Can you introduce your business and the solution you brought into the Hospitality Innovation Lab, and explain what motivated you to take part?

Promote Reviews is a platform that enables everyday customers to create high quality, authentic video reviews for social media as quickly and easily as they can write a traditional written review.

Hospitality businesses know that authentic customer advocacy is incredibly valuable, but generating video content at scale has traditionally been difficult, expensive and heavily reliant on influencers. At the same time, consumers increasingly spend their time on video based social platforms and place greater trust in genuine customer experiences than paid promotions.

Our platform guides customers through the filming process using a simple step by step workflow, automatically edits their footage using AI, and rewards participants based on the performance (exposure) of their content on social media. This enables venues to generate authentic video reviews at scale attracting new customers while allowing operational teams to remain focused on delivering great guest experiences.

We joined the Hospitality Innovation Lab because it provided an opportunity to test our solution with a leading hospitality operator, understand how it performs in a real world environment, and learn how we could make the platform even more effective for large multi site businesses.

⁠Which operator did you work with and what challenge or opportunity were they looking to address through the pilot?

We partnered with Bill’s Restaurants to support the launch of their Poppy Cooks menu collaboration across nine locations in the UK.

The opportunity was to explore whether authentic customer generated video reviews could help increase visibility, engagement and restaurant visits while creating minimal additional workload for venue teams. Bill’s was interested in understanding whether everyday customers could become a scalable source of high quality content and whether that content could influence awareness and purchasing behaviour in a measurable way.

The pilot also provided an opportunity to test how customer generated video reviews could support hospitality marketing in a way that remains authentic, operationally simple and compliant with evolving industry requirements.

Can you talk us through the pilot process, including how the solution was implemented, how it worked in practice, and any challenges, surprises or key learnings along the way?

The pilot was deployed across nine Bill’s restaurants. Customers were invited to participate through in venue signage, scanning a QR code to access the campaign and create a short video review of their experience.

Once enrolled, users were guided through exactly which clips to film using our step by step filming guide. Our AI then automatically edited the footage into a social media ready video review, which customers could post on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Participants received rewards based on the number of views their content generated.

One of the biggest learnings from the pilot was the importance of in venue visibility. Early in the pilot there were delays in receiving the final HFSS menu information and placing signs within venues, meaning some customers were unaware that the campaign was running. Once these issues were resolved, participation increased steadily throughout the programme.

This reinforced the importance of making campaign activation as visible and frictionless as possible. We are now working towards permanent QR and NFC touchpoints that can be integrated directly onto menus, tables and counters, making participation even easier for customers.

Another positive surprise was the willingness of customers to create content. Once given a clear filming structure and simple workflow, users consistently produced authentic video reviews with minimal support required.

What results have you seen so far, and how has the experience influenced your solution, your business or your relationship with the operator?

The pilot generated 40 completed video reviews over the ten week programme, producing approximately 50,000 social media views and around £2,000 in direct spend from Promote users visiting Bill’s through the platform.

Importantly, the programme required very little time from Bill’s teams, with an estimated three hours of combined staff involvement across the entire pilot period.

From a commercial perspective, participating venues outperformed non pilot locations by approximately 5.8% during the pilot period. We also conducted a detailed comparison between two similar Westfield locations, where the participating Stratford restaurant outperformed the non participating White City location by 24.6% in revenue growth.

The pilot provided valuable product feedback that has directly influenced our roadmap. We identified opportunities to improve campaign awareness, simplify onboarding and further enhance content quality. We have already implemented improvements to our video processing and are redesigning parts of the activation journey to reduce friction and increase participation rates.

⁠Looking ahead, what are the next steps for the project, and how do you see the solution developing in the future?

One of our key priorities is making campaign participation even more seamless. We are redesigning the onboarding experience so that customers can scan a QR code or tap an NFC tag and be taken directly into the relevant campaign, reducing the number of steps required to get started.

We are also investing in improved in venue activation materials following the pilot’s findings around campaign visibility. Making participation opportunities more prominent will help drive greater awareness and engagement among customers.

Alongside continued growth within hospitality, we are beginning to expand into the tourism sector. We believe destinations, attractions and tourism organisations face many of the same challenges around authentic content creation and visitor engagement, and there is a significant opportunity to help visitors create genuine video reviews that inspire future travellers.

Following the Bill’s pilot, we have also been selected for the Maria 01 Northern Lights Accelerator in Finland and have signed a partnership with Tokyo Dome City in Japan. These initiatives will help us continue refining the platform as we expand internationally.

Our long term vision is to become the world’s largest platform for everyday customer video reviews across hospitality, tourism and retail.

⁠Overall, how would you describe your experience of participating in the Hospitality Innovation Lab, and what value do programmes like this bring to hospitality innovation?

The Hospitality Innovation Lab has been an extremely valuable experience for our team.

For startups, one of the biggest barriers to innovation is gaining access to operators that are willing to test new ideas in a live environment. The programme creates a framework where operators and startups can work together to evaluate new technologies, gather real world data and learn from the results.

Working closely with Bill’s allowed us to validate our solution, identify areas for improvement and gain insights that would have been impossible to replicate in a purely theoretical setting.

Programmes like the Hospitality Innovation Lab play an important role in accelerating innovation across the sector because they allow businesses to experiment, learn and adopt new approaches in a structured and low risk way. They help bridge the gap between promising technology and practical implementation, creating value for operators, startups and ultimately the guest experience.