Alia and Ranveer’s hotel-booking launch under Dil Toh Roaming Hai

Read the campaign story

MakeMyTrip’s first hotel-booking films with Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh use changing characters to question a familiar travel habit: arriving at a hotel and sorting everything out there. The stars play contrasting people in comic situations, allowing the brand to compare that approach with booking online. The creative task is practical category recruitment, even though the casting makes it look like entertainment.

The chronology matters. MakeMyTrip’s 2016 annual filing dates the Dil Toh Roaming Hai brand platform to 2015. Contemporary March 2016 coverage identifies a new, more product-focused celebrity campaign under that existing positioning. ETBrandEquity describes films dealing with booking comparisons, deals and cancellation benefits, created by Publicis Capital and directed by Amit Sharma of Chrome Pictures. Exchange4media’s interviews explain the intention to recruit people who did not yet use the internet for hotel reservations. The campaign should not be described as the 2016 invention of the tagline.

The mechanism is to challenge confidence rather than only soothe fear. Someone who is comfortable with a familiar method may not think they have a problem to solve. A comic encounter can reveal a cost, inconvenience or missed option in that method, making comparison worthwhile. In this editorial reading, the changing characters provide variety while the repeated structure keeps the learning stable: an assumption is tested, and the service supplies a relevant alternative.

The transferable lesson is to identify the behaviour being replaced, not just the competitor being challenged. A small accommodation business might learn that customers postpone enquiries because they assume availability will be easy to find on arrival. It could then explain a real reservation benefit through a simple, respectful comparison. That is a proposed adaptation, not a claim about the original films’ testing. The comparison should use equivalent conditions and disclose meaningful restrictions, rather than manufacture an incompetent customer to make the new route look good.

The media plan combined television with radio, outdoor and digital activity, but announced scale is not evidence of conversion. No campaign-specific booking lift is attributed here. Nor are historical hotel deals or cancellation messages presented as current terms. The March launch is separated from later celebrity films and feature promotions. The useful experiment is whether a target customer recognises a previously overlooked reason to change their routine and can accurately state the conditions of the offer. Remembering the actors is a different outcome and should be measured separately.

Define the habit before the message

Identify what people currently do and why it feels sufficient. Build the comparison around a genuine cost or missed benefit of that habit.

Use changing characters with a stable comparison

Vary the situation while preserving one clear learning objective. Avoid assigning incompetence to a regional or social identity.

Check equivalence and conditions

Compare like-for-like options and make material cancellation or pricing restrictions clear. Verify terms again before using historical claims in current work.

A small test for another brief

Create a factual comparison of a common booking habit with one real, bounded reservation benefit.

Recognition of the relevant benefit, accurate recall of conditions and qualified enquiry intent.

Stop if the comparison depends on omitted fees, unavailable offers or ridicule of a customer group.

• Interview non-users about why their current method seems sufficient.
• Choose a like-for-like example with verified terms and no exaggerated savings.
• Test whether a simple illustrated scene changes understanding of the decision.