The luxurious Ritz-Carlton Montreal has come under fire after the hotel shared a video on social media to promote its campaign to donate toys to children at CHU Sainte-Justine hospital.
In the caption of the video for the campaign, posted to Instagram Sunday, the hotel promised to donate one toy for every time someone shares their post.
The ask was successful, with the video being shared millions of times, but the hotel seemingly backtracked on their request by changing the caption, specifically the part about one toy being donated per share.
“The Ritz-Carlton Montreal in collaboration with Décarie Motors and the Vo-Dignard Provost Group #challengevp, will be delivering toys December 20th for the children of the Fondation CHU Sainte Justine , who are spending their holidays alone, away from their family & home, in treatment in hospital,” the caption now reads.
The switch quickly drew criticism on social media, with people accusing Ritz-Carlton Montreal of using their partnership with the hospital to boost their social media engagement.
“This is a horrible marketing gimmick and you should be ashamed of the manipulation and lack of transparency that went behind this,” a commenter wrote under the Instagram post.
“This must be one of the most obnoxious, unpleasant thing I’ve seen this year. When you are genuine, kind and generous, you give without being noticed, or at least without asking for anything in return, publicity included. Using this video and images to get more followers and boost your commercial ego/ image is rather despicable. Shame on you,” another person wrote in the comments.
The hotel then posted the video on Instagram again, explaining it’s relationship with the CHU Sainte-Justine and stating that over $100,000 has been raised since 2012.
“IMAGINE. You’re Ritz Carlton Montréal. You do a 200M restoration in 2012. You then post in 2020 that you will donate 1 present per share. You then decide to retract this statement and not honour your word as it got too many shares. THEN you have the audacity to “brag” about donating 100K in the last 8 years,” one person wrote in the comments.
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