The onset of 1st April every year presents an opportunity for brands to ‘trick’ their consumers with generous doses of mischief and pranks through humorous and almost-believable campaigns. Brands capitalize on the event with many things – ranging from fake products and offers, to contests and basically anything that would help them with engagement.

This year was no different, as many brands jumped into the fray with some unique and clever deceptions. We bring to you a list of all the major April Fools Day campaigns from travel brands on social media this year.

Ixigo’s special ‘kavach’

Ixigo is one company that has never shied away from making a fool out of consumers on this special occasion. Over the years, they have mastered the art of deception and this year, they went a step ahead by announcing the launch of a new smart lock for travellers called Ixigo Kavach. Apparently, this smart lock automatically gave thieves electric shocks when pilfered bags were taken more than 5 meters away from their owners.

The brand didn’t wait for April 1 to announce the campaign, and instead tweeted the launch on March 29, making it all the more believable. While most people were smart to catch on to the fact that this might be a joke, the brand was lauded for its hilarious efforts.

Ola’s fake news

Ola has had some of the most elaborate pranks. In 2015, it claimed to launch a helicopter service called Ola Air, while in 2016 it had said it had launched Ola Rooms, a concept through which people could sleep in cabs. This year, Ola announced the launch of Ola News Network, or ONN, which it called India’s fastest news-on-the-go. It said ONN would utilize Ola’s driver partner network to report news, and that its drivers would double up as news reporters.

Ola was consistent with its posts on social media regarding the launch and people were quite happy to finally see some real on-ground reportage. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Oyo’s cryptic moves

Hospitality giant Oyo went all out with the blockchain theme by announcing the launch of its very own cryptocurrency called Oyo Smart Coin, which would be used by its vendors, hotels and customers to seamlessly conduct transactions among themselves. Oyo even had a dedicated site and whitepaper for Oyo Smart Coin. They even had a registration forum with people lining up to get their hands on the latest currency. Kudos to the efforts at making the prank so elaborate and detailed.

Zoomcar’s home-like caravans

Zoomcar was yet another company that tricked people into believing that they had started rentals of caravan-like vehicles. With a promotional video and a hashtag #Zoomcaravan, the brand urged people to try out its latest offering and take the caravan around places, sleep in forests or the foothills of mountains, banks of lakes or unending tea gardens. One glance at the replies and it is evident that people fell for the ruse, with most consumers asking Zoomcar for details and showing excitement about the launch.

Emirates’ sky views

This prank from Emirates was as big and elaborate as anyone would rightly expect from the Middle-Eastern airline. They announced a new ‘SkyLounge’ – part of a plane where the entire cabin is windows. The airline posted renderings of the lounge to show how it would look like from inside and outside.

The announcement was no more than just a prank and even came with a punchline: the SkyLounge will be introduced on the “Boeing 777X fleet.” Emirates is known to share pranks on April 1st. Even last year, the airline pranked internet users with its life-changing plan to launch the world’s first triple-decker that will feature a swimming pool, game room, gym and a park.

Also read: These travel brands are raising the bar for April Fool’s Day pranks.

The post April Fool’s Day 2018: How top travel brands fooled the world appeared first on TravHQ.

From being held up on the phone for hours for customer support to making a beeline for social media handles to air grievances, the service industry has come a long way. The aviation industry, in particular, now comes under immense public scrutiny. This makes it vital for airlines to make social media the most important and the fastest way to connect with their customers – whether it’s receiving feedback about in-flight service, updating them on flight schedules and delays or generally keeping them abreast of latest developments in the company.

Some of the biggest airlines in the world have emerged to become top brands owing to their strong social media presence. From high-quality digital campaigns to quirky content strategies, they are all burning the midnight oil to make sure they deliver better than competition.

Here, we take a look at the social media strategies of top five airlines in the world.

Qatar Airways

The airline has a very strong presence on all social media platforms and usually links most of its campaigns to news and events, including politics, sports or even information about their own company.

For instance, Qatar Airways has recently launched a social media competition to celebrate the final draw for the group stage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which will take place on December 1 at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia. While the competition may seem like any other, what Qatar Airways aims to do through this competition is basically announce the fact that they will start their new direct flights to St Petersburg, making it easier for football fans to choose the airline to participate in the historic sporting event.

The airline is quite active on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, with upwards of a million followers. Their engagement on all platforms is fast and constant, and their swift response to queries and compliments very effectively upsells the brand. Their photographs are visually appealing and their content is crisp and to the point, at the same time effective in communicating the brand message.

Etihad Airways

Social media has been a very important part of the airline’s strategy in recent years. That is quite clear from the way their creative initiatives have played out across platforms. Their multiple campaigns have always garnered tremendous responses, especially their most popular #Reimagined campaign, to announce their new fleets and uniforms for the crew.

Etihad Airways also takes a very light-hearted approach towards their communication.

By adding a little element of fun in their conversations, they prove that they genuinely care about their patrons. Case in point, this video-

They regularly host competitions, have fun quizzes to interact with customers and generally have a good time on all their social media platforms.

Singapore Airlines

While the airline does have a good presence on Facebook and Instagram, they place their best bets on Twitter, which they use as an important tool for branding. Singapore Airlines has a tremendously well-maintained Twitter account with gorgeous photos of destinations, and heavy on branding. They never forget to remind everyone of their reputation for luxury and deliver well on social media posts depicting the same.

When it comes to interactions, they stick to being mostly safe, with general comments and responses to queries. However, by no means do they compromise on the swiftness of response.

Emirates

If there is one airline that has nailed Instagram, it has to be Emirates. With close to 3 million followers on this platform alone, the airline has managed to garner much attention towards the fact that it flies to almost every city in the world. Their pictures have different themes, branding in the form of pilots holding up cards in the destinations they fly to, and most importantly, pretty pictures of destinations.

Their digital campaigns have also managed to create quite a stir, and they fully understand the importance of influencers in selling a brand. In 2016, they roped in Hollywood superstar Jennifer Aniston to showcase the new A380. The humour in the ad resonated with audiences; it was viewed by millions and people praised the unique story that deviated from traditional airline advertising.

Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific’s approach to social media is extremely customer-centric. They make a lot of efforts at social listening. They try and avoid passing on cases, and usually deal with a customer query online, right there and then. They constantly tweet and retweet what their customers are saying about them, which goes on to show how much they care about how people perceive them.

While their Instagram followers aren’t as high as their competitors’, they still don’t lag behind on efforts. The account is full of good images, and more about people than the brand itself. Same is the case on Facebook where they usually promote discounts, offers and engage with followers through hashtags that ask them to share their holiday memories and experiences.

Which brand strategy do you like the best?

The post How top airlines in the world use social media appeared first on TravHQ.

The IT giant IBM today announced it entered into a technology service agreement with Emirates Airline for a period of 10 years today worth $300 million. The company would cater its IT support to the airline helping to improve its efficiency on its customer and passenger support.

The agreement has provided IBM mainframe and storage that will help Emirates to encrypt data in real time. The platform will additionally facilitate the apps that support API Economy- a set of services package of APIs that contain business functions, capabilities and competencies.

Image: Allen Watkin/ CC BY-SA 2.0

IBM had earlier entered into a collaboration with Emirates to enhance its Passenger Service System. The technology will allow the Airline to scale its airport operations and business processes. The IT infrastructure delivery would help the airline to scale into more managed service model. The airline would benefit from business application performance, scalability and imperative savings on operations.

Emirates has been running its ticketing system on IBM mainframe for more than 30 years now and its z Systems have served as the foundation for all the airline’s data management and transactions.

z Systems have emerged as a mode of real time transactions including flight reservations, inventory, check-ins, ticketing, and flight information for Emirates. IBM technology will provide the airline with secure data handling and secure ticketing and gate information whenever and wherever they require.

Source: Times of Oman

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Today, most of the travellers look up for images & videos to get a sense of the real beauty of a destination. The use of visuals is a vital component in any travel brand’s marketing strategy to showcase how they are different. With over a billion users, YouTube videos are now being watched for hundreds of millions of hours generating billions of views every single day. From DMOs to Hotels to OTAs there are some classic case-studies on how the travel industry is using YouTube for customer engagement.

We’ve filtered out 5 of the most awesome YouTube travel campaigns in 2015 that stand out for their creativity, content and virality elements.

1) Singapore Invites: Singapore Tourism Board

Singapore Tourism Board came up with a unique travel campaign called ‘Singapore Invites’ which gave people an opportunity to live their Singapore dream. To win a dream experience in Singapore, the interested participants had to share the names of the persons they wanted to invite and how they wish to experience the destination with them. STB would then assist 25 wished to come true! This campaign was quite successful. You can read more the campaign here.

2) Countryside is great: Visit Britain

To attract travellers from around the world, British Tourist Authority had collaborated with national parks, The Forestry Commission, The Canal and River Trust, Hertz Cars and many other national tourist boards to run its £3 million ‘Countryside is GREAT’ campaign. It showcased the different regions of Britain, where to find great experiences and how to reach there. As per an article, the digital and print campaign reached 15 million people in Germany and 65 million in USA.

3) A different Paris: Airbnb

Airbnb, the alternative stay platform had joined hands with TBWA/Singapore in September last year for its YouTube commercial ‘A Different Paris’ to target Asian travellers. The ad which was shot in Sydney, showed a young Asian woman reminiscing her last visit to the French capital. Three different versions of the ad were released on the YouTube channel of Airbnb, garnering a combined total of 1937055 views.

4) A week in Turkey: Home Turkey

‘Turkey: Home’  campaign was carried out by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism to promote the country and grab the attention of international tourists. This digital campaign ran successfully on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Instead, its Facebook page was chosen the “Best Branded Facebook Page” as the campaign had reached 4 million subscribers on all social media platforms.

5) Benfica safety video: Emirates

Flight attendants from Emirates in this YouTube video, just demonstrate that sometimes travel brands can go on a completely different route to engage with their online audience. Minutes before the soccer match b/w Benfica & Sporting Lisbon at Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, 8 crew members from Emirates walked on the pitch for mock pre-match instructions in a manner similar to the flight safety announcement. Released towards the end of October 2015, the video has over 2,000,000 views till now.

You can find more interesting campaigns by travel brands here.

The post Recap of the top 5 YouTube travel campaigns in 2015 appeared first on TravHQ.

Dubai is a crazy destination and every now and then we come across something out of the ordinary there. Now a new video has come up featuring Yves Rossy and Vince Reffet flying around an Emirates A380 over the Dubai coastline. Yves Rossy, commonly termed as Jetman or Rocketman, has been involved in various flights, including one through Grand Canyon and an attempt to go across Strait of Gibraltar, on his carbon fibre jetpack powered by Jet Cat turbine engine.

This video shows the duo joining the Emirates A380 from the left and then flying all around it before fading away into the skies. Of course it is a promotional video for Emirates, which wants to show off its A380, and XDubai which is an action sport company in Dubai.

They have made it look very effortless in the video but the reality is nowhere even close. The video has been captured from a helicopter circling the aircraft and synchronising the two would have been a huge effort in itself, let alone the Jetman duo.

Last month the Emirates A380 was in news because a video emerged that showed the airliner flying very close beneath a helicopter in Dubai. Emirates acknowledged that they are conducting air to air filming of A380 over various parts of Dubai and apparently it was in the process of shooting this epic video. While experts suggested that it was completely safe and well controlled, it was still a very close flyby.

With this new video coming up, the internet is flooded with mixed responses. While most people are in awe with the kind of feat Jetman duo, XDubai and Emirates have achieved, some have gone to the extent of calling the jetpacks a new form of weapon. Well that isn’t exactly the case because in most cases flying the jetpack requires as many permissions as a plane and for the turbine engines to work properly, you have to set off from a high altitude from a helicopter which again limits the possibilities. To know more about the making of this video, you can follow this link.

Do tell us what you think of this video.

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