This has been an exciting year, for the travel industry as well as for us and that means we had plenty of stories to share. Newer brands made as many headlines as the established names and there were many highs and lows.

Looking back at this year, we have created a round-up of our most popular stories to refresh the events just in case you missed them.

#1- Plenty of investments

Many travel startups got a strong start to the year 2015 with heavy investments by both foreign and domestic investors. While the investor activity slowed down near the end of year, there were some newsworthy investments earlier. We compiled an infographic of the funding raised by the popular travel startups in different categories. Read full story.

#2- Twitter lessons from AirAsia India MD & CEO

Mittu Chandilya is the young Indian at the helm of AirAsia in India. While working his plans to make India operations the largest of AirAsia subsidiaries, he also actively engages with the customers on social media to ensure quality of service and customer satisfaction. We spoke with him to learn a thing or two about using social media right for an airline brand. Read full story.

#3- Year of budget stays

Budget hotel startups were the highlight of this year. This segment saw the entry of multiple players trying to revolutionise the way we look at the low cost hotels but at which some of them picked up pace, it was clear that the OTAs won’t be happy. They were gaining the power to leverage volume to their advantage, something that wasn’t seen in the hotel space at this scale until now. Read full story.

#4- OTAs hit back

Like we said, the OTAs didn’t appreciate the idea of letting the budget hotel aggregators feed on them. Before the startups could do serious damage, some major OTAs blocked them cutting one of their major source of bookings. Read full story.

#5- TripAdvisor takes a swing

It is not at all easy for the OTAs. The hoteliers don’t like them even when they drive large share of bookings. Not only the budget hotels but their friend TripAdvisor also entered the same playground. Lower rate of commissions and better visibility were enough incentives for smaller players to skip their name and shake hands with TripAdvisor. Read full story.

#6- Conversation with Winnie Tan, Tripzilla

The Singapore based company started in 2010 and quickly went on to become the favourite of outbound travellers in the region. Along with that they are also a good example to look for on how to use content right to inspire travellers. Recently they also launched a flight metasearch engine which gives the OTAs a pass and offers only direct deals. Read full story.

#7- Stayzilla shifted focus to alternative stays

India based accommodation booking platform Stayzilla took a strong focus on homestays and other alternative stays options this year. With the message of ‘Make room for something new’, they are actively inviting the people to start adopting the fast approaching shared economy trend. Read full story.

#8- Marketing lessons by the industry experts

There is something seriously wrong in following the patterns. There is no one strategy that can fit all brands and the marketers should stop pushing the same buttons. Marketing experts like Taranjeet Singh, Country Business Head, Twitter India and Terrence Voon, Director, Marketing Activation, Singapore Tourism Board shared some strong pointers for promoting a travel brand. Read full story.

#9- British Airways social media blooper

British Airways made lot of news this year, social media campaigns, new Dreamliner place and more. But one social media mistake made the strongest headlines for them. British Airways got strong backlash on social media after they sent a predrafted tweet to cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and stayed for quite a while in the twitter trends. Read full story.

#10- Technologies for the road

Driverless cars, especially the Google ones were also in the headlines every now and then. If and when they come in, the travel industry will see major transformations. While we were waiting for these autonomous cars to arrive, we also listed down some other technologies that are coming to our cars soon. Read full story.

We have got lot of exciting things lined up for the year 2016 and for a start, we have already announced Startup Knockdown Mumbai and there will be more coming soon.

The post 2015 Round-up: Most popular stories of the year appeared first on TravHQ.

As travel marketers, we use the phrase ‘viral marketing campaign’ all the time. We often try to desperately push the brand or product and achieve big numbers. With the increasing number of travel startups, more brands are rubbing shoulders to take a bite out of the limited attention of the audience. On social media, it is a small window for them to leave an impression.

Ajay Jain, Terrence Voon and Taranjeet Singh talking about online marketing campaigns

During ‘The Singapore Dialogue: Innovation in Travel’ organised by TiE and Singapore Tourism Board earlier this month, these travel marketing campaigns were the topic of an interesting discussion. The panel included Terrence Voon, Director, Marketing Activation, Singapore Tourism Board, Ajay Jain, Founder, Kunzum.com and TiE Delhi-NCR Travel SIG – Chair and Taranjeet Singh, Country Business Head – India, Twitter India. Some interesting stories and lot of insights were shared during the discussion. Here are some snippets from the conversation.

#1- You don’t always need to start the conversation

Brands often try to tell people about their products or brand and initiate conversations around it. They will host chats around themselves and invite people to talk. This might work to some extent for some major brand but not everyone will have this luxury. Brands should keep track of what the conversations on the platform are around and plan campaigns around the topics that people can connect with. Taranjeet shared the example of how the #saluteselfie campaign by Reliance gained huge traction because the timing was perfect to join the Independence Day conversation on Twitter.

#2- Customers don’t care about your product

“Customers don’t care about your product, your profits, your brand or your success” said Terrence Voon. It is important that your marketing strategy has a very clear objective. It should inform people about something new, educate them about a topic or entertain them, make them laugh. If that is not the case, you need to get back to the drawing board and rethink the strategy.

#3- Get local

It is important to have different strategy for different markets. Terrence shared the story of how Singapore Tourism made news among the people of Philippines. The people there really love music so they got a local rock band on-board to play for the promotional video. The video got millions of views and the song was picked up by local radio stations. Its success inspired more content around it like behind the scenes video.

#4- Trending hashtag is insignificant

Taranjeet shared how Brand Managers often go to Twitter because they want their hashtag to trend. According to him that is absolutely pointless and hardly makes a difference if you can’t get your message through. Even if brands rope in accounts with strong following to tweet about them, they are not connecting with the target audience but just working to be in the list of trends.

They should try to focus on leveraging the trends like Lufthansa did during FIFA World Cup 2014. Emirates was the official airline partner but with just one simple tweet, Lufthansa was the one who grabbed all the eyeballs.

#5- No marketer can ever plan a viral campaign

“There is nothing like a viral marketing campaign. It is an end result, a consequence of people on the platform engaging with the content. No marketer can ever plan the end result”, said Taranjeet when asked about suggestions to plan a viral campaign and we couldn’t agree more. According to him, brand strategists should take a step back and define the objectives of campaign clearly. Twitter should be used more as a listening tool. They should observe the usage pattern of various words/hashtags to plan out the campaign. When questioned about influencer marketing for campaigns, he said that it is good for temporary spikes at times but hasn’t got a significant advantage in the long run.

You can find more stories from this event here or other past events here.

The post “There is nothing like a Viral Marketing Campaign” – Taranjeet Singh, Country Business Head, Twitter India appeared first on TravHQ.