The rising trend of Indians travelling internationally is not something that can be missed easily. Outbound travel from India is growing exponentially every year; the Yatra Winter Travel Survey 2017 showed that 36% of travellers were planning an international holiday. On an overall basis, it is estimated that 25 million Indians travelled overseas in 2017, which is growing a very healthy double-digit rate, setting India on the path to become one of the largest outbound travel markets in the world in the next few years.

Moreover, it is not just the lure of shopping and eating in international locations that brings travellers to foreign shores. With an increasing number of Indian travellers, especially millennials, prioritizing personal experiences over material things, it’s fueling the growth of a more experiential travel ecosystem across the world.

Latching on to this insight, VisitBritain launched its new brand campaign ‘I Travel For’ in Mumbai last month. The campaign will run across digital channels, including Facebook and website to engage with potential travellers and inspire them to book a holiday to Britain right now. Using short films and story-telling to showcase unexpected experiences, the campaign aligns the passions that motivate people to travel with experiences that can only be had in Britain, inspiring overseas visitors to book a trip right now.

Driven primarily across Facebook and Instagram, the campaign will also feature Britain’s iconic landmarks and attractions. Additionally, the films highlight common travel interests such as adventure, culinary, relaxation, culture and the undiscovered.

Still from the campaign film, of an unexplored destination in Great Britain.

Highlighting the new brand campaign, VisitBritain Chief Executive Sally Balcombe said, “I Travel For campaign in India will be targeting Buzzseeker travellers. This campaign aims to build on the strong growth we have seen in visits from India, showcasing that Britain is bursting with fun activities and adventure, exciting and contemporary culture and highlighting less-explored destinations. By promoting unexpected experiences, alongside globally renowned and iconic cultural landmarks and attractions, VisitBritain wants to inspire more visitors from India to book a trip to Britain right now.”

Between January and September 2017, there were a record 436,000 inbound visits from India to the UK, up 32% compared to the same period in 2016. Visits from India spent a record £355 million between January and September 2017, up 7% on same period in 2016.

In February last year, VisitBritain tapped into India’s love for Bollywood and Harry Potter by launching a marketing campaign #OMGB (Oh my Great Britain) ‘Home of Amazing Moments’, to inspire Indian travellers to visit the UK. The seven week campaign ran successfully across social platforms, highlighting unique experiences Britain can offer.

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Visit California, in order to attract more Chinese travellers, has forged a partnership with Tuniu. As part of the partnership, they are working with Jay Chou, a leading singer, actor, director and producer. He will star in a series of co-branded spots showcasing the destination and attractions as well as travel services offered by Tuniu.

In the series, Chou travels all over California, assisting wayward travelers along the way and chronicling his journey. Many California destinations are featured, including Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Disney California Adventure Park.

“China is California’s No.1 overseas market, and this partnership with Tuniu creates yet another critical link between Chinese travelers and our state’s many vibrant destinations,” said Caroline Beteta, President and CEO of Visit California. “We are excited to launch this comprehensive campaign, combining travel trade packages, public relations and consumer marketing, all with the intent to inspire Chinese consumers to bring their dreams to life in California.”

The partnership, more than a year in the making, signifies major strides in creating demand for California as a destination among Chinese travelers. In addition to Visit California’s annual cross-channel consumer advertising campaigns, the co-branded Tuniu television campaign will run the entirety of 2017. Q1 will serve as a warm-up period focused on out-of-home advertising, popular evening shows, and TV and online TV Chinese New Year celebration programs. In Q2-Q3, Tuniu will be putting heavy marketing dollars targeting summer and “Golden Week,” the peak travel periods in the Chinese market.

To help travelers inspired by the commercials take action, Visit California is also working with Tuniu to develop four new statewide group travel itineraries and FIT packages in early 2017. A large component of the Chinese travel landscape, tour operators like Tuniu assist travelers in creating hassle-free itineraries with flights, hotels and other arrangements like attraction tickets and rental cars packaged together. In 2015 Chinese visitor spending in California was nearly $2.6 billion, with forecasts to grow to more than $4.8 billion by 2020. More than 70 percent of Chinese travel to California was booked through tour operators and retail agencies, with the top 20 travel agents – including Tuniu – handling more than 80 percent of outbound package tours.

Visit California’s investment in China has grown significantly since entering the market, from a half a million in 2008 to nearly $10 million in less than a decade. The organization has expanded activities over the years to include consumer marketing through television and digital advertising, supporting the more established activities with media and travel trade. Visit California now spends more in China than any market outside of the domestic United States, underscoring the importance of China as an overseas market. Visit California has in-market offices in all three Tier 1 China cities (Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou), as well as Chengdu, and Taipei, Taiwan.

While California pushes to drive tourism in the state, it is expected that the recent announcements by US President Trump will impact travel to the country. Many experts believe that the current situations will turn travellers towards other destinations and that could reduce the impact of efforts Visit California is putting in the Chinese market.

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Christmas is about to arrive and nothing announces the arrival of festive season like the festive campaigns floating all over the internet. They have started to appear and the recently introduced ad by Heathrow airport is doing rounds of the internet. The video titled “Coming home for Christmas” features a pair of old teddy bears arriving after a long journey to their family.

It follows their journey through the airport from their flight, through the luggage carousel, shops and eventually the arrivals lounge where they transform into a human couple meeting their family. Along with a soothing soundtrack, it captures all the familiar visuals and sounds from the airport hub. A unique character is added by the fact that the teddies look terribly out of place due to their small size which adds a hint of humour while carrying the primary communication of the video very well.

Heathrow Commercial Director Jonathan Coen said: “Christmas is my favourite time of year at Heathrow – the airport is abuzz with families and friends reuniting for this special time of year. We love the film and hope the bears’ journey through the airport captures that excitement you feel when walking through Heathrow Arrivals into the arms of your loved ones at Christmas.”

This is the first time Heathrow airport has introduced a Christmas video campaign and celebrates its 70^th anniversary. The campaign was created by advertising agency Havas, directed by DOM&NIC through Outsider Productions and animated by The Mill. The piece was captured over a duration of three days without actually disrupting the everyday operations at Heathrow airport.

The video was released 10 days ago and it appears to have successfully communicated the message that coming home for Christmas is the best gift of all. It shows under the popular searches on Facebook and has been watched over 7.2 million times at the time of writing this. On YouTube, the video has garnered over 3.8 million views. You can find more about the film here.

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Travel brands are welcoming Valentine’s day with new offers, deals and interesting campaigns. The budget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms joined the celebrations by associating social messages with their campaign. The campaign titled ‘No Room for Hate’ started off with a series of memes which were reminiscent of the ‘Be like Bill’ memes that were all over the internet very recently and then went on to pick social topics that are often the hot issues in India, from religion to food and a lot in between.

Valentine’s Day creates a lot of buzz, even more so in India. The campaign created by Thinkstr for OYO Rooms is an attempt to ride on the topical issues and connect with the young people that the brand strongly focuses on. Starting with the ‘Be Like Bill’ approach, they moved to photographs of people next and then adopted a series of graphics to carry a similar message. These social media graphics and photographs were also accompanied by a video of the campaign.

It appears that the strategy has worked well and they have managed to spark a good number of conversations over social media. The hashtag #NoRoomForHate had reached more than 252K accounts over the past 24 hours (Source: TweetReach) with new tweets constantly pouring in.

Along with the campaign over social media platforms, OYO Rooms is also giving Valentine’s Day gifts to the guests staying at OYO Rooms properties which is further adding to the conversations on social media.

What other Valentine’s Day campaigns by travel brands caught your attention? Do share with us.

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Staying at hotels bring out the silly side of many of us. From jumping on the beds to dancing around in towels, people do wacky things and OYO Rooms is inviting people to share them in their latest campaign.

In their campaign #OneForEveryone, they are asking people to share their quirky hotel room habits using a picture or video. The campaign comes in time to target the year end holidayers and promote the brand among them. The contest started today and will continue till December 22 on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To take part in the contest, the users can go to social media accounts of OYO Rooms and share their entries. The entries can be photos or videos and the most interesting entries will get the prizes. Getting more shares and likes on the post will further boost the chances of winning the contest. The contest is open from December 17, 2015 to December 22, 2015. People can send in multiple entries to increase their chances of winning.

Speaking about the campaign, Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, OYO Rooms said, “We are thrilled to launch our latest ad campaign, “OneForEveryone”, which is actually a series of short films showcasing how different people behave once they check-in at a hotel. These colloquial commercials underscore how OYO Rooms understands and caters to the wide spectrum of expectations Indian travellers have from their hotel-experience. We are confident that this campaign will trigger greater brand recall and preference for OYO Rooms when travellers start planning a holiday.”

The campaign has been conceptualised in-house by OYO’s creative team led by Bhaskar Thakur, Head, Brand Strategy. The launch of this campaign is accompanied by 8 short ad clips that set an example for the kind of entries they are expecting while adding some humour to the equation.

The external partners that worked with OYO Rooms for the campaign include The DZU Film Company, Director Daniel Upputuru and AD Tanya Katya.

OYO has been actively trying to lure young travellers through various social media campaigns and the #OneForEveryone campaign will be another step in the same direction. The social media contest will boost their visibility and with New Year approaching, they will be able to offer the OYO experience to more travellers.

Sharing more on the audience and media-mix, Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer, OYO Rooms said, “We are targeting young, upwardly, mobile urban consumers. Along with TV, we have launched a high-impact online campaign #oneforeveryone encouraging consumers to share their quirky hotel moments. Digital and mobile media is a key focus since it will help us reach, engage and forge a relationship with our consumer. We also have OOH across 17 major cities.”

During the contest, they are offering 20 Xiaomi Mi4 mobile phones and 42 free couple stays in selected OYO Rooms properties across India. On Facebook and Twitter, they are putting up 3 phones and 7 room nights up for grabs every day and on Instagram, there are 2 devices to be won in the contest duration.

OYO Rooms is already the leader in this segment and this campaign will surely help them reach new audience, further expanding their digital footprint. If you are participating, quirky videos will surely fetch you more brownie points than pictures.

You can check out all the campaign videos here. Find more details about the campaign on their website. Expect them to roll out more such interesting campaigns in the coming months.

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Airbnb, the online lodging services, has joined hands with TBWA/Singapore for its latest global campaign ‘A Different Paris’ targeting the Asian market.

The ad below, shot in Sydney, shows a young Asian woman reminiscing her last visit to the French capital. Thankfully acting on the advice of an Airbnb host, she could experience and enjoy the ‘Real Paris’ while staying away from the tourist version of the city. Her memories of the ‘Real Paris’ are showcased through an exquisite visual execution using a zoetrope- one of the oldest pre-film animation devices. This ad runs for a period of one minute.

The perseverance behind the making of this ad is really commendable. The massive zoetrope took 100 hours to develop by the carpenters. There were 11256 assembled parts, and painting the miniature models and backgrounds took 648 hours.

You may also want to see behind-the-scene actions of this ad:

According to a report, Jonathan Mildenhall, the Airbnb CMO, stated “Traveling on Airbnb unlocks magical moments – our hosts and their homes create a sense of real belonging for travelers and this feeling is amplified when they discover the city through the eyes of their hosts. This film is showing, in true Airbnb fashion, how the ordinary world can become an altogether different, more magical world.”

As stated earlier by the Airbnb CMO, through the new campaign, the brand’s attempts to inculcate a sense of belonging of the tourist destinations in the minds of the travellers. This initiative by the brand is truly unique and marvellous. The brand has understood that travellers from every corner of the world want to experience the traditional and original nature of the cities. This realization with perfect methods implemented will do wonders for the brand. The tourists will have an uncommon experience of the places they visit. They will be in touch with Airbnb for all the escapades thereon.

The media plan will concentrate more on the creative and experimental placements and formats. The publishers will include Tencent, YouTube, Naver and Yahoo! Japan. It’ll be on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WeChat.

How many of you would like to book via Airbnb for your next travel destination?

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Turkey is a beautiful holiday destination and earlier this year, MakeMyTrip picked Turkey as the hottest summer destination for the year. To present the destination’s unique experiences, MakeMyTrip created a unique online game that showcases the destinations through beautiful panoramas and aerial shots under the name ‘Discover Turkey’ earlier this year. The game was available through a micro-site on www.discoverturkey.in.

The game features five destinations from Turkey with a total of 15 attractions spread through 5 different levels that users have to complete. With each attraction, you will find a virtual experience. Some of them offer 360 degree views while others include virtual tours using videos. Each virtual experience is coupled with a challenge, usually in form of a simple question. The contest has been long over now but the game is still available for users to play.

Campaign strategy

The game has been primarily targeted at social media savvy millennial travellers. To play the game, you have to login using your Facebook or twitter account and share progress on social media. The questions are simple and can be easily answered with the help of the visual tour. Like we said, the objective of this campaign was to promote Turkey as a summer holiday destination and spark some inspiration among the users. MakeMyTrip was spreading the message about Discover Turkey through its social media accounts and getting the users to share the updates on their social accounts further helped in inviting users on the platform.

Promotion strategy

Apart from heavy promotions on social media, MakeMyTrip also joined hands with actress Yami Gautam for offline promotion. They used print advertising and radio ads along with digital ads to spread the word about the campaign and their association with actress. The banners on the MakeMyTrip website also helped spread awareness about the campaign. For the promotions, their marketing spends were primarily targeted towards Tier 1 cities. The contest was open for Indian residents only but was available for people from other countries as a game.

Not only did they promote the campaign using various medium but also set up various on-ground activities at popular shopping malls. This helped them reach people who use social media but aren’t very active.

Our take

We must say the campaign was executed very well by the team at KRDS, the agency behind this campaign. Their team flew to Turkey to get the content for the campaigns, shoot aerial videos, capture 360 degree panoramas and actually understand the whole idea behind Discover Turkey. The website looks quite good and, with interactive maps and impressive interface, enhances the image of MakeMyTrip as an innovative brand in the digital space. The campaign managed to attract over 19,000 visitors with over 1,000 visitors completing all 15 levels.

MakeMyTrip has undergone some major changes this year including a new branding message. Apart from the new branding message ‘Dil toh roaming hai’, they have added new features like ‘Uncancel’, hosted campaigns with popular travel bloggers and invested in promising travel startups. They have also acquired MyGola, a last minute booking service. Sources suggest that a tie-up with Flipkart is also in the pipeline to further strengthen MakeMyTrip’s presence in the online booking space.

This campaign is a classic demonstration of how neat execution and a different approach can do wonders to your campaign. Have you seen Discover Turkey yet? Check out their website and let us know whether it inspires you to travel to Turkey.

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In India, Cricket is a religion and Travel is a passion. When you create a fusion of the two, the result is a cracking campaign like Skyscanner Smartsters.

Skyscanner is a really cool mobile app for frequent flyers and essentially helps you to find the cheapest fares while flying abroad to a destination of your choice. It compares flight-fares from a bunch of websites and aggregates the results in a simple & intuitive interface. Last year, Skyscanner had also launched a hotel only app which works on a similar model as their flights’ app. In India, Skyscanner has been very aggressive since the last year and has primarily been focussing on the rising number of outbound travellers.

Skyscanner has also been the official travel partner of Delhi Daredevils for the second year in running. To promote the entire association for IPL 2015 with Delhi Daredevils, they launched #SkyscannerSmartsters, a campaign where fans were invited to give tips to players on playing smart cricket and travelling smart. The whole idea was driven by the insight that most fans have a fine understanding of the nuances of the game and know how to really travel in style.

What did we really love about Skyscanner Smartsters?

Leverage Cross-Platforms – The campaign was executed across all the key platforms – Skyscanner India Website, Skyscanner India Facebook Page, YouTube channel and Twitter handle making it a truly integrated digital campaign. Learning: Doing a campaign across channels helps you to instantly connect with your community. More importantly, if the proposition is different across channels it gives a fresh perspective to your fans giving them an added incentive to follow you on multiple channels.

Dedicated campaign centric landing page on the Skyscanner India website

Localisation Wins: The whole idea of using #chatpaticommentary and comparing it with Delhi’s local lingo brought an instant connect with Skyscanner’s fans. Similarly asking your team players to speak in Hindi over the more preferred choice of English was a welcome change.

Graphic from Skyscanner India’s twitter feed which shows how they used hindi lingo such as Tadka and Masaledaar to engage with fan-community.

Dynamic & Fresh Content: The problem with most campaigns which span across long duration is fatigue. #SkyscannerSmartsters addressed that challenge in an adept manner by throwing a new question to its fans with on a new match-day of Delhi Daredevils. It kept the fans hooked to the community as they waited for a new question with a new match.

On their Facebook page, Skyscanner India posted fresh questions to engage with their community of fans.

The questions were themed around the travel quotient and linked with the cities where Delhi Daredevils team was playing its matches.

Influencers to Amplify Conversations: Tapping influencers by a brand to amplify the reach of message is not new, but if you get the right mix who can connect with your brand’s overall messaging proposition, the impact it can create is huge. Skyscanner partnered with celebrities and social media influencers who extended the reach of their campaign to new heights.

Skyscanner roped in popular cricket presenter Gautam Bhimani in #ChatpatiCommentary campaign.

It will take some lusty blows & a bit of #ChatpatiCommentary to win the match & to win some @DelhiDaredevils merchandise with @SkyscannerIN

— Gautam Bhimani (@gbhimani) May 9, 2015

Ex-Indian cricketer and popular TV commentator Aakash Chopra also joined the #chatpaticommentary campaign.

Dilliboys! Abhi to party shuru hui hai, thand rakho thand! I am confident that aaj tum aag laga doge #ChatpatiCommentary @SkyscannerIN

— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) April 12, 2015

Did you spot other travel brands engaging with their fan community during major sports events? Do share with us, and we will be happy to feature the best examples.

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