As the industry shifts to mobile and media consumption patterns change, media companies are the first to adapt to the change. They have to stay ahead of the curve as it is crucial for them to ensure their content reaches where their audience are. Lonely Planet is one of the biggest names in travel publishing and the brand has been following the trends closely. In fact it is one of the first media brands to get onboard the recently announced Google Assistant to help Google answer travel related queries. With the evolution of new media platforms, travel brands are exploring them to market their products better. During the recently concluded TiE Travel Marketing Summit, Naveen Seshadri, COO, Lonely Planet engaged in a discussion with Daksh Sharma, Founding Partner, TravHQ to shed some light on the new trends that are emerging in travel marketing and how Lonely Planet is adapting to this shift. Here are the key highlights of the session:

(L to R) Daksh Sharma and Naveen Seshadri

Inspire the right way

The very first point Naveen highlighted is rather obvious yet often overlooked by brands. For most of the travel brands, a very important part of the marketing strategy is to educate and inspire travellers. However, they are not looking for the obvious destinations anymore. The content on your social platforms should go beyond that and educate people about something new which could be of more interest to them.

Build your own community

While the ceiling is dropping on travel publishing, Lonely Planet has found room for itself by constantly experimenting and with the brand value. There is a significant increase in number of self publishers or bloggers on different platforms which offers collaboration opportunities for brands to leverage the reach and provide content. However, brands also have to consider the fact that they might not be loyal to one brand. Which is why brands should look at building their own communities or work on a hybrid model with them so that they don’t keep hopping brands and lose relevance.

Smartly package quality

The internet is flooded with listicles. “10 things to do when you visit Mumbai” is the kind of content audience love, probably because it is easier to skim through text content that is divided in smaller parts. However, this format spoils rich, well researched content. Publishers should look at striking a balance between such instantly consumable content and deep, research driven content. Along with text, videos offer a great way to pack more information in an easily consumable format and brands should experiment with videos if they aren’t already.

Don’t try to boil the ocean

While it is good to set optimistic goals, it is never a good idea to invest heavily in advertising in early days. Trying to outspend OTAs and metasearch services won’t yield anything fruitful. The best approach is to define your niche and selectively target the set of audience with a certain degree of personalisation. This will not only increase conversions but also drive loyalty to some extent. With a small set of well targeted audience, you will be able to better match the expectations and thus leave a better impression.

Structure well

We have seen travel startups often find smart use of data and technology to create amazing products. However, in a bid to lead on the technology front, some fail to spend enough time on the user experience. Make sure that you are putting efforts on fine tuning the interface and offering a good user experience (Read how BlaBlaCar is doing it). Only then the users you have acquired with your marketing efforts will stick around.

If you are planning to add videos to your marketing plan for 2017, here are some tips for you from the experts.

The post Highlights from the fireside chat with Naveen Seshadri, COO, Lonely Planet, during TiE Travel Marketing Summit appeared first on TravHQ.

Travel is changing and it is changing fast. Just over the past few years, we have come a long way. From booking with our friendly cab provider in advance to calling an Uber to go to airport, from walking into a hotel hoping for rooms to booking at last minute using an app, from queuing up at airport to using mobile for check-in, things are changing rapidly and we have adopted the changes very well despite some initial reluctance.

Now a startup is trying to change another travel habit of ours. Most of us go on a trip, enjoy the experience and a few weeks later, pretty much forget everything barring the fact that we had fun. We share the stories with our friends and colleagues but the details are lost in Google searching the name of that one place which we really loved during the trip. Some travellers like me use an app like Color Note to save the details while on the go but that is a rather clumsy way of doing things.

Many apps allow you to avoid either of the two approaches and give you the option to feed in your trip details once you are back. While the idea is good, most people would choose to filter and edit photos for their Instagram instead of uploading all the details on a new platform. Why? Because we need gratification and that comes from friends on social networks. TraveLibro takes a clever approach here and smartly eliminates the need of keying in the details after the trip. Instead, it keeps recording your trip when you are travelling while adding an element of social media into the equation.

Former investment banker Monish Shah perceived a gap in the market while researching destinations for his own honeymoon and joined hands with serial entrepreneur Malhar Gala to build TraveLibro.

‘Libro’ is a Spanish word that translates to ‘book’, only in this case, the book writes itself and is ready for you and your friends to cherish right after the trip. While the feature can be used to record your solo adventures, it can accommodate your friends as well while on the go. As you travel with your friends, it will make a collaborative timeline which will be shared until you are travelling together and record separately when you decide to leave the lazy one at the hotel. Each one of the travellers can contribute to the timeline with photos they shoot at the destination. And with all your trips, you can also showcase a list of countries you have visited and the ones that are on your list. Doesn’t hurt to brag a bit, does it?

The recorded trips can be shared with friends and family who want to know about your journey. This is much easier and more detailed than the scattered photos shared on social media or dumped into a folder to be filtered later.

What works as a travel diary for you, works as a trip planner for someone else in your network. The recorded trips can be used by others to serve as the base plan for building upon by someone else. Whenever I plan to travel, I call my friends who have been in that direction to share whatever they remember of their itinerary and then I fine tune the plan. TraveLibro tries to do that only, albeit in a simpler manner. However, you can’t always count on your friends to make a sensible plan or even have one to share in the first place. That is why it also features a good number of reference itineraries created by experts for you to build upon.

The first time we came to know about TraveLibro, we were slightly disappointed to not find the direct booking option. It always had the option to send an enquiry to one of the many travel agents on the platform but many of us prefer to make individual bookings. Now they have integrated with multiple partners like flight metasearch Skyscanner or activity booking platform Viator to facilitate direct bookings from the website. A partership with Agoda is also in pipeline for hotel booking. This new development could possibly make it a strong player in this highly competitive space and with a large number of popular and not-so-popular destinations covered, it is likely to hold relevance for most of your trips.

Another reason we are so interested in TraveLibro is because it could serve as a new channel for travel bloggers. There are many platforms the bloggers use to engage with their audience and TraveLibro, with the strong focus on being a travel social network, could give them another way to do so. In fact, some of the top travel bloggers like Paul Johnson from ‘A luxury travel blog’, Bruised Passports and Nisha Jha are already using the platform to record their trips and share with their community. They often receive queries from travellers about places to visit or restaurants to try. Travellers can read about the experiences in detail on the blogs and browse through the detailed itinerary on TraveLibro. It would be interesting to see how going forward, we see more people explore the possibilities with this platform.

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Over the past few years, we have seen many new businesses change how we travel. New products and services have disrupted some of the biggest players in this huge industry. Change is inevitable and it is crucial for brands to adapt and stay aligned with the trends. We have also seen an increase in number of resources available online, whether blogs or planning services, that would help a traveller plan better. A large fraction of these services are available for free and often have to fight each other for the attention of travellers. Despite this, Lonely Planet, the largest travel guide book publisher in the world, continues to be on top of a traveller’s mind for over four decades. The key? Identifying the needs of modern traveller and delivering them the same.

Sesh Seshadri, Director, Lonely Planet India

The Lonely Planet guidebooks and web channels continue to inspire a large number of travellers, educate them and help them plan their trips better. We recently got a chance to catch up with Lonely Planet India Director, Mr. Sesh Seshadri over a cup of coffee at their office in Gurgaon to learn more about how the brand continues to expand its footprint in India and the changes he predicts for travel industry. Sesh comes with decades of experience in publishing industry and is always eager to explore how new technologies can be leveraged to deliver relevant content to benefit the travellers. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

How has the travel content changed over the past few years?

We come from a background of producing guides for the past 40+ years and that was probably the beginning of Lonely Planet- helping the traveller enjoy the experience, discover destinations, put together itineraries- this is where it all began. With the advent of technology, there is a lot more content available on the internet but I think the market is still not mature enough to understand the difference between content and curated content. From LP’s perspective, I would say we still have that huge advantage of providing curated content and if you look at any of our books, you will see that we write about things we have experienced and a traveller should know. That is why there is a definite LP voice.

Talking about the changes, I would say there is lot more content available now and it is difficult for the traveller to identify the right sources. That is where the branded content definitely comes into play. I don’t mean to demean anyone. All I want to convey is that our purpose is very clear, it is to help the travellers get the right information that would help with their travel experience.

What technologies do you see finding place in travel?

Recently I was part of a conference where we talked about location based services. That seems to be one of the key factors coming into travel space and I see that is definitely going to find a place in other industries as well. In travel I think location based services are going to play a definitive role in enhancing user experience. Many new models have emerged in travel industry.

Technology is helping solve lot of problems and we will continue to see that. You don’t have to haggle for cabs anymore or make calls to book one. Technology will be a great enabler in travel. It won’t replace anything but is going to improve a lot of things.

Publishing online is much easier now and we have seen many sources offer travel inspiration. How has this affected Lonely Planet?

From the first impressions, it hasn’t affected us at all. I think people must understand that they are both here to stay and complement each other. It isn’t an “either-or” situation. There will be technology and online media but there will still be printed content. The proportions may change over time but neither one of them is going away. There are some people who want to be engaged with technology and then there are some people who want to be engaged otherwise and that number will keep both opportunities alive.

For me, technology is not disturbing the delivery of content but is helping the delivery of content. Having said that, a large fraction of the content available online is crowdsourced. The validity of that content comes in question and that is a challenge. If my neighbour is recommending some activity, I will count on that because I know someone trustworthy has experienced that. But if hundreds of unknown people are telling me about the same activity, how can I know if that isn’t an advertorial?

Do you think the same holds true for trip planning startups?

In some markets, it is important to offer itinerary based travel options. For instance in India, offering itinerary based travel which includes the best places and activities to experience at a destination is much more successful. The key factors being time, budget and experience. This definitely works well for a good number of travellers. However, the new generation traveller is not looking for such an experience. They are looking to experience things that not many people choose and are willing to explore less explored places. It is difficult to put the kind of travellers in a small number of categories. We at Lonely Planet also focus on helping the second kind of traveller.

What is coming next for Lonely Planet India?

We are already doing a lot of interesting new things. If you head to our website, you will see that we have launched specific guides in the form of apps for around 38 cities and we are giving them absolutely free of cost. The whole idea is to bring in engagement, help more travellers and provide relevant information to them. You can expect to see more technology driven content coming from us in the near future. However, that doesn’t mean the guidebooks are going away. Guidebooks will continue to be at the centre of our model but we will try to add more value by leveraging technology.

Some of the upcoming titles under Lonely Planet Kids

We are focussing on specific segments of travellers as well. For instance we are now publishing Lonely Planet Kids and we have got some fantastic titles under that segment. We are also publishing a lot of gift books which are travel related. There is an appetite for things beyond the guide while staying within the travel portfolio and you will see relevant products coming from Lonely Planet India.

Sesh has previously supported us in our events by sharing his knowledge during various panel discussions. Now we are bringing back the events on an even bigger scale. Sign up for the upcoming Startup Knockdown+.

If you are looking for some inspiration or ideas for your next trip, you can head to the Lonely Planet India website.

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