There’s no better way for hotels to tell stories than videos, the engagement is high and brand gets a huge upliftment if videos are made in a compelling format.

Featured here is a video done for Radisson Noida, an upscale boutique hotel to promote Ni Hao, an Asian Cuisine restaurant in Noida (India). Are you a boutique hotel? How are you using videos to convey the story of your hotel? We would love to hear your story.

The post How hotels can use video to market themselves on Digital Platforms appeared first on TravHQ.

Any brand now has more platforms than ever to communicate with their audience, each one slightly different than the other. Social media platforms hold a significant spot in the entire marketing map of any brand yet their relevance has changed over the years. Some have gained an even more important spot while some have lost their lustre. To complicate matters further for the brand, audience now prefer even simpler channels like messaging to be in touch with the brand. The likes of WeChat are already giving plenty of sleepless nights to the social media giants and the trend is likely to continue. Who would have thought things will be promoted and paid for via a chat app?

The change isn’t just limited to the platforms where the users are but how rapidly existing formats are gaining momentum and new formats are coming in. While we haven’t seen the pitch, we are quite sure that video wasn’t something that Mark Zuckerberg focused heavily on when he first pitched Facebook to Peter Thiel. And yet, the platform is now full of videos and is taking the fight against the video giant. YouTube on the other hand now has a large array of 360 videos and VR is the talk of the town.

But where does that leave the marketers? It is an everyday fight between maintaining the momentum on already popular platforms and identifying where the action is shifting. While it is easier for brands with a global scale to allocate resources to experiment, it isn’t the same for startups. And the challenges extend much further.

For almost two years, we have been actively meeting and getting acquainted with entrepreneurs in travel industry. Each one of them building something unique to address the pain points of travellers. Some of them carry strong experiences of working in marketing roles and teach us a trick or two while many others are tech superheroes who rise up to challenges with code. However, irrespective of the expertise, they have to do a bit of both to minimise the required resources in the early days.

We are trying to make the job a little bit easier for the second type of entrepreneurs by bringing together the best marketers, tourism boards and content creators from across the country to share their knowledge with them during TravelNEXUS. For the first type of entrepreneurs who have cracked the marketing code, we are offering a platform to showcase their work and share their learnings with others (Sign up here, we want you there).

We have an array of discussions and keynotes lined up where domain experts will join to share insights. There will be discussions on how travel and hospitality companies can unlock the maximum potential of conventional social media channels as well as identify the upcoming ones or how brands can maximise the impact of their campaigns among many other things. The event is supported by hospitality partner Ramada Gurgaon Central and travel partner Plush Escapes. Leading social media news portal Social Samosa will also bring its expertise to the event. You can read more about TravelNEXUS here.

Full Schedule

The event was originally scheduled to be held on March 25, 2017 at Ramada Gurgaon Central however, we have to push it further due to some unavoidable circumstances. New event date will be updated soon. We know you want to put your every penny towards your business which is why we have kept the registration costs as low as we could. You can reach us through our social channels, mail or use the comment section for any queries you may have.

Registration link.

Update March 17, 2017- Event date to be rescheduled.

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Rush to download all the content you posted on Vine first. The platform is being killed off and in few hours your Vine app will turn into Vine Camera. What was once the go to place for casual short form videos is fading away and we don’t like it a bit. The six second limit (before it was changed) forced people (and brands) to think differently and be creative. We absolutely loved shooting some quirky videos from around the office for our own account and putting the message in the tiny time frame was actually a tough job. However, marketers began moving their money away from Vine and the platform eventually reached where it is today despite its initial popularity.

Now that Vine has gone away, here are some ideas for where you can direct your energy to gain more visibility for your brand:

Instagram stories

500 million monthly active users on Instagram. 150 million using the relatively fresh Stories feature already. Instagram goes on top of the list because its success with videos is one of the many reasons Vine is going away and Stories are a great way to keep the creativity alive. You can go with quick photos or short videos (or Boomerang, even better). Instagram posts are losing visibility as algorithms work their magic but for now, stories can help with your brand visibility. If you are still not convinced, here are some more reasons.

Snapchat

How can we talk about Instagram Stories and not talk about Snapchat! The platform is built around unrefined real time experiences (and disappearing content), something that Facebook looked at for inspiration. The number of young travellers is increasing and they are on Snapchat. Travel brands like Conde Nast Traveler and Marriott are already using the platform to engage with young audience and you should too. Find your quick start guide here.

Animations

You are probably putting lot of graphics and photographs on your Facebook and Twitter account. Maybe you should try using more animations if you aren’t already. Think of it as Vine without sound and get creative. Show your audience that your brand has a funny side and get your message across with less words. Of course you should dial up the humour only in line with your brand communication style but if you hit the sweet spot, it could translate into increased reach for your social accounts. There are plenty of free tools available online that can simplify the process of making them.

WeChat

In some parts of the world, WeChat is really popular and with over 800 million monthly active users, it is bigger than Instagram. It is lot more than just a messaging app and has added social features over time (and as you would have guessed, influencers as well). There is Moments which is like Facebook timeline and brands can also choose to place sponsored content in Moments’ timeline. Subscriptions can drive your content to your audience and the wallet means that it is easier for users to spend $$$ when you convince them to.

Messenger

Facebook is bullish on Messenger as it tries to be the WeChat of West and we know Facebook is good at identifying trends. You can use your Facebook posts to get people to interact with you more through Messenger. Going a step further, you can consider diverting resources towards chat bots, for PR opportunity and the novelty if not for anything else. Even if you don’t have the resources to put towards building a chat bot from scratch, you can use some of these tools to experiment with what you can make. Bots might not have picked up yet but they certainly have potential.

What platform are you planning to replace Vine with?

The post Vine is dead. Here are 5 things to shift your focus on appeared first on TravHQ.

The airline food is usually nothing worth talking about, and it isn’t something airlines highlight often. In most cases, it is ‘decent’ at best. Singapore Airlines however can make an exception here. The highly awarded airline not only receives appreciation for the excellent in-flight entertainment and on-board amenities but also for employing celebrated chefs to offer quality in-flight dining experience. In their latest video they have tried to draw attention to this dining experience and judging by the numbers so far, they have pulled it off well.

Singapore Airlines offers a ‘Book the Cook’ menu with which it allows travellers to book meals from a menu featuring exclusive options upto 24 hours before departure. Through the recently released video conceptualised by Dentsu Mobius, they have showcased the dishes from this menu. However, instead of taking the obvious approach of featuring the chefs preparing the delicacies, it created miniscule versions of the dishes with a tiny set of utensils.

The video was released on October 19 and since then, it has got close to 2.4M views and 8K shares on Facebook and 600K views on YouTube. It features various elements including miniature stove with candle flame, grills and utensils that are used to create small size dishes thoroughly following the preparation process, only at a smaller scale. The video very well puts light on what they have on offer and sends the message of how attention to small details can enhance the overall experience. The impact is also indicated by the fact that someone actually tried to recreate it (without much success).

This isn’t the only video of its kind though. They have released another video in the past which featured a designer crafting miniature aircraft seats of all the seat categories the airline offers. The latest video was followed by a behind the scenes video as well which features the artist and the massive effort that went behind the not-so-simple video. These videos go very well with their communication of delighting the customer by paying attention to small details. No wonder Singapore Airline is among the very few carriers for which the sentiments on social media platforms aren’t negative. And that is something praiseworthy in an industry dealing with baggage losses and unexpected delays on a daily basis.

The post This video by Singapore Airlines is doing rounds of the internet for all the right reasons appeared first on TravHQ.

Instagram has been experimenting with the product leaving the users perplexed lately. Soon after announcing the change in sorting algorithms, they have now increased the maximum length of videos to 60 seconds. Instagram recently opened up to advertising and then came the one minute videos for advertisers. With this update however, everyone will be able to post the one minute videos.

Videos are clearly an important medium for Instagram and according to them, the time people spent watching videos increased by 40 percent. YouTube sees very high usage rate and Facebook videos have also started to pick up well. This update indicates that Instagram is also serious about the same and is trying to increase its appeal as a video sharing platform.

Travel brands and influencers have been using Instagram videos for a while now but if they choose to use longer videos, more efforts will be needed. Instagram says that it wants to offer more flexibility to the users, some claim that the higher limit would give Instagram more opportunities for video ads. The higher limit would allow brands to create a wider variety of content which means the platform might see increased usage by them.

It is certain that the change will force brands to go back to the drawing board to rethink the strategy, doing so might not be very easy. The fact that they are able to post longer videos doesn’t mean that the audience will watch. Attention spans are small and quality of content will continue to determine the success of brands of Instagram.

Marketers and brands who have got enthralling stories to tell and can make good use of anything above 15 seconds, this change can be a blessing. Many brands will be eager to make the best out of this new opportunity. However they shouldn’t consider it to be an announcement for repurposing their content. If you can do great with 7-8 second videos, don’t try to force a longer video or start reposting your YouTube videos on Instagram. Unless you have story worthy of taking up the 60 seconds, keep it sweet and short and focus on grabbing the attention of viewers. The recent algorithm changes will kick out a drab video anyway.

What do you think of this recent change in Instagram? How do you plan to leverage it for your brand? Do share with us.

The post What changes for travel brands with Instagram’s 60 second video format appeared first on TravHQ.