Building a Travel Brand When No One Is Travelling

If you’re a marketer in the travel Industry right now - in the midst of the biggest global lock down in memory -  there’s probably a question you’ve had more than a few times on those Zoom calls with friends and family. After checking on your general health of course, you may then hear, “What is a travel company doing at work?”. The answer they probably expect to hear is that you’re bunkering down, counting the pennies and waiting for the storm to pass.

The answer they normally don’t expect is, that you’re just doing what you do best - marketing.

Yes, it’s an unlikely time to be marketing travel when people’s primary concern is health, job security and whether the supermarkets will have anything on the shelves today. Yet one thing that people never stop doing is dreaming.  And in fact as travel marketers we are lucky enough to be in the business of selling dreams. In fact, I’m amazed how busy we’ve been during this time, and so wanted to share with you a few ideas for where to focus those marketing brains during this quiet time in travel.

As news trickles in daily with constant downers, perhaps it’s never been more important to give your customers permission to laugh or dream. Whilst the comedy is probably best left for the pros on Netflix, a travel brand still has it’s place to entertain.  The key here is to keep the subject matter close to home and relevant. We launched a content series called “Destination Isolation”, a collection of ideas for how you can bring the wonder of travel right into your home during self isolation. It includes virtual rides at Disneyland or resources for learning a new language ahead of that next trip. Our UK team also invited their Instagram follower to “Travel From Home”, recreating their favourite holiday photos indoors.

Has there ever been a better time to get ahead on those tasks you normally put on the back burner? Test and learn is the mantra of being a modern marketer, but with the constant rhythm of campaigns, it’s often easier to keep your eyes focused forward than looking back to learn lessons from the past. We’ve used the travel down time to get up to date on our post campaign reporting, reflecting on those many experiments from last year to make sure we’ve fully absorbed the learnings and the numbers. Giving this extra attention has already produced new insights and ideas that we will be applying to our campaigns post-recovery.

And in terms of research, there’s always a wealth of information from your customers to reflect on. This is the time to be looking through customers reviews, surveys and social posts, identifying gaps or product requests that could really improve their experience, and encourage advocacy. It’s likely your development team will have a little more capacity during this time, and those new product features could really give you the competitive edge once the market recovers.

Lastly, there’s just the basic hygiene that will really help you further down the track. Could it be filing all those creative assets, videos into a central repository for easy access. Or updating your partnership contact lists to save some future admin.

One thing there is always more space for in travel is good content. At Klook we’re a global platform that hosts over 100,000 activities in 400 destinations, so there sometimes seems like endless ways to inspire and educate customers or simply solve their travel problems.  We’ve ramped up our writing of blog articles and explainer videos, with all members of the team getting involved to contribute in an area where they have some first hand knowledge. There is no shortage of passionate travellers in a travel company.

We focus on topics that are ‘evergreen’, meaning the efforts made now will be rewarded for months or even years to come, provided the content strategy is well structured and optimized for search. If SEO and content writing is not a strength in your company, this is certainly the time to skill up. This course on ahrefs is free and really insightful.

It’s important to remember you’re not alone in this crisis, and there will certainly be others in the travel industry feeling the downturn even more. It’s an important time to rally together, use the time to discuss partnership ideas, support content creation and just get to understand each other’s businesses a bit deeper.  The DMOs and airlines are amongst some of the hardest hit in this but that doesn’t mean that the doors are closed to discussions, quite the opposite. Reaching out to share your support keeps motivations up, but also has every potential to teach you something new, or surface ideas for immediate ways to support each other. And can perhaps sow the seeds of a more integrated campaign for when travel has picked up again.

With the campaign calendar being a little more relaxed than normal, this is perhaps the perfect time to put some new ideas into practice. Whilst you might want to keep spending to a minimum, it’s a time to lean on creativity instead. We’d heard often that TikTok, the fast growing social network, had a strong overlap with our young traveller demographic. We decided it was time to upskill, and learning from three of our influencer partners who use the channel extensively, we gleaned some helpful tips to get our presence established on the platform. What’s great about this platform is the pure focus on entertainment, which really suits the current times.  Those fun videos you captured from destinations where people can’t quite get to right now, still have a place in this world. For example one quirky post by a Klook employee on the Shibuya Crossing in Japan gathered over 20k views in a few days. 

Stay creative, stay collaborative and stay experimental so you are well stocked for ideas when the industry recovers. Once the busy rhythm of travel marketing returns, you’ll look back on this time when you had space to think bigger than ever, and the time to get the house in order. Most importantly, stay safe and look after each other.