3 KickAss Ideas for Building The Coolest Stay Brand
A few weeks back I met the Director Brand Marketing at Treebo Hotels, Mr. Shubham Khurana. Over a candid conversation about the company and its growth story, he revealed that Treebo wants to be the most loved stay brand in India. They want to channelise all their efforts in creating that special place in consumers hearts about Treebo Hotels.
If you have tried any of the budget stay brands in India like Ibis, LemonTree, Ginger, Treebo you would realise that, there is a striking similarity in the entire pre-booking — booking — post booking — stay — check out experience. Then how does one brand become the most loved stay brand in the space, when even other players are meeting quality benchmarks within an affordable price range. Loving any brand means you love every interaction with the brand. So how can we ensure that consumers fall in love with every interaction with the brand. To understand this, first let’s decode who these consumers are.
Each year more and more Indians are traveling to domestic locations. So, here are some interesting facts about the domestic Indian traveller:
In 2015 almost 1.4 billion trips happened to domestic locations, which is a steady increase of 11.6% from 2014.
Data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) states that domestic airlines in India flew 81 million passengers in 2015, registering a 20 per cent growth from 2014. This signifies increasing number of business travellers, and 25% of these domestic business travellers are Millenials (age group 18–34 yrs)
Currently women account for 41.6% of those enrolled in higher education and are entering the professional hierarchy in a big way. Further, they already account for an estimated 30% of the economically active workforce and nearly 25% of domestic business travellers.
Thus there is no denying that the millenial age group is steadily increasing its domestic trips both for business and personal reasons. With over 150 million Indians forming the Millenial category, they are the self-assured, optimistic, globally connected and curious lot. There are 3 important reasons why budget stays should focus on building their product & service around Millenials:
- Most Impressionable — They have either just joined the work force or going to join in a few years. Hence they are not yet fixed to any particular stay brand. Its much easier to form ever lasting brand connection with them, than trying to win over someone who already has a favourite brand.
- Higher Consumption — Millenials are mostly singles, who are still in the process of self discovery. They will have higher purchasing power and higher frequency of purchase.
- Being Social — Internet is truly ruled by the youth. They are the voice of every brand today. Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other review sites are places where millenials openly praise and criticise companies. So if you want to act smart and use the power of internet & voice of free brand advocates, then you can build your product and service around the youth.
Ernst & Young defines this category as ‘Speed Demons”, as time is their most valuable asset and seamless service a must for holding their loyalty.
DELVING DEEP INTO THE MILLENIAL TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR
The Frequent, Impulsive, Millenial Traveller — The way Indian’s travel have changed and will change further. Think about millenial’s parents, they would take a significant amount of time to plan a trip even within India. The middle class Indian will also want to save a significant amount of money for travel. Travelling to a domestic location might be once or twice in a year only. But the Millennials travel in a very different way. Personal travel is much more impulsive now. Travel plans are hatched just before weekends and they travel to mostly explore, relax and soothe their senses.
Around 30% Indians have increased their frequency of domestic travel in the past 3–5 years. Where unplanned trip is the major reason behind more frequent domestic travel for around 57% travelling Indians.
With the youth getting more comfortable and secure using credit cards, impulsive travel is bound to keep increasing. In the past 3 years, credit card usage in India has risen sharply to 18%, around 22 million people use credit cards now in a population of 1.3 billion.
So how do we interestingly engage these millenials at every stage of the brand interaction and make them fall in love with the brand?
Check out these funky brand engagement ideas which have never been tried before. They will surely ring a bell with today’s youth!
Play to Score Trips
Online gaming has taken over the entire world, its mainstream and is crossing age and gender boundaries. More than 1.2 billion people in the world play online games and its a huge part of people’s online activities. Here are some interesting facts about gaming by Spil Games, who conducted a worldwide research to understand the gaming behaviour.
As millenials travel more impulsively, therefore being present every time in their happy zone is the key to generate that impulse and ensure continuos engagement. Tie up with online games to convert score points to cash discounts or cash backs on wallets, that can be redeemed on trips. This is a win win deal for both the sides — Game Apps and Stay Brands. Games like Candy Crush Saga, Throne Rush, Clash of Clans are very popular among the Indian youth. Tying up with such games will firstly keep your brand on top of mind awareness, secondly you can gamify the wins so that they keep focusing on scoring and unlocking the benefits, thirdly you can control the travel frequency by putting expiry dates to the bagged wins.
Just by using a new channel for targeting the youth, you can enter their world like Santa Claus, make them travel & stay with your brand, while they feel like they have Earned It! All the more reason why they will be more keen to utilise the earned scores. Because when you earn something using your focus and energy , you won’t let it go so easily.
Experience Zones
Most millenials travel to experience, the journey is more important than the destination, they are more open to accepting & embracing differences. In fact a lot millenials are looking forward to submerging in the local traditions, lifestyle and unique offerings of their host city. This is the reason why Homestays are on a rising demand and why Airbnb came up with its brilliant Airbnb Experiences offerings.
According to the TripBarometer study by TripAdvisor, “Overall, 82% of the Indian travellers plan to try something new in 2016, with the top choices being — Wildlife safari (35%), Cruise (33%) and Adventure travel (29%).”
According to TripAdvisor India Country Manager Nikhil Ganju, “Around 30–40% of Indian travellers have said that they had the intent of going on a trip where there is at least one adventure.”
President & Country Head at Thomas Cook India Rajeev Kale says, “Arguably the most significant, systemic trend in worldwide tourism today is the demand for experiential travel — typically meant to convey the idea of more immersive, local, authentic, adventurous and active travel. The evolving young Indian traveller is showing strong demand for adrenalin-infused adventure, to meet new people, learn new things, and experience a new life.”
It’s time for hotels to look beyond the myopic vision of just providing quality stay. Standard quality stays at affordable prices are provided by many players. Hotels need to engage its guests with local communities & ecosystem , enable them to grow empathy and demonstrate responsibility towards the local communities and environment.
Think about travellers in Ooty getting a chance to visit the local terrace farms, they engage with the farmers there, learn about how they farm, engage themselves in farming and do more. In this process even the local farmers can earn money and grow connections.
Travellers visiting National Parks like Mudumalai, Corbett, Kaziranga getting to participate and meet people who are preserving wildlife. They immerse in the preservation work with them during their stay. This will grow empathy and responsibility towards our environment. Any hotel offering such experiences will be looked up by the people and Govt. alike and emerge as a leader in this space.
Experiences can be as varied as teaching in a local school, meeting local artisans & engaging in their work, cooking local cuisine at some budding local chef’s home, yoga & meditation, spiritual talks & gatherings etc.
Experiences can made as be a flexible addition to the regular available stay options. So that interested guests can simply add it to their bucket while booking their stay.
Be Funny. Be Friendly
This generation loves humour! Evidence is the growing popularity of standup comedians and other youtube channels & YouTubers like SuperWoman, TVF, AIB, BuzzFeed etc. Presenting interactive intelligent humour & emotions at every guest interaction is an excellent way to build engagement and ensure platform stickiness.
Have a look at the Duolingo App interface. I never thought that learning language can be so much fun. It has wonderfully gamified the entire learning process, and the design invokes emotions — they have intelligently used icons of birds, eggs, gem points etc to keep the learner engaged, spirited and on the learning track.
The current Hotel Apps can learn a lot from this. Technology has to be consumer centric, and much more than being just user friendly.
The hotel booking apps should move away from throwing offers and deals plainly at the face of the consumer. And start focussing on actively engaging them — with interesting App design, travel humour, engaging games & quizzes, funny contests, etc so that they keep unlocking gems & points, and keep moving up the user hierarchy, and then they can share their success milestones with their friends on social networks and also win popular offers or cash back on stays with the earned gems & points.
This will glue your guests to your brand throughout the entire cycle of pre-booking — booking — post booking — stay — check out experience.
Other ideas on the way! Stay Tuned. Stay Creative.
