Posts by: Rashi Sen

Rashi Sen is the Editor of Travel & Tourism Middle East, the region's oldest and most established travel trade publication. She moved to Dubai 11 years ago as a journalist for a leading daily, has created pictorial for NGOs in India and volunteered as librarian and chief storyteller in East Africa.

Reaching the technology-immersed generation

Reaching the technology-immersed generation

Online booking and self-booking are steadily gaining popularity, particularly with the new generation of travellers, but luxury travel advisors can convince Gen Z travellers to book a tour or travel experience, with visual marketing, personalised recommendations, and a seamless online booking system.

This generation watches two times as many videos on mobile than other generations, and 70 per cent spend two-plus hours on YouTube per day, according to some statistics. Cisco has reported reports that streaming video will account for more than two-thirds of all consumer internet traffic this year.

More specifically, did you know that 90 per cent of travellers watch online videos? Also, 75 per cent of affluent travellers, 72 per cent of business travellers, and 45 per cent of leisure travellers book travel after viewing an online travel video. These numbers by video marketing observers, tubularinsights.com, may vary from market to market but they remain true to the potential of video marketing in wooing new audiences in luxury travel.

The only challenge with creating interesting video content for these audiences is that they take as less as eight seconds to process information, before moving on to the next piece of information.

Once you have their attention, the opportunities for real-time servicing on emerging and established platforms cannot be ignored.

Take Four Seasons Private Jet Experience, for example, that promises a journey of a lifetime on its website with: glamorous images tick, fabulous videos tick, and just to ensure they have a word with you before your attention drifts, a live Facebook Messenger chatbot with an answer for every question. The last trick will continue to serve luxury travel vendors because when it comes to customisation needs, the most questions and concerns that can be processed in real time, the better and a chatbot comes supremely handy to serve that purpose.

Not all luxury packaging is entirely digital though.

Here in Dubai, the widely touted den of luxury, Atlantis, the Palm, enlisted a spirited on-ground activation to create delicious footage that was lapped up online by their core, and better-still, wider target. All they did was turn a typical cab ride in London into a fairytale by having the driver offer a luxurious vacation to jaded passengers at the end of the ride. The conversation gets captured on candid camera and used as a promotional video to position Atlantis Dubai as a getaway for Londoners. Feel the warmth of this idea that drew new audiences to a luxury outpost.

According to digital marketing agency PMX in Luxury Study, Louis Vuitton’s top two engaging Instagram posts in 2017 revolved around the hashtag #SpiritofTravel, and featured “new luggage for the 21st Century traveller”.  This has been a watershed moment for the popular photo/video sharing platform, the number of luxury social media followers on Instagram grew 54 per cent in the past year way ahead of Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram accounted for 50 per cent of the luxury social audience – if luxury travel vendors are not wooing new audience here then they are surely missing a trick?

Core take-outs: become proactive like the Four Seasons chatbot, think unlike others as Atlantis, and be where the new audience is like Louis Vuitton.

Rashi Sen is the Editor of Travel & Tourism News Middle East and a regular attendee of ILTM in Cannes. Meet a TTN publisher and editor this year at ILTM!