People love to travel but they hate the booking experience. It’s so complex. So many options, so many screens, so hard to make changes.
At Travelport, we’re on a mission to solve this. We launched a new platform, Travelport+, that makes planning, booking, and managing travel EASY for travel agencies and travellers.
We wanted to prove our ‘easier’ credentials and put our platform to the ultimate test. We sent adventurer, Jamie ‘Adventureman’ McDonald, on the most complex trip we could imagine - visiting the New 7 Wonders of the World in less than 7 days, only using public transport.
The entire trip itinerary was booked and managed by Travelbag, a travel agency using Travelport+. The trip involved travelling 22,000 miles, taking 13 planes, 16 taxis, 9 buses, 4 trains and 1 toboggan – at a time when travel was recovering from a global pandemic.
Armed with the latest travel tech tools from Travelport+, could Jamie get to all wonders of the world in the most extreme scenario, setting a new Guinness World Record?
Objectives:
Showcase Travelport+’s ability to:
Build and manage the most complex itineraries.
Reduce manual tasks through increased automation.
Manage itineraries and extras on-the-go.
Increase Brand Awareness.
Shift in perception of Travelport+ and it’s Easy attribute.
Increase interest & consideration of Travelport+.
To meet our objectives, we developed a fully integrated marketing and PR campaign.
We split activation between brand and product focuses.
The “brand” activation was focused on the hero story and the challenge to set a new world record. It consisted of small snippets across channels with the CTA to drive people to the main hero video on YouTube (1.5M views to date) or the 7 Wonders hub.
The “product” activation was focused on the ‘behind the scenes’ narrative and the Travelport+ product features used at what points in the challenge. All CTAs linked back to the Travelport+ webpage. This webpage detailed how the product was put to the test.
PAID MEDIA
We split spend and targeting between brand and product.
On the brand side, we predominantly used YouTube advertising to encourage people to watch the full episode.
We used LinkedIn, Facebook, X, GDN and Programatic to drive traffic to the campaign hub which hosted a mix of video and animation, and information about the product behind the challenge.
For product activation we used snippets of Adventureman acting as a traveller using the product in various situations.
We predominantly used narrow targeting on Linkedin, GDN and media spend in trade publications to reach targets.
ORGANIC SOCIAL
We posted content twice daily for 6 weeks, totalling 84 posts. We directed all content to our Hero Video and Campaign Hub.
Our Instagram strategy included reel content and was structured across the week focusing on product and core campaign messaging from Monday to Thursday and more entertaining content from Friday to Sunday.
VIDEO CONTENT
We created a Hero video and shared it through paid and organic media. It was also embedded on our hub to drive further traffic.
We created a series of videos with behind-the-scenes footage, an introduction to Adventureman, and ustomer stories where they had solved complex traveller problems.
WEBSITE
We created a campaign hub to host content and drove traffic to it through our marketing and PR channels. This encouraged click-throughs to our Travelport+ page (8% CTR to the product page) to capture new leads.
PR
Our PR strategy utilised the campaign as our main consumer PR driver, and through our work with Adventureman and Travelport’s Chief Marketing Officer, we garnered significant consumer press coverage through a satellite media tour.
We sent out campaign launch content to our entire email database and followed this up with tailored content to engaged and unengaged contacts. This allowed us to strengthen our market position and showcase that Travelport+ empowers the most complex trips.
SALES ENABLEMENT
Our 800-strong salesforce were equipped with sales decks to walk our customers through the challenge and showcase products used across the trip. We timed the cmapaign launch with a global customer event in London, where we hired a cinema to show the Hero Video extended cut, and hosted a Q&A with Travelbag, Adventureman and a representative from Guinness World Records.
Emissions
All emissions generated by Adventureman were removed from the air using CO2 removal services from Climeworks.
Solve for complex retailing and merchandising selections:
1st position in competitive set - “A leader in agency retailing and merchandising“ - and uplift versus top two competitors in Customer Pulse Research (CPR) Q3 2023
Reduce manual tasks through increased automation:
Uplift in perception of “Automation and productivity tools that drive efficiencies for agents” feature in CPR Q3 2023
Manage complete trip and extras on-the-go:
Increased perception of attribute across “wide depth and breadth of content across air, hotel and car”. Increased usage of this tool in same period.
Increase Brand Awareness:
Shift in perception of Travelport+ and it’s Easy attribute:
Increase interest & consideration:
