Australia is a big large island far from the rest of the world yet so rich and diverse.
So much that it arouses a lot of curiosity among travelers all around the world. By few hours of plane you can find yourself on an exotic beach surrounded by palm trees, surfers and koalas but also in a beautiful national park colored in greens and rocks. Humid, rainy, dry and hot, freezing cold, these are the weather conditions you can encounter within the same week when travelling in Australia.
Alone but not lonely, Down Under generated close connections with its neighbor New Zealand, so much that travelling between both countries is like going from California to Florida with less hours of flight! That created an amazing patch to explore and the local travel agencies understood that.
That is how their brands were able to expand geographically and so implement an interesting strategy : Australia would not only be a local market but a more global one.
When you look at Thomas Cook you can think of old school, all-inclusive packages designed for a very large segment and that explains why this company missed the main evolutions of the travel industry: digital and independence. People use internet and word of mouth to organize their trips and don’t trust travel agencies anymore.
People going to Australia are looking for adventures, thrill and of course to meet friends for life. But they are young, they are usually alone and they don’t want to spend too much money on it.
That’s where Australian agencies entered in the game and comes with a whole different strategy. The main problem with Thomas Cook, was the costly and impersonal plans. Well then, the Aussies would go for cheap and customized!
Backpackers World Travel, Happy Travels, Peter Pans Travel, they all based their strategies on making the travel agencies fun and for young people. It is an experience more than a transaction.
When entering the shops, it feels already accessible: the music is loud, it is colorful, the agents are cheerful, young, mostly from all around the world, they already traveled to the places they sell and they are similar to their customers. That way the clients can relate, feel close to them and most of all, understood in their quest of a different kind of travel.
As a travel agent, I sat for hours just chatting with a customer on how I traveled, showing them my personal pictures on my Instagram so they get the feeling that they were just chatting with a friend, sharing experiences on how to travel. In that way they were much more comfortable and open to listen to my expertise on how to travel : it just felt like words of mouth!
They are working on a specific segment: backpackers. That gave them an image of being experts in what they do because they don’t aim to reach everybody at once, but because they are so good, the brand will spread naturally. In that way they still get to reach customers with more funds and bigger budgets and still can book for other parts of the world!
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