ITB CONVENTION: VIDEOS ADD NEW EMOTIONAL DIMENSION TO CUSTOMERS’ INTERACTION IN TRAVEL BOOKING PROCESS

Video is the new growth medium for enhancing consumer engagement with travel companies looking to captivate new generations of travellers. This was the conclusion of Sebastian Beck, International sales manager for industry software specialist ISO-Travel Solutions GmbH during an exchange with Jens Boyd, commercial director of tour operator Condor, at the ITB Berlin convention.

Todays consumers are less keen to open emails, especially when they realise that the mails are promoting ancillary services. So, what then can be done to entice guests to book ancillary services, which are these days generating an increasingly bigger share of revenues for companies?

“Videos,” explained Sebastian Beck, International sales manager ISO Travel Solutions GmbH. “This year, global web traffic will be to 80% related to video. And if you have a video link inside an email, you have a 50% higher click-rate,” he says.

A growing phenomenon which was confirmed by Condor’s commercial director, Jens Boyd during the ITB Convention: “At Condor, we have already about a third of the guests booking appropriate ancillary services through e-mail or videos on top of their flight after their original booking.”

ISO Travel Solutions launched a new product called the Travel:up Video. The system aggregates into a single produced video individual video sequences. “Each represents potential additional services that bring an added value. One of the major issues is to find videos of high quality which are also safe in terms of use rights. Then we turn all the summarised additional services into a short film. The produced video is then available to the company’s internet booking engine and further to the reservation system,” highlighted Beck.

Data crucial to creating interaction on video between companies and customers

According to Sebastian Beck, the video brings a new dimension to a product as makes it coming alive. “Marketing is all about creating emotions. How to create emotions if not with videos?” he stressed.

The video can be highly personalised thanks to data provided to ISO by the booking engine. “The more data available, the greater the personalisation in offered services,” described Beck.

For Condor, Travel:up Video has give an easier accessibility to ancillary services for the airline’s guests. Such as in-flight catering, better seat or additional baggage options in short video sequences. “Any type of service is indeed possible but mostly for companies which have a data base through a booking engine. For example, it would be difficult to add the offer of a museum at a destination for example as I am not sure that these services would either provide data or have those data available…” stressed Beck. Airlines, hotels, car rental but also entertainment parks.

These are the potential customers that ISO Travel Solutions GmbH is currently looking at.