Adgully Exclusive | Travelocity tries to break the clutter through latest campaign

Travelocity India, a travel portal has recently launched their latest campaign, called Lowest Price Guranteed. In a unique campaign initiative, Travelocity attempts to provide consumers with information of the cheapest airlines and hotels across the world and in their latest campaign, they guarantee if anyone finds it for less than what is offered by them, then it is free. This guarantee covers 400 airlines and a lakh of hotels throughout the world, including 4,000 in India.

Speaking exclusively to Adgully, Roshan Mendis, President of Zuji and Regional Vice President of Travelocity Asia Pacific elaborated on the campaign and discussed the current plans of the website.

"In the last fifteen months, our clear mandate has been to move to number one or number two spot in every market that we play in and then we have been improving our plans and further executing them. Australia has been a clear highlight in us progressing towards that objective. And obviously what you have seen today, we think is a launch pad for us to be able to do that in India. But generally our businesses are significantly up. We are 50% -60% up on any metric that you look at, whether that is sales or revenue or transactions. So, we feel like we are in a good space in the market and we are doing some of the right things," Mendis explained.

As a part of this step up, Travelocity is expanding their retail presence. "We started with four. Actually the four came with the Travel-guru acquisition. We have expanded that to fourteen and we branded their retail stores in the last fifteen days. We have rebranded the stores to Travelocity stores and we are looking forward to expand that to about hundred. We have branded their retail stores in the last fifteen days. We have rebranded the stores to Travelocity stores and we are looking forward to expand that to about hundred," Mendis explained in detail.

He further added, "We are also working on separate effort to have something called "Travelocity on Location' in a few of the high density areas so that we are never too far away from the person who might be thinking of traveling. In addition to that innovation around the "Travel search product', that in itself is an innovation but that product embedded within an OTA business we think is probably the first time that's happened in any market. So, we are quite excited to see that how we go in India. We have been piloting that over an year now. The pilot results have given us lot of hope and encouragement."

Mendis firmly believes that today for Travelocity, their product innovation and the commitment is to find the best rate for your travel and that is done by having the most comprehensive search functionality the industry can offer.

Commenting on their latest campaign, Mendis stated, "The objective is to try and communicate to the travelling public that we are looking to solve their highest needs and desires when you travel and you are adaptable to booking online. One is you want to find the lowest fare and the second is you want to find the lowest fare as quickly as possible. You don't want to search for many sites to get that and we hope to be able to communicate those two basic messages to quickly and effectively to travelers."

Today there is stiff competition in all markets and this space is no different. There are three big players that have probably 50%- 60% of the market. "Domestic flights are highly commoditized and highly competed for, I see the players investing and migrating towards expanding their business in holiday space and lastly outside of domestic flights, international segment as well as the hotel segment remains still relatively underpenetrated and opportunities for continued high growth," Mendis explained the evolving market space.

On an ending note, Mendis said, "Hopefully we can stay front and center with our campaign. So, this particular campaign, not the positioning because positioning is permanent but the campaign would stay in market for at least 12 to 14 weeks and our hope is to keep front and center in communication that message."

Travelocity aspires to be a brand where conversations are revolved around and wants to ensure it is top recall when anyone wants to book online travel. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]