In southern Thailand, just south of Krabi, the new Anantara Si Kao Resort and Spa sits in a natural refuge that feels like a land far, far away. A place with more pine trees than people, where silver beaches slope into the cerulean Andaman Sea and tiny islands of primeval beauty dot the horizon.
Sounds like paradise doesn’t it? But how do you launch a new resort in a crowded market during a global economic crisis and amid political instability? The Anantara team was looking for an innovative and more effective approach than traditional advertising and marketing practices offered. They needed something special to succeed in today’s competitive travel market and wanted to tap into social media opportunities and the power of word of mouth marketing. The company knew travelers often share their holiday experiences and believed that by giving the ‘right’ people an unforgettable experience and making it easy to share that experience with friends could be a powerful way to drive visits to their new resort. Anantara selected VÖCANIC as their marketing partner, an agency with proven experience of harnessing the power of personal recommendations as a media platform for brands such as StarHub, Heineken, Nokia and Symantec.
Identifying Influencers and Activating Word of Mouth
VÖCANIC developed a unique and cost-effective launch campaign by identifying travel Influencers – the people whose travel recommendations are more powerful than others – and created an engagement plan to capture the voice of the customers and initiate an Influencer-driven word of mouth campaign. VÖCANIC created the ‘Anantara Insiders’ program (www.Anantaraonline.com) to present the new property and made it easy to share information about the new resort on social networks such as Facebook. Over 300 couples and families were identified as travel Influencers using VÖCANIC’s proprietary Groundswell™ platform. Characteristics of these Influencers included a charismatic personality, persuasive communication style and an unusually large social network. Anantara and VÖCANIC segmented the Influencers and offered each group an exclusive experience at the new resort. The most powerful Influencers were given the most attractive offers – the rationale being that these people are more likely to share their experiences with friends and trigger the word of mouth media for the resort. Rooms that would have likely been empty just a few days after opening were instead occupied by travel enthusiasts. Anantara Insider packages included an attractive introductory rate, personal tours by the general manager and a selection of spa and leisure activities.
Listening to Customers
An important part of the initiative was to elicit candid feedback from guests and make needed adjustments to ensure the resort would earn recommendations from guests. When checking out, people were asked to provide feedback via laptops in the hotel lobby. The laptops leverage VÖCANIC’s proprietary ‘Voice of the Customer’ platform that uniquely enables people to give suggestions and also vote on other guests’ ideas for ways to improve the resort experience. All comments are read by the resort’s general manager. Over 50 new ideas for improving the resort have been submitted thus far and a number of the top-ranked suggestions have been implemented.
Word of Mouth Tools
VÖCANIC and Anantara made it easy for guests to share their experiences and recommend the resort to friends. As people check out, they are presented with an Anantara-branded thumb drive containing personal photos taken by a professional photographer during their stay plus beautiful stock shots of the hotel, so they can easily load them to their blogs, Facebook, Flickr and other social media platforms or simply email them to their friends. Influencers are also given five easy-to-carry business card-sized ‘Golden Key Cards’ containing a special URL and a unique token that unlocks an extremely attractive offer for them to pass to their friends. Shortly after leaving the resort, guests receive a beautifully bound, custom, hardback photo album containing personal photos taken by a professional photographer during their stay. “We had a remarkable time and have shared our experience with several friends,” said Grace Young, a passionate traveler from Singapore who recently returned from Anantara. “One friend to whom we gave a ‘Golden Key’ just returned from his stay and hasn’t stopped thanking me!” As 2009 is clearly going to be a challenging year for most segments, particularly the travel sector, combined with the notoriously cluttered traditional marketing channels for travel, Anantara knew very well from past experience that they needed an innovative and differentiated launch strategy for Anantara Si Kao. “Together with VÖCANIC, we developed a program to reach the right people and harness the power of personal recommendation by allowing people to experience the resort-stay for themselves. These personal stories and photos sell the resort far better than I ever could via print advertising.”
A Special Offer for Marketing readers VÖCANIC and Anantara Si Kao Resort and Spa are happy to offer Marketing Magazine readers a special offer. Go to www.anantaraonline.com/adoi and experience Anantara for yourself! Learn more about VÖCANIC and Influencer-driven word of mouth marketing at www.vocanic.com