Anyone who has small children in their life will know all about Spot. He’s every toddler’s favourite puppy and is the star of some very popular lift-the-flap books. But 30 years after the first Spot book was published by Puffin, Spot now has his own iPad app.
And it’s now one of the most popular downloads from the App store. The reason I know all this is that I was watching a presentation this week about kids and new media, with input from Nikelodeon, the BBC and Puffin. The thing which struck me was that even babies just a few months old now have iPad apps designed specifically for them.
It made me think that we should never underestimate the power of children’s influence when it comes to booking holidays, whether it’s through new media or in a traditional retail environment.
We know from our own research that children have significant sway with their parents’ buying behaviour. A survey of more than 2,000 children aged between six and 15 showed almost 80 per cent say that their parents let them help decide where they go on holiday – at least some of the time.
Marketing to children comes with strict guidelines, and rightly so. But unlike many products children pester for there is an educational element to travel. With children as young as six learning languages as part of the national curriculum and a strong emphasis now on cultural diversity in schools, I do think that there is more we could be doing as an industry to include children in a positive way the holiday booking process. And at the same time draw in more business.
I’ve also been watching “Jamie’s Dream School” on Channel 4, where he brings an impressive group of celebrity teachers such as Simon Callow, Rolf Harris and Elen McArthur in to teach a group of disillusioned 16-year-olds. Part of the difficulty with the “failed” children taking part is that they couldn’t see how what they were being taught related to them.
There is so much potential to learn about the world through travel. Whether it’s learning about money and saving for a holiday to the engineering of an aircraft engine. Could agents create explorer zones within their store or on the website, have maps to colour whilst parents make the booking or maybe sell magic money boxes to help save for a trip?
I see a lot of other retailers cleverly drawing families in by appealing to children and making life easy for parents who are prepared to pay the price. For example, supermarkets with their toy car trolleys and Active Kids tokens or restaurants with child-friendly meals and colour-in menus.
Other retail sectors are successfully gearing their service for children and gaining market share. It’s time the travel industry caught up.