The Advantage Travel Partnership has launched its largest ever domestic travel campaign to support its agent members in response to a “significant increase” they have seen for staycations this year.
The consortium’s campaign, which consists of both B2B and B2C activity, involves more than 30 suppliers.
It includes marketing assets and supplier information which it says will arm agents with the tools they need to “take full advantage of the opportunity that presents them to book UK breaks including domestic cruises”.
Advantage will also be including a dedicated UK staycation hub on its members’ ‘extranet’ to house commercial and marketing material from various UK operators. This will include a UK supplier directory detailing product ranges, trade contact details and current offers available.
The campaign will include a ‘UK Uncovered’ digital, flickable online brochure, which Advantage dubbed a ‘bookazine’, as well as tactical email templates, a B2B email newsletter and supplier spotlight emails, and the consortium has created a dedicated members Facebook group for suppliers to post offers and updates which agents can then share on their own channels. There will also be a dedicated resource for domestic cruises.
Advantage said it has designed the campaign with a digital focus to offer “speed to market” and a cost-effective way to reach existing and acquire new customers for agencies with little marketing budget in the current climate.
Head of marketing David Forder said: “Although international travel looks set to open later in May, the number of destinations on the green list is yet to be confirmed and is likely to be extremely limited.
“We have worked with our suppliers to create this dedicated domestic campaign to showcase the significant increase there is in domestic product to meet the demand for staycations which we know is there.
“Our members are now in a position to offer more domestic holidays than ever before providing a personalised service and help customers make the right choice for them. Our suppliers have shown agility and innovation in creating new products in a very short timeframe which means we are able to support our members and in turn offer their customers a broader range of staycation options.”
Forder added: “It’s more important than ever we help our members benefit from any opportunity that presents itself in this fast-changing situation we are in, and whilst staycations are arguably more straightforward for customers to book themselves, an agent can offer the same level of inspiration and expertise for a staycation or ‘seacation’ as they can for an overseas holiday, which takes away the headache of researching suitable British breaks.”