How Personal Can an Online Agency Be? Aussie’s Luxury Escapes Counts the Ways
经过玛丽亚·莱斯拉(Maria Lisella)/
豪华逃生(LE)旅行顾问认为,每个人都应该度过一个愉快的假期。
LE被称为技术成功故事,是澳大利亚最大的电子商务业务之一,在全球范围内运营,现在已经在美国开设了商店
这个在线旅行社可能会通过利用最古老的人类需求之一来改变旅行者的研究,预订和付款方式:一种归属感。
除了与世界上一些最受欢迎和最著名的旅行品牌合作外,LE还与超过200万客户组成的会员基地,每年有超过50万人购买豪华的Escapes产品。
The brains behind this strategy is LE’s Brice Gosnell, head of the Americas. While he has been in the travel industry for 20 years — partnering with Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor, and United Airlines, to name a few — he has also headed brand awareness campaigns for global media brands like MTV, Warner Brothers, BBC, and The New York Times.
LE kicked off its brand activation event with up a pop-up store in Australia in 2013. Expecting to keep it opened for two weeks, Gosnell was taken by surprise. “We ended up staying opened for six months because clients wanted to talk to someone.”
Having discovered this, the company gathered insight and data on who their client base would be and quickly developed packages directly with suppliers to create a perfect product match. At the same time, LE’s execs knew they wanted to be an eCommerce business, so LE invested significantly in digital techniques to establish its core identity as an online agency.
“根据趋势和以前的购买模式,我们已经策划了LE软件包以适合此个人资料,因此我们提供的就是他们已经要求的,”因此,从构建产品线中进行了一些猜测。该产品线将很快扩展到2020年第一季度的航班和巡航。
Membership base creates brand loyalty
戈斯内尔说,基于会员的方面创造了品牌忠诚度:“我们知道,我们50%的买家是重复购买者,这种趋势不断增长。”
To build on this sentiment, he says LE will soon roll out more “… loyalty options for repeat users in the future.”
“What we've found with our Platinum Members (those who have purchased four-plus trips a year) is that they are incredibly brand loyal and act as brand ambassadors for us. We bring groups of them together a few times a year for hosted dinners and trip giveaways to give them the opportunity to meet each other and share their experiences.”
基本上,戈斯内尔说:“这是关于建立一个志趣相投的旅行者社区,尽管大多数人从未彼此见面,但这通常就像家庭聚会一样!”
会员资格是免费的(客户只需要创建电子邮件帐户即可获得每日交易),而收益允许访问现场定价和选项。
About 70% of the sales are done online, and since the company has a global presence, clients have access to trained agents 24/7 to alter or further customize their vacations.
We have a call center staffed with trained agents, which 30% of our customers leverage to build their travel package — and that line is open 24/7 across all markets. The other 70% of our customers book directly online.
A test with brick-and-mortar
一个实体机构采用这种方法吗to buttress in-person sales? Says Gosnell, “You’d have to invest in digital marketing, have the resources to follow up on social media leads, for starters.”
If someone started an online pop-up store, for instance, they’d have to spend significantly to just come up in Google search alone, he adds.
传统的代理商倾向于没有工作人员来处理这一点,因此他们最好的选择可能是与第三方合作,实验安排奢侈品逃脱现在正在与一个不愿透露姓名的机构在一个组成部分上尝试:亚洲的地面运输。该机构将可以使用奢侈品Escapes的产品,并通过每次预订获得佣金。
Curating experiences
LE’s employs more than 20 travel experts who roam the world perfecting and negotiating packages exclusively for Luxury Escapes members.
“旅行策展人是与酒店建立关系并利用自己的旅行专业知识和其他LE员工(例如我自己)的合作伙伴经理,以获得消费者的见解,战略重点和目的地,趋向于确定要参观哪些财产以及我们可能能够能够参观的地方作为包容性提供。”他说。
Similarly, LE’s Head of Tours team builds LE-specific tours by working directly with tour operators. “If we feel an existing tour will work for our clients, we will sell it as is, but with additional inclusions and a best-price guarantee,” says Gosnell.
当前的度假套餐包括在瑞士阿尔卑斯山的滑雪;在缅甸的甘蔗田中骑自行车;浮潜雨林与澳大利亚的大堡礁相遇。
Awarded and growing
戈斯内尔回忆说:“我们于2013年启动,我们被澳大利亚财务评论(Australian Financial Review)授予了五年以下最快的初创公司,因为我们将客户放在我们所做的一切中,为他们提供每次旅行的VIP体验。”
从那时起,该公司的增长导致了位于加利福尼亚州旧金山的美洲总部办事处。2018年,LE的母公司Lux Group收购了旅行业务,Bon Voyage和Scoopon Travel,此举促进了其3亿美元的年收入。LE在《澳大利亚金融评论》(Australian Financial Reviews)的2017年快速入门列表中被评为第一名。
自LE建立了美国的业务以来,它的会员人数增加了一倍,并且报告的销售额高于前几年。