The wonderful journey around the globe
Travel The Basel-based advertising agency Favo has partnered with Hotelplan to launch the new premium brand Globus Reisen.
Travel The Basel-based advertising agency Favo has launched the new premium brand Globus Reisen with Hotelplan.Promoting a tour operator is a coveted task for an agency. It is even nicer to invent and launch a new brand for a tour operator at the same time. From finding the target audience to the strategy and the name to producing the communication measures, Favo has now launched the new travel company Globus Reisen. The idea was developed on behalf of and in close cooperation with Hotelplan, a client of the Favo agency in Basel for two years.With the takeover of Travelhouse, an association of various specialists from the Swiss travel industry, the Migros subsidiary Hotelplan has become the largest tour operator and vacation retailer in Switzerland. Until now, Kuoni had held this market leadership.
As part of a new analysis of the brand architecture of Hotelplan, whose portfolio also includes M-Travel and Esco in addition to the new Travelhouse, Hotelplan and Favo jointly determined that what is now Switzerland's largest travel company "lacks an offering in the premium market," as Favo Managing Director Alice Stümcke describes the start of this brand development. The idea therefore: just as Migros has the premium brand Sélection alongside M-Budget, the orange giant should be able to offer a similar diversification with its travel subsidiary. Conversely, Kuoni's biggest competitor, the premium brand Helvetic Tours, also offers a lower-priced chain.
So the project team asked itself: What are the entry options into the premium market? Here, Favo developed various scenarios in close cooperation with Marketing Director Thomas Christen of Hotelplan and finally defined what could be realized with such a sub-brand.
One important finding is that in the travel industry we are dealing with a market "in which the brand does not really play a major role," as Stümcke points out. Vacationers know the brands, but they buy according to the destination. To do this, the customer studies various catalogs, picks out his dream landscape, and then gets more information on the Internet.
Thus, the next question arose: Does it make sense to simply introduce a new premium brand? At this stage, the agency came up with the idea: Why don't we take an existing brand that is "travel-savvy" but doesn't yet offer travel?
Soon there were two possibilities on the table: "Geo-Reisen", because there was already a contact with the publishing house Gruner + Jahr. The other idea: Why not "Globus Reisen"? The department store has an excellent reputation in the premium sector and has also been part of the Migros family for a few years. "The longer we thought about it, the more sense it made," says Hinrik Wachsmuth, CD at Favo, summarizing the further development.
Before really getting started, a positioning test was commissioned. And here Globus Reisen "already did better than Kuoni, even though the brand didn't even exist as a tour operator yet," marveled the new vacation managers. For the commissioned Link Institute, the analysis meant a ghost awareness rarely observed so strongly before. "A lot is expected of the brand," Wachsmuth and Stümcke concluded.
After the presentation to Hotelplan's management, convincing colleagues from the department store "was then a relatively easy exercise" - especially when the Premium project team was able to show that they "didn't just want to use the name, but also fully understand and adopt the values of the traditional Globus world."
And how big is the market now? Here, too, an analysis has been carried out via intensive Desk Search and with the Link Institute, and with around 1,000 surveys it has been established that the Globus Reisen concept "has very good chances".
In Switzerland, around 20 billion Swiss francs are spent on vacations every year. Around a third of sales each fall into the "budget," "value for money," and "premium" categories. In the most upscale category, there are at least 600,000 potential customers per year. These spend between 3,000 and 4,000 francs per week and person on vacations. And the special thing about it is that up to now, two-thirds of these potential premium guests have traveled without fixed arrangements. They travel with scheduled flights and book their hotel through individual channels. This is where Globus Reisen wants to offer its advice.
In order to reach this group of premium travelers in a targeted manner, Favo also looked for new communication channels. The most obvious medium for Globus Reisen is a magalog. The vacation catalog in the exclusive design of a lifestyle magazine is intended to whet the appetite for Globus Reisen. In addition under chapters such as "just relax", "gourmet travel", "culture inside", "city & more" or "special experience" tempting indicator photos and also literary or journalistic texts are published. If you want to know more, a link will take you to the relevant details, prices or travel dates on the www.globusreisen.ch website. In the Magalog itself per Destination only one of different variations is explicitly offered for sale with price and details. The rest is booked on the Internet.
The whole Globus Reisen project went through in just one year, from the idea to the delivery of the first magalog. More than 30 people are already working at the headquarters of the newly founded company. It is headed by Urs Freudiger, the former marketing manager of the Globus department store. Globus Reisen is integrated into Hotelplan's logistics system and can also benefit from the same reservation platforms, but appears to the outside world as an independent company.
For the communication, the possibilities of customer contacts of the 12 stores of Globus and 18 stores of Herren-Globus are to be included. However, there are no sales booths there. Bookings are made by telephone. But not with anonymous call center agents. As befits a premium customer, interested parties are connected with experts who have already tested these trips themselves.
For the employees at Favo, there are still few opportunities in this regard. In Basel, they are already fully occupied with the production of further catalogs and campaigns.
Andreas Panzeri
As part of a new analysis of the brand architecture of Hotelplan, whose portfolio also includes M-Travel and Esco in addition to the new Travelhouse, Hotelplan and Favo jointly determined that what is now Switzerland's largest travel company "lacks an offering in the premium market," as Favo Managing Director Alice Stümcke describes the start of this brand development. The idea therefore: just as Migros has the premium brand Sélection alongside M-Budget, the orange giant should be able to offer a similar diversification with its travel subsidiary. Conversely, Kuoni's biggest competitor, the premium brand Helvetic Tours, also offers a lower-priced chain.
So the project team asked itself: What are the entry options into the premium market? Here, Favo developed various scenarios in close cooperation with Marketing Director Thomas Christen of Hotelplan and finally defined what could be realized with such a sub-brand.
One important finding is that in the travel industry we are dealing with a market "in which the brand does not really play a major role," as Stümcke points out. Vacationers know the brands, but they buy according to the destination. To do this, the customer studies various catalogs, picks out his dream landscape, and then gets more information on the Internet.
Thus, the next question arose: Does it make sense to simply introduce a new premium brand? At this stage, the agency came up with the idea: Why don't we take an existing brand that is "travel-savvy" but doesn't yet offer travel?
Soon there were two possibilities on the table: "Geo-Reisen", because there was already a contact with the publishing house Gruner + Jahr. The other idea: Why not "Globus Reisen"? The department store has an excellent reputation in the premium sector and has also been part of the Migros family for a few years. "The longer we thought about it, the more sense it made," says Hinrik Wachsmuth, CD at Favo, summarizing the further development.
Before really getting started, a positioning test was commissioned. And here Globus Reisen "already did better than Kuoni, even though the brand didn't even exist as a tour operator yet," marveled the new vacation managers. For the commissioned Link Institute, the analysis meant a ghost awareness rarely observed so strongly before. "A lot is expected of the brand," Wachsmuth and Stümcke concluded.
After the presentation to Hotelplan's management, convincing colleagues from the department store "was then a relatively easy exercise" - especially when the Premium project team was able to show that they "didn't just want to use the name, but also fully understand and adopt the values of the traditional Globus world."
And how big is the market now? Here, too, an analysis has been carried out via intensive Desk Search and with the Link Institute, and with around 1,000 surveys it has been established that the Globus Reisen concept "has very good chances".
In Switzerland, around 20 billion Swiss francs are spent on vacations every year. Around a third of sales each fall into the "budget," "value for money," and "premium" categories. In the most upscale category, there are at least 600,000 potential customers per year. These spend between 3,000 and 4,000 francs per week and person on vacations. And the special thing about it is that up to now, two-thirds of these potential premium guests have traveled without fixed arrangements. They travel with scheduled flights and book their hotel through individual channels. This is where Globus Reisen wants to offer its advice.
In order to reach this group of premium travelers in a targeted manner, Favo also looked for new communication channels. The most obvious medium for Globus Reisen is a magalog. The vacation catalog in the exclusive design of a lifestyle magazine is intended to whet the appetite for Globus Reisen. In addition under chapters such as "just relax", "gourmet travel", "culture inside", "city & more" or "special experience" tempting indicator photos and also literary or journalistic texts are published. If you want to know more, a link will take you to the relevant details, prices or travel dates on the www.globusreisen.ch website. In the Magalog itself per Destination only one of different variations is explicitly offered for sale with price and details. The rest is booked on the Internet.
The whole Globus Reisen project went through in just one year, from the idea to the delivery of the first magalog. More than 30 people are already working at the headquarters of the newly founded company. It is headed by Urs Freudiger, the former marketing manager of the Globus department store. Globus Reisen is integrated into Hotelplan's logistics system and can also benefit from the same reservation platforms, but appears to the outside world as an independent company.
For the communication, the possibilities of customer contacts of the 12 stores of Globus and 18 stores of Herren-Globus are to be included. However, there are no sales booths there. Bookings are made by telephone. But not with anonymous call center agents. As befits a premium customer, interested parties are connected with experts who have already tested these trips themselves.
For the employees at Favo, there are still few opportunities in this regard. In Basel, they are already fully occupied with the production of further catalogs and campaigns.
Andreas Panzeri
