With its latest brand campaign, Treebo Hotels is ensuring people that affordable and budget travel is possible without even compromising on quality stay. The brand is growing massively post-pandemic and fully concentrating on brand building as the travel market is gearing up humongous.
MI talks to Yashi Bisani, Associate Director of Brand Marketing, Treebo Hotels in an exclusive interview. Yashi puts light on the marketing strategies and their growth strategies.
Watch the film: here
Excerpts:
Q) How has the market changed since the pandemic? How is it recovering?
Yashi: It’s too soon to say if the market has recovered. However, it had picked up after the second wave. People started traveling a lot more than they used to do before the pandemic. The appetite for domestic travel has also increased since last year compared to international travel. It is because of many restrictions imposed on travel worldwide. The flexibility is no more present in international tours. Frankly, this is benefitting us eminently.
Also Read Treebo Hotels launches Treebo Pitstop to rescue people stuck in rains
Q) How has brand advertisement gone up?
Yashi: Many brands were not advertising pre-pandemic or during the pandemic. But now, these brands have started advertising extensively. Most of the aggregators offer a lot of summer deals. It will undoubtedly boost the industry. We also started advertising in December during the holiday season last year. We did a round of print ads across all TOI’s during that time. We were just getting started back then, we laid out a plan to continue for the next three months when the 3rd wave of the pandemic hit us again. But it is gradually picking up again now.
So we thought this would be the best time to launch our campaign “Acha Kiya Treebo Kiya”.
Q) Strategy for the campaign “Acha Hua Treebo Kiya”.
Yashi: The strategy for the campaign “Acha Hua Treebo Kiya” was simple; we purely focused on brand building more than directing people towards sales. It primarily talks about the brand and the unique offerings. It focuses on our USP which is- good quality and affordable price. The idea was to reassure people that budget traveling doesn’t mean cutting expenses and compromising quality. There are a couple of more films showcasing the same narratives, which you will see soon.
Q) As the traveling is gearing up for the season, how is Treebo coping with the huge competition in the space?
Yashi: Of course, there is massive competition in the budget segment. From a business point of view, we are currently aiming to expand without losing or compromising quality. Treebo is a customer-centric company. Hence we always want our customers to have a more delightful experience. It will also help us stand apart from our competitors.
From the marketing point of view, we are figuring out ways to fit in campaigns naturally. We don’t want to do any forced marketing for our brand.
Q) What kind of digital engagement are you planning to drive more sales this year?
Yashi: The campaign “Acha Hua Treebo Kiya” is solely a brand-building campaign. There is a performance marketing happening that talks about our USPs. And the call to action s more towards going to our website and direct channels. We are engaging with some micro and mega influencers to deliver the same message in terms of engagement. The campaign is primarily planned for the entire summer, for the next two months until June. By then, you will be seeing a lot of social and relatable content getting churned out across various platforms.
Q) Is there any print campaign also?
Yashi: We wanted to do a digital campaign, as our TG is essentially 18-32 years old. Most of them are now amply present on digital platforms. Hence, we decided to allocate all our media budget to digital channels instead of mainstream media.
Q) How do you choose your influencers who fit into your brand standards?
Yashi: For influencer marketing, we don’t do push marketing. People don’t resonate with these campaigns. While selecting influencers, we ensure that 2-3 things, like
a) Is the influencer communication tactics relatable to our audience.
b) How the Influencer creates a seamless video for the brand without making it look too branded and whilst doing it subtly highlights how Treebos offerings are pocket friendly
c) For us, the number of followers is not the only key metric. We focus more on the kind of engagement they have with their followers. Also, the sort of responses they get mainly from the travel fraternity.
Also Read Treebo Hotels announces Irrfan Khan as its brand ambassador
Q) What are your growth strategies?
Yashi: During the pandemic, a lot of our property wasn’t functional because people weren’t traveling at that time. But now, we have massively picked up. We are now present in 100 plus cities in more than 800 hotels. This number is going to increase multifold as we grow year on year. So our strategy remains to double click on supply and thereby increase the demand. It will provide customers with more options to choose from without compromising on quality.
Q) What are your revenue expectations?
Yashi: We have already achieved the revenue target for this year. For every holiday season and long weekend, most of our list is ‘sold out’ in terms of inventory. So we are seeing this as a very positive sign.
