Marketing the experience of polar travel

Marketing the experience of polar travel

The post Marketing the experience of polar travel appeared first on TD (Travel Daily Media) Travel Daily Media.

Both the North and South Poles have fascinated the world for ages and the popularity of polar travel is at an all-time high, with would-be adventurers keen on exploring the massive white expanse where few have dared to go.

Over the years, a number of tour operators and expedition cruise companies have ramped up their efforts to actually turn this deep-seated yearning into a reality for travellers, and marketing both on and offline has been instrumental in pulling them in.

Travel Daily Media recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tenille Hunt, regional sales director for Quark Expeditions, on how contemporary technologies have helped boost public knowledge on polar offerings and subsequently turn this into actual bookings for expeditions.

Looking for new ways to work together

According to Hunt: “We’re always looking for innovative new ways to work better together to achieve the end result, which is to safely and responsibly send more people to the polar regions.”

To make this possible, Quark Expeditions introduced a new online partner resource on its website last year, the Quark Expeditions Partner Portal.

This one-stop-shop has everything that team members and travel agents need to promote polar travel.

As Hunt explains: “It includes PolarPRO, which is our bite sized, interactive training programme that agents join to become a certified Polar Seller; the Portal also has access to our BrandFolder, which has easy to access images and videos, and essentially all the marketing assets that they can use on Facebook, Instagram, and EDMs.”

Indeed, the resource has everything marketers need, right down to press releases detailing fresh offerings and services.

For those looking into a more interactive approach, Quark Expeditions introduces an AI agent that is a pleasure to deal with: Parker the Polar Bear.

Hunt said of this digital bruin: “Parker the Polar Bear is my new colleague that you can ask anything. You could actually type in: ‘When is the best time to see penguins in Antarctica’ And he’ll absolutely answer everything.”

Hunt highly recommends the use of the AI-driven tool offered among Quark’s agent resources to anyone who wants to get right in and sell polar expeditions to their clients, encouraging these eager agents to sign up for the company’s partner portal.

The changing face of the contemporary polar traveller

Hunt pointed out that one of the key aspects they need to consider when it comes to marketing polar expeditions is the way the market itself has shifted since the pandemic hit back in 2020.

As she puts it: “The typical polar traveller is quite interesting because it’s changed post-COVID: the average age was usually within the mid-60s age bracket. Now, we are seeing that come down, as we’re seeing more young professionals that want to travel to the polar regions, as well as more multi-generational families, especially from India, Singapore, and Thailand.”

Hunt further explained that it is not uncommon to get around six or eight people in a single booking because they’re families travelling together.

At the same time, the company also gets inquiries from those who explored the world prior to the pandemic who, thanks to their experiences over the past several years, want to travel to bucket list destinations like the Arctic and Antarctic Regions before they’re any older.

Hunt said: “People are doing these trips now because they want to see these places now that they have the opportunity to visit, and this is a trend we’ve seen happen across the board.”

Marketing to the Asia Pacific

As Hunt mentioned above, a sizeable number of inquiries regarding polar expeditions have come from Asian nations and this used to pose an issue with regional agents given the time difference between them and Quark’s main office in Canada.

This month, specifically for those in the Asia Pacific (APAC), Quark Expeditions is introducing a six-part webinar series attuned to local time zones.

Deployed as one webinar a week for a six-week period, these bite-sized lectures will run for 20 minutes each and start at 8:30am, enabling agents to absorb key learnings with their morning coffee.

Hunt added: “We know that some agents like to ring us and talk to our reservation staff whom we call our Polar Travel Advisors. We have Polar Travel Advisors in Australia who are in Australian time zones and they are open 24 hours a day, six days a week.”

On the other hand, for agents with more advanced experience in selling polar expeditions, Quark Expeditions recently launched a Quote and Hold tool.

As Hunt explains it: “Instead of them needing to ring or for like our Perth agents or our Singapore agents at different time zones, they might just want to jump online and they know what they want and they can literally just hold that cabin. That’s a new tool that we’ve recently introduced, which is making doing business with us really easy.

Quark Expeditions also prides itself on a great team of business development managers (BDMs) in Australia whom agents can easily reach at any time whenever they need instant information, as well as in-person training if necessary.

Hunt said: “We love nothing more than getting in front of agents’ clients because our team is among the most experienced in the industry .We’ve worked out we’ve got over 60 years of shared experience selling the polar regions, so we’re all veterans in the polar space.”

She added that selling polar expeditions involves storytelling, especially visual storytelling because both the North and South Poles are such scenic destinations.

Hunt suggests: “Our  biggest tip to agents is: if you want to sell these regions, get in touch with us, the BDMs, and we will easily organise an information night. It’s a lovely evening, where we bring along some bottles of wine, some cheese, get up to 20 consumers in the room, and we will do an hour’s presentation. We guarantee you that it gets returns on investment every time.That’s the biggest way to sell polar.”

Aside from this, if agents want to get themselves to the polar regions, Quark Expeditions also encourages group tours to familiarise them with the areas.

 

The post Marketing the experience of polar travel appeared first on Travel Daily Media.


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