Postcards from the Edge

Most hotel rooms are no longer mere graveyards for bad art and plastic ice buckets. Today’s market focuses on personalizing the travel experience for consumers. In fact, many hotels now offer luxury bath products and the opportunity to purchase the items that furnish their rooms. Higher-end hotels have even begun to track repeat customers’ likes and dislikes in order to stock rooms with a loyal guest’s personal tastes.

The insistence on a brand reputation embodying the idea of “hospitality” is just one way the travel industry seeks to brand itself in each detail—which ultimately creates selling opportunities for distributors. In addition to the touches that are obvious to consumers, the continued manufacturing of items such as menus, key cards and an overall increase in customer loyalty programs can mean the need for items designed specifically to compliment a hotel’s ambience and environment.

Have Tags Will Travel

Travel Tags, based in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., is one company that found a niche market in the travel and leisure industry. “Duncan McCannel started making luggage tags for Northwest Airlines in his basement in the ’ 70s,” said marketing manager Christa Bahr. “He was experimenting with screen printing and other unique printing processes. The ‘hobby’ turned into a large specialty plastic printing conglomerate.” The company has grown into a UV litho, digital and silk screen printer, supplying key, loyalty and gift cards, luggage tags and name badges to the travel and leisure industry. Annually, the company produces 700 million cards, offering high-impact, alternative design options such as lenticular and three-dimensional capabilities, animal skins and other nontraditional surfaces, glow-in-the-dark and scented inks and hidden message technologies.

The scope of Travel Tags’ flexibility lends itself to customization for branding that extends beyond hotel decor and all the way to that small they’ve-thought-of-everything touch, like a lenticular room key, or one accentuating the decor of the hotel. When asked how distributors can begin to break into such customization, Bahr commented, “Targeting small businesses, educational organizations and clubs would be a good place to start.”