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.”
Personalization isn’t only revealed in the products decorating a hotel bathtub ledge. From small businesses to airlines or amusement parks, the travel and leisure sector—as well as corporate retail and food and beverage companies—increasingly relies on customer loyalty programs. When it comes to the consumer, loyalty programs are remarkably effective: Jupiter Research reported 75 percent of consumers have at least one loyalty card. With the nationwide proliferation of such cards, companies like Travel Tags can market the need for their products just about anywhere, and to almost any business catering to the general public.
“Travel Tags has manufacturing facilities, creative design services and sales offices throughout the United States as well as European-based operations through its sister company, Narboni, providing gift, loyalty and phone card program solutions around the world,” Bahr stated. “By pooling the capabilities and resources of these strategic locations, Travel Tags offers a variety of stored value products and services including design concepts and online and in-store fulfillment for gift, loyalty, membership, discount and phone cards.” And, with the popularity of such cards, the added value of eye-catching customization like animal prints and lenticulars can provide manufacturers the edge necessary for catching a new client’s eye.
Promotional Getaway
Travel totes, toiletry sets, airline blankets, slippers, towels—the opportunities for offering appealing travel-related promotional products only takes investment and a glimmer of ingenuity.
Baltimore’s Towel Specialties, for example, imprints promotional towels, robes, slippers and grooming kits, among other items. Featured on page 26 is the company’s Tone-on-Tone Beach Towel with Gift Card, which includes a ribbon and a gift card wrapped around a beach towel. The towels are available in a midweight 30x60" size and a heavyweight 40x70" size.
Founded in 1992, Parsippany, New Jersey-based Avaline offers tote bags (including an environmentally friendly line), duffel bags, backpacks, sunglass rings, luggage tags, zipper pulls, blankets and the featured Comfy Flip Flops as part of its promotional product line. Made of 15 mm EVA foam, the items are available in sizes ML (ladies’ sizes 6-9) and LG (men’s sizes 9-12). Avaline also produces Fun Flops, a larger-sized foam shape covered in a custom logo, in which a pair of flip flops are placed—not unlike puzzle pieces.
More fun in the sun comes courtesy of Aloe Up, Eden Prairie, Minnesota. In business since 1983, Aloe Up offers a line of “sun and skin care products,” including spa and sports kits, lip balms and gift baskets containing the company’s sunscreens, aloe gels and moisturizers.
At Your Service
Although corporate marketing departments are getting smaller, they are being asked to do more with less. “It has gotten to the pain point,” said John Nicely, vice president of marketing for WorkflowOne, Dayton, Ohio. “From a customer space perspective, they need more brand for their buck.” This is exactly what Great Wolf Resorts—which is planning to add two new facilities per year for the next five years—got when it sought help from WorkflowOne.
Because repeat business is essential, the resort is focusing on marketing its brand experience, making sure customers have a consistent and high-quality experience whenever they visit. Not only does WorkflowOne assist in managing the brand experience through printed materials including business cards, brochures, forms, suggestion box cards and direct mailers, it also came up with an effective way to extend the strategic plan beyond two-dimensional printed pieces to the impact created by employee uniforms.
WorkflowOne partnered with large-scale corporate apparel provider OOBE, Greenville, S.C., to provide custom and privately branded apparel for all of Great Wolf’s 3,500 employees at nine world-class destinations throughout North America. From lifeguards and hotel staff to restaurant employees and managers, all Great Wolf associates will enjoy beautifully styled, comfortable apparel offering an “ownable” brand appearance to the thousands of families visiting the Great Wolf Resorts properties each year. The idea is to instill brand confidence starting with the employees, by providing a uniform they are proud of and enjoy wearing. That feeling of being proud of the brand and what it represents is then turned outwards to the guests.
“I approached OOBE when I was seeking to secure the Great Wolf Resorts uniform business,” explained Marin McCardell, a WorkFlowOne sales representative. “The OOBE team partnered with me in presenting to Great Wolf. After we secured the business, the OOBE team hosted the Great Wolf executives, and, together, we collaborated on creating an outstanding custom apparel program.”
In taking a brand-based marketing approach, WorkflowOne is providing the resort with vertical market enterprise solutions that leverage the client’s brand, and enable greater cross promotion of products and services.
- Companies:
- WorkflowOne
- People:
- Christa Bahr