Shangri-La Hotel Chain Engages Single Consumers With Gamified Website Ahead Of November 11 “Singles Day” Holiday
In 2010, Chinese e-commerce behemoth Ali-Baba decided to take steps to increase sales in the period between the October Golden Week holiday and Christmas. Ali-Baba knew that November 11 was already viewed as “singles day” and had been a special shopping day since the 1990s, presumably because the two “elevens” in the date roughly translated into “only one” and appeared to be “bare sticks” or singles. Single-handedly, Ali-Baba turned November 11 into the world’s biggest online shopping day, easily eclipsing the sales revenues generated by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, traditionally the biggest shopping days in the West.
As traditional retailers for “singles day” are conventional online merchants selling consumer goods, there was not an obvious strategy for promotion of consumer engagement as it relates to travel experiences as a part of “singles day.” That didn’t deter Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, an international chain with 90 hotels and more than 38,000 rooms marketed under the Shangri-La brand. According to PR Newswire Asia, Shangri-La decided to launch Love Journey, a gamified site where singles are being offered 20% off the best available rate as an incentive to try one of the chain’s unique experiences in Australia, Fiji and South East Asia.
The “game” opens October 27 and continues through Singles Day. The focus of the site is a personality quiz by which a user can identify herself as a Thrill Seeker, Nature Lover, Art and Culture buff, Elite Traveler, Urban Voyager or Tranquil Traveler. Users choose among six options at every level of the quiz, answering questions like “How would your friends describe you?”, “What excites you most about a journey?”, and “What is a romantic setting for you?” After classifying the user’s travel style, the application then proposes three travel options that Shangri-La believes are a good match for the user’s “travel personality.” An additional “hook” is that users are prompted to share their #LOVEJOURNEY with their friends online. Not only are those mentions aggregated as a part of Shangri-La’s “Love Journal,” which apparently contains exclusively crowd-sourced content, but six lucky participants will win a free trip, which is a three-night stay at any Shangri-La hotel.
Image credit: wikimedia
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