To help travel brands, destination marketing organizations and online travel agencies facilitate travel search and shopping, Amadeus has created an interactive video product.
The videos, produced by Amadeus Video Solutions, are designed to inspire travelers and encourage them to make purchases through an interactive interface.
While viewing the videos, which can be embedded on websites or shared via social media, users can click on the screen to see more information about the destinations, attractions, hotels and restaurants shown. Along with descriptions, photos and maps, the video player also shows pricing and links that go directly to booking sites.
Steve Kopp, head of Amadeus’ Horizon 3 team, which spearheaded the project, says the product was inspired by data that found two-thirds of travelers watch videos when planning a vacation and visit more than 38 websites during the process.
For brands, creating an interactive video is an easy way to capitalize on this user behavior. “If the brand already has video material … they simply need to upload to the Amadeus Video Solutions system, do the annotation and then embed the video player on their dot-com or wherever they want to reach their audience,” Steve Kopp says.
Influencer assistance
Brands without existing video content have to option to use Amadeus’ production services or work with influencers from company partner Iambassador.
Working with influencers, who can advertise videos on their platforms, Kopp says, is beneficial because they “have a very high trust factor with their followers. This is very powerful when it comes to engagement. These authentic videos - they make travelers spend more time with the brand than more conventional or corporate media productions.”
One of Amadeus Video Solutions’ first clients was Lindner Hotels & Resorts in Germany, which wanted to market a new hotel in Dusseldorf to millennials.
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Amadeus helped the company connect with bloggers from Thatbackpacker.com and TravelDudes.org who produced clickable videos that were shared on their respective sites.
“We didn’t just want to reach a wide audience, we wanted to reach the right audience at the right time and give them the ability to book their trip immediately, without having to search across many different websites to complete their booking,” says Oliver Stotz, corporate director of marketing and distribution for Lindner Hotels & Resorts.
Clients also have access to a dashboard where they can see data such as engagement and click-through rates.
Amadeus Video Solutions – the first product of the Horizon 3 team, which focuses on creating innovative solutions to address clients’ challenges and industry trends - originally launched as a prototype in 2016 at South by Southwest under the name TravelCast.