Tripleplay Services Improves Sales Efficiency By 20% for Virgin Holidays.
Virgin Holidays has recently entered the retail market through an in-store concession model to offer its products directly to customers. Office Twelve, a specialist store design agency, was enlisted to provide a concept which typified the Virgin brand, name and proposition to maximise customer footprint within the store.
As part of their blueprint, they wanted to exploit the benefits that IP video technology could bring without overwhelming the customer experience or providing undue costs to the site. Tripleplay Services was the natural choice based on its experience of delivering cost effective high quality solution and market expertise in providing innovative integrated video based solutions.
Highly Competitive Market
According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of foreign holiday visits made by UK residents has recently reached a record of 44.3 million visits. In addition, today’s travellers are looking for new and exciting destinations at low prices. The competition is so huge that companies need to clearly differentiate and offer something innovative to their customers. The traditional retail travel agents with the typical brochures and travel packages won’t make a stand in this competitive market.
Virgin Holidays are committed to providing unforgettable vacations at reasonable prices to their customers. Furthermore, their marketing challenge was to achieve a clean and appealing design that allowed consumers to access the concession easily and feel welcome and not intimated when entering the store. As part of the design, Virgin Holidays were looking to create a unique value proposition and stand themselves out from traditional retail travel agents.
Tripleplay’s Innovative Solution Enhances Virgin Holidays’ Brand Recognition
Through Office Twelve’s store design, the Virgin Holidays brand has been captured in the retail market and this is instantly recognizable for consumers. They have achieved a clean and appealing design and it is clearly demonstrated through the commercial results. Moreover, Virgin Holidays managed to differentiate from their competitors by deploying Tripleplay Services’ technology as part of their stores’ design. The Tripleplay Services’ solution delivered:
Interactive touch screens: these screens allow consumers to research their desired destinations and access the very best offers available. A special touch screen was provided for children to use while their parents are researching their holiday.
A plasma screen: each store has a plasma screen running digital signage to allow consumers to watch destination films, best offers and get up to date weather and general information. It is highly visible due to its position and as such attracts additional footfall to the concession.
An Internet terminal: each concession has a feature centre piece which holds an internet terminal and allows consumers online access to book holidays, get up to date information such as foreign office information and weather to help them make informed decision. Easy-to-use user interfaces: these interfaces, supported by targeted videos, images and text have been used to great effect in helping customers quickly find out the information they require. When the terminals aren’t being used, moving images combined with the latest deals are used to draw the customer attention to the store.
Management of the system and data controlled at both a central and local level: the use of a simple user interfaces and centrally controlled user profiles allow local staff to upgrade certain information on a daily or hourly basis to target their customer current needs and market demographics. All other aspects of the system are controlled centrally through a secure remote access connection and provide the ability to allow management to review locally made changes for compliance.
Support and service: all elements of the system are managed remotely through Tripleplay’s support centre providing 7 day a week support and service.
Innovative Technology Delivers Premium Results
“The [Tripleplay Services’] state of the art technology combined with the always up to date information has significantly improved sales efficiency and effectiveness, reducing dwell time in up to 20%,” explains Nicky Greenwood, Virgin Holidays. “Furthermore, Tripleplay Services’ played a key role in achieving the brand recognition we were aiming for.”
Tripleplay Services solution delivers tangible and substantial benefits:
Platform’s state-of-the-art technology reduces implementation costs: unlike traditional digital signage systems, an IP Set Top box was used rather than a PC, which reduced the overall implementation costs. Due to its unique architecture and standards based approach, the investment in the project implementation was focused on the displays and the Virgin Holidays’ contents and not on the support systems to run them.
Real-time control of signage guarantees bespoke and up to date information that meets customers’ needs: all the travel destinations information, films and best offers are locally updated in real-time in order to target customers’ current needs and more widely the market demographics. These changes can be done in a matter of seconds through simple user interfaces and can be centrally controlled and reviewed at anytime to ensure compliance.
Innovative system allows delivering implementations in just 2 months: Tripleplay Services solution can be quickly deployed to deliver content and messages to individual or groups of screens with a single command. This innovative feature enabled Virgin Holidays to deploy its first store in a record two month timeframe.
Proven technology delivers virtually no downtime: the adopted underlying systems guarantee great availability rates by avoiding the common system crashes associated to typical architectures. Virgin Holidays already deployed 8 stores and the reported uptime of the systems is 99%.
Touch Screens daily usage reports allows targeting specific products at precise times of the day: the touch screens underlying application records all the screens accessed by consumers during the day and automatically feeds back the gathered marketing information to Virgin Holidays’ head office.
Tripleplay Supports Virgin Holidays Now and in the Future
Future enhancements to the system include linking the information displayed on the screens to their centralised CRM and content management system to provide up to date product information, pricing updates, and dynamic changes to digital signage screen based on local customer demographic data and time of day trends. As the system installed is multi-functional the video play back system can also be used in the future for a local video on demand service on a stores back office PC’s for staff training, corporate communication and compliance.