British Airways Holidays case study: Engaging the elite

This weighty, hinged wallet reveals the jewels in British Airways' luxury holiday crown: 19 hand-picked hotels from the most beautiful corners of the earth - the Jalousi Hilton, St Lucia; the Beau Rivage, Mauritius; and the Coral Reef Club, Barbados. Each has its own card telling prospects all about each hotel. "See that canopy at the end of the pier? I made that for the photographer," says Harris.

The remark is off the cuff, but reveals the level of attention to detail LIDA has put into producing the pack. Not only were photographers flown out to take new, inspiring images, but members of the account team personally phoned each of the hotels to glean as much about the atmosphere and surroundings of the hotels as possible. It's why the St Lucia card talks about "mangoes, papayas, hog plums, tree frogs and tiny glinting hummingbirds" when rival tour companies would not even think to mention such things.

Every detail matters

That this does is a reflection of the effort being put in to launch a holiday offering in which every detail matters. Uniquely, each customer's holiday is assigned a dedicated British Airways representative. This is the world of luxury holidays.

"The idea with the Prestige Collection was to take the top 19 five-star hotels from our existing three to five star catalogues and repackage them as the cream of the crop," explains Andrew Shelton, senior marketing manager, British Airways Holidays. "But it's not just a gallery of hotels. The key difference is BA organising the complete experience of the holiday, starting with the flight, the booking and the arrangements. We do it all for you. We have a concierge service and 24-hour support. And we make sure each customer talks to the same person every time they phone."

The service caters for what BA sees as the next growth sector - high-earning individuals and families with high expectations. "We saw two types of target when we were researching the market," says Shelton. "First, people who are retired, who want and are willing to pay for the best. Second, young, high-flying execs. These are the cash-rich, time-poor, who want the perfect, hassle-free holiday. What unites both these groups is that they expect a premium service from a premium and trusted brand."

With most of these holidays costing at least £2,000 per person (and some have been £200,000), response would be well rewarded. But targeting 'the rich' is an infuriating affair with direct mail. ABs are renowned for not being responsive, so the challenge was on to produce a pack with real cut-through.

The execution was partly influenced by customer research. "The most striking fact it revealed was that the people we're aiming at are already well travelled," says Harris. "They know about the islands, so rather than do what other travel brochures do and tell them about the climate and the scenery, we decided this would be a waste of time. We wanted to tell them precisely about each of the hotels because these are the elements of the offering that really vary. That's why all the cards are written in different styles, based on extensive interviews."

It was because each hotel/resort was the star that the concept of a modular-style pack appeared - something that Shelton says has a real "coffee table life" to it. People would receive their pack, with one side containing all the details about the Prestige Collection, the other housing the loose cards about each hotel, which could be passed around.

"It's a relatively copy-heavy pack when you look at it in its entirety," remarks Harris. "But because it's broken up into smaller units, it becomes a lot more digestible and hard-working."

Two groups of recipients

Well, that's the theory. How did the pack really work? "We decided we wanted to send it to two groups," says Shelton. "Existing 'Executive Club' members of British Airways (those who fly regularly and are high earners), and any non-Executive Club members who were already on the BA Holidays database and showed a preference for taking the types of holiday on offer."

Not all Executive Club members were mailed, though. They were carefully mined for those who'd been to similar destinations in the past three years. This produced 15,000 names.

A further 5,000 names came from the second target group, profiled in the same manner. The pack was sent to both types of prospect, although the Executive Club members' pack had that branding on it too. For non-members, this element was left plain.

If the numbers sound small, it's entirely deliberate - the hotels featured are highly exclusive. The number of rooms is limited and, from a PR point of view, LIDA and Shelton knew that over-subscription could be just as bad as under-subscription.

To maintain an air of exclusivity, the perception that this mailer was only going to a select group of people had to be cultivated. To begin with, the mailer looks good - each one costs £1.22 excluding postage. And subtle changes, including a new strap-line - "Reassuringly British Airways" - were all part of the subliminal message building. "We even allowed the BA logo to be changed," says Shelton. "The underside of the ribbon is in the same silver as the Prestige Club mailer, not the usual blue. All these elements are extra touches, reinforcing the notion that these holidays are about those extra touches too."

BA has to be careful about revealing the exact response, although Shelton cannot hide the fact that it has done incredibly well. "Bookings to the featured hotels are 95 per cent up on this time last year," he says. "The Executive Club mailer performed better than the other pack - something we expected - but we've also seen responders to the pack show a 25 per cent improvement in upgrading to first class as their holiday begins, which testifies to the fact that the emphasis on the holiday starting with the plane journey really works."

Of the people who have booked a holiday through the mailer, six per cent have upgraded to first class.

Once a year

Because this mailer has so many brand-awareness and brand-reinforcing jobs, it is only designed to go out once a year, which means Shelton is already interested in finding out if this year's campaign will generate return bookers. Particularly high-spending holidaymakers were each given a leather-bound photo album for their holiday photographs to go into once they got back - all part of the BA service. "Seeing if these have turned into brand advocates should prove whether the extra collateral works," Shelton says.

There is some cross-fertilisation across channels too. In November and December 2004, subscribers to BA's regular email alerts received an offer to book their Prestige Collection holidays before the end of the year.

But this is about as far as it goes. Because the BA brand is so hard-working, Shelton won't buy in prospect data for cold mailings, despite there being many 'rich list' lists out there overlaid with holidaying habit data. "The current strategy is to expand with existing British Airways customers," he says. "We're thinking about having a Prestige collection of hotels for different sectors. This one is all luxury beach resorts, but there could be similar Prestige collections for city breaks, say."

And with the results he currently has, no one could really blame Shelton.

His work on this campaign has already seen him win BA's internal marketing Team of the Year award, and the work is being entered into the next tranche of industry awards. Time, no doubt, for a well-earned holiday.

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