Cleartrip intends to disrupt cultural norms & make travel an impulse action: Kunal Dubey

Cleartrip, touted as India’s fastest growing online travel technology company, has just launched India’s biggest travel festival in the online travel segment. Through an engaging campaign, titled #BaaharMilteHain, Cleartrip is looking to redefine what ‘baahar’ simply means and encourages all Indians to get out of their confined spaces and tick off their travel bucket list as every country has opened their doors to encourage travellers.

Using a humorous approach, Cleartrip has created a series of engaging content to entice the market to travel more. Clubbed with attractive offers and customer-friendly propositions like CT Flex and CT FlexMAX Cleartrip is offering their customers to modify and cancel their booking hassle-free and book their travel plans peacefully this festive travel season.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully for their column Talking Insights, Kunal Dubey, CMO Cleartrip, speaks about the #BaaharMilteHain campaign, creating India’s biggest travel festival, bringing the Flipkart Big Billion Days to their customers to make their travel dreams a reality, and more.

How is the festival season looking for the travel and hospitality industry? How are you planning to leverage the same after two years of lull activity?

There is a strong demand across the country on the back of the upcoming travel season. Domestic numbers have already reached 90% of pre-Covid times and Covid fear is becoming less prominent across the country. International travel is at an all-time high booming to over 300% of last year’s demand. Overall, there is a positive outlook for the travel and hospitality industry.

It is a very exciting period for Cleartrip as we bring the Flipkart Big Billion Days to our customers to make their travel dreams a reality. When we call it India’s biggest travel festival, we want to create a movement by playing the role of an enabler and make travel a reality for people who have never thought about taking an international trip or staying at a 3- or 4-star property in India.

Clubbed with attractive offers and customer-friendly propositions like CT Flex and CT FlexMAX which enable users to modify and cancel their booking hassle-free is sure to keep us ahead of the curve this festive travel season.

Tell us more about your #BaaharMilteHain digital campaign. How did you arrive at this insight? What was the brief to your creative agency?

Flipkart created a revolution in the e-commerce industry with the start of The Big Billion Days back in 2014. It paved the way for the introduction of similar properties in other categories as well. No player in the OTA industry has created such a unique proposition to bring a bouquet of offerings for travelers. Putting a trip together involves a significant amount of research, planning, and coordination for the whole journey to fall into place. That is how the idea of coming up with India’s biggest travel sale stemmed. Taking a cue from the DNA of The Big Billion Days,

Cleartrip intends to disrupt and challenge cultural norms that have been created over the years and make travel an impulse action just like shopping or stepping out for a meal or coffee or watching a movie. We intend to do that with irresistible offers that will make people book first and rationalise later. With the Cleartrip Big Billion Days campaign, we wanted to change the way people think about travel by coming up with a unique, disruptive, and scalable idea that mirrors the grandeur and stature of India’s Biggest Travel Sale. Hence, the #BaaharMilteHain concept came about, giving a whole new dimension to the term ‘Baahar’ that is so commonly used.

Who are you targeting through these films? What kind of markets are you looking at?

With the pandemic behind us, there is a high appetite for travel and people are looking to make up for a lost time. These films are targeted toward anyone and everyone who has an expressed or latent desire to travel across India. With these films, we want to expand what ‘baahar’ can mean to people and convert that latent desire to travel into action. With that approach, we are going to a much wider base with a combination of getting high-intent audiences as well as fence-sitters. Basis our internal research, we have witnessed a growing travel trend amongst smaller towns and across various price tiers.

Every other online travel brand will woo with festival discounts. How are you planning to be different and market your product offerings?

The festive season is all about coming together with family and friends and going on a shopping spree. There is tremendous competition for us not just from the travel industry but also from the e-commerce brands that take up a lot of ad space across channels. We want our customers to think differently, prioritise their wanderlust by giving them steal deals on domestic and international flights and hotels in India.

What’s your engagement strategy with your audience? How do you plan to leverage traditional and digital media to reach your audiences?

Our approach is simple, but the most effective. Be present where the audience is, and be present in the right context. Using a lot of 1st and 2nd party data, we have ensured we engage with our audiences not just broader, but also deeper. We have in place a high reach and high impact plan on TV and digital with a presence on the T20 IND vs. Aus series along with building discoverability and action on digital with high Frequency across a host of consumer segments with highly customised campaign offers. To drive consumer action at the moment of truth, we are using BTL tactically at airports and residential areas. We are also doing some industry-first innovations to channel the high reach power of print media to enable our audience to find real value among all the clutter of cross-category offers that we see during the festive season.

How do you plan to measure the impact of the campaign?

The campaign is about liberating people’s latent need to travel and playing the role of an enabler by not just nudging people to ‘Go Baahar’, but also being a partner to activate that journey. From that lens, we would be looking at both short-term campaign lifts, along with positive movements on brand metrics and mind measures in the following weeks and months.