Prashant Chothani chalks out Travelxp’s bullish global plans

Travel channel Travelxp, an initiative of Celebrities Management India and Media Worldwide UK, will be launched for mainstream audiences in the UK on April 30, 2018 through the popular Freeview Digital Terrestrial Technology (DTT)-based platform. 

Travelxp’s launch on the Freeview platform, which reaches nearly 99 per cent of TV homes in the UK, will add nearly 16 million TV homes to the 75 million-plus TV homes that Travelxp already reaches worldwide. Every television manufactured in the UK after 2008 includes an inbuilt Freeview tuner that enables it to receive channels from Freeview, which is operated by DTV Services, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and transmitter operator Arqiva. 

Travelxp will also locally produce content for the UK audiences. This will be driven by Sumant Bahl, MD – Europe, Travelxp, who also leads Travelxp UK from its Greater London office. 

Prashant Chothani, CEO, Travelxp

Commenting on the new foray, Prashant Chothani, CEO, Travelxp, said, “We are confident that our popular, premium travel-related entertainment and infotainment-driven content will connect with close to 16 million Freeview subscribers all over the UK. We are happy to partner with the Freeview platform, which has helped us become the first Indian television channel that has launched in the UK for mainstream audiences, and we look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship.” 

Bahl added here, “We are known for our mainstream approach, which focuses always on the entire mainstream audience instead of the diaspora alone as that would limit our reach and impact. For the UK audiences, we shall not only continue to provide our world class mainstream content from our large library of over 1,000 hours, we will also produce similarly engrossing and quality content locally in the UK, on all key travel aspects of Destination, Food, Culture, Nature, Heritage, Lifestyle and more. This locally produced content will resonate with the discerning UK audiences, and add immense value to our ever growing content library too.” 

UK Marketing plan 

For its varied travel content, Travelxp has made aggressive marketing plans targeting the large mainstream audience market in the UK. The plans include TV campaigns on mainstream television and digital billboard screens across the UK on buses, the Underground, and on social media, amongst other initiatives. 

Chothani further said, “Our launch in the UK on Freeview is yet another major step in our mission to help lovers and aficionados of travel explore the best of travel and lifestyle vicariously through Travelxp, and to encourage them to step out and explore our beautiful world in person.” 

Travelxp is promoted and led by Prashant Chothani, CMD & CEO, and Nisha Chothani, Director and Head of Content. Together, they have over 55 years of media experience that has helped Travelxp become the world’s leading travel channel in seven years since its launch in 2011. 

Travelxp speaks the local language of various countries, like English, German, Czech, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian, with many more in the pipeline. The Indian languages it speaks are Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, and it has plans to add several more in the near future. 

Speaking on the strategy behind launching Travelxp internationally, Prashant Chothani told Adgully, “We started out with 100 per cent English content. We were very clear from day one that we will make Travelxp a global brand. There were two reasons behind this decision. We asked ourselves, why can’t an Indian television brand talk to mainstream audiences on the global front? There were Indian channels abroad, but they addressed only the Indian diaspora internationally. We wanted to change this outlook and decided that our content would be only in English.” 

Continuing further, Chothani said, “We also wanted to showcase India to the world in the most beautiful way that we could. India has a huge potential and that is what we want to showcase in the mainstream globally.” 

Travelexp is a pay TV service across the world, but for the first time it will be on a Freeview service in the UK and be the company’s first ad-funded channel. “Every country is different and in the UK it is an ad-funded market as it outweighs the subscription model,” Chothani explained. 

According to Chothani, both FTA and pay TV will survive. He feels that today, the distinction between pay TV and FTA is not very clear. “The operator bundles everything, like the great Indian Thali, and offers it to the customer. We are the sweet dish on that Thali. We are open to working with smaller operators and our terms are better with smaller operators,” he added. 

Though the channel has not done any AFP business so far, Chothani is open to exploring the option, but at the same time he was firm that it would not be at the cost of the editorial integrity of the content. “We are clear that we will communicate to our viewers if we run AFP content on the channel,” he affirmed. 

Speaking on the channel’s core TG, he said, “As per BARC ratings, we peak from 31-50. But we feel that Travelexp addresses every age group. When we launched, we were catering to the 25+ age group, but later parents wanted their kids to see the world through our programmes.” 

He shared here that the channel had received an unusual appreciation from the Education Department of Mauritius, wherein they said that the Department had written to all schools and parents to let their children watch the Travelxp channel for half an hour every day. “When we asked the reason for this, they said that they wanted their children to be compassionate and inclusive in their thought process and grow up to be better citizens,” Chothani added. 

“Our shows are multi-cultural. When children are younger that is when you groom them so that they learn to accept every culture with an open mind. This also makes them aspirational. Our content showcases History, Geography and Culture, and these are the three things that make for a better human being,” he added. 

When asked whether the channel’s content is adapted differently for different markets, Chothani replied that they had created their own USP, wherein the channel showed the best of what the country or destination had to offer. “Our fundamental statement is very clear – we only showcase the positivity of the destination in all our content,” he added. 

And since the viewership is constant and growing, Tracelxp does not have any season specific content. 

While Travelxp has made aggressive marketing plans for the UK market, the channel has never done any over-the-top marketing or advertising, said Chothani, adding that the promotions have been primarily through word of mouth. “All the big brands/ luxury brands/ travel portals advertise with us,” he concluded.