Virtual hotel tours, real-time reviews and video diaries: How Blippar can enrich the travel industry

Stephen Shaw, Blippar’s Marketing Opportunities Director, flew to Norway as keynote speaker at the Norwegian Digital Travel Conference (DTC) in Kristiansand. Here’s what he thought about digital developments within the travel industry...

Monday 20 October was a first for me: my debut trip to Norway as a keynote speaker at the Norwegian Digital Travel Conference (DTC) held in Kristiansand.

I've done all of the other Scandis but never Norway, and the event was held in Kristiansand on the southernmost tip of Norway (not to be confused with Kristiansund, hundreds of miles away up the western coast).

The Kristiansand conference centre and theatre is a stunning and impressive building overlooking the early morning mist rising from the cold icy waters of the Baltic Sea.

Perhaps distracted by the beauty of the setting, on entering the building it hit me: I was dressed in a royal blue jacket, white shirt and EC1 red chinos - the same colours as the Norwegian flag!

I hurriedly slipped an image of the Norway flag into my presentation as the first slide, and stood in front of the impressive floor-to-ceiling screen for an impromptu impersonation of a human chameleon, only to receive a lovely round of applause from the largely Norwegian contingent. Certainly the best start to a presentation I've ever enjoyed in over three years at Blippar.

My keynote speech was to demonstrate how Blippar's visual browser can be utilised by the travel industry to turn magazines, brochures, posters, print adverts and all other marketing collateral into rich, immersive, interactive mobile experiences, leveraging existing digital content for greater customer engagement, response and revenue.

Earlier talks by speakers from companies including Instagram and TripAdvisor and had been superb in showing attendees how to greater leverage their content. Socially.

But at Blippar we do it by bridging the gap between the physical world and the digital one, by turning print and products into digital experiences, unlocked via our visual browsing lens.

From playing video travelogues and walk-through 360º tours of museums and hotels off brochures and travel magazines, to turning single-page adverts into real-time visitor reviews, aural language lessons and vibrant, musical photo galleries, Blippar offers the travel industry a new and dynamic play form for content delivery that delivers truly engaging mobile experiences and tangible ROI.

What’s more, at the conference we further showcased how our tech can make the printed page more engaging by making the programme itself blippable. We brought its pages to life using our easy-to-use self-service tool Blippbuilder, and enjoyed learning that 700 delegates in the room downloaded our app there and then, blipped the programme, and experienced Blippar first-hand.

I also presented a number of live blipps to the room, revealing to attendees that you genuinely can make an Airbus fly off the cover of Business Traveller magazine, and showcasing our award-winning collaborative work with London agency WDMP.

Their campaign for Monarch Airlines won the DMA Grand Prix award in 2013, achieved a staggering £2.2m incremental booking revenues, and saw 21.7% of direct mail recipients blipp-thru to Monarch's website for further content and information. Watch their video about this here.

We finished on a high with a virtual visit from one of history's best globetrotters: Doctor Who. As a time traveller he was well-equipped to have the final word when blipped off the cover of BBC's Doctor Who Adventures Magazine (for which an impressive 24,500 readers from their 28,000 circulation downloaded Blippar to unlock digital content).

Then, just like the Doctor himself, I was whisked away to the airport to travel back to London - albeit in an SAS 727 rather than a Tardis....