By Editor
Travall app to be made available to 3,600 travel agents in the MENA region, seeking to lend support to agents selling Dubai as both a holiday or business destination
The Middle East region’s first video review mobile application, Travall, goes live in the UAE market this December.
Designed specifically to support the travel, tourism, entertainment and leisure industries, Travall will offer popular Dubai-based destinations with compelling, broadcast-standard videos that will engage consumers looking for insight into the destinations before they visit.
Travall is a unique video concierge service, says Adam Ridgway, CEO of Travall. Any user, whether an in-bound tourist or a local resident, can plan their life using the app. “Advice on accommodation, hotels, cafes, restaurants, sports activities, education and more can be found with the app,” Ridgway explained, adding, “If you are relocating to Dubai, and you want to find out the best neighbourhood to live, we can provide that-we are not just providing video content for consumer-related business, we are also filming the different areas of Dubai. We are providing a service for people to experience and appreciate Dubai and what it has to offer”.
Instead of creating ‘memories’ like we do when we travel, Travall seeks to create ‘pre-mories’ – experiences of the destination before getting there, according to the company.
Key features of the app include: building an itinerary for a trip; making reservations; sharing details on social media; rating and reviewing an outlet; redeeming free vouchers; and taking advantage of last minute promotions. In addition, the most engaged users can earn points towards various prizes including: meal deals, weekend stays, holidays, flights, and other travel and leisure experiences.
Travall has taken familiar features from other apps like Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr and then combined these popular apps and the other locally-based businesses that are a source of information for consumer audience, Ridgway said. “We then take all the information, modernize it in terms of the visual and video content and then offer that to the public. We believe people will need only one app for everything they do in Dubai whether its vouchers for meals, discounts on hotels or finding out about the best places to go,” Ridgway added.
Clients already on board include: Burj Al Arab; Atlantis Hotel; Dubai World Trade Centre; The Anantara; Sofitel; Cle; and the RTA.
Content consists of professional-made videos between 30-60 seconds produced for clients, as well as 15 seconds of user-generated video reviews. “For example we have produced video for the popular Japanese restaurant Nobu at the Atlantis,” Ridgway explained. “At the app, you have the description with a booking number and other basic information. Visitors to Nobu can then take a 15 seconds video, then link the same to their own hashtags and then upload on their profile but linked to Nobu as well. The restaurant subsequently receives more advertising from this.”
If users want to tweet, there is a portal called the “Travel Tweet” a short and sharp 140-character review which they can link to their twitter account. This is unlike other review websites where comments can run into pages, Ridgway said.
Travall has been launched first in Dubai with plans to roll out in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Fujairah and other Emirates from the beginning of 2015. From 2015, the app is scheduled to launch in international markets such as: Bahrain; Saudi Arabia; India; Mexico; South Africa and the USA.
Recent data indicates that online video marketing is rapidly becoming more of an influence on the purchasing decisions of consumers. Over 65 per cent of consumers that view videos online click through to videos create more confidence in their online purchases. A significant 139 per cent also the vendor’s website and over half (52 per cent) say that product agreed that online video marketing dramatically increases brand association.
Travall’s business model is multi-faceted-a video concierge service as well as a tourism guide, says Ridgway. “We allow bloggers or anyone with a passion for food or entertainment to increase their following like they would do on Instagram-only more focused. In the portal, we have a bookings & reservations site but without charging commissions or fees. We also do not charge a per-head spend to restaurants like other companies do,” Ridgway added.
Travall, according to Ridgway, has a digital marketing team and all the videos are enhanced with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for all clients on the app. “For merchants and outlets, we provide them with a monthly consumer intelligence report which shows who visited the site, who downloaded the app, which part of the world they are in, which videos were looked at etc. This allows them to compare themselves with three of their competitors and see how successful they really are. This allows them to raise their game-a main part of this app which to make sure that everyone is constantly striving to be better and enhance the experience of the customer,” Ridgway said.
The Travall app launches in Dubai on UAE National Day, 2nd December, and is available on both Android and iOS platforms from either Google Play or the App Store. This is deliberate, Ridgway says, as Travall hopes to use its unique platform to enhance UAE’s position as a leading global tourism destination.