The Brief

Over 25 % of leisure visitors to Malaysia from India are repeat visitors - most of them families. Further, with each passing year, Indian leisure seekers are increasingly looking for more `out of the ordinary' destinations. Given this, Malaysia Tourism recognised that they would need to showcase more and more exciting destinations to Indians - especially the family segment. And one of their biggest offerings was the natural cave formations. Our task was to create a communication that would showcase a new experience cave exploration in Malaysia - keeping in mind the families with school kids segment.

Creative Execution

Given that the target audience was families with young children, an interactive book with a torch to help discover its contents was considered the perfect communications slingshot. The visuals and content were intentionally presented in the illustrative and rugged format to enhance the whole exploration experience.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We believed that empowering the travel agent with an interactive sales tool detailing the cave exploration experience was imperative. Unraveling the unexplored flora, fauna, history, mystery, adventure and exotica of the Malaysian cave systems in the most interesting manner possible. But the budgets were tight and the timelines short. And a regular brochure with great pictures was not an option we wanted to consider.

Results

Over 30,000 Indians asked for and booked holidays that involved cave exploration visits in 2009. This was a tenfold increase when compared to 2008. The display kit was actively used by over 500 travel agents and sub agents in 18 cities and towns in India. On another note in 2009, Malaysia was the only destination in south East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Indonesia being the others) to register a growth over 2008 in 2009 (7%). All the others registered negative growth varying from 3% to 15%. Malaysia also increased the average length of stay from 6.4 nights in 2008 to 6.7 nights in 2009 - whilst all the others registered a negative growth here as well.