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Print & Deliver’s travel tins add a personal touch to booking holidays while keeping an agency brand front of mind. Business development manager Brian Kane explains how to Andrew Doherty.
Long-haul flights can be an uncomfortable experience; you wake up from a disjointed sleep with a mouth like a furball and the first thing you want to do is brush your teeth. But not every airline supplies an amenity kit these days. Rather than leave your clients with a nasty taste in their mouth, one promotional goods supplier has come up with a rather quirky solution that travel agents can take advantage of.
Print & Deliver has designed a small aluminium tin, shaped like a suitcase. The exterior branding can be customised with an agency logo, name and their own image if they wish, and the tin filled with a variety of items to make a long journey that bit more comfortable.
Business development manager Brian Kane not only acknowledges the practicality of the tin for travellers, but also its usefulness as a soft advertising tool for independent travel agencies.
“That’s the whole idea, to give the independent stores a chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with the bigger players in terms of getting their names out there,” he says.
Items offered in the tin’s standard package include ear plugs, a travel toothbrush, wet wipes, tissues, boiled sweets, an airline headphone adapter and lip balm. There is also an option for a mirrored lid. Individual items can be branded with the agency name, and agents can suggest their own contents.
The first agency customer was Tony Sheldon Travel in Maidenhead, and Kane says that Print & Deliver is in talks with other potential clients.
“We have talked to a golfing specialist about putting golf-related items in the tin, such as tees, ball markers, wrist bands, sun cream, and golf-shaped pens. We’ve also had conversations about personalising the tin for a bride and groom to be used as favours at a wedding.”
Costs for customising the tin start from £5.95 per unit, with flexible pricing for orders of 1,000-plus. “The bigger the order, the more favourable the pricing,” says Kane. “The minimum order is 100 units and we can turn them around in three weeks.”
Neil Jenkins, director, adds: “We are always trying to find new and creative ideas for our clients. Anyone can buy a branded USB or pen from just about anywhere so we try and enhance our customers’ brand in a more unique way by thinking outside the box, or tin.”
Mark Pollard, owner of Tony Sheldon Travel in Maidenhead, ordered 300 tins from Print & Deliver. Customers booking any type of holiday at any price receive a tin from the agency as a little something extra. Pollard says: “We’ve had great feedback from our clients when handing out the tins with their tickets. One couple keep theirs on their window sill as a reminder of their upcoming trip to Australia. Another customer actually sent us a picture of their tin in Australia! The tins are a great talking point and we’ve also had many customers sharing or tagging us on Facebook with pictures of the tins.” He is already planning on stocking up on more. “When clients have gone on more than one trip, we’ve given them new tins and also refilled the last ones too. I might change the content next time, to keep it fresh and do something different.” He sees the tins as money well spent and urges other agencies to think creatively with their marketing: “The travel tins act as a form of marketing for us; you like to think that customers will keep hold of them. We see it as a value add. The tins look like they cost more than they actually do, and it’s always nice to make our clients’ journeys that little bit easier.” |
