Ties up with small and micro enterprises to support local businesses
SPURRED by Covid and how it’s forced travel to go domestic, ALL – Accor Live Limitless has launched its biggest domestic campaign in Indonesia, Rediscover Indonesia, bringing together its 130 hotels in over 30 destinations.
To dial it up a notch, ALL, which is Accor’s lifestyle loyalty programme, added partnerships with an organisation that represents micro and small businesses (UMKM) so that each hotel welcomes guests with a locally-made gift from those small businesses.
“We ask the small businesses which item they want to provide our guests and we buy the gifts from them. That way, we also support the local artisans and businesses that have struggled during Covid,” said Adi Satria, senior vice president operations and government relations at Accor Indonesia.
The year-long programme, which has CIMB Niaga bank as a strategic partner as well, is being rolled out across four pillars – culinary, art and culture, wellness and destinations. It offers more than 130 curated experiences, beyond hotel stays.
Said Satria, “It’s been a challenging time and this is part of our Covid recovery strategy. We want to encourage our guests to enjoy domestic destinations as well as support local businesses and we can create economies of scale with our 130 hotels in 34 provinces.”
Each hotel has been tasked to create its own iconic experience and tell its local story. Launched late March, the campaign is being promoted on its own website, Accor Plus as well as social media channels.
Response has been encouraging both in terms of public relations and sales, he said. “The local media has been quite taken aback by the depth and breadth of our content and experiences. The intention is to make us proud of our country, and it’s time for us to stay domestic.”
One benefit has been cross-exposing each hotel to another province’s culture and Satria said it has also been good for team morale. “We see our team exchanging ideas and information, best practices across the different WhatsApp groups,” he said.
Satria stressed it’s not a discount-led campaign, but more around experiences where guests also earn daily hotel credits.
“This is the biggest domestic campaign we’ve ever done,” said Satria. “It’s taken a lot of collaboration.”
Asked for the budget, he said, “We don’t quantify it like that. There’s a lot of earned media, we have our own co-branded credit card, we have a lot of partners working with us.”
Through Covid, domestic travel in Indonesia has remained fairly steady, said Satria, with places like Jakarta, West Java, Yogyakarta and Bandung leading. And Accor was seeing pick-ups in occupancies in places connected by road.
“The one suffering the most is Bali, which is an inbound destination. It’s not easy to travel between islands right now,” he said.
