It seems that visual and video content is becoming ever more part of the way we communicate. With mobile use continuing to be on the rise, there are much more flexible ways for our customers to access the information they need, whether this be through our mobile app or sending us photos from their journeys via Instagram. With the vast majority of us now owning mobile and tablet devices, engaging with visual and video content is becoming much more convenient and appealing.

This is an exciting movement for everyone, and can provide the ideal opportunity for travel brands like ourselves to embrace the new ways we can inspire our customers to make that all important trip. Transport and travel lends itself nicely to image and video content, and can help bring your journey to life.

We all have various stages that we go through when planning our trips, from brainstorming where we want to go, to deciding how we want to get there. An article on The Wise Marketer says that the rise of social media has now created a new stage to our process of planning a journey; the ‘dream stage’. This is where we see images of locations we want to visit and start to plan our journey from here. They argue that social media is inspiring people to dream about travel and aspire to make plans; this provides a great chance for travel brands to engage with their customers on the stage of planning that they are on.

We enjoy embracing the opportunity to share events that are taking place around Wales with our customers, and to encourage them to travel around and experience the culture that the country has to offer. With plenty of interesting articles about Welsh landscapes and activities to share, visual and social media allow us to be there with our customers for the whole of their journey, from deciding where to go, to actually planning their journey routes through our website.

Follow us on Facebook for inspiration on what there is to see and do throughout Wales.

We’re also continually adding details of upcoming events taking place throughout Wales to the Special Events page of our website, to help provide ideas your next journey!

Pinterest is also a great platform for us to share visual content with our customers; with the site continuing to grow and gaining popularity, we’re looking forward to expanding our engagement here in the new year. Do you have Pinterest? Give us a follow here!

Visit Traveline Cymru's profile on Pinterest.

PhocusWright suggests that whereas previously, people would have conducted research across multiple websites to find the lowest cost for their journeys, now the trend is towards using fewer sites and favourite companies, with the determining factor being the ease of use. With so many websites to choose from, we tend to lean towards our favourite sites, and stick with them. It then becomes vital that we help make our services as easy and efficient for people to use as possible, and helping them along the way.

Last year, we created a video demonstration of how to find a fare using our journey planner. The fares are a relatively new feature on our journey planner and so we’re keen to help our customers make use of this service in an easy and understandable way. Creating this video also allows us the benefit of engaging as many of our customers as possible, as we are able to share this around our social media platforms.

Watch our Fare Finder demonstration here!

Sarah McDonald, Google’s YouTube Travel Chief said that investing in video content drives brand engagement over longer periods of time. Video, she says, has the power to turn consumers into ‘brand advocates’, especially when people are invited to co-create content. This idea of co-creating content worked especially well for us during last year’s Traveline Heroes campaign. Our customers got involved by uploading photos from their journeys to Instagram, with stories of how they have benefitted from using our services. Video has also allowed us opportunities to showcase what we do in different and interesting ways; we have had the pleasure of working with a number of different businesses creating video case studies of how they have used our services, as well as creating a behind the scenes video of our Traveline Heroes advert created during last year’s campaign. Watch below!

These are proving to be great ways to personalise the experience our customers have with us, and this is something we look forward to continuing with.

See below one of our video case studies with Cardiff Metropolitan University.

If you’re interested in finding out more about what business services we provide, please visit our Business Services page.

Our use of mobile services is also continually increasing, and we’re keen to provide a variety of ways for our customers to access the information they want. By having our journey planner, events and more as part of our website, we like to be there with our customers through their journey planning process, from inspiring ideas, to planning their route. By providing a range of options and a personalised experience, we aim to continue to be the ‘one-stop shop’ people will look to when considering and making their journey plans.