Mastercard is the enabler of travelling in the minds of consumers. So when travelling became impossible Mastercard had to reinvent its role and find a new relevant one.The online bookshop that Mastercard turned into the fully functional travel website Booktrips engages the customer in an unexpected and unique journey, transforming love and craving for traveling, not possible presently, into the excitement of reading books. Moreover, the Frequent Book Flyer Club, turning pages into miles, that could be turned into real flights when the end of the restrictions comes, gives customers hope and something to look forward.

Situation:

The Covid lockdown made traveling impossible and made Mastercard role as traveling enabler irrelevant. It also hit the book market hard. The book sales had a decrease of 60% in March-May 2020. Moreover way before 2020 in Bulgaria people stopped reading books. 60% of men and 45% of women read less than 1 book a year. 68% of young people admit they don’t presently read a book.

Brief:

To reinvent Mastercard role as travel enabler and helping SME survive the Covid crisis.

Objectives:

Strengthening the role of Mastercard as travel enabler and first choice for online transactions. Help the publishing houses and bookstores to increase their sales and make the online book shopping exciting. Starting a conversation about reading books and struggling publishing houses and bookshops.

In times of less traveling and even less reading, we took the age-old truth that people can travel through books - and made it literal by creating the first Reading Travel Agency.

We turned an existing online bookshop into a fully functional travel website.

Once you’re on the platform, you can book destinations and time periods, follow our special offers, select types of vacation, choose a personal guide, leave reviews and recommendations. When your choice is set, you are redirected to a selection of books which fit your criteria and can take you to your dream vacation - faster, safer and much cheaper than any flight, cruise or train ride.

And to anticipate real traveling you can join a Frequent Flyer Club where you gather pages instead of miles. Those pages are later converted into real trips, as soon as the regulations allow it.

Target audience

Active urban adults, who miss traveling and have forgotten, because of contemporary hectic device dominated everyday, the excitement of reading books.

Approach

To fulfil the craving for travel by offering them a unique experience buying books online as if planning a vacation. Thus reminding them the thrill of reading - traveling with imagination.

But this thrill, exciting as it could be, is still not real traveling. So to anticipate real traveling they can join the Frequent Book Flyer Club where you gather pages instead of miles. Those pages are later converted into real trips, as soon as the regulations allow it.

We turned an existing online bookshop into a fully functional travel website - booktrips.bg.

We used the style markers and general atmosphere of a typical tourist website and created our own identity, engaging all the travel cliches in a playful way.

The search bar featured a list of destinations and date options representing the time period of the book.

Sections like “city breaks” (urban fiction), “cruises” (naval fiction) or “rent a car” (road-trip books) further established the look and feel of a tourist platform.

The “special offers” connected literary genres with vacation types: “romantic getaways”, “vacation with kids”, “a killer vacation” meant crime novels, etc.

The website was launched on October 1, 2020 and is currently growing and expanding its catalogue.

We applied the media strategy of a travel agency.

It was opened to physical book shops and all publishing houses.

Site traffic - 60 000

Sales - doubled

Impressions - 7 000 000

Response rate - 20%