A Luxury Travel Campaign Without the Luxury of Travel
“We open on a beach.”
The one sentence every ad creative dreams of getting signed off by a client.
So when I was briefed on luxury travel brand Kuoni, I felt sure this was my chance. White sand. Turquoise sea. Someone gazing meaningfully into the middle distance.
Sadly, no.
With just eight weeks until the campaign had to run, and a budget that did not extend to Milton Keynes, let alone the Maldives, there would be no exotic shoot. In fact, there would be no shoot at all.
Once I had processed this grave injustice, I dusted off my Getty Images account and got to work.
The perfect holiday isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. Why you travel matters just as much as where you go. And no two reasons are ever quite the same.
A holiday might be a reward. A reset. A relationship resuscitation. A desperate attempt to remind your children that you are “still fun”.
Which is why planning a holiday is about more than finding cheap flights and somewhere nice to sleep. Our reasons for getting away are too varied, too specific and too ridiculously human to be solved by a price-comparison website.
Kuoni understands that. That’s why every holiday is planned from scratch. Around you. Around what you want from your time away. And around whatever made you want to go in the first place.
Our campaign brought this idea to life by pairing beautiful travel imagery with playful backstories. Each revealed a deeply personal reason for travelling, rooted in just enough truth to feel familiar, but far too oddly specific to belong in any ordinary travel brochure.
In print and radio, we celebrated even more reasons to get away. From impending teenage years to petty Instagram jealousy.
The campaign helped reverse a five-year decline in January sales, with holiday bookings up 12% year on year.
All without leaving the dreary confines of a London winter.
