How travel brands can inspire customers by connecting travel itineraries with real-life experiences

Baleària is a shipping company that has been working in the Mediterranean area for more than 20 years, connecting the Iberian Peninsula with the Balearic Islands with more than 20 connections between 4 different countries. While connecting Spain with the world, this travel brand is also establishing stronger connections with their online customers – through authentic User Generated Content.

“We use Flowbox not just because it has a great aesthetic that we love – but because we believe that it brings a lot of value to our users.”

Teresa Gavilà – Content Marketing at Baleària

The Story

Baleària is a Spanish shipping company with routes that link the Iberian Peninsula with the Balearic Islands, Ceuta and Melilla and, more recently, the Canary Islands by Fred Olsen Express, as well as Spain with Morocco and Algeria in the Mediterraenan and Florida with the Bahamas. With an international base of customers posting images of their trips on social media, they recognized an opportunity to leverage these interactions within their eCommerce strategy.

Challenge

With many available options for travel, online customers spend a lot of time searching for a route that will give them the best travel experience. This includes turning to social media to get real answers from previous customers.

Noticing how popular travel photography is on social media platforms, Baleària saw an opportunity to use the experiences that customers were sharing online to create a campaign that would improve the performance of their eCommerce. But the main question that remained was: how could they leverage this kind of content to its full potential?

That’s when Baleària turned to Europe’s leading User Generated Content platform, Flowbox, to convert their customers’ social sharing into an online shopping experience.

“On a strategic level, what we intend to do is to make our routes known to the user and, of course, we segment it by how ‘appealing’ it may be and routes of interest. In order to do this, we use Flowbox to, on one hand, show the experience of real Baleária passengers, and, on the other hand, link these experiences with our routes on our website so that others can live the same experience.”

Teresa Gavilà – Content Marketing at Baleària

Solution

“We use UGC in our eCommerce for two reasons. First, to give our users a lot of visual content on our website, so that they can see lots of images when they arrive. And also, of course, we want the users to share their own experiences, as this is much more valuable for future users.”

Teresa Gavilà – Content Marketing at Baleària

By collecting content shared by their customers along the Baleària routes, they are able to integrate it directly into their eCommerce store with Flowbox to improve their online shopping journey. With this content, Baleària gives their online customers the social proof that they need to convert by seeing real customers enjoying their travel experiences.

Plus, this kind of content is perfect for promoting their cabins for pets, giving pet owners reassurance that other travelers have enjoyed their experience.

“Our cabins for pets are a great example of UGC on our site. We can tell our users that we have pet friendly cabins, but we believe that this profile of customer that will travel with their pets depends a lot on the credibility of other passengers that have done the same and then uploaded images to social media. So you see that these people are enjoying their time with their animals, you haven’t just heard it from the company, and you want to make that trip too.”

Teresa Gavilà – Content Marketing at Baleària

Results