ILJ (I Love Jaisalmer) Foundation came to us with the challenge of increasing tourist footfall and promoting Jaisalmer Desert Festival to fulfill the terms of the Citizen-Airline Partnership by ensuring minimum seat occupancy for Spicejet’s flights to & from Jaisalmer – a city whose economy took a hard hit due to Covid 19.
Team: Design team – Ramsha Qamar | Developer – Harshad Satra | Content and Social Media – Shreya Kasireddi | Video Production – Hoga Films | Collaboration and guidance – ILJ team
The Problem
Spice Jet cancels flights to Jaisalmer
On 16th January 2021 Spice Jet, the only operator to Jaislamer, announced the cancellation of its flight to Jaisalmer. The discontinuation meant a steep fall in tourist numbers to the city already suffering losses due to COVID 19 aftermath.
Jaisalmer has bad rail-road connectivity with the nearest airport being Jodhpur (300 km). Air connectivity to the city is crucial in the survival of the city where 60-70% economy depends on tourism.
Decreased footfall for Desert Festivalmer
This news came as a huge blow to the upcoming Jaisalmer Desert Festival which was already struggling with footfall due to Covid induced international travel restrictions.
Attracting a large number of tourists, the festival is an annual 4 Day winter event organised by the Rajasthan Tourism Department, with the objective to seek global attention from worldwide spectators, showcasing the historical and cultural aspects of Jaisalmer.
On the 4th of February 2021, on behest of the memorandum submitted to various government bodies; Jaisalmer Vikas Samiti, the district administration of Jaisalmer and Spice Jet signed an MOU – first of its kind Citizen-Airline Partnership to ensure unhindered flight connectivity to Jaisalmer.
The joint initiative aimed to reduce the losses to the airline by following a public-private partnership (PPP) model wherein the local hospitality industry along with ILJ will ensure 60% seat occupancy on each flight or else cover the costs.
This first of this kind sustainable tourism initiative enabled Jaisalmer to host the Desert Festival (24-27 Feb 2021) that was about to be called off.
Challenges + Opportunities
User Personas
Challenge statement
How might we create a buzz1 around the festival given the short time frame, creating a sense of novelty2 to be able to drive India’s internationally bound tourist3 segment towards Jaisalmer, and engage with local experiences4 with the assurance of Covid safety5 protocols?
Design solution and ideation
‘Maru Mela’ was conceptualised as an immersive experience – a sub-event under the Jaislamer Desert Festival to enable local communities and provide them an opportunity to present their culture, heritage and food in its most authentic form. The ILJ foundation organised this sub-event to primarily attract the upper-middle-class Interstate Tourists, Travel Bloggers, and Ancillary Tourists.
To promote the festival we designed a social media campaign capturing the essence and energy of Jaisalmer with modernised local flavours to target the younger demographic in Indian tourist segment. An ad campaign was designed to create buzz considering the short promotion period of the campaign. A microsite for Maru Mela was designed and linked to the ILJ website, to book local food and cultural experiences organised by the foundation.
Event Identity and design language
The motif used with the identity is inspired by the regional community’s representation of Sita Baori (stepwell).
The use of gradients and the grainy texture were chosen to symbolise the region’s natural terrain. It is also reminiscent of the vastness of the desert and the life which resides within it.
Social Media Design
We came up with a social media campaign designed around the words ‘Aao Jaisalmera’ (A term of endearment in the local language), inviting the people to come to Jaisalmer. The hashtag #flytojaisalmer for created for the campaign, adding on to the suggestive marketing and also to link the campaign to the SpiceJet Partnership
The campaign carried the essence of the local culture and enthusiasm all the way from the storytelling, the visuals to the copy and tone of voice. We ran the campaign on all the social channels of I Love Jaisalmer cross-promoting on partner handles including the official Rajasthan tourism handle.
The microsite
We create a microsite for the tourists to be able to book the above experiences online and get an essence of the festival.
User Journey
The first step was to understand the existing user Journey and gather pain points from the offline booking experience provided by I Love Jaisalmer for similar events in the past. Based on our personas, we highlighted the pain points we wanted to solve, both for the user and the other stakeholders in the system.
Using insights from user journey mapping, we re-aligned the booking journey for the end user and further implemented it into a detailed information architecture for the microsite.
Challenges to be addressed
• Lack of a single point of verified information
• Long wait period to get information/make bookings
• Lots of Back and forth to make/modify bookings
• Lack of dedicated information helpline
• Manual errors in making bookings over call
• Lack of manpower at the Booking helpline
The final outcome was a microsite that acted as the one-stop solution for the end user for all their information and booking-related needs regarding Maru Mela.
We also solved for our other stakeholders – the ILJ backend team, by using Airtable to make the population and modification of the event information user-friendly and efficient. It also stored the user data eliminating the need to go back and forth between platforms.
