Staycation – new and popular

People work hard – and for long hours. They need a break. Should it be a staycation or a vacation? While understanding the difference, staycation marketing is gaining popularity for various reasons. And, so, marketers must pay attention to this offering in the future, to grow their business. 

Let us understand what a staycation is. It is a holiday that you take at home or near your home, rather than travelling to another place. It’s easy to have a staycation in a place like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru and many other places in India and abroad. Thus, a staycation is a recreational break spent at home or within a ‘both-ways’ day trip distance of it, requiring no overnight accommodation or long travel.

While vacations were always popular and will continue to be so, staycations are gaining ground at tremendous speed. Let us understand this consumer behaviour a little more. A staycation is a vacation spent in one’s home or nearby, while a vacation typically involves travelling to a different location.

Staycations often focus on local attractions and relaxation at home, or near home, while a vacation generally offers more extensive travel and exploration. A staycation may be short, while a vacation could be for a longer duration.  While you may have one or two vacations in the year or even one vacation in two years, you could have multiple staycations within a year itself, helping you to relax and take a short break and still enjoy yourself with your family. 

Why is it that staycations are becoming more and more popular? To answer that question, one has to understand the difference between a staycation and a vacation. While, in both cases, the marketing opportunities are tremendous, staycation marketing opportunities seem to be growing at a faster speed and have a wider appeal, and the frequency of usage could be higher.

While the vacation is a period of time, devoted to leisure and recreation, typically involved in travel to a different location, a different town or a different country, a staycation is spent in your own home, or within a short distance, often exploring local attraction and amenities and maybe spending time at a resort, or a hotel, near your home. There is no long travel involved in a staycation.

A vacation involves travelling to a different city, country or region and, hence, requires more time. In the case of a staycation, primary stays are within your local area, minimising travel and accommodation costs. Also, a vacation can involve a wide range of activities, depending on the destination, including sightseeing, adventure sports, cultural experiences and relaxation. On the other hand, a staycation involves a narrow range of activities, in the local area, and may even be time spent at a hotel or a resort over the weekend. 

While vacations can be more expensive, due to travel, accommodation and activity cost, a staycation is typically more budget-friendly, due to reduced travel expenses and so easily affordable. Vacation may require more planning and preparation months in advance, while a staycation requires less extensive planning and preparation and could be quite spontaneous. The key difference lies in the location and extent of travel involved. 

Well, enough of understanding the meanings and looking at the definitions and analysing the differences. Now, let us look at the opportunities that marketers and marketing folks have in this new emerging offering of a staycation.

First, every major hotel chain, national and international, is promoting staycations. It is all to do with expenditure. The money spent, the time spent, the effort spent. Here, expenditure is low, affordable and easy in decision-making. It depends on how you package, market, brand and position it.

If you treat a staycation as a commodity, the hotel chains will be less successful in terms of revenue, footfall and profit. Therefore, you need to brand staycations and come up with unique and innovative ways of attracting consumers. Not only should they enjoy the experience, but they should also be able to use it as a talking point, after the event.

Secondly, the usage of facilities within the local area – be it in a hotel or a resort or parks, museums, sightseeing locations, makes – a lot of difference. Within the hotel or the resort, itself, restaurants, play areas for kids, spas, swimming pools and many other facilities can be showcased and used by consumers who have come for a staycation. Ignoring local facilities and attractions would be not only an error, but a blunder too, while marketing staycations.

Thirdly, satisfied consumers and their families tend to repeat, with great frequency, visits to a wonderful staycation. This would lead to regular revenue and more footfall from loyal staycation consumers and loyal staycation families.

Fourthly, a pleasant and welcoming attitude by the staff, for regular staycations’ customers and families, makes them comfortable. They feel like visiting and having vacations there again and again, treating it as their second home.

Let us look at examples of hotels and resorts, which specifically offer staycations. In the case of Marriot Bonvoy, property amenities are included and highlighted on site, such as outdoor pools, digital check-in, meeting spaces, interactive activities for kids especially over weekends, convenience stores, gift shops, breakfast on offer and many other facilities. The Taj group of hotels also offer many facilities and so does ITC, Four seasons, The Oberoi and many other hotels and resorts.

Staycations are in favour today amongst consumers, as also hotels and resorts. Many local tourism bureaus, national and international, highlight activities and local spots. 

Challenges: Some challenges will have to be considered during staycation marketing. One, staycation marketing is different from vacation marketing. It will have to be segregated in the mind and hearts of consumers and families. For that, there will have to be separate teams, to handle vacation marketing and staycation marketing. If the same team is handling both offerings, it could be a mistake. The segments are different and the offerings are different and, therefore, the mindset of the marketer too has to be different.

Secondly, planning and preparation for vacation marketing is long-drawn-out and involves long travel and gestation period and time, whereas, in the case of staycation marketing, the shorter duration necessitates little planning. Sometimes, it can even be impulsive and spontaneous. This aspect of marketing differentiation needs to be considered when vacation and marketing are being handled.

Thirdly, it cannot be a similar positioning for marketing. They have to be both treated as separate brand offerings, with separate positioning and maybe separate sub brands. Fourthly and finally, the challenge is the speed at which the marketing team can come out with offerings and respond with agility to market opportunities, especially in the case of staycation marketing. Slow and leisurely done, marketing activities may not work for staycation marketing, which requires speed and quick responses to the opportunities the market offers.

Staycations are here to stay. Make the most of it, in the marketing way. 

The author is CMD, Samsika Marketing Consultants. He can be reached at jk@samsika.com