Retail travel services within service design innovation, in two words: Welcome Travel

At the press conference, go to the first challenging retail travel project by the Physical-Brand-Design company

On november 30th, Welcome Travel press conference took place in fascinating Logotel headquarter in Milano to announce to journalists the new project by the first italian travel agencies network, property of Alpitour group and Costa Crociere. Among the speakers the leaders of the two companies who underlined the big impact that such a project will have on WT group and Marco de Carli, strategy director of Crea, to explain the design concept and the customer’s experience inside the agency. As professionally presented by Gianni Onorato, president of WTG, the project aims to trace the lines of future retail travel agency starting from a scenario analysis which underlines the transformation of tourism market with a marked increase in online sales. The first and important purpose of the project is to integrate the traditional sales chain with the web one.

This new innovative thinking of retail travel agency could not avoid a complete restyle of the store: the collaboration with Crea International starts from here with a new service design experience, transforming the agency from a traditional office to a place of meeting and sharing, in a fully opened space, with no barriers between buyers and sellers. This is one of the focal points of the whole project: the holidays package must be sold, not purchased, that’s to say that there must be an attention to the customer, right starting from the store, that must be perceived as the place to be driven in a path totally different from the past.

This was the brief of the client,as underlined during the conference even by Gian Paolo Vairo, ceo of the Group, and the point from which the italian retail design team has started to create an environment where transparency and recognition, lightness and modularity characterize the experience within the new retail travel agencies, starting from the new strategic idea "free to travel". The new shop aims to become a real point of reference for holidays and leisure that pushes people not only to dream a travel but to realize it, with the aid of specialized agents.

Marco De Carli, during the conference has presented the new innovative layout of the new agency where the traditional approach between customer and agent is replaced by a new fruition of space, an emotional experience which leaves from the outside of the agency with a new layout even of the window, totally opened that intrigues and invites people to enter.

Within the agency customers can choose what to do, if having a private consultancy with an agent in confortable areas or just have a look to the offers of the moment, download travel materials from the tablets that they can freely consult. Everything surrounded by a frame of images related to travel, as a real window on the world. “Welcome Travel project was a great design challenge – comments Massimo Fabbro, ceo of Crea International-. We have combined the need for efficiency in service and the need to renew the visual code that characterize the travel agencies .The new Welcome Travel has now a new agency which opens the way for a new, modern, light and easy language to use with customers .”

“The project tells a new retail story - says Marco De Carli,strategy director of the project strategy - a strong message of communication ready to strengthen and enhance Welcome Travel’s identity. The opening and immersion into the world of travel along with innovation and the new style of communication of the brand, makes the new space a place that WT, welcomes, involves and communicates with people in a new dimension of interaction between person, place, and brand. The promise of the project aims to strengthen the positioning of WT and to the serenity and the pleasure of the trip: “free to travel. "

Officially announced the partnership between Crea International and Welcome Travel - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design