HouseTrip, the global rental site for holiday homes, is embarking on a £2.5 million consumer marketing drive including TV advertising, as it seeks to turn itself into the foremost brand in the burgeoning travel-tech sector. http://www.housetrip.com/
Founded in 2009, @HouseTrip has rapidly become one of the hottest businesses on the London and European start-up scene, winning a number of awards. It is the only business to be backed by Europe’s three largest VC firms, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and Accel Partners. The company has doubled in size each year since 2009, with more than six million guest nights’ bookings made to date and over 300,000 properties on its books already, the company has its sights set on challenging the biggest names in the holiday sector.
Did our new TV ad make you want to HouseTrip http://t.co/ADppfMjYyQ
— HouseTrip (@HouseTrip) May 4, 2014
The integrated marketing campaign will support a new positioning for the brand, aimed at families, and will include TV spots with digital and out-of-home advertising in London, supported by a major national PR offensive in the UK and France, its two main European markets.
Launching on 3 May, the campaign follows long-time P&G marketing chief appointment Zaid Al-Qassab as Chief Marketing Officer in January 2014 and the subsequent hiring of strategic agencies mcgarrybowen (hired in February 2014), Weber Shandwick and GoodStuff (hired in March 2014). It will challenge the conventional way of holidaying by pointing out the space and freedom offered by booking a whole home for the same price as a hotel room and introduces the line “Do You HouseTrip Yet?”.
Zaid Al-Qassab said: “HouseTrip has a unique story, incredible founders, great financial backing, one of the most talented, experienced executive teams in any European startup, impressive revenues and NPS scores through the roof – the one thing it doesn’t yet have is a recognisable consumer brand. That’s what we’re focused on. I set myself and the team the extraordinary challenge of developing a consumer brand from scratch and bringing it to market in just three months, and we’re going to do it.”