Travel Marketing Summit: ‘The most dangerous thing you can do is follow the herd’ – Reflections Holidays CMO on tackling a brand identity crisis

While the holiday parks category is having an identity crisis, with marketing conventions riddled with out-of-date stereotypes, Reflections Holidays is on a journey of rediscovery. When CMO Peter Chapman joined the outdoor hospitality company, he knew a change was needed, and here, he shares why that is, and how he did it.

Closing out Mumbrella’s Travel Marketing Summit last week, the marketing boss shared how the holiday parks category has done a “horrible” job of building itself up to be taken seriously – despite its significance.

According to Chapman, the holiday park business in Australia is worth $4.5 billion a year. For context, the hotels and resort sector is worth $14 billion. So, it’s clearly something worth taking seriously, but because of the aforementioned identity crisis, it is not.

“And that’s been our problem and the thing we’ve got to construct,” Chapman said.

Chapman speaking at last week’s event

The reason it isn’t thriving, is because it’s only marketing to the stereotypical holiday park audience – Aussie families with young kids.

“Our industry body tells us that market makes up 70% of the revenue that comes into this industry,” Chapman continued. “So over the last 30 years, big holiday park companies have been about building splash parks, jumping pillows, massage parlours, cafes, bars, basically mini amusement parks where you can sleep and parents can get drunk and not judged.

“But now, we couldn’t be further from the amusement parks in terms of our audience.”

So what is Reflections doing?

Targeting that other 30% of the revenue-making audience – the families with older kids, the solo market, the nomads, and the young travellers.

“That’s who we’re for,” Chapman continued. “We consider ourselves to be for that other 30%.”

He said Reflections made an active choice not to go for that larger 70% cohort, and instead double down on the 30% as they align to the brand’s purpose better.

“I think in our case, the most dangerous thing you can do is follow the herd… If we’re following convention, we’re following the rules, there’s no way to get gains that are exceptional to the average.”

Over the past two-and-a-half years in the role, Chapman has driven the brand’s transformation through a complete rebrand, fresh creative and a “manifesto”, and by constantly challenging marketing’s ‘4 Ps’ – product, price, place, and promotion.

“In our manifesto, we say we’re caretakers of breathtaking pockets of the natural world… brands have got a role to create culture and create trends, and so if we’re not going to say it, who will?” Chapman asked.

During this time, brand awareness has grown by 25%, revenue by 18%, and memberships to Reflections’ loyalty program have more than doubled to 300,000.

“We understood that every moment is a brand moment, it’s an opportunity for you to share the way you see the world with your people,” he continued. “And that’s what we need more of to help fix this identity crisis.”

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Lauren McNamara

Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.

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topics holiday holiday park Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit national park Peter Chapman Reflections Reflections Holiday Parks Reflections Holidays travel marketing

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