Riccardo Viroli − Campingvillage.travel

The SUN Beach & Outdoor Style was an opportunity to meet Riccardo Viroli, the young CEO of Campingvillage.travel, a company specialized in digital marketing with a focus on the open air sector, which during the critical phases of the lockdown has always been by the side of the customers, the camping villages, helping them to set up adequate communication activities and also supporting them in the difficult post phase, where it was important to recover the bookings lost in the closing months. Data analysis, prudent investments, human to human relationships are the basis of their strategies, which have proved to be very successful. Let’s find out more.

Camping Business: How did it go this year?
Riccardo Viroli: We have gone from the first information on this virus where many people had taken it a little under the arm, to a much heavier lockdown phase. The accommodation facilities have rightly been very concerned. In the lockdown phase, however, we had the clarity to understand that standing still would have been worse. So, we asked ourselves: “What can we do?”. We have proposed to our customers to keep the final tourist engaged with a constant relationship. However, not everyone felt this need and there was a lot of territorial division: in the north there was more concern, both for missing the foreign tourist and for the objectivity of spread of the virus, while in southern Italy there was more skepticism. Despite this, everyone appreciated our support and presence very much. We really made hundreds of calls every day, and we provided a lot of insights which were then useful for booking purposes.

In the second phase, post lockdown, we found ourselves faced with a situation in which the entrepreneurs who had decided to open, almost all of them, had great uncertainty about the actual presence of the tourist and how to manage the accommodation. Despite this, many wanted to restart as soon as possible, because they realized that starting the “machine” immediately would have made them more crowded. And here there were no doubts: all the customers who opened wanted to do something to push, because in any case the work lost in the three months off, in three weeks, had to be recovered. At this stage, we have been greatly appreciated for the practical advice we have given, including for the purpose of responding to reservations and customer inquiries.

In addition, we have chosen to allocate the budget that we dedicate every year to an experimental project from the point of view of innovation and technology, to the help of open air tourism accommodation facilities. We have invested to reach the Italian tourist, who often does not yet know well the camping-village world product, trying to move him towards this choice. This September I sent a paper letter to the accommodation facilities, even non-customers, explaining what we have done, underlining how a debt was created, not to us, but to the new customer who previously did not know our sector and who therefore is to keep dear.

Another difficulty that there has been this year is that we have had to face with our customers, especially those of the central north who have suffered from the great shortage of the foreign market, was that of having to remodel all the sales and communication part for the Italian market, quickly. It wasn’t that easy. Here too we had the intelligence to plan and organize, analyzing the data to adopt new strategies in these structures. Those who followed us on this path (not everyone was ready on this front, or were not in favor of changing dynamics so quickly with the hope that it was only a matter of a season) has had enormous benefits. So much so that today we have many customers who in the end, despite a season of which we cannot be happy because we are talking about declining data, have brought home less worse results than we thought: many contexts were flat, some context even positive.

Camping Business: What services did you offer specifically to campsites?
Riccardo Viroli: We have offered additional actions on the promotional part of Campingvillage.travel and the other portals of our property, also providing, on the tourist side, additional information (for example, we have created the FAQ section on the Covid emergency), and we produced some videos that we shot on social networks to engage the tourist, and this thing had an excellent result. From the side of the accommodation facilities, on the other hand, we directly followed all the marketing and sales actions of promo-marketing, from the aspect of social media marketing to the aspect of advertising on Google and newsletter marketing, therefore all those marketing actions directed vertically.

Camping Business: You aim a lot to make it clear that it is important to invest in yourself, in your structure, rather than in OTAs, right?
Riccardo Viroli: Never before has the world of OTAs and tour operators experienced a big decline like this year, for obvious reasons, because people need a personal relationship, this has given even more space to direct sales and direct marketing. Among other things, we are in a very fortunate market niche, in the sense that today there are no OTAs or large tour operators that have monopolized the market. In this context, in terms of digital marketing and communication, hospitality structures are understanding that they can invest a little more and that they are investments with exponential returns, because today the world of digital advertising still has very low costs in relation to what it brings. This is what we recommend: with direct marketing you can get much better results, you can bring home a client to work with for more years and you can put yourself in a position to measure these actions.

In this sense, since 2018 we have started an educational-training path that we offer for free and that you receive through DEM, in which we provide the opportunity to be informed on the hottest topics of communication. Even in the Covid situation we have never stopped, and this has put us in a position to help different people on a larger scale, obtaining a lot of positive feedback.

Camping Business: What do you have in mind for the future?
Riccardo Viroli: Also in 2021 it will be very important to keep the tourist engaged. I am expecting undated bookings, hence a pending status. It will therefore be essential for the accommodation facility to keep the tourist, or potential such, connected on an ongoing basis, this will be very important.

Everything that was done in the lockdown phase, for example the animation video, the cooking at home, rather than other attractions of this type, created a relationship that has become a habit. It will be essential to move forward, because people have got used to it and at the same time have increased the digital aspect. There is already a number of data showing an increase in digitization, and obviously these things must be taken into consideration.

Giving a macro answer is difficult, because obviously each context is different and must be analyzed. Today we have the tools to do this, from Google Analytics to Facebook panels, to checking actual bookings through our CRM. So, I think it is essential to plan 2021 now, because doing it in the race, not knowing how the season will go, can put us in a position to make more mistakes. Programming does not mean having a path outlined at 100%, it will not be feasible, but now we already have certainties that are based on previous experience (such as the relationship part or how to excite the customer from the human to human relationship side). However, we hope that the conditions are in place for a season that is as positive as possible.

Camping Business: You were present at the fair with two stands. So, do you still believe in these events?
Riccardo Viroli: Yes, our presence at the fair is a focal point for a meeting moment. We no longer do it to have a direct economic return, because if we had to look at that we would have already stopped making them long ago. But I think that for us who do communication and marketing it was important, in a year like this, to give a sign of presence. Although we work on the digital aspects, and although this lockdown phase has set in motion all the teleconferencing part, we are still old school, and we think that seeing each other live has another value.

We are very happy to have been there, we did not spare ourselves in the stands. It is not an act of force, but an act of presence: we have always tried to work with a certain professionality, and we want to show it even at the fair. This is what perhaps made us emerge in the sector more quickly, despite being the last born. For us, even a salesman who goes out is not a salesman, but a consultant. We no longer believe in selling the product and that’s it, but we made a change of trend six years ago. We understand that asking camp owners the right questions and understanding their needs can lead to great results.