By Anupam Chawla| August 4th, 2016
Pokémon GO, the recent sensation
among teenagers and adults alike, is a free-to-play location based augmented
reality (AR) mobile game. The game primarily uses the GPS and camera of the
user’s phone, which augments the user’s reality and surroundings into the game.
It virtually places the (user) in the
present location (GPS) on map; all the while mirroring the google maps with
roads and locales on the user’s phone. The character in the game moves
whenever the gamer/user moves (tracking the phone’s GPS) in the real world.
Different Pokemon species reside in
different areas of the world, for eg: water-type Pokemons are generally found
near bodies of water in the real world, which generates an authentic touch and
a more interactive feeling in real time among users.
When a player encounters a Pokemon,
they may view it either in augmented reality (AR) mode or with a live rendered,
generic background (using the phone’s camera). AR mode uses the camera and
gyroscope on the player’s mobile device to display an image of a Pokemon as
though it were right there in the real world. Players can take screen shots of
the Pokemon they encounter either with or without the AR mode activated. The
ultimate goal of the game is to complete all the entries in the Pokedex, a rather
comprehensive Pokemon encyclopedia, by capturing and evolving to obtain all the
original 151 Pokemons, mentioned in the series.
Gym
A gym is a battling arena where users
train their Pokemon during battles. For the moment these are the only spaces to
train the Pokemon. However, a user can only access the gym when he/she reaches
level 5 or above in the game.
Pokémon GO is different from
many other mobile games, since it involves physical activity by the user.
To get to the Pokemon, Pokestop or a Gym the user needs to actually travel.
An interesting feature is that is mandatory that the gamer travels a
distance (2.5 or 10 kms) in the real world to be able to use the game’s bonuses
such as Eggs for powerup’s, etc.
The game was initally released in
Australia, New Zealand and U.S.A. in first week of July 2016. To date, 33
more countries have been added to where the game can be played.
Businesses have benefited from the
nearby presence of Poke-stops (or their being the Poke-stops themselves). On
July 15, Yelp added a filter that only shows businesses which have a Poke-Stop
nearby. National parks across the United States saw an influx of visitors due
to the game, with “hundreds or thousands” of people visiting the National Mall
and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C. on the weekend following Pokemon Go’s
release in the country. Small museums with Poke-Stops placed at exhibits also
reported increased attendance, such as the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio,
Texas, and the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Boca Raton,
Florida.
So how can hoteliers monetize the
Pokémon GO craze?
Image
Credit: McLean County Chamber of Commerce
Drive traffic
Pokemon Go successfully drives
two of the 4P’s of Marketing principle, i.e. : Place and Promotion.
The augmented reality dynamics of the
game is such that it induces gamers to move and find places where they could
capture their potential Pokemon, reach Poke-stops (to get the game’s bonus such
as coins, eggs, etc.), find a Gym (to battle Pokemons). These places can
be facilities such as restaurants, amusement parks, bars, hotels, concerts,
events, fairs and symposiums. Find out if there is a Pokestop near your
location, and get to work promoting your proximity.
Build an ecosystem supporting Pokémon
GO
The hospitality industry could go a
step further to reach out to this largely millennial target market by
declaring their facilities as “Pokemon friendly”. The game requires high speed
Wi-Fi and is a heavy drain on the gaming device (phone) battery. A
hotel that hosted phone charging stations and Wi-Fi would be an
attraction for gamers. The game would bring traffic to your property, where
gamers could use those services and also pay to partake of
your food and beverage services and other amenities. This
is somewhat similar to a casino’s concept where the players are provided
with food and wine while they play at the tables.
Strategic alliances with Nintendo
In the present model,
players’/facility owners can pay up and select “LURE” to attract the Pokemons
to a specific location. Each LURE is active for 30 mins and costs about
0.60$. This area could be your hotel. An American pizzeria reported a
spike of staggering 75% to their sales during a weekend after using $10 to buy
LURE modules.
Going further, it is projected that
Nintendo will also open its doors for purchase of Poke Stops and Gym’s, which
would be a boon for facility owners. McDonalds Japan has tied up with
Nintendo to host Poke-Stops and Gyms at their 10,000 restaurants. After this
news, McDonald Japan’s share price saw an increase of 9.8%.
Target new segments, encourage social
sharing
PokemonGo brings potential new market
segments to hotels such as millennials, children, teenagers.
Gamers are starting to use
TripAdvisor to acknowledge the ease of finding a Pokemon at a property. A
traveler rated the hotel Villa Royale in Paris highly on TripAdvisor e
talking about the hotel’s great facilities and surroundings along with the
Pokemons found in the hotel. The hotel general manager replied back
acknowledging this and further goes on to mention that travelers could find
greater number of Pokemons during breakfast in the breakfast room (increased
footfalls during the breakfast period).
TripAdvisor has gone a step
further and lists different properties by search filter of type of Pokemon
likely being found there, (which is usually in-sync with the property’s
surroundings of its flora and fauna).
Mantra is an Australian hotel chain,
with over 20,000 keys to its portfolio. It has been one of the first hotel
chains to monetize the PokemonGo craze by launching the world’s first Pokemon
Go friendly hotels. It works on the LURE module and is
also a PokeStop. Gamers could PokeStop by Mantra 2 Bond
Street in Sydney from 3 pm every Friday during July to receive a free bowl
of fries with any drink purchase, and Melbournian Pokemon Go catchers
could also cash in on happy hour drinks at Mantra on Little
Bourke from 3 pm every Friday during July. The hotel chain markets
itself by showing potential areas in its hotel rooms or restaurants where
in a gamer could run into a Pokemon. This has been tweeted and posted on
social media by many excited travelers and hoteliers.
Mantra
Country Inn & Suites, Portland
Airport has made itself a GYM on the app, meaning Pokemon Go players can
capture the digital creatures throughout the hotel, fight GYM leaders and then
run the GYM site. The hotel is offering a 10 percent discount when gamers
book a room there.
Conclusion
PokemonGo is clearly a crowd puller,
however, hoteliers will have to decide whether the kind of crowd it pulls
is (or is not) an apt target audience. If it is, you may have to
consider consider putting in entry barriers such as a cover charge or
a minimal spend to access areas in the hotel you want to turn into a
PokeStop or a Gym.
Industry experts claim, that an
average hotel would spend about 1/6th of their overall revenue on Marketing
activities. With the help of PokemonGo hoteliers could increase their
profits 3.5% annually, by saving around 33% on their annual marketing spend.
Hotels market their properties and
facilities in various forms such as billboards, printed materials,
advertisements (print, videos and voice), events and fairs, online marketing
(Ads, SEO, SEM, Inbound marketing, etc.). Organizing events and fairs,
sending out invites and following up on the invitees is an arduous task which
requires a considerable spend of manpower and money. Of the channels used
for marketing, online marketing and events account for almost 60-65% of the
marketing spend.
Take an example of a 200 room city
hotel having two onsite restaurants, a coffee shop and a specialty restaurant.
Typically, Rooms accounts for 65% of revenue, the coffee shop 15%, the
specialty restaurant 10%, and Miscellaneous Revenue adds 10% to the Gross
Turnover. The hotel achieves an annual occupancy of 70% and an average ARR of
US$100, so it will achieve a gross annual turnover $ 7.86 million.
The marketing spend of such hotel
would be about 3% of the turnover or $2,35,846. 70% of the marketing spend
is traditionally utilized for online marketing and events, or $1,65,092
annually / $41,273 quarterly. About one-third of this spend goes in local
area marketing spend.
As the LURE module in PokemonGo costs
about 0.60$ for 30 mins, consider that LURE is used 3 times a day for 1 hour
each (during restaurant/bar or any other point of sale’s promotion
hours). It will cost $9720 quarterly. This would have a minimal
saving of at least 10% in the marketing spend per quarter versus spend on usual
marketing techniques for areas in vicinity. This would eventually extrapolate
to 33% annual savings on the local marketing spend and would increase profits
by about 3.5% (about US$ 55,030) annually!
Apart from LURE module, hoteliers can
have a liaison with Nintendo for hosting Pokemon Gyms (gamers congregate in
large numbers at these spots for battling with each others’ Pokemon’s) at their
facilities. McDonald’s Japan has signed up 10,000 of its restaurants in Japan
for this.
Hoteliers should make apt use of this
new trend and be there to capture the market first – it could be a
differentiator not only for saving marketing costs, but also for brand
recognition.
•
It has about 26 million active users
in U.S. which makes it 5.92% of the android users in U.S.
•
An average user spends about 43 mins
daily on this game
•
Revenue generated by the game so
far ( at 19/7/16) : $35 million
•
PokemonGo has the highest number of
downloads from iOS app store as compared to any other app
•
Nintendo’s market value increased by
$9 million within 5 days of the game release
•
7 out of 10 people that download the
app returned to it the next day
•
PokemonGo’s daily usage is twice as
much on Android apps than the Facebook app
