Is your Hotel Pokemon-friendly?
There’s a new mobile craze capturing the hearts and minds of millennials who grew up with the much loved Japanese Manga cartoon Pokemon. Savvy accommodation businesses have an opportunity to tap into this new craze, both for branding and revenue purposes.
The new sensation PokemonGo is a free-to-play location based augmented reality (AR) mobile game that uses GPS and camera of the user’s phone to create a real-time action game to catch Pokemon.
The game virtually places the gamer in the present location on the map by tracking the phone’s GPS and mirrors the google maps with roads and locales on the gamer’s phone. Whenever the gamer moves in the real world, so does his/her Pokemon character. So you could be walking in the park in the real world and a Pokemon residing in that area could pop-up for a potential catch. Also, different Pokemon species dwell in different areas of the world, for e.g. water type Pokemon are found near water bodies in our world. This makes the game authentic and tied down to the real world.
PokemonGo is developed by Niantic and has been very popular among teenagers and adults.
The RateGain blog writes:
“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), Gym(to battle Pokemons). These places could be facilities such as restaurants, amusement parks, bars, hotels, concerts, events fairs and symposiums. This would cater to promoting a place in the quickest possible manner.
The hospitality industry aggregators could go a step further to reach out to these millennials target market by declaring their facilities as Pokemon friendly. The game requires high speed WIFI and is heavy on the gaming device(phone) battery. A facility that hosting phone charging stations and WIFI would be an attraction for gamers. While the game would get footfalls to the facility, the gamers can use the facility’s services such as food and beverage, etc.”
Mantra, an Australian hotel chain has been one of the first to monetise the PokemonGo craze by launching the world’s first PokemonGo friendly hotels. It is also a PokeStop and works on the LURE module.
Mantra markets itself by showing potential areas where a gamer could run into a Pokemon!
Country Inn & Suites, Portland Airport has also become a Gym on the app. So now the gamers can catch the Pokemons throughout the hotel, fight the Gym leaders, and then run the Gym site.
Hoteliers should make use of this new trend of becoming Pokemon-friendly.
Click here for the full article to find out how becoming Pokemon-friendly can save costs and improve brand recognition.