4 ways that travel and hospitality is cashing in on Pokémon Go

From lures and offers to indirect inspiration, many travel and hospitality firms are profiting from the craze, reports Andrew Hennigan.

In the first few weeks after being launched in July 2016, Niantic’s augmented reality game Pokémon Go has attracted more players than the users of Twitter and viewers of the Rio Olympics. Not surprisingly businesses everywhere are looking for ways to benefit from this popularity and many have already succeeded. Here are four examples.

1. Lures and offers

From the very beginning small businesses have adopted the quick and simple approach of paying for Pokémon Lures on their premises. An in-game purchase, lure modules can be bought by any user to attract Pokémon to a certain location for a limited time. Where Pokémon appear users of the game are quick to follow, making this simple tactic one of the easiest ways to attract of crowd of potential customers. Restaurants, bars and even food trucks are finding this technique very effective.

Even the smallest hotel can afford to buy lures, but some larger businesses are adopting the same method on a larger scale. Australia’s Mantra Hotel Group claims to be the first to do this, announcing just a week after the game launched that they would be providing lures on their properties. The lures bring Pokémon and thus Pokémon hunters, but what turns these people into customers is the parallel offer of related initiatives like free snacks and happy hour priced drinks.

2. Professional sponsorships

Marriott Hotels Group has found another creative way to exploit the interest in the game. The company has sponsored Nick Johnson, a highly-successful US-based Pokémon hunter, who attracts a large following with his social media updates. The hotel chain is helping Johnson in his travels around the world looking for the last remaining Pokémon he needs to catch, linking the Marriott brand to the social media conversations about Johnson’s global search for Pokémon.

3. Direct deals with Niantic

Any business can follow the Mantra Group approach simply by signing up for an account and buying the lures or doing what Marriott has done by sponsoring professional Pokémon hunters. However, other companies are looking to deal directly with the game’s creator Niantic to build sponsorship and advertising opportunities within the game itself.

McDonalds is the first company to succeed in making a deal with Niantic to sponsor the game when it launched in Japan. Through this deal all 3,000 McDonalds’ locations in Japan are turned into Pokémon Gyms, locations where players can battle the Pokémon of rival teams, or train their Pokémon to battle. Players of the game are attracted to McDonalds’ locations by the game and then, hungry from the exertion of chasing Pokémon through the streets for hours, they probably buy something. It’s not hard to see why this kind of sponsorship is likely to be both a cash cow for Niantic – the company is unlikely to sell sponsorships cheaply -- and a sought after deal for marketers.

4. Indirect inspiration

Aside from lures, advertising and sponsorship of Pokémon Go, the extraordinary popularity of the game is also inspiring other games and gamified apps. A flood of me-too augmented reality games on the app stores is possible in the coming months, but could a business use similar augmented reality technology on their own apps. Could a hotel chain or theme park have their own app where customers literally hunt down loyalty points or bonus rides using a similar game mechanic? The idea is probably more accessible than it sounds.

What makes Pokémon Go so exciting and successful is not a breakthrough in technology, but rather a breakthrough in game mechanics

Ryan Matzner, Director of Business Development, Fueled

“From a technical perspective, the hurdles are relatively low nowadays,” says Ryan Matzner, director of business development at the New York based app developer Fueled. “There are a number of vendors who provide this type of tech and it would take limited work to get it up and running.” But simply copying the technology doesn’t guarantee success. “What makes Pokémon Go so exciting and successful is not a breakthrough in technology, but rather a breakthrough in game mechanics,” says Matzner

Whatever approach businesses choose to exploit the momentum of Pokémon Go one thing is already clear: augmented reality is probably going to be more relevant than virtual reality in the future, partly because it connects our natural inclination to play with real-world physical activity and partly because it avoids the downsides of virtual reality headsets. The Pokémon Go game itself might fade like many other games in the past, but the mechanics it pioneered will influence successors in the gaming field and non-game apps.

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