Storytelling and luxury travels, striking the emotional chord
Blaise Pascal, reflecting on life in general, concluded that all men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
“The only thing that consoles us is entertainment” — distractions, fantasies, changes…
These things are oxygen for our mind. Without change, our brain maddens and hallucinates. All our activities connect with the idea of traveling, it is our brain that compels us to move, and… here comes our restlessness. Travel is an emotional stimulus, a neurotic push that drives us to go, even if at home — and in the aforementioned quiet room — we feel so comfortable, especially in current times.
Even so, we now feel such restlessness even more than before. This pandemic period has harshened the urge to break our confinement, physical and mental, while we — restlessly — bounce to and from the necessity to feel safe or evade.
With travel, the entire humanity is showing how much it evolved. All men in the world can travel, from tourists to employees, business people, students, everyone. We now have new means of transportation, far better than the nomadic ponies, but, on the other hand, we also have much more comfortable rooms. Nonetheless, we all want to travel, as we all are looking for something far from home, a precious prize, personal enrichment, a unique experience, authentic and rare feats.
Amadeus divides travelers into three different tribes: the ones in search of treasures, those who long for a natural way of life, and those seeking unique emotional experiences. These are characteristics, or stimuli, of the ancient nomadic tribes, the same tribes addressed by the civilized people as excess-indulging barbarians (here is why promising something extreme, barbarous, and excessive easily conquers whoever is fed up with the current civilization).
Why storytelling stirs nomadic hearts
Here lies the secret. If we want to sell an emotional travel experience, we must strike the right emotional chords, the ones that can stir our restlessness. The travel instinct will only shake if we can promise an incredible sensorial satisfaction and only if we can awaken the ancient nomadic urges.
Somehow, we are inclined to think that promising a better-than-heaven experience to whoever is already accustomed to such wonder is challenging, to say the least; but this is not so if we can remind our affluent prospects of their nomadic soul and we can guarantee the unique precious single moment their soul is after.
Reminding, persuading, and exalting expectations are the three main goals of the ancient art of storytelling, an art so natural to be considered biological, capable of creating personal connections through honest, authentic, and inspiring stories.
Authenticity, inspiration, and honesty are the values most appreciated by travelers, and as much as they seem old concepts, it is up to the modern travel operators to communicate them with a current language and updated tools.
The luxury market — not only for travel -, requires reaching two goals to accomplish success: carrying customers by ‘personal magic’ on the palms of the brand’s hands and teaching customers, with a proper language, the values the specific brand is serving.
For the latter, we can offer an example. We see that craftsmen, modern and old, are proud of their heritage, authenticity, valued materials, and craftsmanship; in the same way, ‘travel craftsmen’ can highlight similar values to stir the nomadic hearts.
Good storytelling touches the heart, promises magic experiences, and explains authentic values. It is the only tool that can be adapted, discretely or with much of a show, to any communication technology; and the only failsafe memory, since the time of campfires, reminding us of who we are and why we travel.
#storytelling #travel #luxury
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Author and journalist for many decades, Nick Gandolfi thrives in the complex world of digital and content marketing where he curates the many contents and digital services which float on the web. A storyteller at heart, Nick Gandolfi published comics, kid tales, mystery novels, tech, history, and educational articles (few e-books too). Nick Gandolfi firmly believes that all stories are important because they go to the heart of things and people.
