Created an all-encompassing member engagement plan for the leading global travel association during COVID-19.
Like many entities, associations had to adapt to the new realities of the Covid-19 world. As a travel association, we faced a totally new reality when the pandemic grounded most planes, shuttered hotels across the world, closed many restaurants, and rendered ground transportation largely irrelevant. We responded by creating a full-scale member engagement campaign.
We sought to drive both awareness and engagement among the association’s members. We created a plan to address all aspects of the member experience. We created a staff-led member calling campaign to check in with the members and see how they were doing amid the pandemic and what they needed to move forward. From the calls, we realized the members needed more information on the effects Covid-19 was having — and likely would have — on the industry. We consequently established a portal on the association’s intranet to allow members to network and share experiences. We established honorary memberships for any members who were unemployed, so they did not have to worry about their dues. We conducted Zoom interviews with CEOs of major travel firms, getting them to open up about their personal and professional experiences during this uncertain time, and then made the interviews available to the members. We prepared weekly e-mails to the members summarizing pertinent news, information, and resources; we also published these summaries on social media sites to enable other interested parties to see them. As a result, we received more than 1,000 leads on potential new members. Finally, we conducted biweekly surveys of the members to obtain real-time knowledge about how the travel industry was responding to the pandemic. The summaries of the survey findings provided the basis for more than 500 news articles published throughout the world.
