Passengers traveling through the 11 airports served by New York-based concessions operator OTG got to join in the PokémonGo fun over the weekend.
For the uninitiated, players of Pokémon Go use for iPhone and Android smartphones to find and catch more than a hundred species of Pokémon using GPS in a virtual reality setting. Players can explore places where they live and in cities around the world to capture as many Pokémon as they can.
“We saw people interacting with the game in our spaces and our crew members took notice,” said Eric Brinker, OTG’s VP of experience - marketing & communications. “We wanted to get in on the fun and built out a strategy that allowed us to give something back to our guests traveling over the weekend.”
“It quickly became apparent that there was a significant amount of Pokémon meandering our restaurants and gate lounges after finding that there had been more than 30 Pokéstops and Gyms scattered throughout,” said Michael Marchese, the company’s manager of experience.
Recognizing the unique nature of the situation in the airport space and wanting to get in on the fun, OTG decided to help guests locate and capture a few pre-flight Pokémon by purchasing and installing lures in its airport spaces, said Marchese. Lures are used to attract Pokemon to particular PokeStops for up to 30 minutes and allows players to interact with each other.
“The placing of lures throughout the terminal helped guests more easily track and capture any of the airport-based creatures,” said Marchese.
OTG wanted its airport crew members to be involved, so the company gave them the ability to create and buy lures as they saw fit, based on traffic near restaurants, said Brinker. “We saw this less as a traffic driver and more as a way to get in on the fun and give our crew members a chance to do something unexpected for our guests passing through our locations,” he said. “This weekend we purchased over 80 lures that provided players 40+ hours of paid access across all our airport locations.”
OTG informed travelers about its lures via its social media channels and through crew members on the ground spreading it by word of mouth, said Brinker.
“We aim to create unique experiences in our airport spaces, and this just seemed like a really fun way to surprise and delight our guests,” said Manu Gambhir, OTG’s senior vice president of digital. “Everyone involved had a lot of fun. The creation of the Lures, and promotion of their locations across our social was an obvious way to help our guests catch ‘em all!”
