Changing consumer habits lead to a new Danish travel site

Are you looking for travel options closer to home in light of the corona crisis?

Danes eager to find new and hidden pleasures in Denmark can now browse the freshly launched inspirational site STAYS.dk as an obvious starting point for visiting lesser-known parts of the country.

The new site is an initiative from the growth company GoodiePack.com, which is otherwise more known for offering a digital communication tool aimed at boosting sales and services, and increasing customer loyalty within the hotel, tourism and experiential industry.

But over the past few weeks, the company spotted a need for a new initiative to help the industry and decided to allocate resources to developing the new website.

New inspirational platform aims to promote better ways of exploring Denmark

Udforsk Dit Danmark – Explore Your Denmark – is the slogan for STAYS.dk which aims to provide inspiration for new and better ways of discovering different parts of Denmark.

“Normally we are b2b, men this is specifically targeted at consumers. We consider it our contribution towards helping the struggling hotel, tourism and experiential industry in Denmark,” says Lisa Dalsgaard, the founder of GoodiePack.com and one of the participants on Towards No. 1’s panel of women in tech.

GoodiePack.com was started in 2015 to focus on the experiential economy. The platform is aimed at hotels, venues, leisure spots and regular events and provides a direct communication channel to their patrons in order to boost sales and increase customer loyalty.

Corona hits

If you book into a hotel that is a GoodiePack partner, you receive a text message before your stay with a link to all the relevant information about your stay. This has proved particularly useful in these coronavirus times, where there is less of an urge to touch the folders and flyers that are usually found at hotels, as well as easing the work of hotel staff by providing answers to practical questions and providing options for selling additional services.

The corona crisis has also hit GoodiePack’s customers hard, as the hotel and experiential economy has been particularly affected by the pandemic.

“We’ve been hit as hard as everyone else, but we don’t want to just step back and say that we didn’t do anything for this industry that’s been hit really hard. It’s my impression that some companies have gone into hibernation during the crisis, while others are doing a lot. We want to make a difference to our customers,” she says.

For GoodiePack.com, making a special difference means opening more people’s eyes to less well-known corners of Denmark that are nonetheless well worth visiting. STAYS.dk is an inspirational site aiming to guide visitors to local experiences off the beaten track.

“We want to inspire people to visit the less well-known places and go to the far corners of the country that they may not be familiar with. We collaborate with local associations across Denmark who help supply our content. We want to tell personal stories, such as having a prominent local restaurant owner reveal where he likes to take his wife when they go out. We engage with local people rather than sending reporters around the country,” Lisa Dalsgaard explains.

Before being posted on the platform, all content is edited by an independent team. The platform is promoted though social media, and all traffic to the site is directed on to the local participants, making it easy to book a table, a room or other experiences directly from the local providers.

Profit machine

Lisa Dalsgaard is keen to stress that the initial aim is not to turn STAYS.dk into a new profit machine; it is an honest attempt to make a difference without seeking anything in return from local providers. If the site actually does turn out to make a difference, then there will be scope for building on the initiative.

“We hope that some of the bigger players across the country will see the potential and support this initiative so that we’ll be able to pay our little team. We’re used to launching things and scaling up – and to us, growth is not about a big marketing budget but rather having the right network,” she says.

Initially, STAYS.dk is an initiative that targets Denmark as its sole focus.