Chef Patrick See, Pastry Chef of Regal Kowloon Hotel, taught the children about making cookies

Following the launch of an innovative on-line campaign, hosted via Facebook and enabling people to share their travel ‘dreams’, Travel Counsellors have presented one lucky family with their dream holiday.

The leading independent company, which has over 1200 agents running their own travel businesses across 7 countries, developed and launched a special Dream-maker App in July, which enabled users to browse the app and submit their own dream along with pictures, after which people could vote for these ‘dreams’, with the most popular submission winning the ultimate prize of having $15,000 towards their ideal holiday.

The campaign proved hugely popular, reaching 186,000 people across the globe, over 120 ‘dreams’ being submitted, and more than 2000 individual votes on the site. The winning entry came from Cindy van der Merwe from Cape Town, South Africa, whose dream ‘make every moment count’ told of her family’s inspiring story. Her husband had recently battled with cancer and now being on the road to recovery the family, including her two young sons, aspired to go to Disneyworld together for their dream holiday adventure. As a result the dream received over 1,000 votes and, as the company has an operation in South Africa, the family were paid a surprise visit by the South African office staff to tell them the good news.

“I saw the competition on Facebook and loved the concept,” comments Cindy. “With the hustle and bustle of everyday life you forget your dreams and you stop dreaming.  But the dream-maker competition allowed me to stop and to take time out of my busy schedule to rethink about what is most important to me. Winning has enabled our family’s dream to come true and will give us quality family time together after what has been a very tough year.”

The campaign followed research* by the company which shows 70% of people are yet to travel to their ‘dream destination’. Popular reasons for this were being restricted by work commitments, financial constraints followed by family commitments and time restraints. The dreams concept also reflected its individual Travel Counsellors’ own personal goals, and those of many within the industry, whether that be running their own business, earning more money or simply being able to pick up their children from school. As a result the company saw a significant rise in engagement with the brand on both its Facebook pages and main websites during the campaign. The campaign also proved significant in raising the company’s profile outside the industry, supported by the fact it has seen a 10% increase in new recruits returning to travel after being out of the industry for a number of years.

“This was a really innovative campaign and completely different to anything we have ever done before, so we are thrilled at the positive response it received,” says Managing Director Steve Byrne. “People really embraced the concept, capturing and celebrating the 'feel good factor' of both making dreams come true for customers and realising our Travel Counsellors’ own dreams by empowering them to be in control of their own destinies, and we saw the campaign spread worldwide as anyone and everyone could take part. We’d like to thank everyone who took the time to share a dream and vote for someone to win. Many people connected with Cindy’s personal story of love, courage and quite simply the power of hope to help her win and on behalf of everyone at Travel Counsellors, we’d like to wish Cindy and her family a truly special trip.”

*The survey was completed by 1,818 respondents globally in July 2012