Article
Occtane Group kiosk serves Hilton Head travelers
Concierge Plus combines digital signage, news and entertainment, and transaction processing.
October 15, 2006 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance
Dennis Nelson buys and sells building lots and home sites in Hilton Head, S.C., a resort community with a highly competitive real estate market. He manages the Hilton Head Land Company and competes against nearly 1,400 other realtors who tend to use the same tactics to get attention.
Not long ago, an acquaintance of Nelson's shared an idea that he'd been working on — a way to help tourists get good information about what to do, where to go, and what's going on in the communities they visit by introducing them to local destinations, restaurants, and other businesses by way of an interactive kiosk.
Nelson became one of the first advertisers.
The acquaintance was Russ Johnsen, chief executive of the Occtane Group, a Hilton Head based company that was building a network of travel and tourism and local advertising self-service kiosks called Concierge Plus.
Imagine the separate airport elements of a self-service ticketing kiosk, the closed circuit cable news system, and constantly updating digital signage — all rolled into one unit. Concierge Plus, slightly taller than the average ATM, is designed to do those things, but for the tourism industry.The units are customizable and available with either one or two screens. The upper screen is large format HD compatible, which is for digital signage and advertising, as well as news, sports, and weather feeds. The lower screen is for information, and with its touch screen capabilities, it handles transaction processing.
When a user sees an ad on the upper screen that is attention grabbing, an Italian restaurant, for example, he can access more information about the restaurant on the lower screen — where it's located, directions, a menu, and perhaps even coupons.
The units are owned by the Occtane Group, who negotiates arrangements to put the equipment into facilities such as: hotel lobbies, visitor centers, restaurants, and retail shopping malls — areas with high foot traffic. According to Johnsen, "sometimes there's a quid pro quo, sometimes there's payments, sometimes there's sharing the revenues. There's a variety of different business arrangements."
The Ice Cream Cone, Hilton Head's oldest ice cream shop, hosts a Concierge Plus kiosk, and Dennis Kiely, the owner and operator, is pleased with the results, thus far.Kiely was reluctant at first, because his shop walls are mostly glass windows. "I don't have much wall space, and what I have is valuable to me," he said. The Occtane Group responded by customizing a kiosk with bright colors and characters that reflected Kiely's kid-friendly atmosphere.
Kiely likes the kiosk because it makes him some extra income and gives his customers something to do while waiting in line. He takes pride in the fact that the kiosk is a big seller of tickets to local events and benefits from an advertising push that brings in locals as well as tourists.
Kiely hasn't gotten any feedback from his customers either complaining about or singing the praises of the kiosk, though he says it gets heavy use. Johnsen says the feedback he's seen has been "generally very positive. The users have found good utility. I think it's been well received by people who have used it."
Johnsen admits problems during the rollout, but "we've done our pilot. We built our initial network, verified the business model, gotten the bugs worked out of the software, updated our equipment suite." The Occtane Group is ready to expand their network into new cities, and hopes to have an announcement soon.
Nelson is sold on the concept and cites two reasons:
Each month, the Occtane Group sends Nelson a detailed report of how his ads are performing at each unit, showing him how many people viewed his ads, how long they viewed the ads, and whether they used the attached handset to make an inquiry. This helps him calculate the effectiveness of his advertising in a way that's impossible with his traditional print advertising.But more than that, Nelson says that "the nice part about the whole deal is that we can continue to change our ad content within hours, if not sooner. I think that's the key function of that machine." This quick turn means that Nelson can spotlight more properties than he can with traditional print advertising, by keeping his ads up-to-the-moment fresh.
Nelson says he would recommend the Occtane Group and Concierge Plus to other businessmen, looking for creative ways to advertise. "They are cutting edge people with cutting edge ideas," Nelson said. "If someone comes in town and doesn't have an idea where to buy property or where to buy a piece of candy or where to go to a theatre or do something, (Concierge Plus) would be a great way to find out."
About James Bickers
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