Alaya
TRAVELS
Brief / Rebrand a 19 yr old thriving travel business in North America, right from brand naming to the visual identity design.
Client / Balu-founder of World WideAdventures, the team at parallelhq.com
Role / Brand naming, brand identity design, brand book design
Team / Saptarshi Chatterjee, Megha Ghosh, Ramsha Qamar
The need for a new brand arose when founder Balu Menon decided to combine his 19yr old thriving travel business of two brands- ‘World wide adventures’ (B2C) and ‘Asia Luxe Travels’ (B2B) into one new brand that would speak directly to the end customers as well as travel agents.
The overall branding process we followed
Key Phrases: Understanding the ideal customer profiles
Brand Naming: Deriving the brand name from the brand questionnaire and customer profiling
Brand Note: This is a 'come from' document for the brand, which establishes the brand pillars and core values that the brand stands for.
Logo concepts: Logo concepts are further derived as a way to represent what the brand stands for.
Final logo: After the concept directions is finalised, we create form and type variations tofurther stregthen the concept visually.
Logo applications: This is where we suggest the varied applications to use and reinforce thebrand identity, to create a solid memorable brand image/persona.
"Among the 25 key phrases we jotted down for the customers, these five stood out for us.”
They are seekers
They expect and are used to luxury
They are environmentally conscious
They want to feel loved and nurtured
They are collections/storehouse of inspiring stories.
“The name Alaya came forth while exploring a concept called Intentional Travelling or the ‘Why of Travelling'”
While the customer is travelling from their expressed “Alaya/Storehouse” of intentions, the people of “Alaya Travels ”who are fulfulling on this are also coming from their “Alaya/Storehouse” of intentions like making sure that every customer is taken care of, looked after and provided with an experience that is both luxurious and in line with the intention of the customer.
“We created 3 brand pillars for Alaya, on which the entire brand communication rests and comes from.”
Pillar 1: Coming from an intention
Alaya’s travellers are people who have inspiring intentions in their lives be it contributing to the community, skilling themselves, expanding their networks, travelling in luxury, exploring cultures around the world etc. Alaya Travels partners with them in fulfilling some or all of their intentions.
Pillar 2: Nurturing relationships
Alaya Travels over 19 years have created such relationships with every part of their ecosystem. The people who run Alaya Travels across the value chain are a demonstration of creating these nurturing relationships with the travellers. The travellers themselves have created these kinds of relationships in their lives and are delighted to create these relationships on their travels.
Pillar 3: Collection of inspiring stories
Life for a stakeholder of Alaya is an adventure and these adventures become these inspiring stories. Hearing a story of a stakeholder of Alaya Travel will fill one with inspiration as to what is possible, touch their humanity and have them seek adventures of their own.
“The Alaya logo represents travelling with an intention.”
The circle represents the Globe and the line through it is the life of a traveller, leaving an ephemeral trail in their wake, like a footprint in sand, gone with time but leaving an impact nonetheless. The stroke is like that of a crayon, not strong, not uniform like the unique experience of a traveller from one day to another.
“The logo has a lot of practical use cases in photography during travels with Alaya. It is easily captured in photographs in the many ways.”
