The JG Travel Group

The JG Travel Group is one of the UK’s leading tour operators of group travel among older people, offering exciting and diverse value-for-money tours ranging from short breaks, classic seaside resort holidays, heritage tours, London theater breaks, sports, events, and European holidays, including Cruises, through a number of distinct brands.

Offering an extensive portfolio of experiences for a specific clientele, the JG Travel Group knows that the accuracy of the information they provide in tour documents, marketing materials, and across the web is paramount. That’s why they looked for a content management system (CMS) that could not only streamline how their teams work, but also improve the quality of the materials they produce. 

The JG Travel Group chose Kontent.ai; by doing so, they’ve drastically reduced the time it takes to create and update content to focus on what they do best: engaging, informing, and supporting their loyal travelers. Let’s check out their story.

The complexity of managing hundreds of offerings 

There are so many elements that make up a memorable vacation: transportation, hotels, activities, meals, and more. Now imagine just how much content, copy, and imagery is needed to bring these elements to life for the expectant traveler.

The teams at the JG Travel Group saw that both the volume and sophistication of their content were growing and knew their existing approach wouldn’t be sustainable in the long term. They sought a solution that could help transform some of their manual content operations into more streamlined workflows.

This example illustrates the complexity of the task at hand: 

Consider a hotel on the Isle of Wight. It may be used on multiple tours or itineraries, and the description of the hotel may be used in eight separate tour documents. 

Previously, when the hotel description needed an update or the hotel needed to be replaced, the writers would have to locate that hotel description in eight different folders in eight separate Word documents and update it eight separate times.

Done manually, this update could take over 20 minutes. First, there wasn’t an easy way to search the folders to locate exactly where the description was used. Additionally, it was often hard to be certain that every instance of the description was caught and fixed. 

The JG Travel Group was ready for a new way forward. With Kontent.ai as their CMS, they have centralized all their copy and assets in one organized content hub, making it much easier to find, create, and update their content and assets. 

So, what do their workflows look like now?

From 20 minutes to seconds: Updating content in Kontent.ai 

Creating and updating a hotel description, and other copy like it, is efficient in the Kontent.ai platform. Now, writers can use the robust search function to instantly find one single “content item”—the created description for the hotel on the Isle of Wight—and update it. 

From there, every single tour document where the content item is used gets updated in seconds. Having only one instance of the hotel description and eradicating duplicates also makes it simpler to replace the hotel in existing material or compile new material using it. 

Andrew Bate, Studio Manager for the JG Travel Group, shared the improvements he’s already seen: “It’s great to know there’s only one version of the truth, not multiple versions of one hotel description. It’s one of the things we keep coming back to and one of the big reasons why we wanted to adopt a CMS like Kontent.ai. Sure, it’s minutes being saved, but on the whole, that amounts to a lot of time, especially when you consider just how many tours we’re putting into all these documents, ads, and more. It adds up.”

Driving greater efficiency and accuracy with a dynamic content hub

When the JG Travel Group searched for their new CMS, they were very clear on what constituted the right fit: they wanted something that was more than just a place to store content, but rather a dynamic content hub that makes it easy for users to find, update, edit, and reuse what already exists. 

Andrew further explained this requirement: “The reason why we wanted to go with Kontent.ai over any other CMS, and the biggest benefit, is that Kontent.ai is more than just a storage facility. With Kontent.ai, we can keep documents alive, keep them in one space, and customize them as they need to be. Having one space where our team can get what they need and then populate each of their own respective fields is a big win.”

He elaborated on the time-saving benefits, stating, “With all our content in Kontent.ai, it doesn’t need to be rewritten over and over again. Our busy period from a copy perspective is likely not going to be the same as it has been in previous years thanks to this.”

With all their content sourced from one place and customizable for any purpose, teams can assemble high quality, informative content much faster and easier. Plus, the content that is created is even more accurate, crucial for the travelers who trust the JG Travel Group for planning the perfect getaway.

Multiple teams working faster, all in one CMS

Kontent.ai is fast becoming the place to go for more and more teams in the organization. The studio, PR, design, and web teams all work with Kontent.ai across two main projects, one for the JG Travel Group and another for use as they expand across other brands. Everyone is now able to self-serve content and images from Kontent.ai to populate documents, update websites, create social media posts, and more.

Andrew shared the “before and after” of cross-team content operations, stating, “Before Kontent.ai, teams would come to us to ask whether copy or images were available for various projects. Now, they actually have the ability to go in and find these things for themselves without having to wait on us to hand them over.” 

As the JG Travel Group is a relatively new customer, further integrating Kontent.ai with all their digital tools and design templates is the next area of focus—one that will help ensure Kontent.ai is the primary way for the company to manage content. Andrew shared, “We’re getting everything we need out of Kontent.ai. We now need to integrate it with even newer tools in our stack, like Zapier, for more seamless workflows. As we move forward, we know that Kontent.ai is going to be integral to how we operate as a team and as a wider department.”

The future with Kontent.ai: a powerful addition, backed by excellent support

Successful rollout of a solution must be underpinned by great service and support. The JG Travel Group shared that they’ve felt well-supported in their goals and needs from the very beginning. 

“We’re really happy with how things are at the moment. Whenever we’ve needed to use support, it’s been so fast. Plus, the Learn portal is a great resource to be able to draw upon. When we do have a question, we know we can go there as a first port of call,” said Andrew.

While there are still more areas to optimize, workflows to automate, and teams to bring into the fold, the JG Travel Group is already feeling the impact Kontent.ai has on their everyday tasks and operations. Andrew and the team are positive and optimistic for the future. 

He said, “We’ve been expending too much time and energy on certain tasks for far too long. Kontent.ai is a service we’ve all been quite hungry for. It’s something that’s been much needed.”