Play Travel by Afterpay

Now we’re going places.

After 20 years of working in his family appliance business, Fisher & Paykal, Andrew Paykal walked away to set up LayAway Travel. The online travel agency allowed customers book holiday packages, including flights and accommodation, and pay for them in weekly instalments over three to 12 months.

The start-up had so much potential it attracted the attention of Afterpay, which pumped $15 million into the venture and renamed it Play Travel.

Play Travel is hoping to replicate the success of its backer Afterpay in enticing Millennial consumers to get through the coronavirus-induced squeeze on the travel sector, through a buy now, pay later model.

Andrew Paykal called me in to create a style guide for product tiles and product detail pages, for mobile optimisation. The guide was to include tone of voice and brand guidelines, headline words and characters & style, location placement, bullet points for home page, and product descriptions (length and keyword inclusions). The guide will be used by Play Travel’s employees whenever creating new copy.

I was also asked to review the Play Travel website to ensure the messaging was consistent with TOV and brand guidelines. This entailed a complete rewrite of the home page, holidays and tours landing pages, FAQs and footers.
Finally I was enlisted to research and write all of the Play Travel product pages (more than 60 different holidays, tours and hotels). This was a mammoth task, with some of the descriptions having to cover 14 day tours.

Despite the once-in-a-generation challenges facing the travel industry in 2021, The Play Travel website has performed beyond expectations, with people already booking holidays and tours for 2022.

“We’re proud of what we’ve achieved with the website,” said Andrew Paykal.