Travel high on the agenda for tour operator turned agency

HONG KONG - If your company is called "Secret Tour Hong Kong", it's only natural for people to assume it to be a tour operator.

And in the case of a Hong Kong agency co-founded by Stephen Chung, they would be half right. Secret Tour Hong Kong used to provide walking tours before it set itself up as a brand experience agency with the same name in 2013.

The walking tours that brought travellers off the beaten track, to places like working-class district To Kwa Wan, were a runaway success, with a five-star rating on TripAdvisor and mentions on CNN Travel before Chung decided to terminate that part of the business to concentrate full-time on the agency.

But travel remains on the agenda for Secret Tour. "For some reason, our key clients [HK Express and Expedia] are directly related to the travel industry," Chung, the agency's creative partner, told Campaign Asia-Pacific. 

"We run the agency with the same philosophy as the walking tours," he continued. "For all the campaigns that we run, we want to create a different experience to tell a story. Only stories will be able to move people."

The agency recently helped locally based airline HK Express to launch the "Travel like a three-year-old" campaign in conjunction with the low-cost carrier's third anniversary. The casting of cute toddlers in the video was meant not only to urge tourists to see through the eyes of a child but also to encourage parents with young children to travel, Chung explained.

For its first regional campaign, covering Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Chung said the airline intended to shift its focus audience to include new parents traveling with young children in tow. 

"The younger generation was the target audience in our previous campaigns for HK Express," he said. "But as our target audience matures, they become more adventurous and want to seek an alternative travel experience. Some of them are starting their families and want to bring their little ones along to see the world." The agency has held the HK Express account for the past three years. 

The 90-second video featured in the campaign was shot on location in Taiwan by videographer Pung-Leung Kwan, who also filmed Wong Kar Wai's 2046. HK Express will launch an online musical chairs game later in October for travellers to win air tickets as part of the campaign's activities.

Still from HK Express campaign