The Qantas Out of Office Travelogue is the automated out of office reply powered by your Instagram photos. In a unique combination of email and Instagram, we turned boring out of office emails into personalised travelogues.

In real-time, a traveller’s Instagram photos tagged with #qantasoutofoffice populate their out of office email, turning it into a unique and dynamic direct media channel, which in turn drives sales through links to booking. The Qantas Out of Office Travelogue, like all innovative platforms, has huge potential to grow beyond its initial stages, and in this case to become a highly profitable channel for the airline.

The Qantas Out of Office Travelogue is a unique way of utilising socially generated photography from Instagram, and creating a platform for these images beyond Instagram itself, by placing them into Out of Office emails. This platform turns travellers into brand ambassadors via their holiday photos.

The Qantas Out of Office Travelogue combines Instagram with the out of office reply.

Users activate their Qantas Out of Office by logging in with their email, syncing their Instagram account, and entering their travel dates and message at http://qantasoutofoffice.com.

Once on holiday, every photograph shared on a traveller’s Instagram tagged with #qantasoutofoffice populates their out of office auto-response email in real time. Recipients can book flights directly from this email and view the entire travelogue.

To ensure news of Qantas’ makeover of the out of office email reached people, we engaged several prominent Australian Instagram influencers and asked them to activate their Qantas Out of Office Travelogue while holidaying on Hayman Island and share their experiences using #qantasoutofoffice.

The platform has been supported since its launch in September 2016 by promotions encouraging Australians to activate their Travelogue before major national holidays.

The Qantas Out of Office Travelogue is an active and ongoing media and sales channel for Qantas and continues to drive travel inspiration and bookings.

Within a month of launching, with zero media spend, the Qantas OOOT achieved:

- Over 10 million people reached organically via Social Media

- Over 100 million online media impressions worldwide

- Over 10,000 Out of Office Travelogues shared to date

The Qantas OOOT was also globally endorsed by Instagram.

Source: Google Analytics, Brand24.