A children's e-zine from Club Mahindra

The brand has launched its first travel e-zine for children up to the age of 12.

Club Mahindra Holidays has come up with an e-zine titled Teddy Travelogues. As the name suggests, its theme is travel with the writers being mostly children up to the age of 12 years. It is a quarterly e-zine, produced in-house by the Club Mahindra Holidays.

The first edition was launched on December 18 in Mumbai. The e-zine has 161 pages of content with children sharing their holiday stories, rhymes, diary entries, poems and their perspective on the reasons for travelling.

The magazine can be viewed at http://membership.clubmahindra.com/TeddyTravelogues/index.html#page/1.

The content for the magazine was crowd sourced via a campaign titled Teddy Travelogues Contest and was adjudged by Mathivanan Rajendran, actor, digital strategist and researcher; Mehar Zariwala, education leader; Neeru Nanda, actor; Radhakrishnan Chakyat, professional photographer and Shakti Arora, actor.

The contest invited entries from children across the country in eight categories: My Family Holiday, Holiday Stories, My Favourite Travel Companion, Young Traveller, The Rhyme Journey, Why Travel?, Holidoodle and Delicious Diary. The winners for each segment were divided in two segments, 8-12 years old and 4-7 years old.

Speaking about the e-zine, Deepali Naair, CMO, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India, says, "Our aim is to forge a life-long relationship with our young travellers and continue to create magical moments for them. Children, when compared to adults, look at the holiday experience in a very different way. Also this forum aimed at bringing forth the children's point of view since most of the opinions that we find on the digital world with respect to travel are from adults. It is a brand engagement tool and anyone in the world between the age of 4-12 was free to participate."

Pointing at the insights behind the initiative, Naair explains that holidays in India are a great time for families to bond with each other. "But mothers are especially concerned about the daily itinerary of their kids during this season and want to ensure that it is fruitful for their kids. So we thought of creating a way by which children could showcase and learn more about writing," adds Naair.

The e-zine intends to introduce other categories that the young participants can write on. The magazine does not contain any advertising and is free. "My TG for Club Mahindra Holidays is families with school-going kids. This activity - an engagement tool for kids - will also engage with the parents," adds Naair

As of now, the e-zine is only promoted via Facebook and Twitter. "We wanted it to be free from the advertising clutter and it is more of a marketing tool," adds Naair. The e-zine got several hundred responses, of which 350 entries were shortlisted, of which only 22 came out as winners. This included an international winner also.

Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India, (MHRIL) is a part of the Leisure and Hospitality sector of the Mahindra Group. Started in 1996, the company's flagship brand 'Club Mahindra Holidays', has a customer base of over 175,000 members and 40 resorts in India as well as abroad.