| Story | The idea was to create a travel agency with a twist. Instead of choosing your destination through Tripadvisor, or by looking at images, or by asking your friends on Facebook, you would choose your destination via one simple filter: scent.The travel business most often uses images to motivate people to buy tickets and travel. But in recent times, the image of European destinations have been hijacked by danger and negativity. Terrorist attacks, real and imagined. Our strategy was to bypass images altogether and employ a scent perhaps even more evocative: scent.We researched hundreds of iconic scents from the destinations on the Thalys network and incorporated them into a temporary travel agency. The scents, created by Drom Laboratory in Paris, were soaked into beads that were housed in 720 unique metal tubes. Each tube had a number on it, which corresponded to a destination on one of four maps of Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam and Brussels. People who interact with the installation, find the scents that they liked, and then go to the maps and discover which maps and destinations the scents corresponded with. The scents ranged from cut grass to promote the FC Koln footballs stadium in Cologne, to latex to promote the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam, to fresh baguette to promote the up and coming east district in Paris. Hosts were onsite to help people book promotional tickets. |
