Open Destinations succeeds in scaling up its mobile solution – originally designed for small groups – to serve Nu Skin’s 5,000-plus users
Event brief
For healthcare company Nu Skin’s biennial South-east Asia convention in 2018, Open Destinations was recruited to build an event app using its mobile solution, Tineri.
The app was to communicate the event programme, provide a chat platform, facilitate attendee sign up and feedback, as well as provide additional information on accommodation, the destination and new product details to upwards of 5,000 participants from across the region.
Challenges
The app had to integrate Nu Skin’s existing online content and corporate branding, and be made available in English, Mandarin, Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa for the event’s diverse participants.
The large-scale convention challenged Tineri’s original design as a platform for small groups. It now had to be reworked to accommodate some 5,000 simultaneous users.
Tim Russell, business development manager – Asia, Open Destinations, shared: “(The most challenging aspect) for me was ensuring that an app originally designed for FITs and small groups could still work well with (thousands of) simultaneous users, and that our support team could quickly address any issues arising from this. We had a few sleepless nights leading up to the big event in July, as Nu Skin was relying on us to make the huge convention a success.”
Solution
After their initial meeting, Open Destinations organised two workshops with Nu Skin’s regional team, following which the first priority was reskinning the app with Nu Skin’s branding. Via iFrames, a custom menu feature was created for the company to present its own content within the app. New languages were added to the platform, and web sign-up forms were created. All other content and capabilities were then uploaded to the app.
Russell explained: “Tineri is a very intuitive solution and so we never need to spend a lot of time training our clients – we usually find an hour or so on Skype is enough to give them an overview.
“In the end, while we had a couple of minor glitches and outages – mainly in our chat module – we were able to fix these promptly and with minimum disruption, and Nu Skin were very happy with the product and the support team behind it.”
Key takeaways
The large-scale event expanded Tineri’s capabilities and opened up possibilities for high volume access. Russell said: “Dealing with large loads was our biggest learning; we now know that Tineri can comfortably handle thousands of simultaneous users.
“It also helped us fine-tune our multi-language delivery process so we can deliver the same content, to people travelling on the same tour or attending the same event, in several languages.”
These were especially crucial learning points for Open Destinations in continuing its “rapid growth in 2018”, said Russell.
He concluded: “I learnt that I have a development and support team that will run through walls to ensure our clients provide their travellers with a fantastic mobile platform.”
Event: SEA Nu Skin Live! 2018
Organiser: Nu Skin Singapore
Venue: Singapore EXPO
Date: July 12-14, 2018
Number of participants: More than 5,000
