Success story

Cottar’s Safaris

Headquarters:

Masai Mara, Kenya

Website:

cottars.com

With Canto, Cottar’s Safaris gets stunning photos into the hands of travel agents around the world

Located at the edge of Kenya’s famous Masai Mara National Reserve, Cottar’s Safaris offers authentic and individualized safari experiences. With two unique properties and a wide range of wildlife and wilderness activities, Cottar’s caters to guests seeking quality, sustainable safari experiences.

To show customers what they can expect, the Cottar’s team relies heavily on photographs and videos that convey the unique atmosphere on their safaris.

Cottar’s marketing coordinator Karen Darnborough is at the center of that effort. She manages the company’s growing media library and ensures travel agents and other partners have access to the materials they need to promote the Cottar’s experience.

The goal

Help travel agents showcase the Cottar’s Safari experience with stunning images and videos

The result

With Canto, travel agents around the world have instant access to pre-approved images – inspiring and engaging customers without cumbersome delays

The goal: Modernize a growing content library to make images and videos more accessible

Over more than a century, Cottar’s has amassed a substantial library of images, and they add more every year. “It’s a huge stash, and we realized that we really need to organize those images better,” says Karen. She needed an easier way to find photos – and to open the library up to partners in other countries.

“We work with a lot of travel agents,” Karen explains. “They always want our most up-to-date images, or they need different sizes and resolutions.”

Travel agents rely on Cottar’s luxurious and vibrant photos to paint a vivid picture of the safari experience, so keeping them supplied with up-to-date images and videos is essential. The team initially used Dropbox to share this content with external partners, but as the requests became more frequent, that became unsustainable. “We were sending out a lot of different images to a lot of different people,” says Karen. “So keeping them organized and easy to find became much more important.”
Cottar's Safaris Canto library Screenshot

Enter Canto, a searchable content library with self-service portals for external partners

When a marketing rep introduced her to Canto, Karen knew she’d found the perfect solution. “It’s just a lot more streamlined,” she notes. “If someone wants an image of a bush bath, I don’t have to remember what folder I put it in, scroll through everything, find different options and put them in a Dropbox folder. I just type in ‘bush bath’ and they’re all there.”

In addition to helping Karen manage image requests more quickly, Canto also cuts down on the number of requests she receives to begin with. Thanks to a public image portal, travel agents and marketing reps now have constant access to an up-to-date collection of Cottar’s most compelling photos and videos.
Cottar's Safaris public portal

“It’s basically taken me out as a middleman,” says Karen. “If a marketing rep or a travel agent needs an image to show a customer, they can just send it to them straight away without having to go through me or double-check that it’s right.” With travel agents self-serving from the library, customers don’t have to wait. Photos and videos draw them into Cottar’s award-winning safari experience right away.

The portal also includes brand guidelines, so travel agents and marketing reps know how to use the assets they’re accessing. And if they need the Cottar’s logo, font or colors, they’re right there too.

Karen Darnborough

It’s had a massive impact on the business. I’m really pleased that we found Canto, and I think everybody else is too.

Karen DarnboroughMarketing coordinator

The result: A better experience for travel agents, partners and customers

Using Canto has improved Karen’s day-to-day workflows – and her relationships with the partners she relies on to recommend Cottar’s to their customers.

Travel agencies come out ahead too. With direct access to visual content that brings the safari experience to life, they can recommend Cottar’s to their customers confidently – without hurdles or bottlenecks.

“It’s had a massive impact on the business,” says Karen. “I’m really pleased that we found Canto, and I think everybody else is too.”