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Gift Card Programs

Experience Gifting

Ogloba Team 5 min read

Streamlines personally engaging, memorable experiences for every type of participant.

Experience Gifting

Consumers increasingly seek memorable, personally engaging experiences. Experience gifting companies curate popular activities into nationwide catalogs sold through physical and online channels, creating a young but rapidly expanding market segment.

What is an Experience Gift?

Experience gifting encompasses diverse offerings. Weekend getaways, adventure activities like skydiving and white-water rafting remain popular. The market is diversifying towards lifestyle experiences including spa days, nature excursions, city tours, and gastronomic packages featuring fine dining and wine tastings.

Leading Brands Need a Leading Platform

Smartbox Group leads the European and worldwide experience gift market, operating through seven brands across 10 countries: Smartbox, Bongo, Buyagift, La Vida Es Bella, Cadeaubox, Dakotabox, and Emozione3. The company sold over 6 million experience gifts in 2015, and achieved sales of 500 million euros. Products include overnight stays, wellness, adventure, and gastronomy packages distributed via retailers and branded websites.

Managing Complexity

Experience voucher distribution involves multiple stakeholders: buyers, beneficiaries, suppliers, and retailers. Smartbox Group selected Ogloba's platform to streamline voucher lifecycle management. The solution encompasses voucher creation, manufacturing, inventory management, online/offline activation, reservation booking, partner redemption, billing, and reporting—all managed through a single integrated platform.

FAQ

What counts as an experience gift?

Anything from weekend getaways and adventure activities like skydiving or white-water rafting to lifestyle experiences — spa days, nature excursions, city tours and gastronomic packages featuring fine dining and wine tastings.

Why does experience gifting need a dedicated platform?

Voucher distribution involves multiple stakeholders — buyers, beneficiaries, suppliers and retailers — so the whole lifecycle, from voucher creation, manufacturing and inventory to activation, booking, redemption, billing and reporting, must be managed on one integrated platform.

How large is the experience gift market?

It is young but rapidly expanding: market leader Smartbox Group sold over 6 million experience gifts in 2015 and achieved sales of 500 million euros through seven brands across 10 countries.

Further reading

Gift Card Programs

Self-Used Cards: How Ogloba’s ALO Drives 2.15× More Spend

ALO (Account Link Offer), Ogloba's proprietary measurement tool, shows self-used cards drive 2.15× more spend than traditional redemption tracking.

Gift Card Programs

Loyalty Pass

A bank customer-retention program offering exclusive rewards through a network of partner retailers, built on the gift-card platform.

Gift Card Programs

Omni-channel Retail for Gift Cards

Let customers send, receive and redeem gift cards in whatever way is most convenient for them, consistently across every channel.