From the vibrant metropolis of Marrakech to the historic desert film sets of Ouarzazate, Oasis offers a unique festival experience that blends music, culture and wellness through a distinctly Moroccan lens. Founder Marjana Jaidi says, “Our slogan at the beginning was ‘dance somewhere different.’ We try to use the festival to help people grow, whether through a panel, wellness experience or simply exploring new places. I believe events can have a positive impact on the world.”
After helping to put the country on the map for festivalgoers worldwide, Marjana’s inspiration for Into the Wild came from a desire to move beyond the usual festival circuit and explore lesser-travelled parts of Morocco.
“Oasis was originally in Marrakech, and the spin-off event, Oasis Into the Wild, takes us outside of the city, right to the edge of the Sahara desert. The idea is to get people to explore something new while allowing us to flex our creative muscles and see what the festival looks like in different environments.”
Held at Atlas Studios in Ouarzazate, a historic location where Gladiator, Game of Thrones and The Mummy were filmed, Oasis Into the Wild featured:
A highly curated music programme featuring sets from DJ Koze, Jyoty and Honey Dijon
Art and culture experiences with film screenings and panel discussions with some of Africa’s most exciting creators and artists
Wellness sessions, including yoga, meditation, breathwork and intuitive dance
The challenges for Oasis Festival
As Oasis evolved, moving the festival to a more remote location brought new logistical challenges, particularly in managing lodging and transport bookings— too critical to be controlled by a third party.
“You have to get people from Marrakech to Ouarzazate and ensure everyone has lodging. And you need to be able to sell all these things somewhere convenient,” Marjana says.
In previous years, managing these logistics through a network of third party ticketing platforms was cumbersome and unreliable. Marjana and her team also tried WordPress, but found the platform required too much customisation work to meet their needs, which only became more apparent as the festival expanded.
Into the Wild's increased complexity also demanded a website that clearly communicated everything customers needed to know in one place. "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to plan their trips, from understanding the event schedule to finding accommodation," Marjana explains.
The Solutions
Experience commerce that empowers you to sell anything
With Easol’s all-in-one platform, Oasis are now able to sell anything, including hotel rooms, transportation, yoga classes and any other add-ons imaginable without adding new plug-ins or fragmented systems. This level of flexibility and ownership over additional items like accommodation and travel unlocked new revenue streams for the festival and created a more streamlined booking process for Oasis' customers.
“Being able to sell accommodations and buses definitely added to our revenue this year,” Marjana says. “I just really love the versatility of the Easol platform. Having all these possibilities and different ways to sell and display products stimulates the thinking of what else can I sell here?”
For Into The Wild, Marjana was able to drive sales of accommodation up by just under 300% in year two. In total, accommodation accounted for around 20% of the festival’s revenue.
“We sold more hotel rooms in the first two days on Easol than we did in the whole campaign last year,” says Marjana.
Creating a custom booking journey
In its first edition, Oasis Into The Wild used Easol’s standard checkout flow to sell tickets and a few simple add-ons. With more to sell in year two, they decided to use Easol’s multi-stage booking journey feature. This allowed them to create a custom booking process fully tailored to their festival, breaking down accommodations and transport into separate booking steps so customers were less overwhelmed and more likely to purchase.
“The booking journey is really nice for people to be able to buy tickets and then everything they need for their trip, like accommodation and transport,” says Marjana.
After launching transport via their custom booking journey for the first time, 49% of Oasis weekend pass holders bought a bus transfer.
Building their dream website with Easol's Partner Directory
To achieve their creative vision for their site, Oasis worked with design and development studio Bonito from Easol's partner directory to build an online home for Oasis that matched the uniqueness of their festival experience.
“We really liked Easol’s website themes — design-wise they made a lot of sense to us and helped us get our new website up and running fast. What we wanted was just to be able to have that in our style and look, fully embodying the festival's aesthetic. Bonito did exactly that — they took the basis of our chosen website theme and customised it to our Oasis brand look and feel.”
Working with an Easol partner was crucial for Oasis to achieve a seamless integration of their brand aesthetics with the functional features of Easol. The expertise and creativity of Bonito Studio ensured that the festival's visual elements were incorporated into the website in innovative ways, enhancing the overall user experience and making the booking process more engaging and intuitive.
Discover the new way to sell festivals
Book a demo today, and see how Easol can help grow your festival and streamline your operations.
Christian Murphy
Senior Marketing Manager, Festivals
Share Post
