Parkdean Resorts, the UK’s largest holiday park operator, has submitted an official application to Unicode Consortium for the creation of a Caravan Emoji as part of its campaign to promote British holidays and tourism.
Parkdean operates holiday parks across the North of England, from Lancashire and the Lakes to Yorkshire and County Durham as part of its national portfolio of over 60 resorts, while the emoji language could be described as the fastest-growing in the world – over 5bn emojis are sent on Messenger every single day.
There are currently 3,633 emojis currently available, however, despite significant diversification in emojis, there is no caravan of any kind, meaning that the millions of Brits who staycation every year on a holiday park have no way of sharing their holiday in emoji form.
The final design for the emoji submission was chosen by operators from all 66 of Parkdean Resorts’ holiday parks at its Annual Management Conference earlier this year, and has now been submitted to Unicode, along with a detailed submission stating the case for why a caravan emoji needs to be introduced.
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organisation “devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalisation standards,” making sure that symbols work across all computers and other devices. The organisation also has control over creating emojis for smartphones, and selects new emojis based on submissions, which present the case for the inclusion of new emojis with evidence for why each one is essential.
To support the application, a media campaign will run across digital, social and out of home channels with the hashtag #ParkdeanCaravanEmoji, with existing emojis communicating the call to action in a fun and relatable way. Should the campaign succeed, Parkdean will lobby Unicode for the introduction of further staycation-focused emojis, such as a bucket and spade, or a sandcastle.
Steve Richards, CEO of Parkdean Resorts, said: “More than 3.5 million people visit our parks each year, and a huge proportion will message friends about it, so it’s only right that they should have an emoji that shows their love for their holiday.”
