Learn how tourism companies have achieved success with digital marketing. We have separated 8 travel marketing cases to inspire your campaign in the digital world
If you still have doubts about the effectiveness of travel marketing to boost your business, learn the experience of companies that have succeeded with digital marketing in tourism.
We have separated 8 travel marketing cases to inspire a change of direction for your company. Destinations, hotels, companies, and travel agencies need to know how to place themselves in the online environment to be seen and achieve more sales.
That’s why it is essential to understand how good tourism marketing practices can help you stand out in the market and win more travelers. Learn how to succeed in the digital world and use tourism marketing to get your business off the ground.
- Guia Viajar Melhor
Currently among the main disseminators of tourism-related news in Brazil, Guia Viajar Melhor is a successful example of good travel marketing practices.
Maintained by Travel Media PR, a strategic intelligence agency for the travel and tourism industry, Guia Viajar Melhor has been in the market for 7 years.
Through well applied content marketing, with the best SEO strategies for travel companies – Search Engine Optimization – techniques, it has over 5 million unique readers per year and reaches over 20 million pageviews.
The proposal of the Guia Viajar Melhor website is to have travelers writing for travelers with the objective of inspiring people to travel. Along with information about destinations, it offers options of tourist services to make the tourist’s life easier.
The daily access to the Guia Viajar Melhor website exceeds 15 thousand and one of its articles, “100 destinations to visit in Brazil”, appears in the first positions of Google search when travelers search for “places in Brazil” or “destinations in Brazil”.
- Casa do Turista
Casa do Turista, a tourism agency in Santa Catarina, invested in Inbound Marketing in September 2014 and saw visits to its website increase 10.8 times in less than 2 years.
When it started the strategy with content marketing, Casa do Turista received about 2.5 thousand visits to its website. About 9 months later, this number jumped to 10,000 visits, and in early 2016, it reached 40,000 visits. In other words, it had a 1492% growth.
Through Inbound Marketing, it achieved a position of authority, attracted more visitors and, as a consequence, got more customer conversions and saw an increase in its revenue.
- Refúgio das Galés
Hospedaria Refúgio das Galés is a great example of how strategic planning in tourism marketing can change the course of a business.
Facing the new coronavirus pandemic and the impossibility of receiving guests, Refúgio das Galés developed the campaign “Plan your vacations and guarantee the best prices”, thinking about the summer of 2021.
With the action, the inn managed to get a conversion rate of 23% when most hotels were not selling.
Another tourism marketing campaign from Refúgio das Galés to create immediate sales was the action “Come to your Refúgio”. The inn used e-mail marketing on its contact base to offer a tour option in the midst of the pandemic.
With it, it gained more than 120 new leads and 12 sales in the month of May 2020, in one of the most critical phases of the isolation imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19.
- Perú
A successful tourism marketing case was Marca Perú, created by PromPeru (Peru’s Export and Tourism Promotion Commission).
The goal was to attract tourists, investors, increase the demand for products and services, create export opportunities, make the country a reference in various aspects, and gain socioeconomic respect in comparison to other nations.
And it worked very well, becoming a branding case for an entire country. Based on it, PromPeru created a series of campaigns to encourage visits to the country.
An official Marca Perú website was created, with informative material about the country’s culture, tour options, places to visit, and what is happening there.
In addition, Marca Perú is present in the main digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube and Twitter. From it, PromPeru has created a series of campaigns to encourage visits to the country.
As a result, Marca Perú has gained worldwide recognition and, since 2011, has been winning numerous awards and honors.
- HT Moto Tourism
A tourism agency specialized in making international group motorcycle trips was able to increase its online reach through content marketing.
The marketing campaign was done by publishing content on a specialized blog about the market niche in which the agency operates. The agency invested in two monthly publications and sharing of content on social networks.
With only two months of tourism marketing work, HT Moto Turismo had more than 300 likes on Facebook and got more than 400 followers. In addition, the publications on the social network generated 1,600 clicks on the link to the agency’s website.
Another positive result was the increase in leads, i.e. people interested in the agency’s services who searched for hiring information.
- Sokobanja
The destination in Serbia conducted a tourism marketing campaign to encourage domestic tourists to enjoy the summer there. For this, it needed to get rid of the idea that it was a place only with spas for longer stays.
Sokobanja wanted to be recognized as the most interesting destination in Serbia. To do this, it bet on marketing campaigns in social networks and through Google Adwords.
In Google, his strategy was to segment the ads and, with this, he got a low cost for each impression and could invest more in advertising. In the end, for every 120,000 views he spent an average of 95 euros.
On the social networks, he managed to increase by up to 65% the number of likes on his pages and up to 45% the number of followers. And these results meant an increase in visitors to the destination.
- South Africa
South African Tourism developed a website to show what there is to see there beyond the famous safaris. The tourism marketing campaign relied on audiovisuals to catch the attention of travelers.
The site has 144 six-second video clips, each representing an activity or attraction in the country. Named “24 hours Wow”, the site allows the visitor to set up a personalized itinerary with the video clips and get a glimpse of what he or she could enjoy in the country in one day.
By allowing the target audience to interact through the videos, Tourism South Africa has managed to win over travelers, who started staying on the site for about 10 minutes soon after its launch.
- Bob the Bridge
Is it possible to turn an urban construction unwanted by the local population into a tourist attraction? With a good marketing campaign, yes!
That is what happened with the suspension bridge connecting Omaha and Iowa in the United States. Initially rejected by the local residents, the bridge has not only become a tourist attraction, but has also gained personality and is a great success on the Internet.
The Visit Omaha agency bet on a marketing campaign using the bad reputation of the bridge to turn it into a comical character and thus aroused the curiosity of both locals and tourists.
Bob the Bridge became a celebrity on social networks through humorous videos. As a consequence, people started to visit the bridge and make their own videos and photos. Visit Omaha took the opportunity to create the hashtag #itHappensOnBob and use the material produced by visitors to increase awareness of the place.