To begin with, you have to identify the factors that make your city or town a profitable market. For example, if you have a lot of attractions like museums, musical halls, cinemas, and other places of entertainment, then you can organize a weekend package to get more people to your town.
These are AI generated Destination marketing campaign ideas
- Offer a free location-based event app for your city
- Flip the script by using Google+ Local to create an online destination guide for people visiting your city.
- Create a "101 Things to Do" list of suggestions from locals and the local tourism board, much like the San Francisco Travel Association did here: www.sfta.org/101things
- Build an app that helps users find deals at local hotels and attractions (like Groupon or Living Social) or build on top of existing services like TripAdvisor or Yelp Deals, similar to Travelzoo's partnership with Foursquare as discussed here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/travelzoo-and-foursquare-launch-deals/#comments
- Publish a contest for your top travel tips
- Offer prizes for best travel blogging, vlogging and photo submissions
- Design an online magazine dedicated to the city where you are based and growing your subscribers.
- Create a free app about local attractions in your area or nearest town
- Develop an email newsletter that sends recommended attractions news and events in the region to subscribers
- Publish a travel guide to your city
- Create a calendar of events happening in your city
- Develop an app that helps users plan their trips (such as travel itineraries, points of interest, etc.)
- Create a blog post or video series highlighting great area restaurants and entertainment
- Publish reviews about your favorite local attractions and things to do
- Publish an online poll asking users to vote on their favorite destinations
- Develop a social media app that allows travellers to share photos, recommend places and keep track of events
- Create an interactive map detailing the top spots for each city (beach, museum, hotel) that's published on your website as well as other popular travel sites such as TripAdvisor
- Survey Facebook followers about restaurants you should feature next in your magazine; publish results in a blog post or video series online
- Design a mobile-friendly quiz similar to Gokiburi Quiz (Japan) where people can test their knowledge against other users who are also playing the game
- Run a contest for the best travel photos from around the world
- Create an infographic of your city's best tourist destinations
- Promote destination points of interest through maps and infographics on your website
- Design a mobile app that helps customers plan their trip to your city or region based on specific interests and events; similar to YELP! but with more emphasis placed on planning activities, not just finding businesses.
- Promote local festivals or events in an online magazine fashion via videos, blogs, etc..
- Create an interactive wayfinding map web app that integrates with social media activity (Facebook check-ins/pings, Twitter hashtags posts, etc.)
- ...to name a few...
Put Your Destination marketing campaign ideas into Practice
If you want to learn how to develop a destination marketing campaign, you need to start by mapping out your goals and objectives. How do you want to benefit from your campaign, and what are the results you’re hoping to achieve? What are your goals in terms of growing your tourism business, as well as your objectives in terms of increasing interest in your destination? Once you define these goals and objectives, you’ll be ready to create your destination marketing campaign.
