A.K.A Please Take Me Someplace Warm
If you’re in the Greater Philadelphia area, you can probably guess the inspiration for this blog given this week’s events. A series of storms dumped 8+ inches of snow and ice on the area starting Sunday evening. The combination of heavy snow and ice brought trees down everywhere, resulting in extensive power outages all over the area. Many individuals are still without power today and may not see it come back until the weekend or early next week. So, sitting in your house (or more accurately your 43 degree igloo) with three layers of socks, two pairs of sweatpants, three hoodies, hand warmers and gloves since Wednesday morning can make you dream of warm tropical places. You can dream of warmer weather too through these unique tropical tourism marketing campaigns:
New Zealand
Image credit: New Zealand Tourism
The “100% Pure New Zealand” tourism marketing campaign first launched in 1999 and has been used extensively since in the majority of their international marketing efforts. The truly unique thing about this campaign is their target market. Like us, New Zealand understood the importance of understanding the target audience of their campaign. They determined that they could make the most out their marketing budget by targeting those who were already considering coming to New Zealand for vacation. In other words, New Zealand is targeting people who are already in the sales funnel. But, how do they find these individuals? Referring to these individuals as “Active Considerers”, New Zealand looked for people who were aware of New Zealand, who were interested in coming there someday, had New Zealand on their list of places to go, were aged 18 and over and were willing to spend a minimum amount of money on their trip. They then found out who these people were, what was important to them, what appealed to them about New Zealand and what their New Zealand trip would look like. They then conducted full reports on their top ten key international tourism feeder markets: Australia, China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Korea, Canada, Singapore and India. All of their truly impressive and thorough research is available for review on their corporate website.
North Queensland, Australia
If it wasn’t obvious, we love GoPros. So now, we love Australia’s “1 Day in Paradise” tourism marketing campaign to promote Tropical North Queensland. They had 20 filmmakers head to Cairns and film their 1 Day in Paradise adventure with a GoPro. The films were made with the support of local tourism operators who provided access to a wide array of locations and adventures in North Queensland. Pairing storytelling with adventure isn’t the easiest thing but the filmmakers and participant’s stories are brought to life in these compelling films. Watch one about a 14 year old boy who has spent most of his life on a boat. Or maybe one about skydiving into a scuba expedition. The filmmakers are just as unique as their creations ranging from a stuntman to a former taxi driver to a “shark Cowboy” who pioneered lassoing sharks. The finished videos were show in May at a series of pop-up cinema screenings in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and were then seen more extensively through the YouTube and Facebook pages of Tropical North Queensland. See all 20 videos here.
Spanish Canary Islands
Similar to what Australia did, the Spanish Canary Islands wanted their tourism marketing campaign to expose the beauty of their islands through amateur filmmakers who were experiencing the destination first hand. Instead of using GoPros though, they invited 7 popular Vimeo users to spend seven days on each of its seven islands. These people were given the freedom to document their voyage as they pleased, create a film from the trip and then share it on their personal social networks. Check out their Vimeo page for all 7 videos.
#7Stories Teaser from Canary Islands on Vimeo.
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is taking a Yelp-like approach to drive people to their island with user reviews doing all the talking in their latest “Five Star Island” tourism marketing campaign that launched in September 2013. Incorporating TripAdvisor reviews into their series of print, online, billboard and broadcast advertisement, they are letting the island speak for itself. What’s more compelling…Puerto Rico telling you how great Puerto Rico is or real visitors telling you how great Puerto Rico is?
Image Credit: Skift
These tropical tourism marketing campaigns definitely worked on me. I’m definitely a winter person and I still love the cold and the snow, but I think we need a little break from each other, especially after this week. I’d gladly take a complimentary trip to any of these places for “research”.
