Several Ways to Help You Stand out in Destination Marketing

With a goal to increase the economic impact of tourism, Destination Marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a destination (town, city, region, or county) and focuses on tourism advertising or branding for a specific place.

Nowadays, destination marketing is more competitive than ever before. People get used to arrange their holidays and get inspiration from their computers, mobile devices, and social media. Here below we have summarized some useful ways to help boost  destination marketing.

VR Marketing

By 2020, the VR market could be worth $30 million, according to data from Digi-Capital. Companies like Facebook and Google will inject more money in the technology, and soon maybe headsets will become something ubiquitous as smartphones. The VR industry, still very much in its infancy, can currently divide into many platforms, including HTC’s Vive, Facebook’s Oculus, Samsung’s Gear VR, Sony’s PlayStation VR, and Google’s Daydream.

As tourism market is becoming increasingly competitive, more destination marketers are looking at VR technologies to help them draw more travelers’ attention. VR is already transforming how some destinations work with meeting planners, from saving time and money on sites visits, to creating jaw-dropping experiences at shows. Compared with traditional marketing channels, VR marketing is a promising way to reach young and affluent travelers. Top players like Thomas Cook are using VR devices to give customers a first-hand feel of a destination they’re planning to visit.

VR practices are also seen in China as a destination marketing tool to promote tourist city, such as Sanya, the southernmost city on China’s Hainan Island and a popular domestic tourist destination. It recently launched a WeChat-based VR platform. Simply by connecting a VR headset with a smartphone, users can explore local beautiful scenery in 360 degrees. Besides Sanya, more Chinese destinations are trying to stay in the forefront of marketing innovation to stand out in the highly competitive domestic tourism industry.

Location-Based Strategy in Social Media

In the travel business, visually compelling images about a destination will play a vital role to attract tourists. Therefore, adding locations to your images on the social media platforms is a simple strategy to help you make the most of your presence. A deeper level of understanding about a destination will also be of great help, such as places worth seeing, or best foods to try out etc.

You can add the information to showcase your social media stories about the destination, including local festivals, local livelihood of the people, good places to eat, and variety of public transport.

Right Message at the Right Time

By using the right destination marketing technology tools, you will be able to track visitors’ actual experience before, during and after their visit. With the support of these tools, we can easily get info about when our audience are planning a trip, their interests, and even their itinerary.

To identify potential visitors’ interests and communicate in a more personal and conversational way, you may try programs like Mailchimp, Hubspot, Marketo and open source Mautic, which can provide a higher level of sophistication and more details.