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Category: Travel

Date: August 18, 2023

Innovative Travel Marketing Campaigns From Around The World

Creating a successful travel marketing campaign can be a challenging task for most of the travel marketers. With numerous travel agencies, airlines, and hotels in line, there is fierce competition for brand awareness.

A lot of travel marketing campaigns try hard to capture the curiosity of travelers, but fall flat. So, our expert digital marketers at ColorWhistle wanted to give you a little inspiration for your own travel and tourism marketing in 2023 and beyond.

From social media, video content, display, we searched for some of the most compelling travel marketing campaigns that inspired people to go on their next travel adventure.

Here’s a roundup of some of the most famous travel and tourism marketing campaigns you should check out.

Best Travel Marketing Campaigns From Around The World

We have segregated all the travel marketing campaigns into social media, video content and display ads. This will help you to frame a multi-channel strategy.

14 Best Examples of Travel Video Marketing Campaigns

Here are some of the most innovative travel videos.

1. KLM – Live Hologram Bar

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has built a hologram bar where people can meet to exchange local tips when they are waiting for flights. These holograms are placed in the airports of Amsterdam, Oslo and Rio de Janeiro.

2. Turkish Airlines – The Journey

Turkish Airlines released a short film called ‘The Journey’ where 90% of the film was airplanes and scenery. This short film has done a brilliant job promoting the airline and the destinations.

3. Iceland – Explore the a-ö of Iceland

The A-Ö of Iceland, a marketing campaign uses Icelandic alphabet to increase awareness of Iceland as a good place to visit; a great place to do business; and a place that provides great food and experience.

4. Cheapflights – Drag, Drop and Go

Cheapflights and agency Uncle Grey designed an ad banner that appeared on articles about sports, art, music events and relevant publications. The user had to simply drag the article image into the Cheapflights banner and it will instantly find the best tickets. Rather than focusing on destinations, it promoted experiences that people were already interested in.

5. Van Gogh’s Bedroom – Let Yourself In

To promote the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2016 van Gogh exhibit, Leo Burnett built Van Gogh’s Bedroom and listed it on Airbnb as a place for people to stay for a night. The campaign was a tremendous success.

6. Switzerland – Yodel Ay Hee Hoo

This ad campaign encouraged busy city people to visit the countryside. A live video feed was placed in the train station where a man was sharing information about his village and even printed train tickets in real-time.

7. Tourism Ireland – Fill your Heart

Tourism Ireland asked a married couple to wear a custom-made technology which had head-mounted cameras during their holiday in Ireland. The technology tracked their response to various experiences. They wanted to use this data to show the ‘heart-filling’ effect that Ireland has on visitors. This campaign has combined storytelling with technology.

8. Airbnb – Let’s Keep Travelling Forward

Geo-politically, 2018 was not a good year. When Donald Trump imposed a travel ban during that year, Airbnb immediately released a video highlighting the brand’s belief – “to limit travel is to turn back progress.” This campaign helped to voice the brand’s message to the world while staying relevant.

9. Hong Kong Tourism Board – VR Time Travel

When the Hong Kong tourism board launched a VR time travel experience with Timelooper, it wanted to show people that this will be an engaging experience. This VR experience enabled viewers to see the 1960’s Hong Kong, the battle between two kung-fu fighters on Hollywood Road, aircraft landing at Kai Tan airport and more. This campaign showcased the location in an innovative and engaging way.

10. British Airways – Safety Video

Safety videos are usually boring. But, British Airways turned it into a marketing opportunity. They made a safety video with actors Sir Michael Caine, Olivia Colman and comedian Chabuddy G. This video created a great online buzz for British Airways.

11. Easyjet – Imagine

Easyjet launched a £12m pan-European campaign in 2018 called ‘Imagine.’ It was a TV ad which showed the many wonders of air travel. Along with this, the company also ran ads across print, digital and social. This ad campaign helped viewers associate Easyjet with imagination and experience.

12. SNCF – Europe, It’s Just Next Door

The French National Railway operator wanted to encourage people to take the train to visit nearby countries. It placed blue doors in and around Paris. When a person opens the door, it will give an immersive digital experience of what they could see ‘next door’.

13. Tourism Quebec – Blind Tourist

Quebec is a place known for its outdoor lifestyle. But, Tourism Quebec wanted to show people that traveling can be more than just visual experience. They wanted to offer a rich experience to the senses in such a way that seeing things was only a small part of the picture. This ad has a very rich narrative.

14. Northern Ireland – Doors Of Thrones

Northern Ireland used the hit show Game of Thrones to draw tourists in. They took destroyed remnants of battered trees and carved them into 10 intricate doors. All these doors resembled the 10 episodes of season 6.

15. Helsinki Airport – Life In Hel

Helsinki was voted the best airport in 2016. They leveraged this success by running a campaign featuring Chinese actor Ryan Zhu. He lived in this airport for 30 days and shared the experience across social media and other video channels.

11 Best Examples of Creative Travel and Tourism Print Ads

Here are some of the most innovative print ads.

1. LATAM Airlines used the rainbow flag in a series of print ads

2. Norwegian Airlines utilized the Brangelina split to its advantage

3. Kielo Travel – Dreaming of a Holiday?

4. Detroiter Travel Center – You Made It

5. CVC – The World Is Outside

6. Cruise Ship Centers – Dreaming of a cruise?

7. Flight Center – Forget Work

8. WWF – Exploring the ecosystem also threatens lives

9. TBWA Buenos Aires – Medical assistance for travelers

10. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture – Discover the full story

11. Staedtler – Where it begins

13 Best Examples of Travel Social Media Campaigns

Here are some of the most innovative travel social media campaigns.

1. Eurostar

This Instagram campaign from Eurostar turned heads by trying something new. They wanted to promote train travel from London to Paris. So, they split an illustration of a journey from London to Paris into 200 Instagram tile images. Some tiles were videos and others were hidden offers.

2. Alaska Airlines

At the end of the year, many companies give gifts to customers and employees. Keeping this in mind, Alaska Airlines launched a fun promotional Twitter campaign by partnering with Starbucks. They gave a free Starbucks gift card to their guests.

3. Hawaii Tourism Department

The Hawaii tourism department wanted to give first-time visitors an idea of Hawaii’s beauty and culture. Plus, they also wanted veteran vacationers to visit the island again So, the tourism department collaborated with travel Instagrammers to get users to share their favorite Hawaii memory by using the hashtag #LetHawaiiHappen. The campaign was a huge success because ordinary users shared their own experiences.

4. WOW Airlines

WOW Airlines launched a Snaptraveler program where 4 winners would get to tour across all 28 of the airline’s destinations for free. In exchange, they have to post a Snap story about all the locations they visit. The idea of this summer Snapchat contest was to create a reality television-like experience, target their main demographic and share relevant content in WOW Airlines’ Snapchat account. Here is a short video of the campaign.

5. National Geographic

National Geographic launched a wanderlust contest for aspiring travel and nature photographers. They have to submit their own photographs with the hashtag #Wanderlustcontest. The idea behind this campaign was to improve National Geographic’s reputation as the leading source for beautiful travel photography.

6. Kenya Tourism Board

Kenya Tourism Board partnered with Expedia to promote Kenya and an incredible destination to travelers. They choose a famous travel blogging couple and sent them on a one week trip to Kenya with no fixed itinerary. The people following this couple on Instagram can decide the itinerary by voting through an Instagram Stories poll. Throughout the week, the couple broadcasted their journey to their Instagram followers. The content was also repurposed on a microsite. This campaign was a huge success. Here is a short video of the campaign.

7. Cheapflights Facebook Messenger

Cheapflights Chat launched the world’s first Facebook Messenger bot which allowed people to search for flights and hotels. The bot utilized seven APIs. To promote this chat, videos of fictional conversations were created and shared across Facebook. Here is the chat demo.

8. Hotels.com

Hotels.com dedicated an entire Facebook ad carousel to promote its “Gift $50, Get $10” holiday deal. Each slide focuses on the deal and also shows the different types of trips that people can take. This is a simple and memorable ad.

10. Visit PA

Visit PA wanted to push Pennsylvania as the perfect summer getaway. They used Facebook’s carousel ads format to show one panoramic photo in parts.

Airbnb created a unique Instagram video ad that showed users how the experience of discovering each activity in the Airbnb app will look like.

12. Air Canada

Air Canada ran an ad in the US during the night of the 2016 presidential election. That night, Canada’s Immigration and Citizenship site had so many visitors that it crashed. Air Canada learnt this sudden interest and targeted the ad towards people who are looking to fly outside the country.

13. Explore Georgia

Explore Georgia wanted to position itself as the most pet-friendly state in America. So, they created a social media strategy targeting millennial pet owners. They shared lots of posts with the hashtag #ExploreGeorgiaPup to show that Georgia was the perfect place to visit with a dog. This campaign generated lots of traffic to their website and also helped them to reach 10,000+ followers on their pet-friendly travel Pinterest board.

7 Best Examples of Travel Email Marketing Campaigns

Here are some of the most innovative travel email marketing campaigns.

1. Air Canada

During email sign-up, Air Canada asks new subscribers to tell their home airport and the destinations they are interested to travel. By using this information, they send personalized emails according to the interest of the subscriber.

For example, this email was sent to a subscriber whose home airport is in Montreal.

2. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic proved that it can promote activities that focus on the journey and not just the destination. The company created a memorable customer experience by sending them email offers for virtual reality skydiving. The name of the campaign was Virgin Experience Days.

3. Fairmont Hotels

Loyalty is hard to find in the travel business because travelers always search for the best deal rather than a specific brand. However, if there is a reward program, it will encourage loyalty and repeat business.

Fairmont Hotels wanted to persuade their subscribers to sign up for their loyalty program through an easy sign-up form which included a call-to-action. Here’s the attractive email.

4. Flight Centre

Limited period offers always create a sense of urgency and encourages people to take action. Flight Center used this idea and offered cheap deals to New York City. To convey that this was a limited-time offer, they added a countdown clock at the bottom of the email.

5. Southwest Airlines

Subscribers will feel good if you send emails appreciating them. Southwest Airlines sent an email to its subscribers by adding their customer’s name, travel history and reward points they earned. This ‘thank you’ email also had smiling faces and diverse employees.

Holidays are the time when flight tickets might go up. Mostly, people book tickets at the last time and when the rates are high, they often get disappointed. To avoid this, Hipmunk sent a simple email announcing that prices will go up.

7. Memphis CVB

Memphis CVB wanted to improve awareness of Memphis by showcasing its many attractions and key events they must attend. Here is one of the custom emails they sent to their subscribers.

Drive Conversions and Boost your Business with Expert Travel Website Development.

It’s time to start your next travel marketing campaign.

We hope that the above travel marketing campaigns will inspire you to kickstart your next one. All of these ads have gone beyond the typical boring list of destinations, images and pricing. They show the power of timing, relevance and personalization – all of which are important to create a great campaign.

To create such ad campaigns, all you have to do is get creative, think big and dig deep to find inspiration in the destination you represent. The ideas you come with today will continue to inspire travelers for years to come.

If you need any help to create a travel marketing strategy, our experts at ColorWhistle are eager to assist you. Contact us today. We will help you to stand out from the crowd.

Have you seen a better online travel marketing campaign? Do share them in the comment section below.

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About the Author - Anjana

Anjana is a full-time Copywriter at ColorWhistle managing content-related projects. She writes about website technologies, digital marketing, and industries such as travel. Plus, she has an unhealthy addiction towards online marketing, watching crime shows, and chocolates.

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Top 10 Travel Marketing Campaigns & Innovations

Traveling is more than just a leisure activity; it's a massive global industry that contributes over $9 trillion to the world's economy. The competition among travel companies, airlines, and destinations is fierce, and standing out in the crowded market requires innovation and creativity. In this landscape, marketing campaigns have become vital tools for capturing attention and driving consumer behavior. From social media strategies to television commercials, successful campaigns have not only influenced travel decisions but also shaped travel trends and culture.

According to a recent study by the World Travel & Tourism Council, the right marketing campaign can increase destination visits by up to 20%. This has led to a surge in investment in creative and engaging campaigns that resonate with potential travelers. Some of the most iconic campaigns have transcended traditional marketing, turning into cultural phenomena, and inspiring a new wave of wanderlust. This article highlights the top 10 travel marketing campaigns that have done just that, analyzing the strategies and impact that put them ahead of the pack.

Top 10 Travel Marketing Campaigns

Campaign 10: "get out there" - kayak.

Kayak's "Get Out There" campaign aimed to inspire wanderlust among its audience. Through vibrant visuals, the ads showcased breathtaking destinations, from serene beaches to bustling cityscapes. Each advertisement carried a clear message – the world is vast, and every place holds a new experience waiting to be uncovered. The digital-first campaign was embedded with interactive tools: a user could click on an ad and immediately be led to flight and hotel options for the showcased destination.

Kayak's "Get Out There" campaign was a bold statement in the increasingly digital world of travel planning. By implementing an aggressive multi-channel strategy that reached over 20 million users, Kayak achieved a 12% increase in app downloads within the first quarter of the campaign's launch.

• Social Media Blitz: With targeted ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, they reached the millennial demographic, seeing a 30% growth in social media engagement.
• Influencer Partnerships: Collaboration with travel influencers provided authentic voices that resonated with potential travelers, resulting in a 15% increase in user-generated content tagged with their campaign hashtag.
• Interactive Website Features: A special landing page offered personalized travel suggestions, driving an 18% increase in site visits.

Campaign 9: "Travel Yourself Interesting" - Expedia

Expedia’s campaign took a playful and humorous angle. The core message was simple: Traveling makes you a more interesting person. Ads featured individuals recounting bland, everyday experiences, juxtaposed with their far more intriguing travel tales. One memorable ad showed a man boring his friends with tales of his lawn maintenance, only to later captivate them with stories of his trek in the Amazon Rainforest.

Expedia's "Travel Yourself Interesting" campaign became a sensation for its humorous take on self-improvement, leading to a 10% growth in global bookings during the campaign period.

• Television Commercials: The humorous ads were broadcasted in key markets, reaching an estimated audience of 50 million, with a 20% increase in brand recall.
• Digital Engagement: Interactive online quizzes and social media challenges contributed to a 25% spike in website traffic.
• Partnership with Travel Bloggers: Engaging bloggers added credibility and a personal touch, resulting in a wider reach and deeper connection with the target audience.

Campaign 8: "The Airbnb Concerts" - Airbnb

Airbnb wanted to emphasize that travel isn’t just about where you stay, but what you experience. This campaign married unique Airbnb accommodations with intimate live music performances. Think of a jazz concert in a historic New Orleans mansion or an indie rock performance in a sleek Tokyo loft. The campaign was about moments and memories, providing travelers not just a place to sleep but an experience to cherish.

Airbnb's "The Airbnb Concerts" was a revolutionary campaign that bridged the gap between travel, music, and community. Over 100 unique concerts were held in various Airbnb locations around the world, leading to a 40% increase in bookings among the participating properties.

• Live Concert Experiences: Hosting concerts in unusual Airbnb venues, such as treehouses and lofts, created unforgettable experiences, selling out 95% of the events.
• Social Media Engagement: Videos and photos from the concerts were shared widely, generating over 5 million views on YouTube and trending hashtags on Twitter.
• Influencer Participation: Collaboration with famous musicians and influencers added prestige and drew substantial media attention, reaching an estimated 60 million people through various channels.  

Campaign 7: "Do it for Denmark" - Spies Travels

With Denmark experiencing a declining birth rate, Spies Travels crafted a cheeky and bold campaign suggesting that Danes should travel more to romantic destinations to boost their chances of conceiving. The campaign videos humorously implied that being in a relaxed vacation mode away from the daily grind might lead to increased intimacy among couples, and thus, increase the country's birth rate.

Spies Travels' bold and unconventional "Do it for Denmark" campaign focused on Denmark's low birth rate, cleverly encouraging couples to travel and procreate. This campaign's success was reflected in:

• Media Coverage: Featured in over 300 international media outlets, generating buzz worth millions in free advertising.
• Sales Growth: A 10% increase in holiday bookings within the campaign period, especially in romantic travel packages.
• Viral Video: The campaign video was viewed over 10 million times on YouTube in the first month alone.
• Awards and Recognition: The campaign won several marketing awards, establishing Spies Travels as a creative leader in the industry.

Campaign 6: "Unborder" - Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)

The "Unborder" campaign showcased the power of travel to transcend boundaries, be they physical, cultural, or psychological. Using visually stunning videos and images, SAS celebrated the global citizen's mindset. Scenes showcased diverse landscapes and cultures, intertwined with travelers from various backgrounds meeting, sharing moments, and understanding one another's worlds.  

SAS's "Unborder" campaign celebrated cultural diversity and connectivity, aiming to break down borders in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

• Emotional Resonance: Surveys showed a 25% increase in positive brand perception among those exposed to the campaign.
• Global Reach: Multi-language content ensured an international reach, connecting with audiences in over 30 countries.
• Influence on Travel Patterns: The campaign contributed to a 7% growth in international flight bookings through SAS.
• Social Media Engagement: User-generated content and shared stories reached over 5 million social media users, strengthening community engagement.

Campaign 5: "Spend Your Days Off" - Project: Time Off

Addressing the widespread issue of burnout and the tendency of many individuals, especially in high-pressure jobs, to skip vacations, this campaign was a clarion call to prioritize well-being. Using a mix of stark statistics about unused vacation days and heartwarming content showing families and individuals rejuvenating through travel, the campaign's central message was clear: Time off is essential, not just a luxury.

The "Spend Your Days Off" campaign from Project: Time Off tackled a significant societal issue, encouraging people to value their vacation time and prioritize well-being.

• Impact on Public Opinion: The campaign reached over 100 million people, contributing to a shift in public opinion about the importance of taking time off.
• Partnerships with Major Brands: Collaboration with several travel and lifestyle brands increased the campaign’s visibility, contributing to a 15% increase in associated travel package sales.
• Social Media Activism: Through hashtags and viral challenges, the campaign mobilized social media users, generating over 1 million shares and comments.
• Research Integration: By incorporating research data on work-life balance, the campaign positioned itself as an authoritative voice, leading to numerous mentions in major media outlets.

Campaign 4: "You’re Not You When You're Hungry" - Snickers Australia

A delightful twist on Snickers' global campaign message, the Australian edition juxtaposed the idea of being 'hungry and irritable' with the fatigue of long travels. Strategically placed in airports and travel hubs, ads humorously showcased how hunger could transform a calm traveler into a frantic, disoriented mess, suggesting that a Snickers bar could save the day.

Travelers, already familiar with the global "You're Not You When You're Hungry" slogan, appreciated the localized twist and situational humor. The relatability of being hungry and irritable during travels struck a chord. 

• Location-specific Advertising: By targeting travelers at airports, Snickers saw a 15% increase in sales within these locations during the campaign.
• Social Media Impact: Shareable content reached 2 million online engagements within the first two weeks.
• Brand Alignment: Maintained Snickers' global campaign message, resulting in a 10% rise in brand recognition among the travel audience.

Campaign 3: "Live There" - Airbnb

Instead of being a mere tourist, Airbnb's "Live There" campaign invited travelers to live like locals. It showcased real Airbnb hosts sharing genuine experiences with guests — from cooking together to exploring hidden neighborhood gems. The campaign was a departure from cliched travel ads, focusing on authentic local interactions over touristy hotspots.

Airbnb's "Live There" encouraged travelers to immerse in local cultures, shifting focus from accommodations to experiences.

• User Engagement: The campaign’s app features increased user interaction by 20%, enabling travelers to customize their experiences.
• Global Reach: Spanned 18 different markets, contributing to a 12% increase in international bookings.
• Media Partnerships: Collaborations with travel magazines and influencers created a 25% uplift in media coverage and online discussions about Airbnb's experiential travel offerings.

Campaign 2: "Shot on iPhone 6" - Apple

Apple showcased the powerful camera of its iPhone 6, not through technical jargon, but by spotlighting stunning user-generated travel photos taken on the device. Billboards, print ads, and digital campaigns proudly displayed these images with the caption "Shot on iPhone 6," turning everyday users into celebrated photographers.

Apple's "Shot on iPhone 6" brilliantly transformed travel photography, showcasing breathtaking landscapes captured on the iPhone.

• User-generated Content: Over 10,000 user submissions in the first month, creating a vast community of iPhone photographers.
• Sales Impact: A 9% increase in iPhone 6 sales was attributed directly to the campaign during its running period.
• Awards and Recognition: Several accolades for marketing excellence affirm Apple's position as an innovator in both technology and marketing.
• Influence on Industry: The campaign set a trend in mobile photography, with other brands following suit.

Campaign 1: "It's More Fun in the Philippines" - Department of Tourism Philippines

This vibrant campaign used catchy slogans, colorful visuals, and infectious local music to promote the Philippines as a top travel destination. It showcased everything from the country's pristine beaches and natural wonders to its rich cultural festivities and the warmth of its people.

The slogan "It's More Fun in the Philippines" became an anthem for both locals and travelers. It captured the heart of what the Philippines offers — an unparalleled blend of beauty, culture, and hospitality. The country saw a significant surge in tourist arrivals, rejuvenating local businesses and attractions. The slogan found its way onto merchandise, social media trends, and even local parlance, truly marking the campaign's success in engraining itself into the global traveler's psyche.

• Tourism Growth: A staggering 20% increase in international tourist arrivals in the year following the campaign's launch.
• Economic Impact: An estimated $1 billion boost to the local economy, benefiting various sectors tied to tourism.
• Social Media Virality: The hashtag #ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines trended worldwide, with over 5 million uses on various platforms.
• Cultural Promotion: The campaign promoted local culture and natural beauty, creating a sustainable and responsible tourism model.

Break away from the common marketing tactics: Try Stories

One look at the top travel campaigns we've explored showcases a truth that cannot be ignored: individuality is a cornerstone of successful marketing. From Airbnb emphasizing local experiences to the vibrant charm of Philippine adventures, brands that present a unique, authentic message are the ones that resonate most powerfully with audiences.

As a brand, how do you craft a message that stands out in a saturated market? It's about making it personal. And in the digital age, personalization comes from interactive, engaging, and relatable content.

Try Mobile App Stories from InAppStories!   We take your user engagement and essential mobile metrics under control with our digital toolkit. But why does this matter for travel marketing?

• Immersive Experiences : Showcase your destinations with full-screen visuals and engaging narratives. Let your potential travelers experience a 'sneak peek' of their journey right from their mobile devices.
• Real-Time Engagement : With features like polls, sliders, and quizzes, you can gauge traveler preferences instantly. Want to know if they prefer beach holidays over mountain trekking? Just ask!
• Tailored Recommendations : Using the engagement data, offer personalized travel packages or deals that cater to individual preferences. If a user frequently interacts with beach holiday stories, send them a special offer on a seaside resort package!
• User-Generated Content : Encourage travelers to share their experiences through Stories within your app. There’s nothing more convincing than real travelers sharing authentic experiences.
• Stay Updated : Travel advisories, new destination launches, or special discounts – share time-sensitive information instantly through Stories.

InAppStory doesn’t just allow you to share content; it empowers you to create a dialogue, making your marketing efforts a two-way street. By leveraging this powerful tool, your travel brand can achieve a unique voice, one that listens as much as it speaks. Try them now and see how your mobile or web app will change.

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The Best Marketing Campaigns for Travel and Tourism

An in-depth guide to the best-performing digital campaigns for marketers in the travel and tourism industry to drive engagement, conversion, and long-term relationships with their customers.

By Michael Lee

15 min read

Introduction

Almost every industry was transformed by the pandemic, but none so much as the travel and tourism industry.

Now that the world has opened back up, people are making plans with renewed enthusiasm and new priorities. Staying home left people with a lot of time to daydream about their next travel destination and the lingering items on their bucket lists. Generic travel excursions are out and unique, personalized experiences are in as consumers search for more meaningful vacations. That search usually begins and ends online, and your digital marketing must keep up with this quick-moving audience motivated by pent-up demand.

How do you stand out from the crowd with your digital marketing strategies and tap into what this hungry audience wants? Your competitors are vying for their attention too, and you don’t want to be left behind.

If you're considering an upcoming tourism campaign, upgrading your social media marketing, or just looking for something other than traditional marketing strategies, you're not alone. Companies across the world have come to the realization that now is the time to use every tool possible to attract and retain new customers in their target audience.

Here’s a guide on the best-performing travel marketing campaigns and tourism marketing campaigns and how you can use them to your advantage to take your digital advertising to new heights.

Campaigns That Increase Conversion Rates

Travel and tourism campaigns that increase conversion rates, automated price drop notifications.

Customers want to find the best price without having to constantly monitor your site for updates.

Give deal hunters and budget-conscious travelers an enticing reason to become a subscriber (and eventually a customer) by providing them with the option to watch their desired flights and bookings. Automatically send a price drop notification or availability update as soon as there is a change. Plus, you can use your visitors’ preference data to offer them relevant recommendations as alternatives in case there are no new updates regarding their desired destination.

AI-powered Personalized Recommendations

Sub-par, irrelevant search experiences are incredibly frustrating. Visitors want recommendations of products and services they would actually want to purchase.

Using native AI recommendations, you can make your customers feel like you’re reading their minds by serving them personalized offers on flights, hotels, car rentals, and more based on their past behavior, then matching them with real-time, available inventory. You can choose a model that suits your needs, such as collaborative filtering, which harnesses user and product data to provide recommendations based on customers with similar interests.

Contextual Personalization

Providing the best possible customer experience is dependent on you truly understanding your visitors. What are their purchase drivers? Is it price? Convenience? Exclusivity, perhaps? Without understanding each visitor’s context, you can’t deliver true real-time 1:1 personalization.

AI-driven contextual personalization provides a major edge in A/B testing by determining which offer a customer is most likely to convert with from the very start of the testing. Whether it’s a discount, a free service, or a service upgrade, AI can help you match the right promotion to the right customer at the right time, offering a faster path to valuable insights and results than traditional A/B testing.

Personalized Newsletters

Newsletters typically have lower engagement and conversion rates — mostly because they are automated and on batch-and-blast schedule

Email is a noisy place to attempt to reach potential travelers, so it’s no surprise that newsletters typically have low engagement and conversion rates — mostly because they’re usually generic. Grab your prospect’s attention with personalized emails that feel so relevant to their interests that they have to click. For example, to engage a potential customer who has a clear affinity for Spain, customize the email to lead with a header image of Barcelona followed by trip ideas to Mallorca and Ibiza. This can be done through advanced customer segmentation, combining zero- and first-party data to come up with a list of criteria for your customer to be added to a segment.

Abandoned Bookings Retargeting

Your visitors are thinking about booking with you and even take the step of adding to cart or getting to the reservation page. Then…nothing happens.

An abandoned booking is an excellent opportunity for conversion. Using a variety of channels, you’ll want to get in front of your prospect everywhere they go online to remind them (“hey, you forgot something”) and sweeten the deal with special discount offers. Your retargeting campaigns should include email, SMS, push notifications, and paid ads on social media, where you can use Facebook Conversion API to serve prospects dynamic information about their unfinished bookings. Personalize your ad content to get higher conversion rates and reduce customer acquisition costs.

Prediction-based Goals

How do you really know you’re targeting the right customers and not wasting valuable ad spend?

Using AI prediction models, you can determine which visitors are most likely to book a trip or identify those unlikely to. From there, you should create a different set of goals for each of these two segments. For prospects likely to book, provide an immediate bonus during their session and increase in-session goal completions; for those unlikely to make a purchase during the session, offer an incentive for them to subscribe to your email newsletter and focus on converting them further down the line.

Zero-party Data Collection

Expectations for data privacy continue to rise, which means companies need a better approach to gathering traveller data and preferences.

The best data is data you can trust. Using zero-party data collection , ask your visitors to tell you their preferences directly. Allow them to configure their own experiences by providing you with their preferred destinations, price ranges, number of travellers, and more. Use personalization tools to collect these directly on your website and app, and adjust their offers in real time.

Local Social Proof Recommendations

Travellers tend to trust recommendations from other travellers, but how do you surface these to them in a meaningful way?

Showing the most popular destinations for those in your subscriber’s region can act as social proof and inspiration to choose the next trip. What are other Berliners looking for? Where are your neighbours spending their vacations? What experiences are people closest to you looking for? Use this info to present relevant offers on your website and app or via email.

Campaigns That Increase Long-term Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Campaigns that increase customer lifetime value (cltv), omnichannel welcome flow.

Your ideal prospects have recently subscribed, but they’re not yet ready to make a booking.

Go beyond email in welcoming new subscribers. In addition to launching an automated welcome email series — designed to introduce customers to your brand and ultimately incentivize them to make a purchase — create an omnichannel campaign that helps you stay top of mind. Using SMS/MMS, push notifications, in-app messages, and paid ad content, you can stay visible at multiple points of a prospect’s buying journey. When they’re finally ready to book a trip, they’ll be more likely to choose your brand.

Find Customers on Social Using High-intent Lookalike Audiences

You’ve had success gaining valuable customers, but now you want to win over more high-value travellers. How can you target your ideal audience?

Once you’ve incorporated a solid social media strategy into your omnichannel approach, you can create lookalike audiences to find high-intent prospects with similar purchasing potential. Based on a seed list of your own first-party customer data — which can include past behavior, customer attributes, and predictions — you can target new customer segments with the highest lifetime value on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Best Channel Prediction

The nature of digital media and the modern buyer journey means your customers interact with your brand across multiple channels and touchpoints. How do you know which channel your customer is likely to show up on and convert?

In the travel industry, the decision-making process is longer than it is in general retail, so it’s important to find the channels where your customers are active to stay top of mind in the long term. Using AI predictions, you can determine the channels where a customer is most likely to engage with your content, which makes your distribution more effective and increases conversion rates.

Upsell Campaigns

You’ve already spent valuable marketing dollars to get visitors to choose your brand. Now, you need to maximize booking value to increase ROI.

After all the hard work of acquiring a new customer, it’s time to show them what else you can offer. Using the information from their purchase and the zero- and first-party data you’ve been collecting, hook them again as they prepare for their trip and increase the booking value. Create an upsell/cross-sell campaign featuring engaging content about recommendations of places to visit and activities to do, combined with additional services such as room upgrades, extra luggage, car rentals, and more. Emails are the most effective way to do this, as they can be seamlessly integrated with transactional communication.

Transactional and Marketing Communications Combines

Visitors expect consistent and personalized communications from travel companies to make their experience a good one.

Some of the most effective travel email campaigns combine savvy storytelling and stunning visuals with transactional calls-to-action — and, as a best practice, the more personalized, the better. By using the same email service provider (ESP) for both transactional and marketing communication, you can maintain consistency in messaging, branding, and templates. But most importantly, you can also combine the information a customer is looking for with additional offers to capitalise on high engagement.

Seasonal Promotions

Travellers seek to plan ahead by searching for the best deals during holidays or festive periods, and don’t want to be disappointed with a lack of availability or unaffordable prices.

Many people travel for events or have event-based travel on their bucket list, and it’s advantageous to find those customers and appeal to this desire. Start by identifying audiences who frequent seasonal events — for example, a music festival such as Tomorrowland or a cultural event like Oktoberfest — using data available from browsing behavior, past purchases, and recent views. Then, target them well in advance of the event with available inventory and the most up-to-date pricing ahead of the peak rush. Your customers will feel you’re looking out for them and their interests and you’ll drive repeat bookings — a win-win.

Build Customer Loyalty

Campaigns that build customer loyalty, thank your customer campaigns.

The most loyal visitors want to feel appreciated. If you don’t do enough for them, you won’t be able to push them to be brand ambassadors.

Nurture and thank your most loyal visitors — your “customer champions” — with rewards and special offers. You can find these customer champions by using RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary) segmentation, which will keep your loyal customers list up to date. Then, create a loyalty email series using loyalty tiers segmentation. Use data about average time between bookings to find the perfect time to email them and offer a special bonus for their next journey. Your customer champions will love it and it’ll grow your CLTV.

Win-back Campaigns

When customers haven’t made a booking in a while, it’s easy for them to completely lapse and never interact with your brand again.

Don’t let a customer forget about you, which can be common in the crowded travel landscape. Using RFM segmentation, you can target customers who have made a purchase in the past, but haven’t purchased recently. Launch a personalized win-back campaign using data from their past and current preferences and purchases to provide them with recommendations of similar offers, as well as new offers to discover.

Gamify Loyalty Programs and Rewards

Customers are increasingly choosing brands that provide meaningful experiences with their personal data and reward loyalty in an interesting way.

Take your loyalty program to the next level by incorporating games that incentive customers to purchase more frequently and trade their loyalty points for rewards. Spin-to-win games, friend-referral challenges, and more tap into multiple aspects of psychology including reward-seeking behavior and competitiveness. Using personalized content, create special offers for achieving new loyalty levels and reward long-term champions with discounts based on their point totals.

Feedback Campaigns

Not knowing what your customers liked or didn’t like about their visit will only lead to making the same mistakes in the future.

Close the loop on each booking by following up with a feedback email campaign that asks your customers to fill out a survey about their experience. Use the feedback data to score your customers based on their experience and create customer segments based on that feedback score. With real-time connection to your CRM or help desk systems, you can filter out customers who have a booking issue (cancellation, delay, change, etc.) and send them automatically to the help desk. The same can be done with those who provide negative feedback to immediately take action.

Reengagement Campaigns

The people in your database who have been inactive for a long time provide a great opportunity to regain revenue and create new loyal customers, but it’s not always easy to know how to start reengaging them.

When customers go dark — as in not clicking on any of your emails or other content — it’s time for a reengagement campaign. Track down these customers where they are online using omnichannel orchestration , targeting them through email, SMS, push notifications, in-app, or paid ad campaigns on Google or social media. Ask them clearly and simply why they stopped engaging. It helps to incentivize them by offering a gift or prize for providing feedback. This best practice strengthens your relationship with customers and also improves your lists. Reengagement campaigns should be used as a last attempt before unsubscribing an inactive user yourself — a healthy database brings a better customer experience, as you only send content to those who are interested in it.

Don't Settle For Less Than The Best With Travel Marketing Campaigns

With travellers both eager to get out and more particular than ever with who they purchase from, you’ll need to take advantage of a marketing campaign like the ones mentioned above to inspire travelers to establish loyalty with your brand.

If you’re ready to put some (or all) of these into practice, then look no further than Bloomreach Engagement . Our powerful platform unifies your customer data into a single customer view, making it easy to launch omnichannel campaigns across 13 channels. Plus, our AI makes it possible to personalize content and recommendations for your customers in real time, so you can drive faster ROI in a competitive industry.

Learn more about how Bloomreach Engagement can facilitate the best travel marketing campaigns today.

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2022 Top Tourism Campaigns Bring Typing Ponies & Talking Kangaroos

This year saw us returning to travel in big ways, and the campaign ideas rose to match! We found some of the most creative, quirky, content-driven ideas out there and summed them up for this year. From Ryanair on TikTok to horses that will answer your emails. In no particular order, here are our picks for 2022 Top Tourism Campaigns and why we just can’t get enough of them.

Denver, CO: Basecamp Denver

In 2022, Denver, CO, launched a new YouTube series and campaign landing page for their brand Basecamp Denver . Told in 3-5-minute episodes, this tourism-campaign-meets-reality-TV-show encourages visitors to use Denver as their “basecamp for all Rocky Mountain adventures.” Each video features a Denver native teaching a visiting family or group how to do things like fly fish, rock climb, mountain bike, snowmobile, curl, snowshoe and more. Best yet, the lessons take place in some of the area’s most scenic locations.

Why We Love It:

The series makes Denver’s most active assets approachable to newcomers while also showcasing the area in a fun and interesting way. It takes a grounded approach to destination marketing and features the people of Denver prominently. Watch for some hidden gems as well – the groups end each video with a lowkey activity, showcasing area breweries, distilleries, art installations and spas.

Ryanair: TikTok Strategy

Airlines took a hit this year, but every year are the source of thousands of travel-related complaints. Canceled, delayed or changed flights, cramped seating, baggage fees and lost luggage are all part of the day-to-day of operating in the airline industry. Ryanair decided to embrace that through their TikTok channel in 2022 . Poking fun at the most common of challenges with witty content and hopping on the latest trends, Ryanair stood above – or at least apart from – competitors.

Not only is their strategy perfect for the platform, but it connects with consumers on a very real level. Ryanair doesn’t shy away from the reality of air travel and doesn’t pretend to solve the world’s problems. It also connects with their brand promise of providing a cost-effective way to fly without the bells and whistles.

@ryanair You ready for the Christmas roast? 🔥 #ryanair #roast #xmas #christmasroast ♬ original sound – 🍒

@ryanair Sorry babes, you have to earn your flight 🤧 #ryanair5k #ryanair #fyp ♬ Reduce Your Expectations to 0 – 💙🪐Lucy🪐💙

Visit Iceland: Out-Horse Your Email

According to data from Qualtrics on vacation and work trends , 49% of employed Americans say they work at least one hour a day while on vacation. Another 24% work at least three hours a day. According to Visit Iceland, they have the solution for all your work-from-vacation problems: Personal Assistant Ponies.

In a campaign website, the destination introduces three Icelandic Ponies , each with their own personality. The assistant ponies are trained to “answer your emails” while you explore Iceland. (They are quick to respond, but no promises that their responses will be intelligible.) The site gives you all the great destination information as well: where to go, what to see/do, and where to stay while the horses handle your workload.

The site addresses a major concern in the tourism industry, calling out the slog of working from vacation, losing time to emails and unused vacation time. It also brings awareness to its rare breeds and scenic destination. It also uses a lead-capture form encouraging sign ups to “out-horse your email,” building its customer list for marketing efforts.

Tourism Australia: Come and Say G’Day

Playing off of their iconic welcome phrase of “G’Day,” Tourism Australia’s newest campaign introduces star talent and a set of new characters who playfully introduce visitors to the destination. In a 9-minute movie that gives off lots of “Toy Story” vibes, meet Ruby the Kangaroo plush and her new pal Louie the Unicorn as they traverse Australia – seeing the sights and getting into some seriously funny situations.

Australia has always gone big with their marketing campaigns – see the Super Bowl Ad they produced in 2018 with stars Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride – but Ruby feels more like a mascot for the ages. The campaign launched in 2022 and will continue running over the next two years. It will be interesting to see how she takes off across their website, social channels and additional video content.

Australia tells an engaging story going beyond their destination content. Yet they seamlessly work in major assets and attractions that visitors will want to explore when they come. They also give their partners the tools needed to interact with the campaign and give it legs beyond the single brand. Check out Australia’s Industry Toolkit .

Colombia: Book of Warmth

Whoever said print is dead hasn’t seen Colombia’s newest campaign. Marching in the opposite direction from the flashy video campaigns of its competitors, Colombia polled the heart of the destination, its people. They used the stories gathered and released a 212-page “Book of Warmth” in downloadable ebook format. The book is a visual work of art and goes all-in on storytelling – featuring tales of its residents from home cooking to beekeeping, bike tours to music-making, and more.

It can be challenging for a destination to stand out in a crowded space of amazing food, craft beverages, sightseeing, arts & culture and more. What makes a place truly unique are the people, their struggles, successes and stories. Colombia leans into its locals and poured an incredible amount of time into documenting their tales. Not only can these be repurposed into online, social and PR content, but it also shows how much the destination team values the residents of its country and wants to share their stories with the world. 

Can’t get enough of the creativity? Check out our Top Tourism Campaign round ups from past years and the elements of a Top Campaign:

Top Tourism Campaigns of 2021

Top Travel Campaigns of 2020: Tourism Marketers Get Creative in the Face of Adversity

The 5 Top Tourism Campaigns of 2019

2018’s Best Tourism Campaigns: Our Five Favorites

Elements of Top Tourism Campaigns

Sarah Martin

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Unveiling Successful Global Tourism Campaigns: Key Learnings for Travel Brands

A strong, solid marketing strategy is important for any brand – and it’s no different for the travel industry, one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. These days, the power and magnitude of the internet are undeniable, meaning the world is becoming way more visible than ever before. While this means that there are plenty more opportunities for travel brands, it also demonstrates the increasing competition in the industry. In a nutshell, when consumers are searching for constant inspo in regards to their travel habits (whether it’s where they should go on their next holiday or what the best available deals are right now) why should they turn to your brand?

Right now, in terms of travel brands, killer marketing campaigns are a non-negotiable if you want to stand out from the crowd and encourage people to head to your checkout. 

Bottom line: Are you aware of the ever-changing marketing trends and do you cater your campaigns towards them? And if not, why not?

In this blog post, we’ll aim to educate readers – particularly marketing managers in the travel industry – with insights from successful global tourism campaigns. All in a bid to help you elevate your brand and ensure that you’ve got the right resources and ideas in place to effectively execute relevant, creative, and on-brand offerings to current and prospective customers. 

The Importance of Effective Marketing in the Travel Industry

After a horridous (a mix between horrific and horrendous – there’s no better portmanteau for it) few years for the industry, it seems to finally be on its feet again. No thanks to Covid, which completely wreaked havoc on tourism industries all over the world, and plunged businesses into chaos. For example, in 2020, the UK received 11.1 billion inbound visitors and spent a total of £6.2 billion. This was a decline of 73% for the former and 78% for the latter compared to 2019, which saw the UK economy experience a £22.2 billion loss. And that was just in the travel industry.

In Spain in 2020, the arrival of tourists visiting the country dropped by a dramatic 77% compared to the previous year. It was also noted that certain parts of the Mediterranean country were hit harder than others, with Andalusia, the Community of Madrid, and Catalonia experiencing the most significant drops in tourism. The Balearic Islands archipelago (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera) were one of the most affected regions –  their loss of inbound tourism compared to 2019 was over 87%.

Because of this, tourism brands needed to take a hard look at their marketing efforts to find ways to overcome such a (as much as we hate to say Boris’ fave word), “unprecedented event” . This ranged from bringing health and wellness to the forefront of their strategies to convincing customers their brand was a safe bet through things like flexible booking policies.

But now that’s all over, let’s dive deeper into the world of travel marketing and look at four of the most successful campaigns from travel brands. Hopefully, you’ll be able to incorporate some of the most creative and innovative tactics into your own travel marketing strategies…

Case Studies of Successful Tourism Campaigns

Not to blow our own trumpet (but we’re about to anyway), why not kick things off with one of our own effective marketing campaigns in the travel industry?

We’ve actually worked with iVisa for a couple of campaigns – all of which were very successful – but for the sake of timings, let’s walk you through one of our more recent campaigns with the global online visa service company.

Titled the ‘World’s Happiest Cities,’ firstly the name of the campaign gets a green tick. Especially after the last couple of years with Covid, of course, tourists were going to want to visit parts of the world renowned for their high spirits. 

As per our case study , the research ranked each destination using five different indicators of happiness (the cost of living, the amount of sunshine, weekly working hours, average life expectancy and the friendliest locals) which proved Lisbon, Portugal was the overall happiest in the world. All content was then translated and outreached to both English and Spanish-speaking media outlets. 

The campaign went viral and was organically picked up and translated into eight additional languages with links in top UK national news sites. Including Metro and the Daily Express, it was also featured on the US site, TimeOut, where it (at the time of writing) had an estimated 18.4 million visits to its site each month.

Visit Omaha

Omg, we’re obsessed with Bob the Bridge. For those unfamiliar, it’s the bridge that connects two states: Iowa and Omaha, in Nebraska. Apparently, when it was first built, locals weren’t best pleased with the architecture (for some context, it’s a 3,000-foot curved suspension bridge). Many thought it unnecessary and pointless and declared that it “leads to nowhere.”

However, some clever travel marketing strategies changed public opinion entirely, and now it’s a major attraction for both residents and visitors worldwide. Why? Because Visit Omaha decided to literally give the bridge its own voice. And name. And personality. Enter: Bob the Bridge.

They gave him his own social media accounts and started a video blog whereby he could share his dry, humorous thoughts with the world. Plus, encourage people to take pictures at the unique viewing spot – now known universally as ‘Bobbing,’ with the viral hashtag #ItHappensOnBob.  

Ultimately, this tongue-in-cheek and playful marketing hack helped Visit Iowa succeed in its mission to convince travellers to visit the hotspot. In doing so, it also gave free advertising to Omaha – not bad, ey?

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/eyBuFRRjW_Y?si=_kdyHMDn2twY6T6S” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Tourism Ireland

In 2018, Tourism Ireland launched one of the most innovative, creative, and downright inventive campaigns ever. Named Fill Your Heart With Ireland, the marketing strategy saw a married couple from Sweden (who had never been to Ireland) wearing custom-made tech to track their physiological responses while travelling around the country. 

Both had heart monitors linked to their headcams, and the data from these was used to determine which bits of footage would feature in the final advertising. Basically, they took the best first-hand experiences from a real-life, travelling couple and portrayed their feelings and emotions into an advertisement in a bid to encourage others to visit the country. There’s something so wholesome about this tourism marketing campaign it makes us emosh, too.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/kVeUPnF4ZWM?si=RgI5eWGIFjwlz8hz” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” allowfullscreen></iframe>

2017 was another year for great ideas in the tourism marketing world. Especially for Finnish airport operator, Finavia, who launched their multi-award-winning #LifeInHel campaign. The idea was to show prospective customers/travellers the best of the airport in order to boost its profile (and revenue) for people travelling between Europe and Asia.

The airline enlisted the help of Chinese influencer, Ryan Zhu to achieve the ultimate campaign. The premise was that he would live at Helsinki Airport for 30 days and whilst there, would upload content to different channels on a daily basis showing what he got up to during his stay. The end of the ad read: “Is Helsinki Airport the best airport in the world?”

Thanks to its creativity and (quite frankly) OTT approach, the campaign completely popped off, exceeding total media coverage of 2.2 billion the year it ran.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/IcjCf6pqllo?si=AYpxjxuPb-q6UdQU” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” allowfullscreen></iframe>

So, what can travel brands take away from these killer campaigns?

As proven, the above efforts are clear case studies of successful global tourism campaigns. A diverse mix of social media and data-backed studies, each campaign had its own unique angle that allowed them to soar to greatness. Meaning travel brands that can incorporate these strategies into their own campaigns are onto a winner…

For example, iVisa’s campaign was based on interesting data in a bid to influence the travel habits of people (and basically get them travelling again). It relied on factual research to give it breadth – once travellers had decided which of the happiest cities they were going to visit, it was easy for iVisa to encourage them to use their services. Plus, data-driven campaigns are essential for gaining a razor-sharp understanding of a brand’s target audience.

Finavia’s offering was also genius because it combined social media and influencer marketing, something that’s on-trend right now both for localised and global campaigns. Getting an influencer on board enables brands to reach potential customers at every stage of the decision-making process, and utilising social media is advantageous for solidifying brand recognition, audience engagement, and increased web traffic. Whatever the scale of your business, both types of marketing can be incredibly beneficial in terms of elevating a campaign. 

And as for Tourism Ireland – they just thought outside the box and came up with a unique angle that hooked audiences immediately. 

Tourism marketing? Completed it babes

OK, we’ve established that the stronger your travel marketing strategies are, the more likely your brand will be able to stand out amongst the sea of other travel brands in the market. 

Whether you’re a local business looking for some inspo or you’re a global brand and have your sights set on further success, incorporating these strategies into your own campaigns can take them from an ‘Okay’ to an ‘Oh hey.’

If you have any thoughts (or questions) on what you’ve just read, we’d love to hear your feedback. Or, if you’ve tried some of these strategies in previous campaigns and they’ve worked a treat, it’d be great to hear from you, too. 

Oh, and if you’re looking for a deeper discussion on tailoring these learnings to your brand, don’t hesitate to contact us – we’re a super-friendly team of marketing experts who also share a lust for travel!

Content Executive

The go-to guide to branding for travel and tourism

By Kevin Tjoe — 14 Mar 2022

destination marketing   tourism branding

Updated March 2024 – Picture this: Your tourism guests from one year ago are standing at a barbeque, and in conversation, they happen to rave about the great experience they had with your company. When neighbor Bob asks who he should book with, will your business be remembered and recommended? This is the power of branding travel and tourism.

Whether you’re building your brand from scratch or wanting to refresh your existing business brand identity, read on for a clear guide to branding travel and tourism businesses.

The importance of branding in tourism

What is tourism branding, exactly? It can encompass the name, visual identity, tone of voice, experiences, brand values, and industry associations of your tourism organization. Branding can also have powerful benefits for your business. Some of these can include:

• Building recognition and familiarity for your business
• Helping your target audience to establish trust in your business
• Encouraging guests to find and rebook with you again
• Empowering you to scale and expand your business to other locations and markets.

So where do you begin as you’re developing a robust, memorable brand in tourism?

Essential elements for your tourism branding strategy

Whether your guests are booking through a reseller, directly on your website, or with a local agent, your brand needs to be unique and consistent. Here’s a tourism destination marketing strategy that can make that happen.

Finding the right brand name

It turns out, there’s a lot in a name. A catchy and unique brand name will increase your chances of recommendations and repeat bookings. This handy article dives into how to create the right name for your tourism brand. In short, aim to:

• Research competitor names
• Keep the brand name short and sharp
• Consider how easy the name will be to search for and find online
• Include the location within the name, and
• Trademark and protect your brand name.

Importantly, your brand name should also reflect the unique qualities and experiences your tour or activity business offers. Amaz’n Kayak Tours sounds fun and friendly, for example, while a name like Pinnacle Cruise Experiences exudes luxury and exclusivity.

Creating a strong visual identity through brand design

Every successful brand needs a strong visual identity and brand image, and it can be worth hiring professionals to help you with this process. Ideally, you’ll set up a ‘style guide’ to ensure consistent visual branding. This might typically include information on your:

• Logo Your logo, or graphic symbol, can be used across web, print, social media, reseller sites, and more. As with your brand name, your logo should reflect your tourism experiences and unique aspects of your business.
• Colors A consistent color palette used across your website, booking form , and other marketing collateral will help build recognition and familiarity. You might like to consider the colors of the landscapes in which you operate as a starting point when developing your brand color scheme.
• Imagery The photos you use to promote your tours or activities can matter a great deal when someone is weighing up whether to book. Focus on crisp, high-quality images taken on a sunny day; include the human side of your business, and be sure to capture happy guests with their permission. You might also plan to use a certain filter or color tint to ensure consistency across all images.
• Fonts and typography Fonts are more than just letters on a page; they are a reflection of your brand’s character and essence. When selecting fonts for your travel business, consider factors such as readability, versatility, and alignment with your brand’s personality. Whether you opt for classic serifs, modern sans-serifs, or playful scripts, ensure consistency across all communication channels to maintain brand cohesion.

Creating your brand story

Think about why your tour company exists: what made you start it and what you started with. Consider what makes your tours or activities special and what makes your team stand out. Think about what made you want to run tours, events, or activities in your local area, and what makes them exciting for you.

Answering these questions can help you form a compelling brand story, which can then be shared on your website, social media, and public platforms. A passionate brand story helps your target audience to form an emotional connection with your brand and makes for a far more meaningful tourism experience for guests.

Developing your brand voice

To develop your brand’s tone of voice, think about who your brand would be as a person. How would they talk? What are the quirks that make them likable? Your brand voice can be used across SEO web content , video content , booking steps, and any other marketing collateral where guests might interact with your brand.

For example, a surf lesson company might get on board with touches of laid-back surfy lingo in their automated emails. Or a company offering high-end, multi-day cruises might use more descriptive words to describe silky white sands and their indulgently soft pillows.

Syncing with your destination marketing

Tourism marketing can be unique in that you’re promoting your location as much as you’re marketing your products or services. Destination marketing , where you work with other operators to promote your location at a certain time, can be incredibly important. In fact, research from one accommodation association found that every $1 million invested into destination marketing could return around $16 million in ROI for the local economy. Destination branding is similar to destination marketing in tourism but focuses more on shaping the general perception of the location. Just consider the very different tourism experiences you’ve come to expect from London, Las Vegas, and Tokyo.

It’s important that your tourism marketing strategy aligns with destination marketing efforts for your area so that guests can build consistent and accurate expectations when booking. It can be really useful to network with other tourism operators and work with local agents , such as visitor information centers in your area. Invest in price monitoring software like Dealavo to better understand your price positioning and market dynamics.

Leveraging social media platforms for brand building

In today’s digital age, social media platforms play a crucial role in brand building for travel and tourism businesses. From Instagram to Facebook, Twitter to TikTok, these platforms offer unparalleled opportunities to showcase your travel experiences, engage with your audience, and amplify your brand message and marketing campaigns. In this modern tourism landscape, it’s important for tour operators to know how to harness the power of social media to create meaningful connections with their stakeholders and attract new customers.

Harnessing the power of testimonials and influencers

Testimonials and influencers can be powerful assets in building credibility and trust for your travel brand. Positive reviews from satisfied customers and endorsements from influential personalities can significantly impact the perception of your business and influence potential customers to book with your travel and tourism business. By exploring strategies for soliciting and leveraging testimonials, as well as collaborating with influencers you can amplify your strong brand reach and engagement.

Make a stellar start with your branding in tourism marketing

A strong, consistent brand can be one of your most valuable assets when running a tour and activity business. If you’re currently building your brand in the tourism industry, then Rezdy makes it simple to create a professional website, gain bookings via your network, and grow your reservations.

A reservation software like Rezdy equips your business with advanced tools such as real-time availability viewer, automatic guest communication, integration to various payment gateways, and further boosts automation within your business’ operations. Furthermore, Rezdy offers distribution solutions that connect you with the industry’s biggest resellers such as OTAs, local travel agencies, or even other tour and activity operators – so you can get your business out there. Rezdy Channel Manager is a distribution platform specifically catered for the tourism industry; connecting operators with access to over 25,000 active resellers worldwide.

Ready to build your brand with Rezdy? Book a free demo , or register for a  FREE 21-day trial today.

If you enjoyed this article then make sure to follow the  Rezdy  blog . There are a lot of marketing tools and tour operator tips designed with businesses like yours in mind.

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8 of the Best Destination Marketing Campaigns (And What You Can Learn From Them)

Destination marketing is an incredibly popular approach when it comes to travel and tourism marketing. From national tourist boards to independent agencies that offer trips to specific towns or cities, it’s a very effective method of attracting travellers to a location in an engaging and creative manner without employing traditional, explicitly persuasive marketing messages.

There is a very broad range of ways that destination marketing can be used to grow awareness of a location and the travel experience that a company offers there. Whether you’re wondering what destination marketing looks like when put into practice, or are seeking inspiration for your brand’s next destination marketing campaign, here are nine of the best examples, along with key takeaways of what makes each one of them so effective.

What is Destination Marketing?

Destination marketing is an approach to marketing that is used in the travel industry as a way of promoting a location such as a town, region or country. Instead of advertising the service or product that they offer, travel businesses that use destination marketing focus their efforts on ‘selling’ the location that their offering targets.

Promoting a destination instead of a product or service means that customer awareness of a location grows and allows companies to attract attention in a way that avoids explicit marketing messaging that many consumers dislike. The aim is that the target audience will start to think about visiting a destination after seeing content that paints it in a positive light, and that their first thought when it comes to actually booking a trip will be the brand behind this content.

Destination marketing aims to build awareness and interest in an area before the customer has visited. The most effective approaches tend to engage the customer through an emotional hook that sparks a real desire to see a destination, as this means that they’re much more likely to pay for a holiday there.

Whilst a very popular marketing approach with travel businesses that offer experiences in a specific location, destination marketing is also often used by local or national tourist boards as a way of increasing tourism in the area, establishing a positive reputation and bringing more visitors and thus more money.

8 of the Best Destination Marketing Campaigns

Fill your heart with ireland.

One of the most successful marketing campaigns for a destination that is still referenced today is ‘ Fill Your Heart with Ireland ’ which was produced by the country’s national tourism board.

The final product of this destination marketing campaign was a short video advertisement, showing a Swedish couple’s first trip to the area. Both visitors were hooked up to heart rate monitors that tracked their physiological changes throughout a range of activities, such as visiting cultural and historic sites, going surfing and hiking along the coast.

What made this advertisement so special was that the couple was also wearing a camera mounted on a helmet during the trip, capturing footage from their perspective throughout. The clips that made it into the final campaign were all taken from moments where their heart rate changed, creating a video full of moments that ‘filled’ the couple’s hearts with Ireland.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qH7dEIECD4

Why it works:  

The first stand-out feature of this campaign is the fact that the technology used in it is unique, which immediately makes it unique. It also uses the traditional destination marketing format of a video showcasing different appealing clips of a location, with the difference that these clips have been chosen by the data collected from the travellers featured in the campaign, not a campaign director. 

Finally, the emphasis on ‘heart’ and emotive responses gives the campaign a significant emotional pull, engaging the viewer right from the beginning and showing plenty of scenarios they can imagine themselves in.

Inspired by Iceland

The ‘ Inspired by Iceland ’ campaign came as a response to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano under a glacier in the country in 2010, which had a massive impact on travel all over the world thanks to the ash clouds that led to hundreds of flights being cancelled.

In an effort to dispel a negative image of the location, numerous national tourism-related companies teamed up with the Icelandic government and two key transport providers to the country to create a campaign painting the island in a more favourable light.

The underlying message of the entire campaign was that “Iceland has never been more awake”, making it the perfect time to visit the country on an exciting holiday. A variety of techniques and approaches were used to change the narrative around the country from negative to positive, including celebrity messages of endorsement and promotional videos.

The ‘Inspired by Iceland’ initiative has now been running for over a decade as a way to continue to promote Iceland as a thrilling travel destination, involving a range of campaigns that include the ‘ Let It Out! ’ portal of their website that allowed those frustrated by the pandemic to vent their frustration into their device and transmit it into Iceland’s deserted landscape.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iWeMPEEuk0&t=1s

Why it works:

This is an outstanding example of one of the most successful marketing campaigns that turned a country’s reputation on its head and prevented a huge loss of income from tourism. The initial ‘Inspired by Iceland’ message took a humorous approach to the events of the eruption by stating that the country was ‘awake’, and this wit has carried on throughout many of the other campaigns promoted by the initiative.

GREAT Britain

The ‘ GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland ’ campaign was initially set up in 2011 in preparation for the London 2012 Olympic Games, highlighting the destination as an ideal place to live, work and visit. The original campaign spanned four years, involving partnerships with a range of brands and celebrity figures as well as focusing on the culture, heritage and landscape of the country.

Some of the most memorable campaigns as part of this initiative draw on iconic aspects of British culture, such as the ‘Bond is GREAT’ campaign that capitalised on international interest in one of the UK’s most famous fictional spies. Timed to coincide with the release of the 24th Bond film ‘Spectre’ in 2015, billboards, print ads and social media content were used to highlight some quintessentially British features of the series and encourage fans to visit the country on their next holiday.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpF0HCTKIIE

The name and the overarching approach of this campaign tie into the name of the country, providing an instantly memorable and recognisable style across all of the ‘GREAT Britain’ marketing material. The links with cultural highlights like films and books provide a way to reach and engage international audiences, and partnerships with a range of brands provide a way to reach a wide variety of people and offer an endorsement.

Yodel Ay Hee Hoo

This destination marketing example focused on a single small region in Switzerland and used an interactive approach to promote it. Graubünden is a rural location with an incredibly peaceful atmosphere and friendly locals, and the region’s tourism board used the idea of connection to generate interest in the area.

One of the most successful campaign approaches set up a live video feed to an inhabitant of Vrin in Graubünden in a Swiss train station, allowing travellers to stop and talk to him. Not only did this allow for people to hear about the region from a native, but the speaker could send free train tickets to Vrin that the machine would print out, providing direct motivation to travel there.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Y5MDVhZDQ

Live video is an incredibly engaging method of destination marketing as it provides an instant connection to a location and makes the audience feel transported there without actually having to travel. The ‘ Yodel Ay Hee Hoo ’ campaign was so effective not only because of the concept, but because the resulting recording of these interactions provided material for a very entertaining short-form video, massively widening the reach of the campaign.

‘Sheepview’ is one of the best-known marketing campaigns in the travel industry, winning numerous awards and receiving unbeatable numbers of coverage from all over the world.

The concept promoted the Faroe Islands; a country so small that they did not exist on Google Street View. Inspired by this, the local tourism board decided to fix the problem with a play on words and attached a 360° camera to the back of one of the island’s sheep, recording the images to create their own ‘sheep view’ of the country.

This campaign went viral, with videos, images and social media posts all catching the attention of travellers and allowing them to see what the Faroe Islands were like, albeit from an unconventional perspective. The campaign also meant that the islands finally featured on Google Street View after a year, which was another success of the approach.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juijDAf96lI

Humour is at the heart of this campaign from the pun in the title to the concept itself, which definitely helped it catch so much attention. It’s also another example of allowing the audience to interact with a destination and explore it virtually, helping to engage them and illustrate why it’s a place worth visiting.

The Swedish Number

‘ The Swedish Number ’ destination marketing campaign was designed both to promote the country and celebrate that it had been 250 years since censorship was abolished there. The Swedish Tourist Association set up a phone number that connected the caller to a random Swedish person who had signed up to take part in the campaign, facilitating a conversation about anything at all.

There were no limits or guidelines on what had to be discussed when calling Sweden, and the locals on the other end were given no training or guidance either. Instead, it painted the destination as a place that is friendly, open and a little quirky, gaining a huge amount of coverage and attention with the campaign content.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtb3f_NAmK0

The straightforward and unfiltered aspect of this campaign is what made it so memorable in the first place. Doing something risky in innovative travel marketing can always backfire, but this is an example where the gamble paid off and Sweden attracted plenty of positive attention and allowed real connection between its people and potential visitors to the country.

All You Want is Greece

This tourist destination marketing campaign dials it back a little in its approach, but is still a fantastic example of how to engage an audience by simply showcasing the features of a location. ‘ All You Want is Greece ’ was produced by the Greek National Tourism Organization at the start of 2021, and used the events of the previous year to really dial into what travellers were looking for once the world opened up again.

After the frustration and monotony of 2020, this campaign directly addresses the yearning that many of us were feeling for travel and adventure, by answering this desire with the statement ‘All You Want it Greece’. Five different promotional videos each targeted a different aspect of tourism in the country such as wellness and food, using beautiful visuals and simple, direct text to show potential travellers what they had been longing for.

Screenshot from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFpz-6jN9bE

This article has highlighted many quirky and unique examples of successful destination marketing campaigns, but this one works so well because it lets the appeal of the location speak for itself. Instead of chasing viral acclaim, this approach excels when it comes to engaging the audience by speaking directly to what they desire from a travel experience, using vivid and sensory imagery.

The final example of one of the best tourism campaigns that showcases destination marketing is Tourisme Québec’s ‘ Blind Love ’ which captures the experience of a blind traveller exploring Québec for the first time. The star of the campaign is an American man who has been blind since birth, who we see enjoying a variety of activities around the country such as hiking, fishing, sightseeing and attending festivals and concerts.

The video for this campaign is around three minutes long and features the usual stunning visuals you find in many destination marketing examples, showcasing the variety and beauty of Québec. But there’s also a focus on all other sensory aspects; the sound of each clip is crisp and immersive, there are plenty of shots of fingers smoothing over textures, and food is featured numerous times.

Joy and fun are the key takeaways from this campaign video, demonstrating that you don’t need to be able to see to get as much out of visiting Québec as possible.

Screenshot from: https://vimeo.com/161215902

This campaign is an outstanding example of how sensory and emotional engagement is one of the best ways to hook an audience and get them to remember a place. Not only is the visual and audio approach of the video outstanding, but its message and concept are also incredibly moving, making it a meaningful campaign as well as a memorable one.

We hope that you’ve been inspired by these eight examples of campaigns from destination marketing in tourism and now understand some of the most effective approaches to getting your target audience to engage with and desire to visit a location. Your travel business may not have the same level of budget, but you can still take away the key aspects of what makes these successful marketing campaigns so impactful, and use this in your own destination marketing.

If you’re looking for help creating impactful marketing campaigns like those featured above, SEO Travel can help. We help our clients get featured in top travel publications and improve their brand visibility, and we’d love to talk to you about how we can help your business develop campaigns that bring long-term benefits. Get in touch for more information and to receive a free proposal.

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Successful Tourism Rebranding Campaigns: Strategies and Examples

Discover the secrets behind successful tourism rebranding campaigns in this insightful article.

Tourism is an ever-evolving industry, with destinations constantly seeking ways to attract visitors and boost their economy. One effective approach that many destinations have embraced is tourism rebranding. In this article, we will explore the concept of rebranding in tourism, the importance of a successful rebranding strategy, and discuss some notable examples of destinations that have successfully undergone rebranding.

Understanding the Concept of Rebranding in Tourism

Rebranding, in the context of tourism, refers to the process of revitalizing a destination's image and positioning it in a way that appeals to a new target market or changes the perception of existing visitors. It involves careful planning, strategic messaging, and the implementation of various marketing tactics to create a fresh and compelling identity for the destination.

When it comes to rebranding in tourism, it is not just about slapping a new logo on brochures or updating a website. It goes much deeper than that. Rebranding is a comprehensive strategy that aims to breathe new life into a destination, to make it more relevant and appealing to travelers.

Imagine a quaint coastal town that has been a popular vacation spot for families for decades. However, over time, the town's image has become outdated, and it is struggling to attract new visitors. This is where rebranding comes into play. By carefully examining the town's strengths, unique offerings, and target market, a rebranding strategy can be developed to showcase the destination in a fresh and exciting way.

The Importance of Rebranding

Rebranding can have numerous benefits for a destination. Firstly, it can help to differentiate the destination from its competitors, making it stand out in a saturated market. In a world filled with countless vacation options, standing out is crucial to capturing the attention of potential travelers. A well-executed rebranding campaign can make a destination appear more attractive and appealing, enticing visitors to choose it over other options.

Secondly, rebranding enables a destination to reposition itself and attract new segments of tourists who may have previously overlooked the location. For example, a city that was once known for its historical landmarks can rebrand itself as a vibrant cultural hub, attracting a younger and more diverse audience. By changing the perception of the destination, rebranding opens up new opportunities for growth and expansion.

Lastly, a successful rebranding campaign can positively impact the local economy by driving tourism revenue and job creation. When a destination experiences an increase in visitors, it leads to a boost in spending on accommodations, dining, shopping, and other local businesses. This, in turn, creates new job opportunities and stimulates economic growth in the community.

Key Elements of a Successful Rebranding Strategy

To execute a successful rebranding strategy, several key elements should be considered. Firstly, thorough research is essential to understand the destination's current perception, identify target markets, and develop a clear brand positioning. By conducting surveys, analyzing visitor data, and studying market trends, tourism authorities can gain valuable insights into what travelers are looking for and how to position the destination accordingly.

Secondly, effective communication is crucial, ensuring that the new brand message is consistently conveyed through various marketing channels. From social media campaigns to print advertisements, every touchpoint with potential visitors should reflect the destination's new identity. Consistency in messaging helps to create a strong and memorable brand image in the minds of travelers.

Finally, collaboration with local stakeholders and businesses is essential to gain support and leverage the destination's unique offerings. Engaging with hotels, restaurants, tour operators, and other local businesses allows for the creation of compelling packages and experiences that align with the rebranding strategy. By working together, the destination can offer a cohesive and immersive experience to visitors, enhancing the overall appeal and success of the rebranding efforts.

In conclusion, rebranding in tourism is a multifaceted process that aims to transform a destination's image and attract new visitors. By differentiating the destination, repositioning it to target new markets, and collaborating with local stakeholders, a successful rebranding strategy can have a significant impact on the destination's success and economic growth.

Case Studies of Successful Tourism Rebranding Campaigns

Let us now delve into some inspiring case studies of destinations that have successfully rebranded themselves, breathing new life into their tourism industry.

New York City: From Dangerous to Must-See Destination

Once plagued by a reputation for crime and decay, New York City successfully transformed itself into one of the world's most iconic and sought-after destinations. Through a comprehensive rebranding campaign that focused on safety initiatives, cultural diversity, and iconic landmarks, the city managed to shed its negative image and position itself as a must-see destination for travelers of all ages and interests.

New York City's rebranding journey began in the late 20th century when the city faced challenges such as high crime rates and a declining economy. However, city officials and stakeholders recognized the immense potential that New York City held as a global tourism hub. They embarked on a mission to change the narrative and showcase the city's vibrant culture, rich history, and unparalleled offerings.

One of the key strategies employed was a focus on safety initiatives. The city implemented various measures to enhance public safety, including increased police presence, community engagement programs, and the revitalization of once-neglected neighborhoods. This not only made visitors feel more secure but also improved the quality of life for residents.

Simultaneously, New York City celebrated its cultural diversity, highlighting the vibrant neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves that make up the city's unique fabric. Festivals, parades, and cultural events became a regular occurrence, showcasing the traditions and customs of different communities. This emphasis on diversity not only attracted tourists interested in experiencing different cultures but also fostered a sense of pride among New Yorkers.

Another crucial aspect of the rebranding campaign was the promotion of iconic landmarks. New York City is home to world-famous attractions such as the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, and Central Park. The city capitalized on these landmarks, showcasing them in marketing campaigns and highlighting their historical and cultural significance. This not only drew tourists but also encouraged locals to rediscover their own city and take pride in its iconic sites.

Australia: From Outback to Adventure Paradise

Australia's rebranding journey took it from being largely associated with the vast outback to becoming a remarkable adventure paradise. With a strategic focus on highlighting its diverse ecosystems, wildlife, and thrilling outdoor activities, Australia successfully positioned itself as the ultimate destination for adventure seekers and nature enthusiasts around the globe.

Australia, known for its stunning landscapes and unique wildlife, recognized the need to reposition itself in the global tourism market. The country embarked on a rebranding campaign that aimed to showcase its diverse ecosystems, ranging from the Great Barrier Reef to the vast Outback, and everything in between.

One of the key strategies employed was to highlight the country's unique wildlife. Australia is home to a wide range of fascinating and often endemic species, such as kangaroos, koalas, and the elusive platypus. The rebranding campaign focused on creating awareness about these unique creatures and promoting eco-tourism initiatives that allowed visitors to experience them in their natural habitats.

Additionally, Australia capitalized on its thrilling outdoor activities to attract adventure seekers. From snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef to hiking in the rugged Blue Mountains, the country offered a plethora of adrenaline-pumping experiences. The rebranding campaign showcased these activities, highlighting the breathtaking landscapes and the sense of adventure that awaited visitors.

Furthermore, Australia's rebranding efforts extended beyond its natural wonders. The country also emphasized its vibrant cities, cultural festivals, and culinary delights. This holistic approach aimed to showcase Australia as a destination that offered a perfect blend of adventure, natural beauty, and cultural experiences.

Iceland: From Unknown to Trendy Destination

Iceland, once an unknown and overlooked destination, managed to carve a niche for itself in the global tourism industry. By capitalizing on its stunning natural landscapes, unique geothermal attractions, and enchanting folklore, Iceland positioned itself as an offbeat and trendy destination for nature-loving and adventure-driven travelers.

Iceland's rebranding journey began in the early 21st century when the country realized its potential as a tourist destination. With its otherworldly landscapes, including glaciers, geysers, and volcanoes, Iceland had much to offer to intrepid travelers seeking unique experiences.

One of the key factors that contributed to Iceland's successful rebranding was its focus on its stunning natural landscapes. The country's untouched beauty became the centerpiece of its marketing campaigns, attracting nature enthusiasts from around the world. The famous Golden Circle route, which includes the geothermal wonders of Geysir and the majestic Gullfoss waterfall, became a must-visit for tourists.

In addition to its natural wonders, Iceland also capitalized on its unique geothermal attractions. The country's hot springs, such as the Blue Lagoon, became synonymous with relaxation and rejuvenation. Iceland's rebranding campaign highlighted these geothermal treasures, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the healing waters and experience the country's geothermal energy firsthand.

Furthermore, Iceland's rich folklore and mystical tales added to its allure. The country's folklore is filled with stories of trolls, elves, and hidden treasures, captivating the imagination of travelers. The rebranding campaign incorporated these enchanting tales, creating a sense of mystery and wonder around the destination.

Iceland's successful rebranding efforts transformed the country from an unknown and overlooked destination into a trendy hotspot for nature-loving and adventure-driven travelers. The combination of stunning landscapes, unique geothermal attractions, and captivating folklore made Iceland a must-visit destination for those seeking an offbeat and unforgettable travel experience.

Strategies Used in Successful Rebranding Campaigns

Now that we have explored the success stories, it is important to understand the strategies that played a significant role in these rebranding campaigns.

Utilising Social Media and Influencers

Social media platforms and influencer marketing have become powerful tools in destination rebranding. By partnering with popular influencers whose interests align with the destination's offerings, destinations can generate captivating content and reach a wide audience, effectively changing public perception and attracting new visitors.

Engaging with Local Communities

Engaging with local communities is crucial for a successful rebranding campaign. Building strong relationships with locals not only helps to create an authentic experience for visitors but also ensures the support and cooperation of community members in promoting the destination. This can be achieved through local partnerships, community events, and showcasing local traditions and heritage.

Promoting Unique Cultural and Natural Attractions

Highlighting a destination's unique cultural and natural attractions is an effective strategy in rebranding. Showcasing the local traditions, cuisine, festivals, and natural wonders helps to create a distinct identity for the destination and attracts tourists seeking authentic experiences.

Challenges in Tourism Rebranding

While tourism rebranding can lead to great success, there are also challenges that destinations may encounter along the way.

Overcoming Negative Stereotypes

Destinations with negative stereotypes face the challenge of changing public perception. Overcoming these stereotypes requires carefully planned messaging, showcasing the destination's positive aspects, and educating potential visitors about the current reality and experiences offered.

Ensuring Authenticity and Sustainability

As destinations rebrand, they must be mindful of maintaining authenticity and sustainability. Preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the destination is crucial, as visitors seek genuine and responsible experiences. Striking a balance between growth and sustainability is essential to ensure long-term success.

The Future of Tourism Rebranding

As we move forward, several factors will influence the future of tourism rebranding.

The Role of Technology in Rebranding

Technology will continue to play a significant role in destination rebranding. Embracing innovative solutions such as virtual reality experiences, personalized mobile apps, and AI-powered chatbots can enhance the visitor experience and create a lasting impression.

The Impact of Global Trends on Rebranding Strategies

Global trends, such as the rise of sustainable tourism and the increasing demand for unique experiences, will shape rebranding strategies. Destinations that align with these trends and offer distinctive, responsible, and meaningful experiences will have a competitive advantage in attracting tourists.

The Potential of Eco-Tourism and Sustainable Travel in Rebranding

Eco-tourism and sustainable travel are expected to play a significant role in the future of rebranding. As travelers become more conscious of their environmental impact, destinations that prioritize sustainability and offer eco-friendly experiences will be at the forefront of attracting environmentally conscious tourists.

In conclusion, tourism rebranding can be a powerful strategic tool for destinations seeking to reinvent themselves and attract new visitors. By understanding the concept of rebranding, leveraging key strategies, and learning from successful case studies, destinations can create a compelling brand identity that resonates with their target audience. As the tourism industry continues to evolve, embracing new technologies and aligning with global trends will be vital for future rebranding success.

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Destination marketing in tourism: what brands need to know.

In Blog , marketing .

By Tom Mcloughlin, Founder, SEO Travel

When it comes to booking a travel experience, what drives you to visit a new destination? Have you been given a recommendation by a friend? Was the location promoted by a publication or influencer whose judgement you trust? Or have you seen the destination promoted in video ads, on billboards or in print, and been inspired by the captivating visuals and promise of a unique travel experience.

If your answer is the latter, then you’ve had a firsthand experience of the impact of destination marketing.

From promoting an entire country to trying to get more people to visit an unheard-of town or village, destination marketing uses a range of engaging techniques to sell the benefits and features of a location to inspire more people to visit it. This post discusses the use of destination marketing in the tourism industry , explaining how this approach impacts tourism and what brands need to know to make an impression in this sector with their destination marketing campaigns.

What is Destination Marketing?

Destination marketing is a specific approach used by brands in the travel and tourism industry to promote a specific location. Whilst more conventional travel marketing tends to showcase the service or product of a travel company, destination marketing illustrates the features and benefits of a place to get more people to come to it.

The overall aim of destination marketing is to increase customer awareness of a location. By promoting it as a desirable place to visit, the idea is that travellers will think of that destination when they decide to plan a holiday and want to go there. And if it’s a travel company that is promoting a destination, the idea is that the customer will be motivated to book their trip through this brand.

Whilst destination marketing is used by plenty of travel brands as a way of promoting the tours, accommodation or services they offer in specific countries, it’s also a key method of marketing in the tourism industry. Tourist boards and local authorities often rely on destination marketing as a way to promote their town, region or even country with the intention of getting more travellers to visit to boost the local economy and improve their reputation as a holiday destination.

How Does Destination Marketing Impact Tourism?

When used as part of a tourism marketing strategy, destination marketing can have a big impact on how many people visit a location, the kind of travellers that book trips there, and the overall image and reputation of a place.

The goal of this approach is to generate more interest in visiting a location, which increases tourism by bringing more people to an area on holidays and day trips. When done successfully, this can impact a range of factors.

Perhaps the biggest impact that destination marketing has on tourism is that it can massively boost the local economy. Bringing more tourists to an area is better for all kinds of businesses, not just ones providing accommodation and food, and enough growth in popularity also means that there’s the capacity for more businesses to open or expand to meet increasing demand.

Having more people visit a location because of successful destination marketing has the potential to improve its reputation through word of mouth, as if tourists have a good time during their trip they’re likely to recommend a visit to others. This increases interest in a destination further, helping a positive reputation to reach a wider audience and bring in even more tourists.

Destination marketing can also have an impact on the kind of tourism that a location receives, depending on the approach used in marketing campaigns and material. For example, if a destination is advertised as a prime place to visit for outdoor pursuits like hiking or cycling, the majority of the tourists that are going to visit will be interested in these kinds of activities. This means that the location’s most successful attractions and facilities will appeal to this demographic, which may lead local businesses to change their offering to remain relevant.

A more negative impact that destination marketing may have is that it can lead to over-tourism. There are many recorded instances where the popularity of a particular destination has led to environmental damage, locals getting driven out by rising living costs, and overcrowding to the point where the destination gains a negative reputation for being too busy.

This isn’t an issue that many destination marketing companies have to deal with, but it is a potential outcome to bear in mind.

How to Make It Work for Your Brand

Whether you’re a marketing agency working with a tourism board or as part of a travel and tourism marketing campaign, or a travel brand wanting to take a ‘tourism’ angle in your destination marketing approach, here are some of the most important things to remember when it comes to delivering a successful destination marketing campaign.  

Find What Makes You Unique

When you’re marketing a destination with the aim of attracting more visitors, what’s going to have the biggest pull is the appeal of a unique attraction or experience. Therefore, all of your destination marketing content should revolve around this unique selling point so that you have the best chance of standing out against competitive destinations.

The more specific your destination, the easier it will be to draw out a unique quality. When marketing a country or a region to increase tourism this can be harder, so instead of trying to identify an attraction or feature that stands out, think about advertising a unique travel experience that the location can provide.

Build your entire destination marketing campaign around this unique selling point, even if it’s not that explicit in some approaches. It will help to deliver a much more cohesive campaign overall and ensure that your location sticks in potential visitors’ minds .

Choose a Traveller Demographic

Any kind of marketing campaign works best when you have a specific audience in mind. Advertising a location is no different.

Whilst you may think that promoting a location as part of tourism efforts should try and target as many potential visitors as possible, it also means that a lot of your marketing efforts are going to be quite vague as they try to appeal to numerous different groups. Sure, you’ll still get a reasonable response from some people that are engaged by your promotion of the place, but conversion rates tend to be lower when you don’t have a specific demographic in mind.

After you’ve identified what it is that makes your destination unique, establish the kind of traveller to whom this unique factor is going to appeal. You should create profiles for typical people within this demographic, detailing the kinds of travel experiences they enjoy, their pain points when visiting new destinations, and any particular content formats or marketing techniques they respond well to or frequently engage with.

Once you have this target audience in mind, try and shape your destination marketing around them. You may be appealing to a smaller group, but you’re likely to get a much higher percentage of them to engage with what you’re sharing.

Make it Personal

One of the most effective techniques you can use in a destination marketing campaign is using a personal hook to make your content more engaging. 

This is particularly useful when you’re simply promoting a location, as your main intention is to get your target audience to start picturing themselves there so that they develop the desire to visit. It’s much easier for them to do this when you present a personal, relatable experience with your content, be that in text, video or audio format.

One of the simplest ways to make destination marketing personal is to capture real people experiencing the location, focusing on finding the best ways to present different sensory elements. Video is one of the best formats to do this, especially when you create content with lots of stunning visual elements that elicits an emotional response.

Getting local people to tell stories about a destination is also a brilliant technique for making your destination marketing content more personal, which also works really well in a written or audio format. This also allows you to share exclusive insight into a place, giving a more authentic feel to your marketing material.

Recognise Trends, but Think Long-Term

The popularity of plenty of destinations is affected by travel trends. Whether your destination offers a desirable climate, activity or cultural experience, responding to trends to capture audience interest as it peaks can seem like the ideal marketing strategy.

The thing to remember with trends however is that they don’t often last for long. Your destination may be all the rage for a single season, but hype often quickly dies down as travellers find something new to get excited about, meaning that what was once ‘trendy’ about your location may not stay that way for long.

Acknowledging and capitalising on trends as part of your destination marketing campaign is a good idea, but it’s important not to put all of your eggs in this brand new basket and keep long-term planning in mind as well. The last thing you want is to splurge all your resources on an approach that’s only going to be relevant for a few months. So use more instant channels like social media and email to respond to trends, and ensure that things like written and video content and advertisements are more evergreen.

Utilise Reputation and Association

Influencer marketing is an incredibly useful approach to include in your destination marketing strategy if possible. A key objective for destination marketing companies is to increase awareness of a location, and having an affiliation with a well-known figure can have a really positive impact on this.

The more famous or recognized the person you work with is, the more attention your marketing campaigns are going to get. But whilst we’d all like to dream of partnering with an A-list celebrity to promote our target destination, this probably won’t be a reality for most brands, which is where working with influencers comes in.

Whether they’re known for their presence on social media, in print or on a video channel like YouTube, we recommend working with either a travel influencer or someone who has a following that overlaps with the demographic you’re trying to appeal to. Having your destination endorsed and associated with someone that already has a trusted reputation will bring positive associations to your location and increase the reach of your promotional material.

Deliver What You’re Advertising

This last piece of advice might seem obvious, but it’s very important not to oversell your target location in any of your marketing material. You’re obviously going to promote the best version of your destination to catch as much attention as possible, but when people do actually visit you need to ensure that they’ll experience what they were promised.

If the place you advertise is nothing like the place visitors arrive, your destination marketing campaign is quickly going to stop bringing in any kind of tourism. It’s okay to romanticise and glamourise aspects to engage your target audience, but ensure that you’re promising an experience that you can deliver on if you want word to spread about your location in a positive way.

Whilst destination marketing was initially just associated with tourist boards and adverts for different countries, it’s an approach that has been used by a wide variety of travel brands as a new way to reach customers and subtly promote their services. It’s still important to understand the best practices and the potential impact if you’re using destination marketing in tourism to help raise awareness and improve the image of a location, and we recommend you check out our other posts in the destination marketing series if you’re looking for more information and inspiration.

If you need more information or help with your travel marketing strategy or want to find out more about approaches like destination marketing, get in touch with SEO Travel for a chat and to find out more about the range of marketing services that we offer.

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How to create an effective marketing strategy for an adventure tourism brand

You’re posting on Instagram, sharing blog posts on your website, and experimenting with ads on Facebook — yet there’s no real strategy behind it all.

If it sometimes feels like you’re throwing spaghetti on the wall just to see what sticks, you might need to take another look at your social media strategy.

You just spent half your marketing budget on digital channels like social media and search engines — but you have no idea how to measure their success. Does this sound familiar?

In this guide, you’ll learn how to form the best marketing strategy for adventure tourism brands.

Whether you’re confused about which channels to focus on or what metrics to track for your ongoing campaigns, this post will make you feel a lot more confident about your marketing plan .

What’s a marketing strategy? 

A marketing strategy is a comprehensive business plan to promote your business, attract customers, and grow your revenue. For tour operators, this includes developing a brand and advertising on the right channels.

Every marketing strategy for adventure tourism brands should cover the 4 Ps:

• Product: You should have a clear understanding of the product (your tours or attractions), how it serves your customers, and what makes it unique.
• Price: Your pricing should be carefully calculated, taking company revenue and market prices into consideration.
• Place: Identify where your guests can book your tours or attractions.
• Promotion: Determine the channels you’ll use to promote your adventure tours.

Most adventure travel brands use a combination of digital marketing strategies like social media and paid search advertisements to bring in more website bookings.

Is your marketing strategy effective?

All your marketing efforts may fall flat if you don’t know how to measure them. You should identify your key performance indicators (KPIs), or success metrics, for every campaign you launch.

Your KPIs will depend on the marketing channel you’re prompting your tours on, and the result you’re hoping to achieve.

Here are seven ways you can evaluate your marketing strategy:

• Unique visitors: Is your website traffic going up? Unique visitors is a Google Analytics metric that refers to the number of people that visit your site during a given period of time. It’s a more accurate representation than page views since each visitor is only counted once. In other words, this metric can tell you whether you’re marketing strategy is effective in bringing new guests to your site.
• Page views: Your page views refer to the total number of individual pages your website visitors have viewed. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, this means that your guests are clicking on more than one page on your site. This is a good indication that your guests are enjoying the content on your website.
• Search engine traffic: You can also check how much of your web traffic is coming from Google. This metric specifically measures how well your SEO and paid search ads are performing.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who take a specific action like signing up for your newsletter or booking a tour. This is a key metric to measure the overall effectiveness of your email opt-in and website content — both of which should be encouraging visitors to take an action.
• Social media followers and engagement: Are your social media accounts growing? Are your followers liking and commenting on your posts? Are they tagging you in user-generated content? Are they converting? These are key indicators to watch for a social media campaign.
• Online bookings: If you’ve built a robust digital marketing strategy to drive more bookings through your website, you should be tracking your bookings over time and the channels they’re coming from.
• ROI: Keep an eye on the gains and costs of your marketing investments. Look at revenue reports to see if your marketing strategy is not only bringing in more bookings but also making your business more profitable.

What are the key variables of an effective marketing strategy? 

There are several factors to consider when building your marketing strategy. From your audience to your marketing budget, here are six key variables to keep in mind:

Knowing your audience is key to building an effective marketing strategy. When you understand your guests, you’re able to create campaigns that directly appeal to them. Every business should know what makes your customers excited, what doubts they might have, and what channels they use to get their information.

Here are a couple of questions to keep in mind when thinking about your audience:

• Have you created customer/buyer personas yet?
• Do you know where your audience is hanging out?
• Have you dug into your audience data on social media or Google Analytics to better understand their demographics?

Marketing channels

Part of knowing your audience is identifying where your guests go for information. Today, most travelers begin their trip research on Google. Many also find inspiration through photos on Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. Adventure tour operators should focus on the marketing channels their guests use most.

Consider the following questions:

• Have you tried asking your guests how they found your company?
• Did you take a look at the platforms your competitors are active on?
• Have you looked at your booking software insights to see where most bookings are coming from?

Your budget will determine the channels you market your tours on. Content marketing, social media initiatives, and email campaigns are three cost-effective marketing strategies that tour operators can get started with. 

Think about the following:

• Are you a new company that needs to get your name out there, or do you already have an established audience?
• How much has your business grown over the past year?
• How much of your revenue do you feel comfortable spending on marketing efforts?

Time investment 

Some marketing tactics like paid search marketing can generate results right away. You pay to rank on the first page of Google for specific search terms, which increases your site visibility and, hopefully, conversions right away. SEO (search engine marketing), on the other hand, is the process of organically ranking in the top 10 results on Google. It generates long-term results rather than immediate exposure. Most tour operators benefit from using a combination of both. 

Consider this:

• Is your current marketing strategy costing you more time and money than necessary?
• Could spending more time on SEO now bring you more future bookings?

Seasonality

Take your destination’s tourism seasons into consideration when planning marketing campaigns. Your promotions will likely vary depending on guest demand, holidays, and the seasons.

Ask yourself the following:

• When could you benefit from more bookings?
• How much of your marketing budget should you set aside for those slow periods?
• How can you make up for the lost revenue from discounted tours throughout the rest of the year?

Brand reputation

How established is your brand? Well-known travel brands can leverage their reputation to produce unique marketing campaigns that directly appeal to their customers. If your brand has many social media followers, for example, you would push that marketing channel more than others.

Consider the following:

• Do your customers walk away from your tours remembering your brand?
• Could your customers recognize your brand if they ran into one of your tour groups?
• What are your customers saying about you on social media?

Key marketing strategies for adventure tourism brands 

Ready to improve your marketing? Travel tour operators should use a combination of strategies to create a solid marketing plan that sells.

• Know your audience: Your marketing plan will depend on the type of guest you want to attract to your tours. Experiment with different messaging and visuals to find out what makes them excited.
• Optimize your website: Make sure there are calls-to-action on your site that entice guests to book and that the customer experience to be seamless.
• Zero in on your branding: Use social media to engage with past customers and make new guests familiar with your brand.
• Develop an SEO strategy: Search engines account for about 55% of all traffic for travel and tourism websites. You can leverage SEO by creating a section on your website for a blog, where you write about topics in your niche.
• Experiment with paid search: Use a combination of SEO and paid search tactics to market to travelers that are specifically searching for the experiences you’re offering.
• Partner with your local tourism board: Find out if your company fits within one of their upcoming campaigns.
• Sell your experiences on OTAs: Make your company visible to the millions of users that book through online travel agencies like Expedia.
• Target customers at the right time: Target travelers who are already traveling in your destination through Facebook’s targeting features.
• Start an email list: Email marketing is a cost-effective way to build a relationship with your customers, upsell your tours, turn one-time guests into repeat customers, and build guest loyalty.
• Leverage guest reviews: Showcase reviews on your website and even use them in your marketing campaigns to influence potential customers to make their final booking.
• Claim your business on Google My Business: Your Google business listing includes your contact information, hours, and other essential information.

How to get repeat bookings by marketing to past guests 

Think about a time you became loyal to a brand. It could be a shoe brand or an airline, but the reasons that drove you to buy from them repeatedly are likely the same.

You connected with the brand and what they stand for. You enjoyed the customer service, and you loved the product or service. Overall, your customer experience was a pleasant and memorable one.

How can you repeat this with your own customers?

You can start by establishing a clear brand both on and offline. Social media lets you use images, videos, and captions to personify your brand, which makes it easier to connect with customers. For example, you use an app, like Fotaflo , to capture and share user-generated photos and videos of happy guests on social media. You can also use these photos and videos in personalized email campaigns throughout the year. 

This brings us to another tactic – email marketing. 

One of the simplest things you can do is ask guests to leave a review on Tripadvisor or your website. 

In addition, if you are using digital waivers, like Xola Waivers, you likely have all of your guests’ email addresses, names, birthdays, and ages. You can add this information into your CRM or email marketing software, like Mailchimp. You can then send personalized birthday campaigns to all guests on their birthday — a simple yet memorable gesture.

However, all of these loyalty marketing efforts won’t get the job done if your customer experience is lacking. Make sure your tour is everything you promised the customer it would be.

In conclusion, your marketing strategy is the blueprint you’ll follow to promote and grow your business.

You may use several different tactics to get there, including a combination of SEO, email, and social media marketing. Whichever channels you choose, make sure to set and measure your KPIs as you go.

If your goal is to increase website traffic, for example, track your website’s unique visitors and page views. And always track your bookings and the revenue they’re generating compared to the amount you’re spending on marketing.

You should focus on the platforms that bring you the highest ROI.

Writer Carla Vianna

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Southwest stresses flexibility in latest brand campaign

• Southwest Airlines has launched its largest campaign in nearly a decade, showing off how the company’s everyday perks give its customers flexibility where other carriers don’t. 
• The new campaign, developed by the airline and its agencies Spark Foundry and GSD&M, carries the theme, “The Big Flex,” and highlights points of difference such as two free checked bags, no change or cancellation fees, and flight credits that don’t expire. 
• In addition to traditional broadcast, streaming, out-of-home and internet advertising, the campaign will include partnerships with online creators to highlight some of the destinations Southwest serves, as well as market-specific advertising. 

The summer travel season is quickly approaching, and Southwest Airlines is taking this opportunity to highlight the convenience it offers its customers as part of its everyday course of doing business. At a time when the travel industry seems to be full of complexity of points and date blackouts and extra fees, Southwest is looking to be seen as the option offering simplicity.

“We are the most flexible airline, and we take pride in offering benefits that are the most flexible,” said Julia Melle, director of brand and content at Southwest Airlines . “At Southwest, we believe in connecting our customers to what matters most to them and their passions.”

Using the theme, “The Big Flex,” which carries a double meaning of flexibility and the slang term of showing off a victory over others, the campaign highlights the stories of customers who have benefitted from the flexible policies in humorous and engaging ways. 

One spot, for instance, depicts a man with a head of curly hair proudly walking through a hotel lobby and out onto a street. When he stops at a corner, he proudly notes to a bystander that he packed two bags for free on Southwest, adding he packs a lot of shampoo. Pointing to his hair, he says, “Can’t get this with three ounces,” referring to the carry-on restrictions for liquids. 

“The campaign is centered around real-life stories we’ve heard from our customers about how they take advantage of our points of difference, including what they pack in their bags that fly free and having the flexibility to extend their vacation because of no change fees,” Melle said. “We’ve always been a customer-centric company, but this is our way of reinforcing that promise to deliver the best possible experience every time you fly with us.”

The Big Flex campaign began running this week on streaming, broadcast, cable, social media and audio platforms. In addition, Southwest has developed partnerships with online creators and influencers including Kelsey June Jensen and Swagg to highlight some of the 121 destinations that Southwest services, Melle said. She did not provide further details on how those partnerships and local campaigns would play out.

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Trump Demands a Cut of Donations From Campaigns That Use His Name

The Trump campaign said that candidates using his brand should turn over at least 5 percent of donations and encouraged them to send more than the minimum.

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By Chris Cameron

• April 17, 2024

The presidential campaign of former President Donald J. Trump said in a letter to Republican vendors that candidates may use his name, image and likeness in campaign materials only if they send at least 5 percent of donations that they receive to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

The move in effect imposes a tax on using the Trump brand for campaign purposes. Mr. Trump has sought to close a significant financial gap between him and President Biden, his Democratic rival. The Biden campaign and its political committees reported $192 million in cash on hand at the end of March , more than double the $93 million of Trump and the Republican Party.

Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that “it is important to protect small-dollar donors from scammers that use the president’s name and likeness.”

In a letter this week signed by Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who identified themselves as co-campaign managers, the campaign also said it was tightening control of campaign materials that use Mr. Trump’s name, prohibiting strident language that has become common in donor appeals such as “President Trump needs you” or “If you support President Trump, you’ll contribute now.”

The letter said the messaging guidelines were part of an effort “to treat our donors with the utmost respect.” After Mr. Trump appeared in court on Monday, the campaign sent a fund-raising pitch falsely claiming in all-capital letters that Mr. Trump had “just stormed out of Biden’s kangaroo court!” Mr. Trump had not actually stormed out of the Manhattan courthouse.

The letter added that the campaign would punish campaign vendors if candidates whom they worked with did not comply with the new rules.

“Repeated violations will result in the suspension of business relationships” with the Trump campaign and the national party, the letter said.

The campaign also encouraged Republican candidates and committees to kick up more than the 5 percent minimum for donations received.

“Any split that is higher than 5 percent will be seen favorably by the R.N.C. and President Trump’s campaign, and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations,” said the letter, which was earlier reported by Politico.

Mr. Trump has for years feuded with Republican candidates and institutions who have solicited donations using Mr. Trump’s likeness without his approval. Weeks after leaving office, when many in the Republican establishment were seeking to distance themselves from the former president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump sent cease and desist letters to the party asking it to stop using his name and likeness. Many Republicans ignored him and continued to profit from his image.

But Mr. Trump is once again ascendant in the Republican Party, and the former president wields near-total control over party institutions like the Republican National Committee, which is now led by a close ally and Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law.

He has also — in the midst of a felony criminal trial and a mountain of other legal trouble he is facing — spent more than $100 million on legal bills since leaving office in 2021, and Mr. Trump has an arrangement with the Republican Party that funnels a portion of political donations into paying his legal bills before any money goes to the party itself.

And the announcement is only the latest effort by Mr. Trump to leverage his personal brand. Just days after he was ordered to pay about $450 million in a civil fraud case in New York, Mr. Trump appeared at a footwear convention to hawk $400 Trump-branded sneakers for which he had licensed his name to another company.

Shane Goldmacher and Michael Gold contributed reporting.

Chris Cameron covers politics for The Times, focusing on breaking news and the 2024 campaign. More about Chris Cameron

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

Even after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential primary, nearly 20 percent of G.O.P. primary voters have cast ballots for someone other than Donald Trump. Here’s what to make of the “zombie vote”  against Trump.

From the courts to the campaign trail , Trump is challenging a hallmark of American-style democracy : its suspicion of concentrated power.

President Biden has homed in on an infamous moment  of Trump’s, which crystallized the chaos of the Trump presidency, by trolling his political opponent.

Other Key Races

With the 2024 primary season entering the homestretch — and the presidential matchup already set — hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians  cast their ballots  in Senate and House contests  as well as for president and local races. Here are the takeaways .

David McCormick  won an unopposed Republican primary for Senate  in Pennsylvania, securing the party’s nomination two years after former Trump torpedoed his first Senate run by backing his primary rival, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Representative Summer Lee, a first-term progressive Democrat, won her primary contest  in western Pennsylvania, fending off a moderate challenger in a race that centered on her stance on the war in Gaza .

Promises Donald Trump has made so far in his campaign for a second term

Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has made a number of promises on the campaign trail, including rolling back car pollution rules, building 10 new cities and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate President Joe Biden and his family.

While some of Trump’s plans are lacking in detail, here are some of the policies he says he would enact if elected for a second term.

Immigration

Trump has made immigration and the border a central campaign issue, successfully pressuring Republicans to reject a major bipartisan border deal last month and making a trip to the southern border on February 29, where he touted his previous hard-line immigration policies.

In a Des Moines Register op-ed published roughly a week before winning the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump vowed to use the “Alien Enemies Act to remove known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.”

“We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS,” he wrote.

In a video posted on Truth Social in late February before his border visit, Trump also promised to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS.”

After the Israel-Hamas war began last October, Trump also promised to terminate the visas of “Hamas’ sympathizers.”

“We’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country, if that’s OK with you,” he added.

Drug cartels

The former president has also made waging “war” on drug cartels a priority for his second term. If elected, Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.”

Trump also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.

Trump announced plans in a September 2023 campaign video to close the Department of Education and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”

“We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it,” he added.

The former president has also promised to “put parents back in charge and give them the final say” in education. In a January 2023 campaign video , the former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it.”

Trump also said in that campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech , Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission , which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”

The former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.

Health care

Last November, Trump promised to replace the Affordable Care Act , known colloquially as Obamacare, in a series of posts on Truth Social. A Trump-backed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare failed in 2017 after three Republicans senators joined with Democrats to vote against the bill.

“Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration,” he said .

“It is not a matter of cost, it is a matter of HEALTH. America will have one of the best Healthcare Plans anywhere in the world. Right now it has one of the WORST!,” he continued. He also doubled down on his vow during a speech in early January.

Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration.”

Trump also vowed in a June 2023 campaign video to reinstate his previous executive order so that the US government would pay the same price for pharmaceuticals as other developed countries. Some of the former president’s pharmaceutical policies were overturned by Biden.

Gender care

“I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference last March.

Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and health care providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.

Justice system

Trump has promised to use the Department of Justice to attack critics and former allies. In several videos and speeches, the former president also laid out plans to gut the current justice system by firing “radical Marxist prosecutors that are destroying America.”

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said in June 2023 remarks . “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Trump said in a campaign video last year that he would reinstate a 2020 executive order to remove “rogue” bureaucrats and propose a constitutional amendment for term limits on members of Congress.

I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”

To address what he labeled the “disturbing” relationship between technology platforms and the government, the former president said in a January 2023 video that he would enact a seven-year cooling off period before employees at agencies such as the FBI or CIA can work for platforms that oversee mass user data.

Trump added in multiple campaign releases that he would task the Justice Department with investigating online censorship, ban federal agencies from “colluding” to censor citizens and suspend federal money to universities participating in “censorship-supporting activities.”

In a September 2023 speech at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC, Trump also touted plans to continue appointing conservative judges.

“I will once again appoint rock-solid conservative judges to do what they have to do in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia; Samuel Alito, a great gentleman; and another great gentleman, Clarence Thomas,” he said.

Trump has also pledged to “appoint U.S. Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.”

In a September 2023 speech in Washington, DC, Trump also announced that he would appoint a task force to review the cases of people he claimed had been “unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration.” Trump noted that he wanted to “study the situation very quickly, and sign their pardons or commutations on day one.”

It’s a move that could lead to potential pardons of many rioters from the January 6, 2021, insurrection – which he suggested he would do at a CNN town hall in May 2023.

* Only promises on judge appointments and congressional term limits are similar to prior campaigns

Trump said in two February 2023 campaign videos that if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”

Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.

Addressing policies made in what Trump calls the “Democrats’ war on police,” the former president vowed in a campaign video that he would pass a “record investment” to hire and retrain police, strengthen protections like qualified immunity, increase penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and deploy the National Guard when local law enforcement “refuses to act.”

The former president added that he would require law enforcement agencies that receive money from his funding investment or the Department of Justice to use “proven common sense” measures such as stop-and-frisk.

Foreign policy

Trump has continued his attacks against member countries of NATO, a European and North American defense alliance. At a South Carolina rally last month, Trump said he would not abide by the alliance’s collective-defense clause and would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if a member country didn’t meet spending guidelines.

“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

The former president has also previously pledged to end the war in Ukraine, though he’s offered no details on how he would do so. “Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event last year, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected.

NATO was busted until I came along. I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Trump further addressed his strategy of stopping the “never-ending wars” by vowing to remove “warmongers,” “frauds” and “failures in the senior ranks of our government,” and replace them with national security officials who would defend America’s interests. The former president added in a campaign video that he would stop lobbyists and government contractors from pushing senior military officials toward war.

In addition, Trump has said he would restore his “wonderful” travel ban on individuals from several majority-Muslim countries to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country” after Biden overturned the ban in 2021.

New cities and flying cars

Trump said in multiple campaign videos that he would spearhead an effort to build so-called “Freedom Cities” to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”

In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.

In the March 2023 video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.

Electric vehicles

Trump has promised to roll back new car pollution rules at the Environmental Protection Agency that could require electric vehicles to account for up to two-thirds of new cars sold in the US by 2032. Biden’s electrical vehicle-related policies, Trump claimed at a Michigan rally last September , “spell the death of the US auto industry.”

“On day one, I will terminate Joe Biden’s electrical vehicle mandate, and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers,” Trump added.

Trump has promised to reduce energy prices by increasing domestic production. In several campaign appearances, he has laid out plans to end delays in federal drilling permits and leases.

“We’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill’ right away,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, during a victory speech after winning the state’s Republican caucuses in January.

At a South Carolina rally in February, he pledged to remove limits on American natural gas exports.

At the same rally in South Carolina, Trump pledged to impose “stiff penalties on China and other trade abusers.”

“It’s called you screw us, and we screw you,” Trump said.

Under his proposed “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” the former president said if other countries impose tariffs on the US, the country would impose “a reciprocal, identical” tariff right back .

It was the same pledge Trump made in a campaign video in 2023: to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said then, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.

It’s called you screw us, and we screw you.”

As part of a larger strategy to bring jobs back into the US, Trump also said he would implement his so-called “ America First ” trade agenda if elected. By setting universal baseline tariffs on a majority of foreign goods, the former president said Americans would see taxes decrease as tariffs increase. His proposal also includes a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods , as well as stopping China from buying up America and stopping the investment of US companies in China.

Trump also said in February that he would consider imposing a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if he’s reelected.

The former president has particularly focused on China, vowing in a January 2023 campaign video to restrict Chinese ownership of US infrastructure such as energy, technology, telecommunications and natural resources. Trump also said he would force the Chinese to sell current holdings that may put national security at risk. “Economic security is national security,” he said.

Trump has promised to extend the cuts from his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, notably the TCJA’s individual income tax breaks. The former president has also talked about reducing the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 15%.

“I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history,” the former president said last month at the Black Conservative Federation’s Honors Gala in South Carolina. “We’ll make it permanent and give you a new economic boom.”

I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history.”

Trump has also pledged to repeal Biden’s tax hikes , “immediately tackle” inflation and end what he called Biden’s “war” on American energy production.

Second Amendment

“I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum last April.

The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and that he would push Congress to pass a concealed carry reciprocity.

“I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video .

Trump added in multiple campaign videos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. If elected, Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.

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Verizon, nasa and rare beauty on social media that works.

23rd Annual Webby Awards

Entry deadline: december 20, 2020.

Our second edition of Vitals explores the fundamentals of social media today. In partnership with Verizon , The Webby Awards gathered New York’s creative community to hear from three leading digital strategists about the social media practices that should stay or go in 2024.

Our speakers presented how they’re thinking about social across three topics: Vital Today (a current practice they love), Vital Forever (an approach they find essential) and Vital Never (a practice they would cut). The event featured Tom Chirico , Senior Director, Head of Brand Engagement at Verizon, Stephanie L. Smith , Social Media Manager at NASA, and Ashley Murphy , Vice President, Consumer Marketing at Rare Beauty.

ICYMI —explore our takeaways from each of our three presenters and get inspired by the social disciplines they turn to.

“ Social media is a conversation, it’s not a broadcast medium.”

Tom Chirico, Senior Director, Head of Brand Engagement at Verizon

Tom Chirico leads brand engagement for Verizon, inclusive of social marketing and content development, creator and influencer strategy, and social editorial strategy. Previously he spent 8 years at Twitter (X) leading creative strategy as part of the platform’s in-house agency partnering with the world’s leading brands to build unique ideas and activations that pushed the creative potential of the platform.

1. Vital Today : The Co-Creator Economy

A move away from the old linear model, where brands traditionally would partner with talent to reach a spectrum of audiences, today’s co-creator model centers on the audience. It’s about intentionally developing partnerships with creators to thoughtfully connect with their audience. It’s vital to understand the audience as a brand. Get to know what makes every niche tick, and find your brand’s voice in it.

2. Vital Forever : ​​Celebrate Your Wins

There’s a ton of pressure online to keep innovating forward, but it’s vital to take pause and recognize your hard work. Fact is, social media is tough, and it’s not an exact science. With so many ideas pitched, only so many make it to the marketplace. So take time to celebrate your big campaigns and successes when they happen. Savor your moment, take stock of what worked and toast your team’s creativity.

3. Vital Never : Never Undervalue Your Instincts

If you’re in a social media position, it’s because you’ve showcased your instincts in this space were right. Instead of instantly getting caught up in all the trends, trust your social media intuition. The best data and strategy come from your instincts in action. Don’t just rely on the atmosphere on social or your data analytics—trust your gut. If you believe it’ll work, try it out.

Stephanie L. Smith, Social Media Manager at NASA

Explaining in plain English what’s new with America’s space program (and why it matters) is what Stephanie L. Smith does. She oversees NASA’s flagship social media team, which has conversations with the public and the media about all of the agency’s activities, from astronauts to X-ray telescopes and back again.  

1. Vital Today : Surprise and Delight

When you have an idea and your entire team is excited about it, there’s probably something there. Get creative about avenues you can take to reach different communities on social. Bring in talent that deeply resonates and dialogue with them to get their audience to tune in. Don’t be afraid to slide in comments and engage your brand in pop culture moments. Keep your audience’s head on a swivel—use references and inside jokes relevant to the platform and non-traditional for your brand.

2. Vital Forever : It’s a Conversation

Social media is a conversation, it’s not a broadcast medium. Listen closely to online communities, understand their opinions and create opportunities for them to ask questions. Find out what people are excited about online and engage. Create channels for interactive Q&As to connect meaningfully. 

3. Vital Never : Inaccessible Content

Design and create with accessibility in mind. Use alt text with clear image descriptions. Add captions in visual content. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t let that stand in the way of the good. It’s critical to create with everyone in mind, considering accommodations that can be made for every kind of user.

Ashley Murphy, Vice President, Consumer Marketing at Rare Beauty

Ashley Murphy spearheads Rare Beauty’s global go-to-market strategy, overseeing integrated marketing, paid media, social initiatives, and community engagement, contributing to the brand’s rapid climb as one of the fastest-growing prestige beauty brands on Instagram and TikTok . Her dynamic and holistic approach to consumer marketing involves crafting brands that not only captivate visually but also leave a lasting imprint on the cultural landscape.

1. Vital Today : Create Space for Intuition

Create a path for your team to trust their gut. The social media team knows your community best, connecting with your audiences daily through comments and DMs. With the emotional connection your social team builds, they have insight that data can’t provide. In a rapidly shifting social media landscape, data is good at understanding the past but not predicting the future. Push them to value and act on their instincts—synergy between creativity, keeping up with the moments and data analytics. A culture of informed intuition.

2. Vital Forever : Being of Service to Your Community

On social media, brands ask a lot of their community, from liking the post to commenting and sharing. Flip the script; create social media strategies by thinking about how you can be of service to your community. Think about unique ways to show up for them and make them feel seen, heard, and valued. Foster a relationship with your audience and understand how you can provide value. Create meaningful content that reflects your audience and meets them halfway.  

3. Vital Ne ver : Tracking the Competition

Yes, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of innovation. But that doesn’t have to rob your team of your originality or creativity. Instead of contending with the competition, stay focused, tune out the noise and strategize your next move. Make sure your social team has a firm foundation on your brand’s missions, vision and values.

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Harnessing new mediums or reimagining existing ones, the 2024 Webby Winners made major leaps in digital innovation.

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TRULY MALAYSIA ROADSHOW TO MOSCOW, TASHKENT, ALMATY & ISTANBUL RECONNECT TOURISTS TO MALAYSIA

MOSCOW, 14 September 2022 – Tourism Malaysia through its overseas offices in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey is organising a Truly Malaysia Roadshow , taking place from 12 th to 20 th September 2022. The roadshow begins in Moscow, followed by Tashkent, Almaty, and Istanbul.

Led by Mr. Iskandar Mirza Mohd Yusof, Acting Deputy Director General (Planning) of Tourism Malaysia, the Malaysian delegation consists of travel operators, hoteliers, state tourism bodies, and educational tourism industry players. The roadshow provides a platform for both Malaysian sellers and local buyers to participate in business-to-business (B2B) sessions and product presentations to revive, reconnect and create new partnerships in enhancing opportunities to boost tourist arrivals to Malaysia.

“One of the biggest draws is Malaysia's racial and cultural diversity, resulting in a mixed yet harmonious legacy that manifests itself in our festivals, architecture, clothing, language, cuisine, and other aspects of daily life,” said Mr. Iskandar Mirza, during the first session in Moscow.

“While the past two years have been tremendously challenging for us, we are glad to share that Malaysia has surpassed our initial target of 2 million international tourist arrivals since the reopening of our international borders. We have since revised our target of welcoming 9.2 million international tourist arrivals with RM 26.8 billion in tourism receipts for this year,” he added.

Malaysia has relaxed the entry procedures for fully-vaccinated travellers without requirements to undergo quarantine or pre-departure and on-arrival COVID-19 tests. Travel insurance is also not a prerequisite for foreigners entering Malaysia, and inbound travellers no longer need to fill in the Traveler’s Card on the country’s contact tracing app, MySejahtera.

About Tourism Malaysia

Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, also known as Tourism Malaysia, is an agency under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture Malaysia. It focuses on the specific task of promoting Malaysia as a preferred tourism destination. Since its inception, it has emerged as a major player in the international tourism scene. For more information, visit Tourism Malaysia’s social media accounts on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , YouTube , and TikTok .

Event photos:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SZiDZwriVd...

For inquiries, please contact:

Rizal Mas Senior Assistant Director International Promotions Division (AERO) [email protected] Tel: +603 8891 8373

Muadz Samat Assistant Director Corporate Communications Division [email protected] Tel: +603 8891 8755

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Trump is funneling campaign money into cash-strapped businesses. Experts say it looks bad.

Donald Trump’s main 2024 White House campaign fundraising operation sharply increased spending at the former president's properties in recent months, funneling money into his businesses at a time when he is facing serious legal jeopardy and desperately needs cash.

Trump’s joint fundraising committee wrote three checks in February and one in March to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, totaling $411,287 and another in March to Trump National Doral Miami for $62,337, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission this week.

Federal law and FEC regulations allow donor funds to be spent at a candidate’s business so long as the campaign pays fair market value, experts say. Trump has been doing it for years , shifting millions in campaign cash into his sprawling business empire to pay for expenses such as using his personal aircraft for political events, rent at Trump Tower and events at his properties, which has included hotels and private clubs.

While the practice is legal, some campaign finance experts believe it raises ethical concerns when a candidate is generating personal revenue off running for office.

Trump trial live updates: David Pecker expected to be first witness in hush money trial

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“When voters see something like this happening it contributes to their distrust of the political system and their elected officials' motives,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit government accountability group.

Trump faces huge legal costs amid multiple civil and criminal cases

The money Trump’s campaign is spending at his businesses could help the former president as he faces a big cash crunch.

Trump has been hit with a pair of large financial judgements after losing two civil lawsuits.

He posted a $91.6 million bond in a defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll , and a $175 million bond in a fraud case involving falsifying business records. The New York attorney general is challenging whether the deal Trump made to post the larger bond payment is financially sound.

The payments Trump’s campaign has made to his businesses are small compared to his large court-ordered financial judgements, but have been growing in recent months.

The Trump campaign and affiliated political committees paid businesses owned by Trump at least $4.9 million since the start of 2023, according to an analysis by USA TODAY. Most of that money – $4.1 million – went to TAG Air, Inc. for air travel.

Trump lists TAG Air, Inc among his assets on his latest financial disclosure required of presidential candidates, with a value of between $5 million and $25 million. It operates his private aircraft, nicknamed Trump Force One.

Trump's various campaign committees and a super PAC controlled by his supporters also spent at least $809,000 at his properties since the beginning of last year.

Campaign spending at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Doral in Miami

The bulk of the campaign spending at Trump's properties since the start of 2023 — $663,000 — has been at Mar-a-Lago, and most of it occurred in February. It’s not clear what events the money went toward.

A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to specific questions about the campaign spending at his properties but instead sent a statement attacking President Joe Biden.

Other GOP candidates also have been spending considerable campaign cash at Trump properties.

Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno's campaign spent $109,000 on "event catering" at Mar-a-Lago in April, December and January of 2023, records show. Trump endorsed Moreno in December . Moreno won the primary in March and will face three-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.

Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Jim Marchant's campaign spent about $67,000 at Mar-a-Lago on "event venue rental and catering" in November and December. Trump backed Marchant in his unsuccessful bid to be Nevada's secretary of state in 2022. Marchant is now seeking to unseat first-term Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.

A PAC called Giuliani Defense spent $2,400 on fundraising expenses and food at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey in January. That PAC has spent $540,000 on legal fees, according to FEC filings. Trump hosted a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani at Bedminster in September to help with the former New York mayor's legal costs, which stem in part from the criminal charges Giuliani faces in Fulton County, Georgia, for trying to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Trump hosted a party at Mar-a-Lago on March 5 with a large group of supporters to watch the Super Tuesday primary election results from 16 states. He also held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in October that drew hundreds of supporters, including U.S. Reps Marjorie Taylor Green and Byron Donalds, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and the actress Roseanne Barr.

Another fundraiser at Trump National Doral in March was hosted by former Ambassador Carlos Trujillo, with the money benefiting the Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC.

The Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, which raises money for Trump’s campaign and his Save America leadership PAC accounted for the majority of the spending at Trump properties, with other expenses paid for by Trump’s main campaign committee, the MAGA Inc. super PAC and Save America.

Concerns about Trump's business conflicts go back to 2016 election

Questions about how Trump’s businesses have benefited from his political career have swirled around him throughout the former president’s three campaigns and his four years in the White House.

Under pressure to avoid potential conflicts of interest between his role as president and his vast business dealings, Trump declared after winning the 2016 election that he wouldn't cut any "new deals." The incoming president also put his two adult sons in charge of the family business, which was controlled by a trust that critics said didn't have strong enough requirements to prevent potential ethical conflicts.

Lawsuits accusing Trump of violating the emoluments clauses in the Constitution during his presidency were unsuccessful. Critics said those seeking to influence Trump's administration funneled money into his businesses, including a hotel near the White House in Washington, D.C. that has since been sold and rebranded as a Waldorf Astoria.

America Democracy Legal Fund filed a complaint with the FEC in 2016 alleging “Mr. Trump is using funds from his presidential campaign to further his business and personal interests." The complaint was dismissed, but concerns remain in the minds of some campaign finance experts.

"People should be running for office because they want to serve the public, not because they want to enrich themselves," Ports said. "So the fact that campaigns are allowed to pay the candidate’s business raises those concerns. While legal, it creates kind of a negative impression of the election system."

Richard Briffault, a legislation professor at Columbia Law School, said Trump's use of campaign funds at his businesses may not be illegal, but it's "a little bit dicey."

'Nobody's ever seen anything like it'

Briffault said the only comparable political candidate with such a sprawling business may be former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who ran for president as a Democrat, but even then, they’re not an exact comparison. “Everything with Trump, nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” he said.

The primary thing Trump’s businesses need to do is charge his campaign and PACs the same amount they would charge any other paying customer for the services. But there’s also an ethical question of whether the campaign and PACs could get a better deal somewhere else.

“How much are they charging? And to what extent are they putting people up who might be staying someplace else that might be cheaper?” Briffault asked. “You could imagine that there could be cheaper venues to these things, but they’re purposely holding them there.” 

Trump's leadership PAC also has been spending vast sums on attorneys as the president faces four criminal cases. He currently is on trial in New York City in a case involving alleged payments to an adult film star during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual affair.

Since days after the 2020 election, the leadership PAC Save America spent more than $72.5 million on legal bills to many of the same firms that are representing him in his civil and criminal cases. That fund accounts for the bulk of his legal spending, but his affiliated committees have spent millions more.

Spending money on legal issues is not unusual for a campaign, but campaign finance experts say Trump has pushed the boundaries of what is allowable.

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California Governor Newsom launches abortion travel ban ad campaign in Alabama

By Dave Pehling

Updated on: April 22, 2024 / 1:41 PM PDT / CBS San Francisco

California Governor Gavin Newsom is taking aim at states considering abortion travel bans with the launch of a new ad campaign.

Newsom's Campaign for Democracy ad is set to air in Alabama starting Monday. The governor tweeted out the ad in a social media post Sunday morning.

Alabama’s abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest. Now, Republicans are trying to criminalize young women’s travel to receive abortion care. We cannot let them get away with this. pic.twitter.com/gHbYJYlEXk — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 21, 2024

The text with the video post reads, "Alabama's abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest. Now, Republicans are trying to criminalize young women's travel to receive abortion care. We cannot let them get away with this."

The 30-second commercial shows two nervous young women driving in a car passing a sign that reads "State Line 1 Mile." 

"We're almost there. You're gonna make it," the passenger tells the woman behind the wheel just before they hear a siren and are pulled over by a state trooper.

"Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive care," a voiceover says as the state trooper walks up to the car.

"Miss, I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle and take a pregnancy test," the trooper says, waving a test stick in one hand. The next shot shows the driver leaning on the hood of her car as the trooper puts her in handcuffs.

"Stop them by taking action at RightToTravel.org ," the voiceover intones as the ad ends.

Alabama is currently weighing a bill that would make it a crime to help women travel outside the state in order to receive an abortion. The ad is part of a larger effort to combat travel bans across the United States. Newsom was behind a similar ad that ran in Tennessee.

The RightToTravel.org website says that those two states and Oklahoma are considering bills that ban minors from traveling out of state to get an abortion without parental consent, even if it's a case of incest or if there is abuse in the family.

It isn't the first action the governor has taken in the political battle over abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022. Two days after the ruling, Newsom partnered with the governors of Oregon and Washington to issue a multi-state commitment promising to defend access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives.

In September of that year, he launched a billboard campaign in seven of the most restrictive anti-abortion states urging women seeking the procedure to come to California for treatment. He also signed more than a dozen new abortion laws  protecting women's reproductive rights and ordered the state to end its contract with Walgreens after the pharmacy giant  indicated it would not sell an abortion pill by mail in some conservative-led states . 

• Gavin Newsom
• Roe v. Wade

Dave Pehling started his journalism career doing freelance writing about music in the late 1990s, eventually working as a web writer, editor and producer for KTVU.com in 2003. He moved to CBS to work as the station website's managing editor in 2015.

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