The most popular category by far in the inaugural International Travel & Tourism Awards, saw a whopping 27 organisations enter, leaving it up to the panel of esteemed industry judges to rattle it down to the most ‘stand-out’ campaigns.
Judges were looking for organisations that have implemented the finest strategies to successfully market their tourism products or services using digital technologies. The judges handpicked the seven leading campaigns that are listed below.
Michael Ball, Co-Founder of Traverse and one of the judges on the panel for Best Digital Campaign in Tourism commented: “There were some fantastic entries in this category, some really innovative campaigns that people have been running, some fantastic returns, and seeing who they are targeting and what they have been getting out of them has been brilliant.
“The biggest things personally for me is seeing the way companies are really innovating. These were not just run of the mill award entries that you might have seen five years ago, people are keeping up to date with the latest trends and looking ahead to new social platforms, video and other digital innovation.”
The winners will be announced to an audience of more than 500 leading industry figures during a prestigious awards ceremony at London’s Grade I-listed Tobacco Dock, not far from WTM London’s ExCeL venue (Tuesday 6 November).
- The #followthespiders teaser campaign by Warner Bros. Studio Tour London was effective in capturing the imagination of the global Harry Potter fanbase. The key campaign objectives were to generate social media conversation, increase brand awareness and awareness of the new Forbidden Forest expansion while generating ticket sales.
The hashtag, #followthespiders, generated more than 125m impressions over eight days, it also achieved global press coverage. The engagement resulted with an 18% uplift in year on year ticket sales with brand awareness increasing by 5% year on year.
Sarah Roots, SVP, Warner Bros. Worldwide Tours commented: “It’s wonderful to be shortlisted in the launch year for these awards and we’re delighted our creativity and innovation has been recognised in this digital campaign.”
- Faroe Islands Translate by Visit Faroe Islands and Atlantic Airways sought to raise awareness about the Faroe Islands as a travel destination and help protect the Faroese language by creating a clever and ambitious marketing campaign that dared to take on Google. The campaign went viral and generated 1.4 billion media impressions and 20 million euros in PR value. The translation service generated 1.3 million translations from 181 different countries, and it engaged the local community, with 41% of the Faroese population taking part in the campaign. The worldwide media coverage was enough to capture Google’s attention, and they are now working together to add Faroese to Google Translate.
Levi Hanssen, Content Manager, Faroe Islands commented: “We’re thrilled to be shortlisted. It’s great to get recognition for what turned out to be a hugely successful marketing campaign. It connected people from all over the world with Faroese locals, more people worldwide now know about the Faroe Islands, and who knows, the Faroese language might even end up on Google Translate!”
- AirAsia needed to rejuvenate its brand image in conjunction with Visit Asean@50 campaign. Together with WE ARE KIX they came up with the Adventure Live campaign, which is a one-of-a-kind travelogue that was broadcasted live from six Asean destinations on AirAsia’s Facebook via Facebook Live. Audiences were taken for a ride as they interacted and voted for the adventures the hosts experienced.
This generated interest in Asean destinations, which consequently increased customer activity. Seat sales increased by 27% during the campaign period, and 14% compared to the same period the year before.
- LoveZagreb – Zagreb Shortcuts# by Zagreb Tourist Board was a campaign consisting of blogs and vlogs that provided potential tourists with different information that is usually included in the traditional brochures. It allowed the destination to have more visibility and an open communication channel with potential visitors. The Zagreb Tourist Board carefully picked out topics to cover less popular areas of Zagreb, that were off the beaten track, which helped tackle problems such as overcrowding and the aided the sustainability of certain attractions.
The campaign generated increased traffic to the blog and website from targeted markets, such as United Kingdom (21.17%), Spain (16.83%), Italy (15.24%), France (11.02%) and Germany (8.66%) to name a few.
Martina Bienenfeld, CEO, Zagreb Tourist Board commented: “Zagreb Tourist Board truly appreciates being shortlisted in the Best Digital Campaign in Tourism at the International Travel & Tourism Awards. We consider this already a great achievement and recognition of our efforts to promote Croatia’s capital through carefully planned and conducted digital campaign, which has huge impact for the development of our tourist offer. Congratulations to all the other candidates as well and we’re looking forward to the awarding ceremony in November!”
- Visit Jersey, in an attempt to gain more interest from Londoners, arranged for a high-definition camera to be set-up at St Ouen’s Bay, they then invited local pub-goers and influential travel writers to a trendy bar in Shoreditch, London, to witness the sight of the Jersey sunset in this exciting campaign they have named Shoreditch to Shoreline.
The entire event of the crowd watching the sun go down was documented in a separate video and has now gone viral, receiving more than 120,000 views online and more than 2,200 shares on Facebook.
Keith Beecham, CEO, Visit Jersey commented: “We are delighted to have been shortlisted for this prestigious award which celebrates the hard work of our Visit Jersey team to help the world fall in love with Jersey. The ‘Shoreditch to Shoreline’ video was all about proudly bringing our product to market. The lion’s share of our visitors are from the UK and, with 11 daily flights departing from London to Jersey, the capital is a key target market for us. Our brand proposition ‘the island break’ offers a fresh, vital escape from city living and what better way to capture this than with a perfect Jersey sunset, streamed live from shoreline to fashionable Shoreditch. We look forward to continuing our efforts to share the island break with the world.”
- DEC BBDO on behalf of Canary Islands Tourism activated a plan for micro-segmenting their inbound market by motivation and promoted this via content platforms. They came up with The 7 islands that became 47 With the new “always-on” micro-segmented system, they generated different micro actions for each motivation, specifically for each person according to the contact points along their consumer journey.
María Méndez, Manager, Promotur Turismo de Canarias commented:”For the Canary Islands and its commitment to digital marketing and innovation, it is a great honour to be among the nominees of the first ITTA Awards. We wish you a bright future and we hope to be by your side in the next World Travel Marketing editions”.
- Visit Denmark worked with East West Marketing in effectively raising Denmark’s profile in China as a vibrant, China-friendly, fly-drive destination by leveraging the popularity of self-drive tours through a clever and strategic consumer digital campaign with China’s transportation titan DiDi.
When Denmark Meets DiDi campaign built awareness achieving almost 1,300 unique driving itineraries and more than 35,000 itinerary votes. Overall, the campaign generated 16 million impressions on Didi’s mobile app with a 0.5% click-through rate and 215.3 million impressions across social. In order to maximize awareness, an integrated public relations campaign yielded £726,501 in earned media.
Alina Xiang, President and CEO, East West Marketing commented: “As the China market continues to mature, it will shape and define the future of global tourism. This nomination recognizes East West Marketing’s unwavering commitment to serve as a digital leader and prepare our clients for not only the tourism demands of today, but also tomorrow.”
The awards were co-chaired by Marcelo Risi, UNWTO Chief of Communications, and Nick Pilbeam, Reed Travel Exhibitions Director. Expert judges were drawn from top industry organisations including London & Partners, Euromonitor International, public relations body PRCA, Global Wellness Institute, Association of Southern African Travel Agents, and LGBT consultancy Out Now.
To book your table at the International Travel & Tourism Awards, please visit https://awards.wtm.com/