Digital travel marketing
Digital travel marketing is one of the ways of communication between destinations and tourists, through which DMOs attract tourists to their territories. This makes digital marketing an important part of smart tourism because it helps to communicate relevant and inspiring information to tourists.
There are many challenges in digital travel marketing. Basically, the problems are not technical, but content.
Often photos and videos posted in social places do not meet the expectations of tourists. Link.
Mistakes in goal-setting marketing are common, when the main goal is to sell something, and not to captivate and inspire. A lot of destinations and tourism organizations release template videos, post posts on social networks using the same templates. In our opinion, digital destination campaigns lack creativity and a better understanding of their tourists. This idea has long been supported, as evidenced by a lot of information materials on different sites, for example WTM.
The situation is no better with the content of hotels, guides and other travel service providers. People rightly believe that such content also characterizes the destination as a whole. And here, too, there is a problem: DMOs work out little and somehow react to the content of tourism organizations. And if hotels and guides are subject to certification, undergo some kind of training and selection for the quality of their services, then there is no control over online content or at least help from the destination management, although any tourist content directly affects the reputation and attendance of the destination. There are positive exceptions here, for example, the official Visit Britain website provides stakeholders with clarifications about digital marketing.
DMO Northern Ontario provides courses for local stakeholders.
Another problem of digital promotion is the lack of a systematic understanding of this work by tourism businesses.
The solution, in our opinion, is to educate local businesses in literacy and the basics of Internet marketing. There are several solutions, such as tutorials or guides.
The flow of tourism marketing completely into the digital format is one of the most powerful trends in modern tourism. Accordingly, capital and competition and specialists flow there. The latest trends are:
US Digital Advertising Spending.
Growth in digital travel ad spending in 2022.
Digital Travel Marketing Growth Predictions.
Digital Travel Advertising Trends
Zenith Digital Travel Advertising Status and Forecast Report.
Many destinations around the world have realized the importance of digital destination promotion. Below we have placed various case studies of destinations so that online promotion becomes informative, inspiring and useful for tourists.
Kenya launches new marketing campaign mainly on digital platforms. More.
Thailand launches Digital Tourism Program. More.
San Diego uses mostly digital advertising in its work and invites local stakeholders to place their advertising campaigns on the resources of the local SDTA DMO. More.
British Columbia received a special award for its digital marketing program. More.
Tasmania launches new marketing campaign primarily on digital channels. More.
Oklahoma Launches New $1.2M Advertising Campaign With Increased Digital Advertising Share. More.
An interesting selection of creative destination marketing campaigns. More.
If you have interesting cases and examples of smart tourism in digital advertising of destinations, or you just liked or inspired such advertising, please send us a link, we will study and publish this case on our portal.