Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
showing their creativity and skills. From celebrities, writers, tour guides, environmentalists,
students, to mums, dads and retirees everyone was vying for the Best Job in the World. A shortlist
of 50 applicants from 22 countries was narrowed down to a fi nal 16, 15 of whom were chosen
by Tourism Queensland, and the 16th a 'wild card' applicant Claire Wang from Taiwan chosen by
popular vote. The job went to 'ostrich-riding, bungee-jumping' charity worker Ben Southall
from Hampshire in England, who was still in 2011 reporting via blogs on his adventures.
Tourism Queensland claims that the campaign generated more than $80m of equivalent media
advertising space - for an investment of just $1m (Sweney 2009). The campaign, developed by
the Brisbane-based agency of Nitro, won two top awards at the Cannes Lions International
Advertising Festival.
By offering an opportunity to win a free vacation, marketers involved with these types of
campaigns create excitement, interest and commitment among competitors and hope to raise
awareness of their destination by generating free media coverage. In 2009, the Orlando
Convention and Visitor's Bureau initiated a 67 Days of Smiles contest, promising two lucky
winners the chance to visit Orlando for 67 days. The idea was that it would take a tourist 67
days to experience everything the Orlando area has to offer. Kyle and Stacey were chosen for the
job and recorded their trip on a 67 Days of Smiles blog. By the end of their experience, the
Days of Smiles website had recorded over 67,000 hits and their Twitter account had almost
1,000 followers. The travelling duo was also featured by several media outlets including the
New York Times
.
Twitter is increasingly being used as a stand-alone marketing tool to generate awareness for a
tourism product or service. TheVirginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) won a marketing award in
2009 for a wine tourism promotion called 'Vintage Tweets' - a cutting-edge public relations
effort that utilized social media to promote wine tourism in Virginia. VTC organized Vintage
Tweets in September of 2009 in Arlington to kick off October Virginia Wine Month. The state
tourism agency used Twitter to target media, bloggers and consumers who were passionate about
wine travel, live in and around Washington, DC, and had a signifi cant number of Twitter
followers. VTC used Twitter to invite 40 of those consumers to a wine reception, featuring six
different wineries from across the state. The guests tweeted about their wine tastings and also
took part in Virginia Wine Travel Twitter trivia. In total, Vintage Tweets was able to reach over
43,000 consumers in just 24 hours, providing key facts and travel ideas to potential visitors from
across the country.
One relatively new social media platform that is helping tourism and hospitality businesses is
the emergence of geo-location sites such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Foursquare
encourages consumers to broadcast their whereabouts (or 'check-in') in exchange for discounts
or coupons etc. Foursquare recently hit one billion check-ins (Mogg 2011). People use the
Foursquare app on their smartphones to check in to places like restaurants, pubs and hotels, and
just about any other type of physical and even nonphysical location. Once they check in, users
often share that information with friends, families and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
Foursquare users compete for badges points and 'mayorships', awarded to those who check in
to a place most frequently. Business owners claim their venue on Foursquare (for free) and
reward people simply for checking in, for checking in a certain number of times, for checking
in with friends, or reward the person who checks in the most (the 'mayor'). For example, Chili's
Grill and Bar, a national restaurant chain in the US, rewards its customers with free chips and
salsa every time they check in. Chili's makes money on the deal because customers don't walk
into Chili's just for free chips and salsa and leave. They order appetizers, entrees and drinks.
Dutch Airline KLM used Foursquare as part of an innovative social media campaign that
focused on random acts of kindness.
An effective way to emotionally connect with consumers
