Sustainable Travel: Welcoming While Educating

Situation & Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot of travelers to rural destinations. Those new to outdoor recreation joined experienced people on the trails, in campgrounds, and in the backcountry. For many small communities, this was a positive side effect of restricted travel and fear of crowded places. However, it also had a significant impact on the wild lands that make these destinations so precious.

It was important that travelers continue to feel welcome as 2020 and 2021 travel to Arizona’s outdoors was being planned, but education about sustainable travel was necessary. The Arizona Office of Tourism partnered with Leave No Trace to create educational content, and it needed to be distributed to various types of travelers quickly.

Strategy

Our first step was to create inspirational content that educated domestic travelers about care for the beautiful landscapes of Arizona. Knowing that a variety of audiences would view the content in advance of a visit, we crafted a story and a video that would resonate with solo travelers, families, DINKs, and travelers over the age of 55.

We then ran five digital media campaigns in conjunction, tailored to each of these audiences. Using custom audiences, retargeting, and lookalike audiences on Facebook and YouTube, we inspired responsible travel using our custom story, then further educated travelers about Leave No Trace principals on the client landing page, and finally encouraged continued engagement via a newsletter signup call-to-action.

Results

Due to grant requirements, this campaign was restricted to just over one month. Nevertheless, our team produced the content on a quick turnaround and distributed it beyond expectations, despite competing for attention with holiday and election advertisers.

• In just one month, messaging about responsible travel in Arizona was seen nearly 1.4 million times, generating 21,609 clicks to read more about LNT in Arizona.
• The engagement rate of 48% was significantly higher than industry average of 8-12%
• Cost per click of $0.33 is well below travel/hospitality industry average of $0.63 for Facebook
• 55+ and families were the best-performing markets in this campaign