What is Destination Marketing?

Firstly, let's answer the question "What is destination marketing?".

Destination marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a destination (town, city, region, country) with a purpose to increase the number of visitors. In other words, destination marketing is tourism advertising for a specific location. Unlike product marketing, where the products are delivered to customers through distribution channels, accoriding to destination marketing meaning, consumers travel to the destinations. Which bring some peculiarities to the ways of promotion.

Why Destination Marketing?

Over the last few years, travellers have discovered the places they were going to visit, book hotels and transportation, plan trips and share their emotions and memories with friends online. The main answer to the question ‘what destination marketing is for?’ – is to stay competitive.

The primary challenge is to make your consumers interested in your location before they arrive using social media marketing and search engine optimisation. For this:

• Show the privileges of your country (region, city, town etc)
• Create and share the story about the destination you promote
• Care about customer experience (CX) – be sure your website is attractive, convenient, and fast-loading.
• Create Google Posts via Google My Business profile about the best sightseeing, magnificent places, or traditional holidays. These will appear in the top search results with images enhancing your overall SEO for free.

However, depending on the purpose and destination, you should use different online tools.
For instance, to promote a country it is better to concentrate on contextual ads, search engine ads and social media (within your targeted region, i.e. the region you would like to target).

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To promote a town or a city, pay attention to testimonials services (as most likely, your potential customers would like to check references concerning accommodation facilities, activities, and your location accessibility).

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And the most useful tool to promote a region will be search engine ads and social media (pay attention to cultural and natural attractions, region peculiarities and features).

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How to Succeed in Destination Marketing?

9 of 10 travellers consider it essential to read online reviews.

Moreover, 95% of travellers always trust tour & activity reviews on third-party sites such as TripAdvisor.
However, if the destination is not that popular yet – travel consumers are looking for video and photo material to find out what to expect from the location they would like to visit. However, the first step in country promotion is to highlight a particular destination or to draw attention to it.
To succeed in tourism advertising, you should analyse the ‘product’ and focus your marketing activities on:

• Identifying the right audience (in other words answer the questions “Who are those people who want to see your destination?”, “How old are they?”, “How do they travel?”, “Do they travel with their families?”, “What are their needs?”)
• Finding their motivation (“Why would they like to see the destination?”, “What are they going to do there?”, “How much are they going to spend?”, “What do they want to get?”)
• Matching your audience ‘needs’ with ‘wants’.

A piece of advice here would be to cooperate with government officials of the country you are going to promote to get the most objective data for your research and to get a better understanding of the specificity of the promoted region.

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To delve deeper into destination marketing, we asked our digital marketing expert, who was involved in promoting tourism in Georgia, to answer the most common questions about destination marketing.

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How to Start Promoting a Destination if the Brand Has Not Been Promoted Before?

To create online destination marketing campaigns, we need to segment users who plan a trip or are looking for tours at the moment. For this, we use segments of interests, related to airline tickets, tours, summer and family vacations.

To improve the quality of this audience, we need to narrow down such targeting to interests in a specific destination. It can be historical, cultural spots or even cuisine.

You should decide whether to narrow interests or use broad targeting under specific socio-demographic data, based on your primary goals. Please remember that the narrower the audience, the more expensive such a campaign can cost.

Besides, you should determine the age category of users who will be interested in a potential trip to the promoted destination. Also, consider the conditions that other destinations offer consumers, as well as options for spending time there, for example, active/passive leisure.

Since one group can be interested in a calm vacation with their children, and another one can’t imagine their life without extreme. Based on this, it may be worthwhile to exclude the audience of minor users from showing ads.

Also, depending on the goals and KPIs, you can segment the audience by gender and age. For example, select groups of men aged 18-24 years, women aged 25-36 years old, and so on.

Do not forget about ad creatives and their impact on different gender and age groups of consumers.

Digital Strategies for Destination Marketing

Tourism boards and destination marketing organizations (DMOs) face increasing pressure to stand out in a crowded global travel market. From limited visibility and seasonal tourism to dependence on offline marketing, digital strategies offer powerful solutions to overcome these barriers. Here's how a data-driven digital approach can transform a destination's visibility and impact.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Pain Point: Low organic visibility and limited search presence for key travel queries.

Destinations often struggle to appear on Google for essential travel-related keywords — such as “things to do in [destination]” or “best beaches in [country].” This is especially true for emerging or under-promoted destinations.
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Solution: Travel SEO helps create lasting visibility by:

• Building optimized landing pages for different themes (adventure, culture, family trips).
• Structuring content around traveler search intent (e.g., "when to visit Georgia" or "Seychelles honeymoon packages").
• Improving local SEO for city-specific or regional tourism entities.
• Attracting international visitors by creating multilingual content targeting different markets.
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2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
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Pain Point: Inability to quickly attract travelers during peak booking windows or promote new packages.

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Some destinations find it difficult to reach global audiences fast enough — especially during key booking seasons or when launching new experiences.
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‍Solution: Travel PPC offers immediate visibility with:

• Geo-targeted ads focused on feeder markets (e.g., UK tourists for Seychelles).
• Campaigns tailored to promote specific regions or experiences (e.g., wine tours, spa retreats).
• Seasonal pushes to maximize high-conversion periods.
• Retargeting to stay top of mind with previously engaged users.

Real Example: Promodo helped drive high-intent traffic and increase booking in 9 times due to the implemented tourism advertising campaign for the Maimon Group.

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3. Content Marketing
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Pain Point: Lack of awareness and emotional connection with the destination.

When travelers don’t know what makes your destination unique, they simply don’t choose it. Especially for lesser-known locations, stories matter.

Solution: Content marketing builds emotional resonance by:

• Highlighting authentic experiences (e.g., local food, traditions, festivals).
• Publishing inspirational guides, itineraries, and insider tips.
• Using SEO-optimized storytelling to build awareness and support rankings.
• Creating long-form and multimedia content that supports social sharing and engagement.

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4. Social Media Campaigns
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Pain Point: Poor social presence and low engagement from potential travelers.

Many DMOs post content inconsistently or fail to adapt messaging across platforms and audience segments.
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Solution: Effective social media campaigns:

• Use dynamic content formats like Reels and Stories to capture attention.
• Encourage UGC (user-generated content) and influencer partnerships.
• Promote events and seasonal highlights in real-time.
• Tailor tone and visuals for each market (e.g., more luxury content for UAE, adventure-focused for Scandinavia).
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5. Email Marketing
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Pain Point: Inability to retain interest or drive repeat visits.

Even when travelers discover a destination, they often leave without converting — or forget about it entirely.
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Solution: Email marketing nurtures interest by:

• Segmenting leads based on travel intent, region, or past behavior.
• Sending personalized content (e.g., “Your 5-Day Family Getaway in Georgia”).
• Re-engaging abandoned form-fill users with relevant follow-ups.
• Promoting last-minute deals, new experiences, or off-season travel ideas.
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6. PPC Automation: Scaling Campaigns for Every Destination and Route
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Pain Point: For many destination marketers — especially those promoting multiple cities, regions, or international travel routes — running PPC ads manually is overwhelming. Updating prices, availability, seasonal content, and languages across hundreds (or thousands) of routes or experiences becomes impossible to manage effectively at scale.

Solution: PPC Automation
With automation, destination marketers can:

• Generate and manage thousands of hyper-targeted campaigns based on real-time data.
• Automatically update ad creatives, prices, and landing pages to reflect live inventory and offers.
• Pause or activate ads depending on route availability or seasonal demand.
• Create multilingual campaigns that match user intent in local languages.
• Reduce human error and cost-per-click (CPC) through structured ad architecture.

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How Does Marketing of Destinations Works in Practice?

Destination Marketing Case Study 1: Promodo & The Georgian National Tourism Administration

The Georgian National Tourism Administration partnered with Promodo to enhance the country's visibility and attract more international tourists from key target regions.

Promodo developed a data-driven PPC strategy, including precise geo-targeting, audience segmentation, multilingual ad creatives, and A/B testing. Campaigns were optimized for each target market to ensure relevance and engagement.

As a result, the number of international tourists visiting Georgia increased by 14% year-over-year, proving the effectiveness of tailored digital advertising in tourism promotion.
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👉 Read the full case study for more insights.

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Destination Marketing Case Study 2: Promodo & The Seychelles Islands

Promodo also supported the Seychelles Tourism Board by working on SEO and media promotion. Their efforts helped strengthen the destination’s online presence and attract organic international traffic, reinforcing Promodo’s expertise in marketing exotic travel destinations.

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FAQ

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Should you promote your destination using only digital marketing tools, or enhance the strategy with offline advertising?

Offline promotion, TV or out-of-home advertising, will improve brand awareness and increase audience reach, attracting the users who might have missed online ads. It is essential to determine the places for advertising offline, which will be relevant to the portrait of the desired target audience.

How to set proper KPIs for evaluating the performance of destination marketing campaigns?

Here are the most common KPIs for destination marketing campaigns:

• Customer inquiries;
• Newsletter subscription;
• Traffic;
• Video views;
• Other conversions actions on site

How do you market a destination with a small or limited budget?

Focus on high-impact, cost-efficient strategies:

• Targeted SEO for long-tail search queries
• Retargeting past visitors or interest groups via social and display ads
• Partnering with influencers or travel content creators
• Using free tools like Google Business and user-generated content (UGC)

What are the biggest mistakes in destination marketing?

• Not having a clear value proposition or brand message
• Failing to localize content for different languages and cultures
• Ignoring mobile optimization
• Underutilizing automation for campaign management
• Relying too heavily on outdated methods like brochures or print ads

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