Drive traffic and revenue for your destination marketing organization smart travel marketing strategies. The best part? They're all faster and easier to implement than you'd expect. 

Marketing for travel and tourism is a fickle beast. Sure, there are principles from other industries that can work, but impactful travel marketing in 2025 requires a tricky balance of digital engagement, interactivity, and “real life” experiences to keep travellers hooked (or, to quote our founder, “to put heads in beds and butts in seats”).

It’s one thing to get visitors “in the door,” but keeping them engaged before, during, and after their trip is where the magic and the long-term ROI happens.

The good news? Building the right mix of tactics is far easier than it was five or ten years ago. The even better news? With summer still in full swing in North America, there’s plenty of time to brainstorm and launch tourism marketing strategies that can drive traffic and revenue before (and during) shoulder season. 

Here are four travel marketing strategies you can steal for 2025, complete with real-world inspiration to show exactly how they work.

Attract Niche Audiences with Themed Trails and Experiences

Themed trails turn a scattered set of attractions into a cohesive, story-driven journey. By linking unique businesses, landscapes, and cultural highlights under a unifying theme, you can:

Build an currated and connected experience for any interest, taste, or experience

 has mastered this approach with its “Unearthed” trail. Rather than just mapping out where to eat, sleep, and explore, it curates a journey that stitches together culture, cuisine, and jaw-dropping landscapes.

Day one might see travellers sipping lattes in tiny prairie cafés before stepping into a UNESCO World Heritage Site where dinosaur fossils whisper stories from 75 million years ago. Day two blends high art with small-town charm: theatre performances in Rosebud, vintage treasure hunts, and live music under the Badlands sky.

For destination marketing organizations, this approach does more than create buzz and drive foot traffic. It connects otherwise isolated attractions into a cohesive, marketable experience and transforms a collection of businesses and points of interest into something far more valuable than the sum of its parts.

The takeaway: A well-crafted trail is more than a guide or other one-dimensional travel marketing initiative. It’s a conversion tool that turns casual interest into booked itineraries, and booked itineraries into lifelong advocates. 

 want to connect across your destination, and build and launch your first trail in less time than you think thanks to a handful of 

Drive Engagement with Challenges and Survey Contests 

Survey contests and challenges transform simple promotions into interactive experiences that visitors will actually want to engage with. As a bonus, they capture actionable data your organization can use. 

By blending exploration with incentives, you can:

is a prime example of a survey contest done right. It guides participants through Surrey’s top birding spots with playful challenges like bingo and trivia, all tied to a prize package. As travellers explore together and the UGC content and social shares roll in, important detailed insights emerge about your most engaged visitors and which strategies resonate the most. 

 survey contests keep visitors exploring, spending, and telling you exactly what will bring them back.

Build Post-Trip Loyalty with a Reward Program

Rewards programs turn one-time visits into ongoing relationships. By offering perks tied to exploration, reward programs promote engagement mid and post-trip by offering digital or physical rewards (think t-shirts, digital badges, stickers, etc).

Especially when integrated with an app or mobile experience, reward programs can: 

Drive traffic to owned channels and stores

Improve advocacy and emotional connections post-trip

. Through its app, travellers earn points for checking in at breweries, completing challenges, and conquering curated itineraries. Those points can be redeemed online for 

, turning every pint into a step toward their next favourite hoodie or cap.

Importantly, reward programs can also extend the visitor experience well beyond the trip itself. It strengthens brand connection, builds loyalty, and keeps your destination in the conversation long after the last check-in.

Building a rewards program with online redemption

 doesn’t just hand out swag. It transforms visitors into advocates who keep coming back. 

Culinary trails transform a region’s food culture into a ready-made itinerary that’s as marketable as it is mouthwatering. A specific kind of themed trail, culinary trails weave together a selection of standout eateries under a focused theme. 

Endlessly flexible, with a culinary trail you can: 

Showcase local flavors and cultural heritage

Encourage exploration across multiple neighborhoods

Extend visitor stays with multi-day tasting opportunities

Attract niche culinary interests by highlighting specific cuisines and hidden gems 

 is likely the prime example of this. Home to one of the highest concentrations of Asian restaurants in North America, Richmond has distilled its culinary diversity into a curated list of 17 eateries serving everything from delicate har gow to Afghan mantu. Visitors can follow themed itineraries, like “Hidden Gems” or “Best Dim Sum”, or create their own route with an interactive map.

The experience is more than just a meal. It’s a deep dive into Richmond’s cultural history, shaped by generations of immigrants who brought their culinary traditions with them. Along the way, travellers discover bustling dim sum halls, hidden gems, and overlooked food courts that locals swear by. Featured on CNN Travel’s “12 of the world’s most enticing food and drink trails,” the Dumpling Trail turns an everyday craving into a destination-worthy adventure.

can do more than feed visitors — it can define your destination, encourage repeat visits, and create a foodie reputation that travels faster than any ad campaign.

If there’s a thread here, it’s this: the best tourism and travel marketing in 2025 doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels like discovery, like an invitation to take part in something that matters to the place you’re in.

Whether that’s chasing dumplings, earning a pint-fueled hoodie, hunting for birds, or tracing the bones of prehistoric giants, the goal isn’t just to get visitors in the door. It’s to give them a reason to linger, explore, and carry your story home with them.

Smart Travel Marketing Strategies for 2025 (with Examples)

This summer, we’ve rolled out some of the most powerful tools yet to help you manage destination campaigns, curate immersive regional content, and supercharge visitor engagement through the app and admin. Here’s your full rundown of what’s new—and what it unlocks for your team.

🚀 Tourismo Feature Release: June & July 2025

This summer, we’ve rolled out some of the most powerful tools yet to help you 

 through the app and admin. Here’s your full rundown of what’s new—and what it unlocks for your team.

🎯 Campaigns Is Now Live — Manage Everything in One Place

We’re thrilled to announce the full release of 

—your new command center for destination marketing campaigns.

Now live in production, Campaigns bring project management directly into the Tourismo platform with:

Whether you're launching a walking tour series, an arts campaign, or a regional push, 

 streamlines planning, coordination, and performance tracking—without needing third-party tools.

🧠 Magic Regions: Bulk-Add Listings to Curated Areas

 using smart tag and keyword search from within the Region editor. Select a region, search listings, and instantly add all relevant businesses or events. Magic Regions make it easy to build compelling, content-rich areas with just a few clicks.

📝 Interactive Content Pickers for Newsletters, Blogs & Pushes

 in your newsletters, blog posts, and platform pushes is easier—and way more powerful.

: Add Listings, Itineraries, Events, or Challenges directly into your content

: Use tag, featured status, or custom filters to curate exactly what shows up

: Spotlight a specific event, itinerary, or listing with one click

: Control layout and styling to match your tone and goals

 in the block editor. 🙌
No more redoing blocks or losing your layout—just seamless editing and faster workflows.

These tools give you a flexible storytelling engine, perfect for seasonal campaigns, onboarding emails, and community engagement updates.

🧭 Themed & Filtered Regions: Tell Local Stories with Tags

 using tag-based filters. Organize listings and events into curated collections—like “Vintage Stores”, “Indigenous Artists”, or “Local Makers”—within geographic boundaries.

Create virtual regions based on a theme, and filter what shows by tags AND boundaries

Turn filtering on/off per region in your app or WordPress integration

Perfect for destinations looking to tell deeper, more personal stories of place.

 to help drive real-time discovery, boost engagement, and simplify configuration:

 display time-based promotions on listing cards

 gives visitors context for what's nearby

 directly in the Admin panel—without needing to resubmit to app stores. Update layouts, toggles, and style options on the fly.

🏷 Tag Grouping & Collapsing Accordions

Long lists of tags? No problem. Tags can now be 

grouped by category and collapsed into intuitive accordions

, adding polish and clarity to your gamified experiences.

📊 Improved Reporting & Behavior Insights

Get smarter with your data. We’ve made several upgrades to reporting and behavioral tracking:

 between homepage summary and report pages

Deep linking from listings to user profiles

 is now included in listing and platform APIs—ensuring accurate hours across regions

Need precise control over DMO reporting zones? You can now define which municipal districts a DMO covers under 

Admin → Organizations → Edit → Areas

. This ensures that listing and event traffic reports accurately reflect real-world partnerships and jurisdictions.

Build segments and cohorts based on real behavior.

Challenge logic now behaves more intuitively:

“Earned Badge” modals give instant visual feedback

These improvements give you cleaner metrics and a more predictable user experience.

🛠 Bulk Edit System: Faster Admin Workflows

 tool for Listings, Challenges, Events, Regions, and more. Instantly:

This new system dramatically improves efficiency and reduces manual work across all your admin tools.

🧭 Custom Website Navigation (Standard Web)

Links to custom content types or filtered collections

Tailored user journeys for your destination

🛑 Cleaner WordPress API: Hidden Tags Now Stay Hidden

If you're using the WordPress API, we've improved how tags are delivered:

Hidden tags (used for internal ops or filtering) are excluded automatically
✅ This keeps your public content clean and free from backend clutter.

Feature Release: June/July 2025

Authentic, well-structured storytelling is now essential for DMOs to ensure their destination content is recognized, trusted, and promoted by AI-powered search tools and travel assistants. We put together a few tips and tricks for optimizing your blog posts for AI

🤖 AIO for DMOs: Why Authentic Storytelling Is the Key to Winning Over the Robots (and Your Visitors)

In the past, your blog posts and destination stories were written for two audiences: real people planning a trip, and search engines indexing your content.

Search results are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence—whether it's Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), ChatGPT plugins, Perplexity, Bing’s Copilot, or travel planning bots that summarize the internet in a blink. That means your destination’s story might be interpreted, remixed, and recommended by a robot before a human even sees your blog post.

. It's a growing content strategy that ensures your articles, blog posts, and landing pages are 

understood and surfaced effectively by large language models (LLMs)

Where SEO is about keywords and rankings, AIO is about 

training the AI to know what your destination is known for

, who you are as a community, and what content is credible, trustworthy, and useful enough to include in a travel planning response.

TL;DR: If your content isn’t clear, helpful, and human, the robots might skip it entirely.

📍 Why This Matters for DMOs and Tourism Content Creators

“Where should I go in BC in October?”

“Is there a wine trail near Penticton?”

“Best Indigenous cultural experiences on Vancouver Island?”

These aren’t typed into Google anymore. They’re asked to AI assistants. And the answers they return? They’re based on blogs, websites, and online content 

If your destination doesn’t have fresh, well-structured, human-driven content online, 

you’re invisible in this new digital landscape

Good news: You already have the secret weapon AI is looking for: 

LLMs are trained to surface content that is:

: Not a copy-paste or shallow roundup (good riddance, listicles!) 

: With named authors, linked sources, and citations

interview with a third-generation cheesemaker

? These stories are gold. They help AI build a narrative about your region that’s hard to fake (and hard to compete with).

Heads up: if you’re not telling your destination’s story, AI will piece one together from TripAdvisor, Reddit, and someone’s outdated blog from 2013. The lesson? Control your destination's narrative! 

✅ How to Optimize for AIO Without Selling Your Soul

You don’t need to become a machine to work with one. Here’s how you can 

keep your content human and still AIO-ready

Be specific and helpful. Instead of “A Winter’s Tale,” go with:

“3 Cozy Winter Getaways Near Nelson, BC (with Hot Tubs & Craft Beer)”

Help AI understand who’s speaking and where. Say:

“We chatted with Sienna, owner of Moonbird Coffee in Comox Valley…”

“We interviewed a local café owner…”

Include links to booking pages, directions, maps, hours, pricing, or other concrete info. If your blog post answers the “how” and “when,” AI is more likely to trust it.

4. Structure Your Content for Robots and Humans

Bullet points for itineraries or highlights

FAQ blocks at the end of posts (like “When’s the best time to visit?”)

5. Cite Your Sources (Even If It’s You)

Add author names, dates, and links to external partners or tourism operators. This builds credibility, which AI values more than ever.

AIO doesn’t replace SEO. In fact, it actually enhances it. Optimizing for AI ensures that when someone types a question into Google or asks ChatGPT for “underrated road trips in BC,” your content:

Gets linked or quoted as a trusted source

Gets credit for being real, relevant, and recent

It’s not magic. It’s just smart content creation, grounded in what you already do best: 

The most powerful way to optimize your destination for AI search is to 

publish regular, specific, human-centered stories

 that only your organization can tell. Whether it's about a trail cleanup effort, a new mural by a local artist, or where to watch the northern lights, 

you are the voice that teaches AI what your destination is all about

So write often. Write well. And write like someone’s planning a dream trip based on your words.

AI Optimization for Destination Marketing Organizations

Get access to the resources and support you need to deliver impactful tourism campaigns in way less time. Pick a campaign package, get connected with tourism experts, and let your dedicated Tourismo team handle the rest. 

In case you didn’t know, Tourismo is closely related to The Number — a 21-year old agency in Victoria, BC with deep ties to the tourism industry. We’ve served hundreds of tourism industry clients over the years. The experience we’re lucky enough to have built is deep. 

But we’ve always known the agency-model isn’t 

 the right fit for every scenario or tourism organization. 

Those years of experience informed the creation of Tourismo. With Tourismo, our objective has always been to transform how tourism development, stewardship, marketing and expertise is accessed, packaged, and delivered

Today, we’re over the moon to announce a solution to “tourism industry marketing woes” that’s been years in the making: 



While there are exceptions, the current state of working with most agencies to build and deliver tourism campaigns is — well — pretty grim. 

To simply get started with an agency to build a campaign requires valuable time and money spent on administrative overhead and RFPs. 

 get off the ground, more often than not we see tourism organizations having to manage a patchwork of contractors and then being left with a massive planning document that the already busy tourism organization has to execute. 

The reality is that traditional agency models are slow and expensive. But even worse, old school agency models leave a good chunk of that campaign execution work up to the one person who needs that support the most — the client! 

Time and again we’ve seen promising tourism organizations invest in ambitious projects, only to fail getting them off to ground due to a lack of capacity, and onerous project requirements. 

We believe (and know) that tourism can be a force for good. We know from experience that for that to be true, the every tourism organization at any size or scale needs a fighting chance go build and deliver campaigns that drive real impact and growth. 

With Tourismo Campaigns, we’re empowering tourism organizations with accessible, impactful, and measurable marketing solutions that free them from outdated processes and accelerate their path to success. 

In as little as 24 hours, any tourism organization can access the expertise and support they need to plan and deliver a destination-growing campaign. 

No RFPs. No weird gatekeeping of know-how. No retainers. 

Campaigns reimagines the way tourism marketing gets done. 

From start to finish, Tourismo Campaigns let 

 tourism organization access world-class tourism marketing expertise while receiving start to finish support — no contractor wrangling or lengthy RFPs required. 

Pick from a Menu of Pre-Packaged Solutions


Any DMO or tourism organization using the Tourismo platform can select from a menu of standardized campaign packages including themed trails, digital ad campaigns, content creation, and social media strategies. Each package is built and informed from real industry experience. Deliverables, outlines, and costs are clearly outlined (aka: no more surprises, ever!)

Any interested organization simply “inquires now” via the Tourismo Campaign marketplace. After inquiring, you’ll get connected directly to a dedicated account manager to define needs, scope, and suggest the best “campaign recipe” (or, a combination of tactics). 

Get Connected with the Right Partners for the Job 


Whether you’re a “one person DMO” or part of a growing org, you’ve got a lot going on! To help you save time and avoid endless contractor wrangling, your account manager will connect you to the right partners to make your campaign as successful as possible including photographers, designers, influencers, subject matter experts, and more. 

Save Time with Seamless Project Management


Once your campaign is planned, your dedicated partners carry out the work for you, coordinated by Tourismo’s internal project managers. Clients can opt for different levels of support or bring on recognized partners to reduce management fees.

Access Consolidated Reporting & Delivery


Everything from creative assets to campaign results is managed and reported through the Tourismo platform, eliminating manual processes that usually take hours or even full-time employees. Campaign outcomes are delivered with transparent metrics and a clear record of impact.


Why This All Matters for Tourism Organizations

Tourismo Campaigns create real, measurable value for tourism organizations of all sizes:

By eliminating the cumbersome agency procurement process and offering standardized yet customizable packages, organizations dramatically reduce admin and overhead (and avoid the risk of overpaying for bloated, one-size-fits-all services).

Your organization can now easily tap into a team of industry experts (IE: photographers, writers, digital marketers, and strategic consultants) without the gamble of random freelancers or the markup of traditional agencies.

Campaigns deliver finished, implemented work (and not just plans or reports) ready to launch and measure. Tourism organizations gain true last-mile delivery: instead of just having a great idea or strategy, you’ll see it executed and producing tangible results.

Standardized campaign packages allow for true apples-to-apples comparisons on pricing, deliverables, and results, erasing doubt and risks regarding budgeting, timelines, or planning.

Supports the Mission of Tourism for Good


Every campaign empowers destinations to not just market themselves, but grow thoughtfully, efficiently, and sustainably — because the wrong agency commitment can potentially ruin a promising, growing tourism organzation. 

Let’s Usher in a New Era of Tourism Marketing

It sounds like a cliche, but Tourismo Campaigns represents a huge step for tourism marketing. With Campaigns, we’re blending the best of agency expertise with the efficiency and transparency of a modern platform or SaaS platform (software as a service). Whether you’re a large city with a complex development plan or a small destination launching a new trail, Campaigns give you the tools, team, and technology you need to succeed.

The days of endless RFPs, unclear deliverables, and administrative headaches are coming to an end. With Tourismo Campaigns, tourism organizations can effortlessly access a lower risk and more impactful model for tourism marketing. 

Take a look. We'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Introducing Tourismo Campaigns 

It's probably true: SEO is dead. If AI optimization (AIO) is the future, what do DMOs and tourism organizations need to know? 

 AIO. That’s right, AIO is emerging as the successor to SEO as the perceived best way to stay ahead in search in this new world order. 

In case a refresher is in order, AIO = AI Optimization. Just as we've all come to "optimize" the content we write for search engines (SEO), marketing pros across every industry are now scrambling to optimize their content for different AI tools and models (a few examples: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and so on). AI search is MASSIVE, and is fast becoming a more trusted way for visitors and travellers to research which destinations to prioritize. 

Okay, back to my "SEO = Caesar and AIO = Brutus" analogy. I admit maybe that’s a shade of hyperbole. I mean SEO still does have some relevance (especially for the boomer and Gen X populace that are slower to embrace AI). However, all signs are pointing towards an inevitable outcome. 

In case a quick refresher is in order, AIO = AI Optimization. Basically, it's the process of optimizing your content to appear in AI tools and LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT, GPT Search, Perplexity, Gemini, and so on.  

To put this into perspective, consider a few talking points from Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. He said that Gemini is processing 50x more tokens in 2025 than in 2024, and that their AI overviews have scaled to over 1.5 Billion users in use in over 200 countries this year. 

And just a few weeks ago Google offered buyouts for staff largely in their search department. The writing is on the wall. 

So, what does this all mean for the tourism industry? Basically — that we need to ensure Perplexity, GPT Search or any of the other major AI models are serving up our organizations or destinations as a recommendation to user queries. 

Luckily, I have some extremely good news —I have discovered the hack! I’ve uncovered the single biggest cheat code to surfacing as a result in AI recommended lists. 

So what is it? …. Drumroll please. …. 

Be authentic and be an authority on whatever you are talking about. And if you aren’t the authority on a subject, collaborate with an organization that is.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. 

Be real, touch grass, look the robot in the eyes, and tell it what you are about with honesty and integrity through your website and content. 

There is no magic cheat code for the AI. 

No keyword to insert. No cheeky workaround to get you recommended. 

The answer is be real. Be an authority on what you know best and whatever you represent. Then, collaborate with your network to churn out authentic, authoritative content. 

But what does being “an authority” really mean? Well, if you’re a DMO, that means posting content that champions the real spirit of your community, not as you want it to be, but as it is.

Post highlights from within your organizations or from associated members (or, have them write content directly for your platform). Own who you are and address perceptions of your community head on — take the rein on narratives and perceptions already out there.Above all, be grounded in where you are, and move the dial on where you want to be with real development before you market it. 

Blog

Smart Travel Marketing Strategies for 2025 (with Examples)

Feature Release: June/July 2025

AI Optimization for Destination Marketing Organizations

Introducing Tourismo Campaigns

Collaboration Against the Machine

Tourismo Wins Emerging Startup of the Year

Meet Tourismo: Making Tourism a Force for Good

Blog

.css-nzdyzb{position:static;}.css-nzdyzb::before{content:'';cursor:inherit;display:block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;z-index:0;width:100%;height:100%;}Smart Travel Marketing Strategies for 2025 (with Examples)

Feature Release: June/July 2025

AI Optimization for Destination Marketing Organizations

Introducing Tourismo Campaigns

Collaboration Against the Machine

Tourismo Wins Emerging Startup of the Year

Meet Tourismo: Making Tourism a Force for Good

Smart Travel Marketing Strategies for 2025 (with Examples)