Goa Tourism case study explores the brand’s social media campaigns over the years.
Brand Introduction
Goa is one of India’s favorite tourist destinations, and Goa Tourism, the state’s official tourism board, is consistently innovating new services to cater to the growing demands of tourists from around the world.
Objective
To promote GTDC and encourage travelers to visit Goa all round the year.
Challenge
- To promote traveling to Goa in the monsoon (Non-peak season).
- To work around a very low budget (No money was spent on campaigns or promotions).
Execution
Goa has always been at the forefront of creating organic growth and engagement for the brand by building relationships with content creators. But Goa Tourism observed the trend of consumers being less engaged with paid or sponsored content and realized the necessity to create organic conversations with our consumers.
Throughout various campaigns, Goa Tourism campaigns began in 2015. With the success of the #Instawalk paved way for #TourismByTourists introduced in 2016. Goa Tourism’s social media handles were transformed into a platform for real tourists to become ambassadors of Goa.
The campaign organically engaged with over 100 travel influencers who created a large amount of valuable content and delivered it to our target audiences at no cost to the brand. The campaign was awarded heavily in the digital marketing industry and even won a National Tourism Award.
In 2017, the brand noticed the increasing trend toward self-drive vacations where tourists rent out vehicles to travel at a location rather than rely on taxis and public transit. As per a research, the most rented vehicle by tourists was the Honda Activa, indicating that Honda was a much-loved brand by our consumers.
Hence, Goa Tourism partnered with HMSI (Honda Motor and Scooter India) in 2017 to conduct the #GoaHunt which saw the creation of a mini-series that earned over 4.2 million views on YouTube and made Goa the most influential state tourism board in Asia.
In #TourismByTourists2, launched in 2019 as a response to ever-growing audience segmentation online, the brand aimed to engage with more focused groups of people (segmented by demographic or interest) who influence perception about Goa through a set of themed-activities.
The campaign was designed to highlight different aspects of Goa through the lens of various types of travelers like women, foodies, students, and others.
The first themed activity, #TourismByWomen was introduced on Women’s Day for the brand.
#TourismByWomen – #TourismByTourists2
Here’s a sneak peek into what some lovely women travellers had to say about their visit to #Goa. Ladies, share a video with us about your fond memories tagging #TourismByWomen and #TourismByTourists2.Ayushi Anand Sharwari Bhope Parnashree Devi Seema Wadhwa#InternationalWomensDay#WomensDay2019#TravelLust#Tourism#TravelBug
Posted by Goa Tourism Department on Wednesday, 6 March 2019
The next campaign was followed by a large scale collaboration with food communities, influencers, and chefs for #TourismByFoodies.
The campaign then went on to engage with celebrities and their fan clubs with #TourismByCelebs and finally, turned to engage with professional travelers and travel publications through #TourismByPros
Goa Tourism also added value to the content through the creation of rich media such as short videos.
Results
2016:
- Goa Tourism became the fastest-growing travel brand on Social media.
- Facebook Review rank: 4.2 to 4.6 (Tied for the highest Rank for a Tourism Board in India)
- Facebook quadrupled in fans: 1,24,471 to 510641
- Twitter tripled followers: 6214 to 18911
- Instagram doubled in followers: 6511 to 13047
- #PickMyGoaPic on Instagram crossed 25000 submissions
- Direct requests of more than 50 blogs and 25 videos to be shared on the official pages
- Facebook and Twitter Inbox interaction was doubled
- Facebook Engagement crossed 10%
2017:
Both GTDC and HMSI (Honda Motor and Scooter India) derived benefits from the outreach programs and the results were completely organic.
- Participants generated over 130 shots/images/selfies along with several high-quality short-films. These images were used for the sustenance of the campaign and the mini-series.
- Over 4.2 million hits on YouTube (and counting) on the official #GoaHunt mini-series.
- Garnered large-format coverage in 9 prominent blogs, 8 magazines and 4 features in mainline newspapers.
- The brand generated earned media coverage for both GTDC and HMSI in more than 120 print and online media including The Times of India, Dainik Bhaskar, and Navhind Times, and a 15-minute TV spot on Aaj Tak, one of India’s leading Hindi channels.
- On Facebook, the campaign engaged with over 12,000 users and reached 1,75,000 more
- Goa Tourism emerged in the Top 3 most influential tourism boards in Asia.
- It also gained 30,000 followers on Twitter and received over 22 million impressions during the campaign and trended across India for 4 hours.
- The Tourism Board’s Instagram account grossed nearly 7,000 engagements during the event and grew by over 3,000 followers.
- Leading tour operators such as Thomas Cook India and SOTC reported a marked increase in tourist arrivals in Goa immediately after our campaign ended. The media quoted Thomas Cook spokesperson Rajeev Kale as saying, “Despite being a traditional low or off-season, the company has witnessed a significant increase in demand for Goa during Monsoon 2017; the sustained Y-o-Y uptake was approximately 55%.”
- GTDC too reported that footfalls had increased by 60.45% during June-September 2017 as against 22% for the corresponding period 2016. This rejuvenated stakeholders who engaged in activities promoting local culture, cuisine and lesser-known monsoon festivals.
- The media reported that Honda Navi (HMIS) sales crossed the 60,000 sales mark, far ahead of the original target of 50,000 units.
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