Destination marketing requires a travel organization or regional marketing team to promote an entire region as a desirable travel spot. This involves highlighting the best attractions and things to do, indicating the tour and activity companies that provide excursions, promoting the restaurants where people can enjoy a fresh, local meal and advertising the local hotels in the area. Creating an effective marketing strategy is the first step, but distributing it is an even more important part of the process.

What is the Best Way to Increase Distribution?

Work with local agents. Local agents help you connect with those in the community around you. Agents at the visitor information centres, concierge desks at hotels and at local travel agencies can help you increase your brand message and your visibility. These local agents are often ideal for promoting options within a destination to travelers who have already arrived for their getaway. In addition, they can help you uncover fully incremental channels. For instance, people who work at local businesses may be interested in taking a loved one to a local hotel for the night, or they might want to try out a tour or activity. Through local agents, you can provide business employees with discount codes or gift cards that encourage them to try local travel-related products. This may not be the typical audience that you would target in the travel industry, but it significantly helps improve your visibility within the community.

Work with international agents. International agents are necessary to helping you promote your destination on a global scale. You need to provide these agents with proof that your destination is the right fit for their target audience. This requires you to have a diverse selection of accommodations, restaurants, excursions and attractions for travelers to enjoy. International agents that you will need to partner with include OTAs and retail travel agents. OTAs often have access to the largest audience base, and are particularly important when it comes to implementing a distribution strategy for a tourist destination marketing campaign. These travel giants prefer to offer packaged products, so you will want to be able to provide them with local packages that can easily be resold to travelers who are interested in your destination. Through international agents, you can improve your destination identity and increase your visibility to travelers of all ages, stages and backgrounds.

Why is Distribution Pivotal to the Success of the Tourist Destination Marketing Strategy?

Ultimately, distribution is the best way to increase visibility. The marketing strategy needs to be visible in order to encourage people to visit your destination, and they are more likely to visit a destination where there are lots of different things to do. Network with as many agents as possible, and soon your destination will become the up-and-coming place that everyone wants to visit on their next trip.

To find out more information on improving your visibility across the globe, download our distribution ebook today.





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