Pivoting during the pandemic
Case study
The Faroes is a collection of 18 islands northwest of Scotland, halfway between Iceland and Norway; human population – 50,000, number of sheep – 80,000.
Challenge
Tourism is the third-largest industry on the Faroe Islands, and accounts for 14% of employment across the 18 islands.
When the tourism industry had to shut down in March 2020, due to Covid-19, guests had to postpone their planned trips to the islands and were, of course, greatly disappointed. The Remote Tourism campaign was created to give people the opportunity to experience the Faroe Islands without being there in person, and to inspire them to visit the islands in the future.
Strategy
The concept enabled curious virtual visitors to experience the Faroe Islands in real time via a local guide, whose movements were controlled via a joypad (via mobile, tablet or PC) on the remote-tourism.com website. Just like an arcade game, tourists could make the guides jump, run and manoeuvre in various directions during the 60-minute tours. So how did we take this initiative and create a buzz a thousand miles away?
The campaign was launched through building a tailored media list and distributing a simple press release. This was followed with intensive media liaison with a tailored and targeting pitching strategy.
Travel PR also distributed invitations to key news and travel media to join the first virtual tours to the Faroe Islands, plus organised an exclusive advance tour for one or two key journalists to take over the remote tourism tool themselves.
Impact
Within 24 hours of its launch, the Faroe Islands enjoyed more virtual visits than its normal physical visits spread across a whole year and, in just six weeks, 700,000 people ‘visited’ the Faroe Islands from all over the world. Two weeks after the islands reopened in summer 2020, all hotels were sold out. The impact on the community was tangible; tourism jobs were saved, and the campaign gave millions of people a vibrant, exciting outdoor travel experience from the comfort of their own home during quarantine.
Travel PR is not just a PR agency which works to represent us as a business; they are very much part of the AITO family, and make it their mission to engrain AITO’s DNA into the way that they work. It’s more like working with friends, because they really care and are passionate about AITO. They constantly strive to ensure that AITO is seen as the market leader in specialist travel and we trust them implicitly.
AITO, The Specialist Travel Association
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Travel PR, established 25 years ago, is a leading specialist PR and communications agency specialising in the travel, hotel and lifestyle markets. Want to create a PR strategy for your brand?