Success Story: Visit Panama City Beach
The Challenge
- Entering 2022, it was uncertain if destination travelers would continue to visit Panama City Beach (PCB) in the record-breaking volume that had been achieved during 2020-2021.
- In PCB’s core markets there are many beach destinations within a similar drive time. Visitors have lots of options and PCB’s goal was to steal share from competitive beach destinations.
- In a vast media landscape, it is difficult to intercept and capture travel intenders to influence their final decision before booking.
The Solution
- Carved out a dedicated media budget for competitive conquesting in an overall media budget that remained flat.
- Deployed a multi-touch tactical digital campaign reaching travelers showing interest in competitive beach destinations that included Display, Native, Pre-roll Video, YouTube, and Paid Social Media.
- Retargeted those exposed to a competing beach’s advertising messaging on linear television. Through ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) technology, we showed our PCB display and OTT ads to those who had seen our competitor’s ads on TV.
- Launched a high-impact digital ad unit targeting consumers identified as having spent money in a competitive destination based on third-party data.
The Results
- 2022 quarterly in-destination surveys deployed by PCB’s research partner show that people who formerly said a competing beach is their favorite beach now say PCB is their favorite beach.
- 2022 average quarterly percentage of new visitors was lifted by 64% YoY.
- 2022 bed tax revenue beat the historic record set in 2021 by 2%.
