Ready to grow your destination marketing program? Finding the right destination marketing software is essential. From the most basic tools to dedicated all-in-one platforms, we've rounded up and reviewed the most popular platforms for powering your destination marketing efforts. 

Modern tourism marketing success isn’t about visibility alone — it’s about coordinating, launching, and measuring visitor engagement. Sure, a destination can invest millions in ads and SEO. But if those tactics can’t turn a curious browser into an active participant AND if that destination can’t measure the “in situation” impact of that marketing spend, they’ll remain in the proverbial dark ages of destination marketing.
This is where destination marketing software becomes essential. The right software doesn’t just distribute content or just build a themed trail — it empowers DMOs to craft and measure a range of immersive, measurable, and interactive visitor experiences. From pre-trip inspiration to post-visit reengagement, effective software transforms destination storytelling into trackable visitor journeys. Yet not all platforms or approaches to destination marketing are created equal. Below, we compare the most popular tourism and marketing tools available today including the good, the bad, and the very ugly.

MySmartJourney and Bandwango: Good for Routes, Weak on Engagement 

 MySmartJourney lets tourism sites create self-guided digital experiences using QR codes, NFC chips, and short URLs. 

 MySmartJourney is a fairly popular destination marketing software platform used by DMOs to launch simple, self-guided itineraries with photography, video, and other media elements. It also provides DMOs with simple analytics that report on the performance of said guides, and requires little technical/coding knowledge or overhead. Bandwango is extremely similar in terms of scope and feature breadth. 

Why they fall short as destination marketing software:

Limited engagement depth: Visitors consume pre-established content passively; there’s no dynamic personalization or gamification.

Limited breadth of features: While it’s relatively simple to create routes with MySmartJourney, that’s about where the features with the platform end. It solves one problem (self-guided itineraries), but offers DMOs little else in terms of visitor engagement opportunities.

Data fragmentation: Analytics are minimal, so DMOs can’t easily track or optimize engagement.

Maintenance overhead: Keeping QR codes and multimedia updated across multiple sites is resource-heavy, and can be cumbersome/slow when working with collaborators across your destination.

Lack of integration: It doesn’t connect easily to CRM, marketing automation, or other DMO tools.

MySmartJourney and Bandwango are solid standalone experience builders — but not a full engagement platform. They both miss the intelligence, data, and automation that define true destination marketing software.

Google Drive and Microsoft 365: Great for Teams, Useless for Visitors 

Cloud collaboration and document sharing. 

 Sure, they aren’t dedicated destination marketing software platforms — but the Google Drive / Microsoft 365 stack powers way more DMOs than you’d expect in 2025. They might be okay for getting your destination marketing program off the ground, but long-term the benefits start to dwindle pretty quickly. 

Why they’re not destination marketing tools:

They can help teams create assets and coordinate but don’t directly engage visitors or collect traveler insights.

There’s no visitor-facing data or engagement tracking. If Google Analytics is implemented, it can be difficult and time-consuming to gather visitor specific insights.

They can’t publish itineraries, routes, or campaigns. These tools are necessary for office collaboration — but they can’t deliver or measure any visitor experience. They’re back-office utilities, not marketing software. So while they might play an ongoing role in your destination marketing initiatives, they can’t really act as destination marketing platform of any kind.

Semrush: Powerful SEO Tool, Weak on Real Visitor Connection 

 Semrush helps brands improve their search rankings, monitor competitors, and analyze content performance. 

Semrush and similar SEO tracking tools like AHRefs are extremely powerful tools for marketers in any industry. And while it can be indispensable as a tool to more strategically plan content and – by extension – drive traffic to your website, it can’t act as a fully realized destination marketing platform. 

Why it underperforms for destination marketers:

 It’s designed for website visibility via SEO (and, in part, AIO), but not visitor engagement after a click or conversion.

No behavioral or in-situation personalization: 

It can’t adapt content to real-time visitor actions or interests.

 SEO data doesn’t connect to on-site or in-destination experiences.

DMOs often need outside help to extract full value (for example, a dedicated SEO strategist).

Semrush drives traffic — but traffic isn’t the same as engagement. Once visitors arrive, Semrush has no tools to deepen the connection or measure outcomes. It’s worth considering as one tool in your marketing stack — but don’t expect it to extend beyond that niche.

Paid Advertising Platforms: Expensive Visibility Without Control 

 Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and TripAdvisor Ads help destinations reach large audiences through paid advertisements across a wide range of platforms. 

Paid advertising is a key strategy for any destination at any size, and can be extremely effective. However, it can get expensive quickly, and is best suited for somewhat larger DMOs with more robust budgets. And, like SEMRush, it should be considered as but one tool in your destination marketing toolbox. 

 CPCs and competition are rising across all travel categories — “pay to play” is a real thing when it comes to paid advertising.

 Ads can’t control the user journey after the click, leaving the rest of the work to DMOs.

Tracking which ads lead to real visits or bookings is unreliable and complex to set up.

: Privacy changes have eroded precision targeting, removing a huge degree of control from destination marketers.

Paid advertising is valuable, but it’s only half the equation. Without integrated destination marketing software to capture and engage that traffic, ad budgets leak efficiency.

Crowdriff and Influencer Platforms: Reach Without Retention 

 Platforms like Crowdriff can connect brands and destinations with social media influencers to plan, launch, and measure influencer campaigns. 

CrowdRiff is a visual content / media platform built specifically for tourism, travel, and destination marketing. It combines features around user-generated content (UGC), digital asset management (DAM), creator content, and visual galleries/maps to help DMOs more efficiently use visual media across channels. For destination marketing organizations, there’s a lot to love about Crowdriff. But similar to the marketing initiatives above, it only tackles one element of the destination marketing equation, making it a hard sell as a “one platform to rule them all” solution. 

 Short-term influencer or UGC campaigns rarely build sustainable engagement.

Content lives on the influencer’s platform, not yours.

 Measuring conversions from influencer traffic is difficult, which can make getting buy-in from collaborators and stakeholders difficult.

Visibility depends on third-party social platforms.

Influencer platforms can amplify awareness — but they don’t create a measurable, owned visitor relationship. For DMOs, that’s a strategic blind spot.

Mailchimp: Great for Emails, Poor for Live Engagement 

Automates email campaigns and newsletters. 

 email marketing software, but there are a wide range of similar platforms out there for building and launching email campaigns. We might sound like a broken record at this point, but Mailchimp is best thought of as one tool in your marketing toolkit, and not an all-in-one solution for destination marketers. 

Why it’s not true destination marketing software: 

Visitors can’t interact beyond opening or clicking an email.

Limited integration with real-world behavior: 

It doesn’t connect with on-site experiences or geo-based triggers.

Audience fatigue reduces impact over time.

 Engagement insights don’t feed back into broader visitor analytics.

Email remains useful for nurturing leads — but it can’t support interactive, in-destination engagement.

Tourismo: The All-in-One Destination Marketing Software for Every Visitor Touchpoint 

Where others specialize in single functions — SEO, ads, emails, or influencer outreach — Tourismo unites all aspects of visitor engagement in one powerful platform. 

Built from the ground up as an “all-in-one” destination marketing platform with a big emphasis on visitor engagement and destination-wide collaboration, Tourismo is the only destination marketing platform that unites and connects with every tool in a destination marketers toolkit. 

Key Capabilities of Tourismo’s Destination Marketing Software 

 Create interactive routes, maps, and guided experiences instantly.

 Engage visitors through quizzes, badges, and check-ins.

 Automatically update business hours, attractions, and descriptions across channels.

Track in-destination visitor behavior for actionable insights.

 Share real-time impact metrics with partners and funders.

Sync with CRM, email, web embeds, and campaign tools.

 Manage contributors and tourism partners from one central hub.

Tourismo is built for DMOs, not just marketers. It bridges the gap between pre-trip discovery, on-site engagement, and post-visit reactivation — all within a unified software ecosystem.

Tourismo eliminates silos by merging visitor content, analytics, and stakeholder coordination into a single, purpose-built destination marketing software platform.

Even best-in-class tools have learning curves. For Tourismo: 

Teams may need to shift from static content thinking to interactive journey design.

Initial setup requires planning for partner and attraction integration.

Budget alignment is essential if moving from free or legacy tools.

But the payoff — unified data, measurable engagement, and clear ROI — far outweighs these small hurdles.

Best Practices for DMOs Using Destination Marketing Software 

Design for participation, not just promotion: 

Build micro-interactions like quizzes, votes, or digital badges.

 Consolidate all engagement channels into one dashboard.

 Use AI to keep listings and itineraries current.

 Link engagement metrics to visitation, spend, and retention.

Empower attractions and tourism operators within the same system.

Tourismo’s modular platform enables DMOs to start small and scale engagement across their ecosystem.

So, what destination marketing software is best for you? 

Each of the tools above — from MySmartJourney to Mailchimp — delivers a piece of the puzzle. Depending on the stage and scale of your destination, they might serve as a short term solution to building out and growing your destination marketing efforts. Tourismo is different. It’s the only destination marketing software designed specifically for DMOs to: 

Prove marketing impact with data that matters.

If your goal is to move beyond impressions and create measurable, lasting engagement, Tourismo isn’t just a tool — it’s the destination marketing engine your organization needs to grow smarter, faster, and more sustainably.

Destination Marketing Software: Which Platform is Best for Your DMO? 

There's no way around it: your destination needs a visitor engagement strategy. So, where do you start? And how does visitor engagement tie into your marketing efforts? From the basics of destination marketing to finding the right destination marketing software, this guide has you covered.  

Tourism marketing has entered a new era. For years, the goal was simple: drive awareness, fill hotel rooms, and measure success through sheer visitor numbers. And while those goals haven’t necessarily changed, they’re no longer the primary focus of forward-looking destinations. 

Why? For one, visitor expectations have changed. Simply creating a proverbial giant “Go Here!” sign towards your destination isn’t enough. Technologically “plugged in” and discerning visitors expect personalized guidance and meaningful connections with a destination before they even arrive. The most forward-thinking DMOs now define success not by impressions or likes, but by engagement: how deeply a visitor interacts with the stories, content, and experiences a destination shares (and, by extension, how extensive visitors engage and explore any given destination). 

So, what does that all of this mean for your destination marketing organization? From strategies to recommendations for destination marketing software and platforms that can take your destination to the next level, here’s everything you need to know. 

Destination marketing is the practice of promoting a place — a city, region, or country — to attract visitors. The goal isn’t just to increase arrivals; it’s to shape how a destination is perceived, guide the visitor journey, and deliver experiences that drive loyalty and repeat visits.

Traditionally, destination marketing focused on three phases:

 — putting the destination on the traveler’s radar.

 — providing resources and inspiration to help visitors plan.

 — encouraging trip bookings and in-market spending.


That’s the classic trifecta of destination marketing (and marketing more generally). 

But now there’s a fourth critical (and too often overlooked) phase specific to destination marketing: 

In destination marketing, visitor engagement is the process of connecting with travelers during their trip and after their return. It’s about meeting travellers where they’re at, and creating a relationship before, during, and after their experience with your destination. 

The Key Elements of Destination Marketing

Effective destination marketing touches nearly every aspect of a traveler’s decision-making process. Destination marketers often describe the building blocks as the 

 — Hotels, rentals, or lodging options where visitors stay.

 — Cultural sites, outdoor experiences, events, or landmarks that define the destination.

 — Dining, shopping, and local services that enhance the visitor experience.

 — Transportation infrastructure, way-finding, and digital accessibility.

These elements are well-known in the tourism industry for extremely good reason — they remain important and critical for 

 Visitors expect more than a list of hotels or landmarks. Instead, they want to see how these elements fit into a coherent, authentic story about the destination.

Telling Your Destination’s Story with Visitor Engagement

DMOs have long measured success in impressions, clicks, or visitor counts. But those numbers only capture part of the picture. 

Consider this example. A visitor might see your ad and even arrive at your destination. On one hand, there are two success metrics to track there: impressions, clicks, and a conversion. 

But if what we’re tracking about that visitor ends there, we’re missing a huge part of their experience (and potential impact on your destination).  If you aren’t actively 

 with visitors once they arrive (let alone before or after), your visitors are less likely to explore your region, generate revenue, or recommend and return to your destination after visit’s end. 

Visitor engagement goes beyond promotion to answer questions like:

How do we help visitors personalize their trip?

How do we provide real-time updates or recommendations?

How do we capture insights about what visitors value most?

. It transforms a DMO from a promoter of experiences into a 

Go-To Visitor Engagement Strategies and Tactics for DMOs

Visitor engagement might sound like a pipedream for any DMO — but what does visitor engagement 

 look like? The reality is that there are hundreds of potential engagement strategies out there. But based on our own expertise and feedback from real destination marketing organizations, these are proven strategies that work. 

Themed trails are one of the most effective ways to blend storytelling with place. They connect visitors to local businesses, attractions, and cultural assets through curated journeys that highlight a destination’s unique character.

These trails can be built around food and drink, history, outdoor adventure, family activities, or seasonal experiences. By guiding travelers from stop to stop, DMOs can increase visitor dispersion, spread economic impact, and bring community stories to life. 

 are also an excellent way to attract niche travelers (more on that later). Let’s look at an example. 

The BC Ale Trail is a celebrated example of this strategy in action. The program combines digital itineraries, gamified passports, and storytelling content to guide visitors through British Columbia’s breweries, pubs, and surrounding communities. Each trail features not only beer but also local dining, attractions, and outdoor activities — making the experience richer than a simple directory. 

The result has been a measurable boost in brewery visits, stronger community pride, and increased collaboration between businesses across the province.

The more you know about your happiest and most excited travellers, the more you can narrow your focus to speak directly to that audiences. That’s where survey contests can play a huge role. 

 can invite visitors to share their perspectives while giving the DMO valuable data on traveler interests

For example, a DMO might run a seasonal survey asking visitors about their favorite activities, dining spots, or hidden gems in the community. Participants are entered into a prize draw — often for local experiences like a weekend getaway, event tickets, or gift cards.

The beauty of a survey contact is that it nails two goals at once:

: The survey provides actionable data for marketing strategy.

: The prize element drives participation and builds excitement.

Fast to implement with a tapestry of benefits, survey contests are an excellent “first step” towards visitor engagement that any destination can ideate and launch surprisingly quickly to great effect. 


Travel “passports” have become a powerful way to encourage exploration. Visitors collect digital (or physical) stamps as they visit partner locations, unlocking rewards when they complete a trail or reach a milestone.

, a DMO launches a passport around a theme — breweries, historic sites, outdoor adventures, or holiday markets. As visitors check in at participating locations, they collect stamps toward a prize.

This makes passport campaigns an effective strategy to: 

Disperse visitors across multiple neighborhoods or towns.

Drive measurable foot traffic to local businesses.

Create a playful sense of achievement and discovery.

Designed to encourage visitors to explore shops, restaurants, and cultural venues, passport campaigns are an excellent strategy for increasing visitor exploration while tracking engagement for any DMO.  


Contests remain a tried-and-true tactic for building excitement and expanding reach. Unlike surveys or passports, travel contests often emphasize shareability and amplifying your destination through social sharing or user generated content (UGC).

For example, DMOs can invite visitors (or potential visitors) to enter by sharing photos, submitting stories, or engaging on social media. The prize is usually an immersive travel package — such as a “weekend getaway” that bundles local lodging, dining, and experiences (but, really, that part is up to you!). 

This not only engages participants but also introduces them to partners and offerings they might not otherwise discover — all while ensuring your destination “shows up” on social in a big way via your visits (and not expensive paid campaigns). 

Quizzes are a simple but powerful way to drive engagement — especially when combined with events and key collaborators (IE: businesses) across your destination. Social, interactive, and appealing to visitors and locals alike, quizzes can make a big impact on constituents across your destination consistently and quickly. 
For example, The BC Ale Trail engaged audiences with weekly quiz nights held at breweries across the trail. By offering incentive and a “locals friendly” appeal, weekly quiz nights helped visitors discover breweries while positioning the trail as approachable and fun. These quizzes doubled as itinerary builders, pointing travelers to trails they might not have considered. Read more 

Interactive events work in a similar way, blending education with participation. For example, a DMO hosting a food festival might run a trivia contest where attendees unlock prizes by answering questions tied to local history or cuisine.

Sometimes the most engaging experiences are the ones visitors 

 Hidden content campaigns add an element of discovery to digital marketing by rewarding those who dig deeper. 

By nudging visitors to explore your destination in pursuit of “hidden content,” you can encourage visitors to engage with your destination in a way that’s rewarding for travelers and business owners alike. 
Take for example the Dino Trail in Drumheller, Alberta. Travel Drumheller leveraged an existing series of concrete dinosaur statues to create a dinosaur-themed trail that incorporated “hidden content” into its digital platform. By offering physical rewards for travellers who “unlocked” every bit of hidden content, Travel Drumheller transformed the trail from a static itinerary into an 

As you can imagine, the possibilities for “hidden content” campaigns are endless: heritage trails, cultural tours, or even seasonal experiences are all excellent candidates for this engagement approach. 

Why These Visitor Engagement Strategies Work

All of these tactics share three key qualities:

 — Visitors don’t just consume marketing; they participate.

 — Local businesses and residents become part of the storytelling.

 — Whether through passport scans, survey responses, or quiz completions, engagement can be tracked and analyzed.

For DMOs, these strategies represent a way to do more than promote — they provide a structure to 

facilitate exploration, create memories, and capture data

Choosing the Right Visitor Engagement Platform

There are multiple destination marketing software platforms designed to help DMOs manage engagement, from asset management systems to itinerary planning tools. 

Most platforms (like Crowdriff or Bandwango) focus on a specific element of destination marketing (in the case of Crowdriff, managing UGC; in the case of Bandwango, building passport campaigns). 

— Does building visitor engagement campaigns require developer support and excessive coding? 

— Does the platform offer direct support when building visitor engagement campaigns? 

 — Can your team quickly build, find, repurpose, and share assets (articles, photos, etc) when building and promoting visitor engagement campaigns? 

 — Does it allow for dynamic itineraries and targeted recommendations?

 — Can it connect with visitors in real time during their trip?

 — Does it provide actionable insights on engagement, not just impressions?

 — Can local businesses and stakeholders easily contribute content?

Obviously we’re a bit biased, but for the best “all-in-one” visitor engagement platform that tackles all of the above, we recommend Tourismo. 

Tourismo is an all-in-one visitor engagement platform built specifically for DMOs of any size, combining the above capabilities into a single system. 

While other platforms may specialize in content storage or itinerary planning, Tourismo connects the dots across the entire visitor lifecycle — from pre-trip discovery to post-trip re-engagement.

The Takeaway? Visitor Engagement is No Longer a "Nice to Have" for Growing DMOs

 Travellers don’t just want to be told where to go; they want to interact with destinations, personalize their journeys, and stay connected long after their visit.

For DMOs, the shift toward engagement-first strategies is both a challenge and an opportunity. By focusing on smarter content management, personalized journeys, real-time visitor engagement, and data-driven insights, destinations can create marketing strategies that resonate far beyond the first impression.

The right visitor engagement platform will make this possible — and ensure your destination isn’t just visited, but truly experienced.

Destination Marketing 101: A Practical Guide to Visitor Engagement

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. 

Blog

Destination Marketing Software: Which Platform is Best for Your DMO?

Destination Marketing 101: A Practical Guide to Visitor Engagement

Smart Travel Marketing Strategies for 2025 (with Examples)

Feature Release: June/July 2025

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Introducing Tourismo Campaigns

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Tourismo Wins Emerging Startup of the Year

Meet Tourismo: Making Tourism a Force for Good

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Destination Marketing Software: Which Platform is Best for Your DMO?