Destination Marketing 101: A Practical Guide to Visitor Engagement

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. 

What is Destination Marketing?

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:

• Awareness — putting the destination on the traveler’s radar.

• Consideration — providing resources and inspiration to help visitors plan.

• Conversion — 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: visitor engagement. 

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 four A’s:

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

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

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

• Access — 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 any destination. 

But what’s changed is how DMOs communicate them. 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 engaging 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?

Visitor engagement creates two-way interaction. It transforms a DMO from a promoter of experiences into a facilitator of meaningful connections.

Go-To Visitor Engagement Strategies and Tactics for DMOs

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

1. Guided Itineraries and Themed Trails

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. 

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

Case Example: BC Ale Trail
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. Read more about The BC Ale Trail

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

2. Survey Contests

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. 

A simple survey contest 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:

• Visitor Insights: The survey provides actionable data for marketing strategy.

• Engagement: 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. 

3. Passport Campaigns

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.

With passport campaigns, 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.  

4. Travel Contests

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). 

5. Quizzes and Interactive Events

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.

6. Hidden Content Campaigns

Sometimes the most engaging experiences are the ones visitors stumble upon. 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 interactive treasure hunt, especially appealing to families. Read more about the Dino Trail

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:

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

• Community Connection — Local businesses and residents become part of the storytelling.

• Measurability — 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 that fuels smarter future campaigns.

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). 

When evaluating a platform, consider:

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

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

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

• Personalization features — Does it allow for dynamic itineraries and targeted recommendations?

• In-market engagement tools — Can it connect with visitors in real time during their trip?

• Analytics and reporting — Does it provide actionable insights on engagement, not just impressions?

• Integration with partner networks — 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

Destination marketing is evolving from promotion to participation. 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.