THE German National Tourist Board (GNTB) plans to use a new broad-based social media campaign to promote Germany as a travel destination around the world, particularly among young travellers.
The campaign will be launched at the ITB 2013 in Berlin and will continue throughout 2013 and 2014. The planned campaign will support the theme for 2013: ‘Germany for young people – vibrant, fashionable, innovative’ which caters to a tourism segment offering vast economic potential.
The target group is also huge, with current figures showing that about a third of all international visitors to Germany are under the age of 39. “Young people visiting from abroad today are Destination Germany’s future holidaymakers and business travellers.
They are becoming an ever more important target group, especially as domestic tourism will be increasingly affected by demographic change,” said Petra Hedorfer, chief executive officer of the GNTB.
Social media will play a key role in addressing the target group for this campaign. The most effective way of communicating with young travellers from outside Germany is to use the channels they use to communicate with their friends: social networks such as Facebook. This is the basis for the GNTB’s social media campaign which it hopes will encourage young international travellers coming to Germany to share their experiences online.
This requires generating content which presents Germany as a travel destination for young people and which spreads virally. To encourage active communication (live sharing) on social networks, there are plans to set up ‘check-in points’ at some of Germany’s best-known sights.
These will enable young international travellers to simply log in at the sites and share their photos and text messages directly using social media.
The GNTB already reaches out to this target group on its website www.germany.travel with a section entitled ‘Germany for young people’, which is available in 26 languages and 30 markets worldwide.
“Excellent value for money, a cosmopolitan outlook and superb infrastructure (integrated network of road, rail and air) make Germany an ideal destination not only for young independent travellers but also for group travel and other organised trips, such as school trips,” added Hedorfer.