Can Thailand's "Meaningful Relationship" campaign really attract 1M travelers?

3 travel marketing takeaways from Thailand's latest campaign

Author

Alex Jeffries
January 07, 2024

Travel and romance are often intertwined. From romantic getaways to finding love in unexpected places (I see you, Eat, Pray, Love), relationships are a key part of travel.

The new “Meaningful Relationship” campaign from Thailand plays on the idea of these relationships, first showing people reminiscing about their “relationship in Thailand” - a woman reflects on her trip, and we see her with a man. A man reflects on his trip, and we see him with a woman. And so on.

As the film goes on, we see these aren’t the romantic flings we expect - these are relationships that go deeper: relationships with the community, with flavor, with nature, with places, with preservation… and with yourself.

A tourism ad is almost by its nature going to be a beautiful thing. What separates campaigns like these (and the marketing you’ll do) is how the messaging lands.

Promoting these deeper connections to a place, ones that won’t just make the trip more significant in the moment but that will make longer-lasting memories, is a powerful way to market… a necessary strategy, given their stated goals of reaching nearly 1M travelers, which we’ll go into more below.

⚡️ Travel Marketing Tips ⚡️

Inspired by Thailand’s campaign? Here are three ways you can apply the concepts behind this campaign to your own travel marketing efforts:

  1. Make Activities A Part Of The Bigger Picture - Most trips have some sort of activity. Hiking, cooking, dancing. How can you connect these activities to the destination? E.g. can the cooking class include a market tour?

  2. Celebrate Communities - The trend towards travelers looking for experiences and connections continues to grow. How can you facilitate these connections with the people around you?

  3. Create Share-Worthy Moments - While this campaign clearly has professionals behind it, you can see in the South Korean story the focus on taking and sharing photos and videos. In your tours and in your destination, what are some share-worthy moments you can create?

To watch the 3-minute film and learn more about Thailand’s “Meaningful Relationship” campaign, including their goal of reaching almost 1M travelers, click below to see our new post.

Thanks for reading this issue of Travel Marketing Sunday, a weekly publication from Passport Creative. Our goal is to bring you the best travel marketing examples from around the globe to inspire your own travel and tourism marketing efforts.

Questions about this campaign? Need help with your own travel brand’s marketing? Reply back and let’s chat!

Sincerely,
Alex