Top Trends in Travel Advertising of 2009 [Viral, Baby, Viral!]

Is there a sexier word in advertising right now than "viral"? Of course not -- it's like the Gisele of the advertising industry. (And yes, sadly, "strategic partnerships" are the Paris Hilton. Go 'way, strategery.) And while the PTG editorial team was racking it's collective brain about virality and whatnot, we thought we'd toss together a list of the best meme-type things that have worked for folks looking to push their product. MEME FTW!

9. America's Best Bathroom

This hasn't even fully blown roof (yes, pun intended) in terms of being viral yet -- the finalists were just recently announced. But the folks at Cinta do extensive research on these bathrooms, and as the contest draws closer, they beef up the PR effort to really promote the contest. Plus, it's just freaking quirky to discuss bathrooms and cleanliness in terms of offering up a prize for "Best Bathroom."

8. Digg.com

Yes, this is a heavily oversimplified "meme" and probably one that doesn't even count unless you're totally down with thinking about memes in a very meta way; Digg, most of the time, is the site that creates the memes. (Rumor has it, in fact, that Digg runs the interwebz.) But the truth of it is that newspapers have simply done an outstanding job of promoting their product and driving traffic on Digg: the Los Angeles Times travel section is consistently located on Digg's Front Page, and as a result, they've seen their traffic skyrocket amidst a shoddy economy and a failing newspaper industry. No comment on how they're able to succeed so much.

7. Fantasy Football Aruba

If fantasy football were universally popular, this little offering from the Renaissance Aruba might top the list: essentially, they are providing a "Draft Day Package" whereby a group of eight guys get together, pay basically $100/night and get multiple night stay in Aruba to draft their fantasy football team, complete with drink and casino packages. Yes, it is the most awesome thing ever.

6. RyanAir

This probably classifies as a "failure" because we've got a multiple-use tag here at TL whereby we rip on RyanAir for their various decisions in advertising: using stewardess for a pinup calendar, attacking bloggers, or charging for bathroom trips on plane flights. But hey, we're talking about it right? And you know what they say about bad word > no word.

5. 67 Days of Smiles

Orlando is chock full of amusement parks and crazy rides. At a lot of those, you get your picture taken in mid free-fall while smiling. So, Orlando, in order to get all "strategically viral" and whatnot, decided to bust out a YouTube-style contest where people submit themselves as the potential face of Orlando tourism. The prize? 67 days of riding amusement park rides and (basically) blogging about it. It's not as popular as some other ideas, but still, clever.

4. Cleveland Tourism Videos




I'm not even sure how this fits into "real advertising" because the Cleveland Tourism Vids -- which are absolutely hilarious -- are also blatantly fake. But, here's the thing: they went "viral" because even the Inside the NBA crew on TNT spoofed them. And at this point, someone needs to grow up, say "Yes! Our city is bland and boring and tiny and not normally worth visiting, but if we can replicate that, maybe, just maybe we can drive some tourism when it's not Furniture Market." (Yes, I'm looking at you High Point.)

3. Rapping Flight Attendant

Southwest, in my humble opinion, is the best airline around. Primarily because they don't tack on silly bag charges, they're really, really helpful about letting consumers switch scheduled flights, and the people who work for them are generally just more friendly than other airlines. A perfect example? David Holmes, the rapping flight attendant who got so large even CNN covered him. Actually, he's bigger than that -- he went viral twice after explaining GAAP to Southwest's investors at their annual shareholder meeting.

2. Twitter

Twitter is by far and away the most love/hate filled meme-trend on the internet right now; I know people involved in advertising that simply can't stand the 140 character micro-blogging tool (you know who you are) but then others, myself included, are straight up addicted. It's a fantastic method for communicating your deals, plans, and corporate insight to consumers without seeming intrusive ... or without paying any money! Just ask Marriott International, whose Twitter account ranks up there with the finest in terms of corporate synergy PR work. (PS: Follow PTG on Twitter, obvs.) And if you think Twitter is going away, you should definitely remember what they said about blogz a few years ago, and look where they are.

1. Best Job in the World

Queensland, Australia: an awesome place but not necessarily a tourism mecca, no? Well, when they announced that they were hiring for the "Best Job in the World" recently, they received such a flood of applications, website traffic and wannabe viral videos that the whole internet shut down! Well, their internet anyway. But the folks in Queensland did everything related to their campaign perfectly: they offered a substantial sum of money for someone to hang out on an island and blog about it, and it put more eyes on their natural product than any amount of advertising budget possibly could.