Cape Town Tourism and its agencies, Ogilvy Cape Town and Flow Communications, have launched what is a world first: a Facebook-based travel app. As the city hurtles towards its busiest time of year – in real life – Cape Town is also expecting a massive influx of extra visitors in the next three months in its virtual life. These visitors will be able to experience the city via the app.
“The Facebook app is a creative user experience that utilises the latest technology and Facebook’s immense global reach to raise awareness of one of Africa’s most beautiful and inspiring cities. From 2 October, (until the end of December 2012), Facebook users around the world will be able to send their Facebook profile on a holiday to Cape Town and stand the chance of winning a trip to the city for real,” says Cape Town Tourism CEO, Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold.
Du Toit-Helmbold says the organisation is “acutely aware of the importance of social media in travel decisions, and in particular, the role that Facebook plays in determining holiday destinations”. This has led to the design and development of one of the most innovative apps yet to position a city globally via Facebook.
Facebook users can tailor-make experiences that fit their personal interests with a unique itinerary assigned to them. The app demonstrates Cape Town as a city that offers everything from high-energy adventure sports to relaxing, family-friendly experiences. The opportunity to win a real holiday to the ‘Mother City’ at the end of the campaign is a great incentive to play the game.
“Anyone signing their profile up for a trip gets a boarding pass in their profile’s name from their home town and heads off on a five day virtual trip to Cape Town. Each day they receive an update with photos of where their profile ate, went, partied or stayed – with gripping point-of-view photos and videos showing the full experience,” says du Toit-Helmbold.
It’s a simple process to sign up to play the Facebook game. Facebook users need to click on the app to start their journey on the www.mycapetownholiday.com Facebook page.
Velma Corcoran, Executive Marketing Manager at Cape Town Tourism, says that “earned media is the most powerful form of destination marketing in a noisy marketplace.”
Worldwide, Facebook has reached over one billion monthly active users and more than 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook per day, with travel related photos dominating.
Du Toit-Helmbold points out that, “Social Media – and Facebook in particular – has a great influence over consumer choices globally, especially in the travel sector.
Research in 2012 has shown that 76% of travellers post vacation photos to a social network and 40% post activity/attraction reviews. When you bear in mind that over 90% of consumers around the world say they trust recommendations from friends, such as word-of-mouth, and that of those who used social media to research travel plans, only 48% stuck with their original travel plans; it is clear that social media is now of paramount importance for travel authorities like us.”
Du Toit-Hembold believes the campaign “will give thousands of people a chance to do a virtual ‘test drive’ of a trip to Cape Town in a really engaging way, and it should whet appetites around the country and around the world resulting in more arrivals for Cape Town”.
Cape Town Tourism’s recent iAmbassador campaign – during which influential travel bloggers were hosted in Cape Town and local citizens engaged as the marketers of Cape Town – resulted in over 36 million Twitter impressions in three weeks (source: Tweetreach). It illustrated the power of social media combined with citizen engagement and set the stage for the organisation’s next digital marketing campaign with Facebook.
Virgin Atlantic is sponsoring the flights for the winners of the trip to Cape Town and will resume their seasonal direct dailies between London and Cape Town from 18 October 2012.
