MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Successful online marketing for Falkland Islands tourism

The results of the Falkland Islands Tourist Board’s first online marketing campaign in the UK have been outstanding, according to Jake Downing, General Manager of FITB.

The campaign ran from 18 August to 27 October, and included a series of print adverts in the Guardian and Observer newspapers as well as 1.5 million online adverts on the Guardian’s own website. The adverts were designed to encourage visits to a dedicated Falkland Islands ‘microsite’.

The tourist board worked closely with the editorial team at the Guardian to create the microsite – a separate mini-website, which was displayed as an offshoot to the Guardian’s own website, and included an image gallery of the Falkland Islands, as well as information about what to do and see, links to other relevant websites, plus a competition to win a holiday to the Falklands.

By the end of the campaign the microsite had been viewed by 17,342 unique users and the competition had received 10,296 entries.

“This far surpasses our initial expectations”, said Mr Downing, “and what’s particularly exciting is that 20% of the competition entrants requested further information on holidays in the Falkland Islands. We’re now in the process of sending information out to each and every one of these potential holidaymakers.”

Penny Bartram, Guardian Plus Group Head agreed that the campaign had performed incredibly well. “We received double the number of online visitors that we would expect for a campaign of this size”, said Ms Bartram. “We were overwhelmed by the number of competition entries submitted for this once in a lifetime prize – proving that the Falkland Islands is seen as a very desirable destination by Guardian readers.”

“We were delighted to see so much interest and our aim now is to convert as many of the competition entrants as possible into visitors for the coming season, and also for the following season (2010/11)” said Mr Downing.