South African travel agents and incoming tour operators now have another online tool to help build awareness of and sell Cape Town as a holiday destination.
Cape Town Tourism today launches a unique Facebook game enabling Facebook users in South Africa and around the world to send their Facebook profile on a virtual holiday to Cape Town and thereby stand the chance to win a trip to the city for real. The game will run until the end of December. The overseas winner receives two tickets to Cape Town sponsored by Virgin Atlantic Airways, while CTT will arrange the domestic winner plus partner’s holiday.
CTT is encouraging the trade to share the new Cape Town Facebook game on their own Facebook profiles and so become part of a campaign that is expected to result in a “massive influx” of virtual visitors in the next three months and stimulate real demand for the destination at the same time.
CTT ceo, Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold, says the game enables Facebook users to tailor-make experiences to their interests and create a unique itinerary assigned to them. “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 photos and videos showing the experience,” she explains. “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”. To participate, Facebook users need to click on the App on the www.mycapetownholiday.com Facebook page.
CTT believes social media and Facebook in particular play an increasingly important role in determining where tourists travel to.
Executive marketing manager, Velma Corcoran, says research shows that 76% of travellers post their holiday snaps on social networks and 40% post activity/attraction reviews. She says more than 90% of consumers worldwide say they trust recommendations from friends; and tonly 48%of those who use social media to research travel plans stick with their original plans.
CTT says its recent iAmbassador campaign, during which it hosted international travel bloggers, resulted in more than 36m Twitter impressions in three weeks.
