How to Craft Strategic Stories for Tourism Marketing Campaigns

Tourism marketing campaigns often have big goals—increase tourism, be more sustainable, and create better experiences. But how can marketing efforts help meet those demands? At GLP, we approach tourism marketing from a strategic storytelling perspective. To us, that means finding and communicating stories that inspire the “right” action (i.e., the action getting the organization closer to its goal).

Here’s a glimpse into our strategic storytelling process from our ongoing Finger Lakes Outdoor Experience Campaign—a two-year partnership with the Finger Lakes Regional Tourism Council (FLRTC) that supports and promotes sustainable outdoor recreation in the region.

Understanding the Destination and Their Goals

Good stories are authentic stories. For marketing agencies to help partners tell authentic stories, they need to engage in meaningful conversations about their goals and their place/destination.

BIG PICTURE GOALS

As a marketing agency specializing in sustainable tourism, we always start by meeting with representatives from our partner agency to learn about their goals—not just goals for the campaign, but for their organization as a whole. Who are they? What is their mission? What do they want to be known for? Then, we zero in on how the campaign strategy and tactics can best support the whole mission.

In the case of the Finger Lakes Regional Tourism Council, defining who they are comes with the complexity of uniting a 14-county region. First, we met with the board of representatives and asked two core questions: what are the challenges, and what are the opportunities? 

Through our conversations, we found that the board saw the region as having a wealth of currently underserved offerings. So, our “big picture” goals for this campaign became highlighting all-season experiences and local stewardship efforts to attract responsible travelers and, ultimately, benefit local communities.

However, we don’t settle with this top-down approach—we also go from the bottom up.

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

Any outside agency looking to make an impact on a community level first needs to get to know that community intimately. One of the best ways to do this is through stakeholder engagement. At GLP, engaging with local stakeholders is not just a checkbox in our process; it's a fundamental aspect of our approach.

For our Finger Lakes campaign, we followed the board meeting by having individual conversations with tourism representatives from each of the 14 counties. While we had already convened as a whole, we recognized the importance of providing space for individual voices. We wanted to know how each county saw themselves, and how they saw themselves in relation to the wider region. This step is crucial in shaping regional identity campaigns to ensure that no piece of the broader puzzle is left unturned. 

With that same interest in mind, we asked each county representative to get us in touch with five local "champions" in the outdoor and conservation sectors. Having conversations with these champions, often individuals like the owners of well-known businesses, managers of state parks, or leaders of land trusts, led us to connect with their local network of community members who embody the spirit of the Finger Lakes—avid hikers, bikers, birders, natural resource stewards, and outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds. 

This process aligns with a sustainable tourism approach by funneling down to the passionate voices that are the essence of the region. Rather than creating a new “tourist attraction,” sustainable tourism respects local cultures by building visitation off of the existing assets of a community to attract visitors who will have a deep and sustained interest in the place. By speaking to people with different perspectives, from those who have a vested interest in tourism and economic development, to those who just love recreating in their backyard, we learned how locals love their community, to create a campaign that inspires visitors to love it in the same way.

Seeing it for Ourselves

There's an irreplaceable value in experiencing a destination firsthand. While data and research provide valuable insights, nothing compares to actually being immersed in the sights and sounds of a place. For that reason, we try to incorporate a scouting trip into our process whenever possible.

Successful scouting trips have a strategic approach. At GLP, we prepare with months of research and stakeholder engagement. This groundwork not only familiarizes us with the destination's key features and challenges but also helps us establish local connections. By the time we are ready for a scouting trip, we have an understanding of the destination's identity, aspirations, and potential that is flexible enough to evolve based on our on-the-ground exploration.

We approach the scouting trip with a dual perspective. On one hand, we view the destination through the lens of our tourism industry expertise, identifying opportunities for partnership, promotion, and development. On the other hand, we approach it as tourists, experiencing the destination as visitors would. This dual perspective enables us to craft marketing strategies that not only showcase the destination's assets but also resonate with travelers on a personal level.

FINGER LAKES SCOUTING TRIP

Photos by Erika Piik

In March 2024, our Founder Rob Holmes, Head of Production Matt Weatherly, and Brand Strategist Erika Piik went on a scouting trip to the Finger Lakes region. The team began in Syracuse and zig-zagged up and down the eleven Finger Lakes, traversing westward until reaching Rochester and watching the sunset on Lake Ontario.

The team sat down with some of the region’s craft beverage experts, outdoor adventure guides, and accessibility and conservation leaders. These experiences took our engagement with the region to the next level, from having conversations over the phone to having conversations about the trail on the trail and having conversations about the farm-sourced food on the farm. 

Here’s what Erika Piik had to say about her experience,

“Being able to visit a destination before filming is a real luxury, but provides so much more information and understanding to the process. You have to view the locations through a few perspectives: as the campaign strategist, as a story developer and finally, purely as a visitor. What is really cool? What is unexpected? What are you learning and experiencing as you move from place to place? 

Being engaged in the preproduction process gives us some insider information, but ultimately the best stories we produce unlock the joy of discovery as a visitor. You have to put down the notebook and working hat and put yourself into the setting. Have a pistachio croissant (so good!) at a local bakery. Talk to folks on the trail and enjoy the view together (waterfalls are awesome). Sit down in a restaurant (ask a local for a recommendation) and listen to the conversations and enjoy the vibe. Travel is supposed to be fun and ideally transformational. Immersing yourself into a place is the biggest benefit of a scouting trip. Capturing that spirit in a short video is our challenge.”

Crafting the Story

Storytelling is both an art and a science. Crafting the narrative isn't the last step—it unfolds throughout the entire process. By astutely engaging in conversations with partner organizations and local stakeholders, and synthesizing those insights with first-hand scouting trip experience, creative storytellers pull core narrative elements to light.

It is essential to keep the partner’s campaign goals and organization goals in mind. There is a wealth of stories to tell, but strategic storytelling means telling the right story to inspire actions that will fulfill those aims and deliverables.

THE FINGER LAKES STORY

The process of crafting a story will look different depending on the story medium and size of the marketing campaign. For our multi-year campaign with FLRTC, we are telling the Finger Lakes story through multiple mediums, with a special focus on video storytelling.

With a campaign covering such a large region and period, multiple standalone stories fit together to convey the broader narrative of outdoor experiences in the Finger Lakes. We identified key stories by tying together common themes from a wide range of local perspectives. Guided by the campaign goals of attracting responsible, slow, all-season, and repeat travel across the entire region, the story themes center around passion points through which community members and visitors can experience the outdoors in various ways and spaces. Paddling, for example, is an exciting regional story because of the diversity of waterways—canals, rivers, lakes, streams—that provide endless ways to experience new sights and sounds through just one activity in the Finger Lakes.

In addition to key themes, every story needs a character. Through our stakeholder engagement process, we identified passionate local voices to feature in our films. When it comes to marketing a place/destination with sustainability in mind, community members need to be the characters in the story shaping the future of their home. In the Finger Lakes, we found that local characters representing passion points such as hiking, biking, and fishing are notably stewardship and accessibility minded. Featuring these voices conveys sub-themes that are naturally present in the spirit of the people and place. Ultimately, we aren’t selling a destination, we are inviting the viewers to experience the destination through local eyes and voices to spark that emotional travel flame of “I want to go there and experience that.”

GLP will be filming in the Finger Lakes in June and October, and releasing campaign videos and stories through Fall 2025. Stay up to date on campaign content by following us on LinkedIn.

Telling Your Story

Need help reaching your tourism marketing goals? Get in touch to discuss how we can use strategic storytelling to meet your destination’s goals!