Every summer, Tel Aviv hosts a week long Pride festival which culminates with the Gay Pride Parade – where members of the LGBT community from around the world gather for music, fun, and socializing. What started in 1998 with a few gatherers, has turned into an event hosting over 100,000.
Using this event as an opportunity to reinvigorate travel to Israel, we partnered with the Israel Ministry of Tourism to create a campaign targeted at the Italian and United Kingdom LGBT audience across Expedia® and Hotels.com®. The objective was to increase awareness of Tel Aviv as an LGBT destination, while educating about the other unique experiences and destinations available throughout Israel.
We worked with our lodging teams to source 140 exclusive deals throughout Tel Aviv during the Pride festival. Additionally, display advertisements were used across the sites to promote other Israeli destinations.
The UK campaign resulted in an impressive 23% increase in year-over-year passengers from 2014 to 2015 and 19% increase in hotel demand.
This campaign is an excellent demonstration of the benefit in targeting a niche audience. In partnership with Expedia Media Solutions, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism was able to leverage a unique feature of their destination to increase visitors by finding and valuing a small, yet active and engaged community.
For their creative and effective campaign, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism was announced as the recipient for the Expedia Media Solutions 2015 EMEA Most Innovative Campaign of the Year award.
