“Where Next?” Campaign Encourages Audiences to Keep Dreaming of Travel

The COVID-19 crisis has brought unprecedented challenges to the travel industry and the world. However, as destination marketing organizations around the globe face this incredible adversity, they are continuing their vital work as anchors in their communities by serving local businesses and tourism partners, and planning for recovery.

Our role at Expedia Group Media Solutions is to help support them in their journey. For nearly a decade, we’ve helped cities, states, regions and countries reinvigorate tourism following times of adversity. Working closely with our advertising partners, we’ve activated our disaster recovery program and crisis toolkit to help support advertising partners as they continue to navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

Where Next?

This week, as part of our continued mission to support the travel industry and our advertising partners, we’ve launched a campaign called Where Next? that encourages travelers to continue dreaming of travel even while they stay home to stay healthy.

Running between now and June, the campaign invites travelers to explore destinations virtually and discover stunning full-screen imagery and information on both iconic and lesser known destinations around the world.

Built by our in-house creative agency, Creative Partnerships, this new campaign helps destinations stay at the forefront of traveler’s minds for future travel consideration, paving the way for rebuilding trust with travelers around the world to capture demand when the time is right.

Where Next Creative Partnerships Campaign

To extend the campaign’s reach and engagement, the website features integrated social sharing capabilities so users can share their choice with friends and family across social channels and help other travelers around the world dream up their next adventure.

The campaign is available on any device across Expedia Group brands—including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity, Orbitz, CheapTickets and Vrbo.

Where Next? launched this week, which coincides with the U.S. Travel Association’s annual National Travel and Tourism Week (NTTW). In response to the COVID-19 crisis, NTTW this year is honoring the #SpiritofTravel, with the U.S. Travel Association stating, “Through every crisis in our nation’s history, it’s the spirit of travel that moves America forward.” You can learn more about the #SpiritofTravel here.

Thailand Where Next Creative Partnerships Campaign

Whether inspiring travelers to dream about their next trip, educating them on the state of travel, or capturing demand, we believe that the more we can help destinations and the broader travel industry with recovery efforts and help travelers go places, the more we will all benefit. Travel is essential to people, businesses and economies around the world. Tourism will always play a critical role in reinvigorating the economy and supporting destination recovery after disaster strikes.

This campaign is one example of the steps we are taking to support recovery efforts and reinvigorate tourism. Travel partners can learn more about how to inspire travelers and navigate recovery when the time is right. 

Monya Mandich

Vice President, Media Solutions Marketing

Monya Mandich is the VP, Marketing of Expedia Group Media Solutions and oversees all integrated marketing and communications activities for the brand. In her role, she is responsible for raising awareness of digital media opportunities for partners across the Expedia Group suite of leading global travel brands. With nearly two decades of experience, she evangelizes a thought leadership approach both externally and internally centered on data-driven insights, which has resulted in travel and marketing industry recognition and accolades. Monya previously managed strategic partnership development, executing strategies for top-tier partnerships, maximizing traffic and revenue for Expedia.com. She started her career in the travel space at VacationSpot.com, where she ran the B2B marketing and customer acquisition efforts for the vacation rental booking site. Monya is on the board of directors for Destinations International and the U.S. Travel, and also participates on the advisory committee for U.S. Travel's Project: Time Off, which aims to shift thinking around the health, business and economic value of personal time off, Monya was also recognized as one of HSMAI’s Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing. She is a graduate of Western Washington University and lives in the Seattle area with her family.

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