USD 1-M prize on emerging tourism destinations up for grabs

Two emerging tourism destinations are set to each receive an award of USD 500,000 to develop and create a digital marketing campaign to showcase their destination to a global audience.
This comes after travel association Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), in partnership with the world’s largest travel site TripAdvisor, joined to search for emerging destinations to take part in the PATA CEO Challenge 2016.
The PATA CEO Challenge, launched in 2015, is an awards program that embraces the uniqueness and diversity of different heritages, cultures, customs and nature of world destinations.
This involves the selection of lesser known destinations that are ready to be discovered, enjoyed and recognized for their authenticity and beauty.
Last year, the province of Albay was awarded the PATA CEO Challenge 2015 Top Destination in the category of Regions/States/Provinces.
The PATA CEO Challenge 2016 is open to all regions, states and provinces. This year the rules have been amended to include those smaller nations that currently attract less than 100,000 international visitor arrivals in a calendar year.
PATA Mario Hardy, in a statement, said that the contest was an amazing opportunity for emerging destinations to enjoy a major boost to their marketing campaigns.
“Once again PATA and TripAdvisor are working together to support new and emerging tourism destinations and I look forward to meeting the winners in London later this year, “ Hardy said.
He also stressed that the effective use of digital media was an essential ingredient in any successful marketing campaign.
TripAdvisor’s Head of Destination Marketing for Asia Pacific Sarah Mathews, for her part, said that the challenge reinforced the company’s commitment to supporting and shining light on destinations to enable traveler discovery.
“TripAdvisor recently announced newly-redesigned destination pages to help global destination marketing organizations find new opportunities to reach TripAdvisor’s community of millions of travelers,” Mathews said.
“The new features allow them to complement the site’s user-generated content with their own, with added insights on great things to see and do in-destination,” she added. (PNA)