At an event held on the Olympic mountain Trebević near Sarajevo, USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Federation Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) Minister of Environment and Tourism Edita Đapo officially launched Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) first ever promotional campaign on Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel platform, aiming to position the country as an attractive tourism destination in Germany, Turkiye, Austria, Serbia and Croatia. The 3-month campaign was funded by the FBiH Ministry of Environment and Tourism (FMoET) and implemented by the FBiH Chamber of Economy (FCoE) in partnership with USAID Turizam.
The campaign promoted 26 points of interests across the FBiH in three languages (English, German, Turkish) and thereby contributed to a series of USAID Turizam’s strategic goals, including propelling the brand of BiH in prioritized international markets, accelerating recovery of demand to pre-pandemic levels, setting arrivals on a growth trajectory, increasing the number of arrivals and reducing seasonality through targeted and effective marketing and promotion.
USAID Turizam facilitated FMoET’s $ 290,000 grant to the FCoE for the purposes of the campaign implementation and secured a 1:2 match by Tripadvisor to augment campaign reach and performance in the targeted source markets and an additional $ 30,000 in market intelligence.
USAID Turizam has also provided international expertise in digital destination marketing to advise on campaign design and performance and advised the FCoE on creating and delivering needed content/materials. USAID Turizam also supported the FCoE in designing and launching an outreach and PR campaign to reach and inform local trade about the campaign and encourage enlisting on Tripadvisor and secured participation of TripAdvisor in a webinar targeted at local trade (tourist boards, travel agents, lodging and service providers) on how to enlist on TripAdvisor, improve their existing listing, and best ways to capitalize on and benefit from the campaign.
