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Social Media Asia: Ultimate Explorers Thailand

ByLaurel Papworth

Thailand have a social media competition – inviting bloggers to undertake a “team” holiday set with challenges they have to blog about.

Thailand have a social media competition – inviting bloggers to undertake a “team” holiday set with challenges they have to blog about.

Tourism Authority of Thailand have a social media challenge underway: submit a video of yourself, be selected to be one of 5 teams competing in the Ultimate Explorers Thailand competition.

utltimate thailand

Each of the five teams of finalists will have six days and five nights in one of five chosen locations – Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Samui, and Pattaya – in order to explore and fulfill given assignments: the task for each team is to explore the attractions and activities and then upload pictures, write blogs, and upload videos via numerous sources of online social media. The winning team, the one that gets the most online votes, will receive a cash prize, holiday package, and other prizes worth US$15,000 in total. More importantly, the purpose of the event is to inspire international travelers to set their feet on Thai soil. (from ETN)

Release the content from the spin – don’t tell everyone that you “have the best holiday destination” or “the premier vacation spot”. Far, far better if the target audience do the talking for you. The power of word of mouth – get backpackers etc. market to your target audience – themselves.

“We have [been] publiciz[ing] via online media since September 1, 2009, launching a website, stirring interest by means of social media, and social networking such as youtube, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. We made a direct marketing approach to travelers through the most reputable traveler websites such as WAYN (Where Are You Now). Strikingly, this campaign has captured the attention of digital travelers because even though only two weeks has passed, there have been 52,871 visitors and 16,770 views of the video campaign. These figures are considered the highest numbers since TAT’s first online campaign resulting in approximately 155 teams of applicants to date.”

User generated ads FTW!

I’m actually one of those sad cases that prefers user generated ads to agency ones (with a few exceptions of course). How about you?  😛

Their Facebook page is here.

13 Comments

  11. Yep! User generated content rocks! Let the people talk and share about their experience. Agency ads are good too especially if launched from main stream media but shouldn’t do too much talking.

  13. Too bad that the Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) doesn’t have a clue on how to market their country. Links on their web site are broken, they don’t reply to emails, requsts for literature are ignored, and they lie about the number of tourists visitng Thailand.

    They should study the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (HVB) that had at one time a budget of $5 million dollars and Hawaii had 5 million tourist. Not bad – a buck a tourist.

    TAT just spins their wheels and gives the impression they are doing something by having a contest that few will participate in and will do nothing to attract tourists.

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