At its core, Pinterest is a bookmarking site. The average user of Pinterest is not simply bookmarking links, funny videos and reminders, but goes to Pinterest every day to plan for their vacation and get holiday travel inspiration.
At its core, Pinterest is a bookmarking site. The average user of Pinterest is not simply bookmarking links, funny videos and reminders, but goes to Pinterest every day to plan for their vacation and get holiday travel inspiration.
Travel searches on Pinterest increased 60% year on year, along with the number of monthly users. Going from 250 million to 459 million between 2018 and 2021, with 100 million of these users coming in 2020.
459 million people use Pinterest every month and 240 billion pins have been saved since Pinterest launched, making an average of 533 pins per user. Furthermore, Pinterest is growing in the younger generation with the number of Gen Z users increasing by 40% between 2019 and 2020 and the number of millennials growing by 35% in 2020.
A lot has changed, especially in the last year but the numbers show that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, people never lost their interest in travel. Currently, there are 40 thousand Pinterest boards named "travel inspiration".
More people coming means new changes in travel demand and consequently new trends. According to Pinterest, eight travel personas are growing in importance for travel marketers and that destinations should pay attention to shape their travel products and services.
Pinterest also notes that organisations should use Pinterest to help travellers imagine the future by inspiring new trip ideas, reassure travellers with safety and trust plans, promote staycations and short-haul trips and base their message on people’s emotions.
Ashish Arya, Global Head of Strategy & Marketing for Travel at Pinterest, takes us through the big picture on how destinations can use the platform: How Brands are Inspiring Travel Again.
Although Visit California's Pinterest account only has 11.9K followers, it includes 30 boards and receives 10 million monthly visitors. This tourism board reached an audience outside of its community by implementing current trends such as road trips, which is being promoted through the Pins series "We Believe…" that aligns very well with their global brand positioning 'Dream Big'.
Like Visit California, Visit San Diego is another destination with limited followers (4.3K) but a high monthly viewership (1.8M).
The tourism board is currently promoting the 'Happiness is Calling You Back' campaign, part of its tourism recovery programme. The $5.8 million recovery advertising campaign ran through the end of 2020 and its goal was to invite "visitors from nearby markets back to San Diego, reinforcing our authentic, welcoming, laid-back attitude fuelled by good vibes while encouraging a culture of safe and responsible travel".
The San Diego tourism recovery programme comprises three distinct campaigns, with "Happiness is Calling You Back" for brand awareness, "Always-On" for education and storytelling and a "Pull-through" digital campaign for consideration and booking.
Again similar to Visit California, the tourism board highlights short weekend getaways and road trips.
Another destination with a successful Pinterest account is Tourism Ireland, with 25.4K, the account is the number one on the list with an astonishingly 10 million viewership.
The most recent Pins project represents the vibes of cottagecore, which is the perfect aesthetic for this country considering its amazing rural landscapes and culture - one of the reasons why this destination is often used as a filming location for historical films and series.
Visitors can find a total of 46 boards, unveiling the Irish culture and what can be enjoyed in this country, including boards for Dublin and Belfast, the most popular places; St. Patrick’s Day, the iconic national holiday along with the Traditional Irish Pubs board, another popular element of the Irish culture known worldwide; and of course, boards for the series Game of Thrones and Vikings.
Like Tourism Ireland, Visit Scotland has a good number of followers - 9.1K - and a very high viewership with over 10 million monthly visitors. Visit Scotland drives focus on their adventure and outdoor activities.
The Adventure board with 43 Pins - one of the board with most Pins, right after the shared board for Edinburgh with 319 Pins where visitors can see user-generated content alongside content created by stakeholders as Dundas Castle, Mercat Tours, Rabbie’s Tours and Radisson Blu Edinburgh. Despite not having many Pins overall, this Pinterest account still serves as a go-to for travel inspiration, the perfect place to find helpful information and itinerary ideas for those in the first stages of the visitor cycle.
Another board people will find interesting is the ‘Scotland on Screen’ where visitors can see filming locations of different shows and films. The most predominant Pins are for the ongoing series ‘Outlander’, a period fictional drama set in the 18th century and based on the novel series by Diana Gabaldon.
This series has filming locations across Scotland, including The Highlands, Glasgow Cathedral and Stirling University. Using the popularity of shows and their filming locations is an excellent opportunity for destinations to promote the whole country, including “off-the-beaten-path” areas and disperse the number of visitors from the popular places which would avoid mass tourism and help preserve those locations.
Visit Durango in Colorado has over 749,000 followers on their Pinterest account and is undoubtedly one of the most successful accounts on the social channel. They also have over 69,000 monthly viewers. The destination's focus on Pinterest is to demonstrate that Durango is an adventure wonderland, providing plenty of activities for visitors to enjoy. Each of the 32 boards that Visit Durango has included highlights different aspects of the DMOs outdoor recreation and historical offering.
As Pinterest users are looking for ideas for holidays on Pinterest, Visit Durango have been quite successful in inspiring specific activities such as cycling, the railroads, outdoor sports, wildlife and winter sports. Visit Durango have added the most interesting pins for each board, encouraging users to save these on their own boards. Due to the visual way of presenting different experiences and themes, Visit Durango is providing inspirational content to get people dreaming and ultimately drive visitors to the destination.
Pure Michigan is narrowing down its Pinterest presence to pinning guides covering outdoor activities, seasonal activities, itineraries and bucket lists and support of the local business. Pinterest users can actively suggest boards they are interested in by tweeting about it. Pure Michigan grew its following from 23,000 to 749,000 followers in three years, has 22 boards and over 2.4 million visitors. Each board has fewer pins added, making it easier for users to review the pins quickly rather than scroll through an abundance of pins.
Because of Pure Michigan’s focus on food, the destination has created a board featuring Michigan restaurants, bars or recipes from local influencers. This variety in content is quite interesting, as the board really gives its Pinterest followers a good sense of the destination. Pure Michigan is managing the board but local influencers can be added as contributors and add some of their favourite foods and places. This is a great way of collecting great ideas and building a Pinterest community of influencers that help to share the best that the destination has to offer.
MySwitzerland is another interesting example, as the destination is tying in all its social media channels with its overall strategic focus and campaign activities. Switzerland is doing great with 27.6K followers and 325.3K monthly viewers. Like other social media channels, MySwitzerland is building a community of engaged users to share and help pin the best that Switzerland offers.
Each of the boards is essentially used as a hashtag across their online activities. This is quite smart, as it is easier to find other content on other platforms through common hashtags. Two of the boards are the recent 'I need Switzerland' campaign that includes the hashtag #IneedSwitzerland and the past '#inLOVEwithSwitzerland' campaign.
Currently, MySwitzerland is promoting their '100% women' campaign, launched on International Women's Day. The aim is to incentivise women travellers to visit Switzerland for adventure sport and outdoor activities and promote 100% women travel offers and events created by women for women and led by a female guide. This campaign came with the six-month 100% Women Peak Challenge that encourages female mountaineers to climb Switzerland's highest peaks between 8 March and 8 September 2021 in all-women rope teams.
The campaign proves to be successful across their social media platforms, with thousands of people sharing content and Pins with the hashtags #peakchallenge and #IneedSwitzerland.
Have a look at what they say in the annual report.
Discover LA is using Pinterest to give an overview of all things LA. With almost 37K followers, 4K monthly viewers and 24 boards, the destination mainly shows many parts in line with their website presence. Working with a mix of boards containing saved Pins by the destination and user-added Pins, Discover LA is providing a pool of inspirational content and involving the Pinterest community to share their take on the city and what it has to offer.
Pinterest is a pool of ideas and inspiration for users and Discover LA, it is also a great opportunity to highlight wedding vacations, including promoting LGBT weddings. The 'LA Weddings' board is the one with the most Pins (107 Pins) with around 8K followers, and the 'LGBT Weddings' shares the same number of followers despite having only 33 pins.
Tourism Montréal is certainly one of the most captivating and colourful pages, with all the Pins duplicated in two languages, English and French, as these are the city’s official languages.
With 4.1K followers and 82.3K monthly views, their Pinterest shows what a traveller would see on their official tourist website but in a fun and exciting way, showcasing the true essence of Montreal. The Boards focus on the multiple types of experiences that visitors can have instead of promoting a specific trait of the destination or the most current trend, which demonstrates how versatile Montréal is.
Most of the content consists of “thing to do” guides that could be seasonal such as “Spring break in Montréal”, monthly like “Thing to do in April 2021”, or food-related guides. Visitors can also find current events like exhibitions for art, music, and museums, which is great because not only attracts international visitors but can also be used for locals who are interested in exploring more their city.
The QueerMTL’ s #curfewcomforts is a campaign aimed to show the “spirit of #çavabienaller🌈 (“It will be OK!”) and despite the curfew, the city’s LGBTQ+ community has kept that rainbow bright”, a fantastic initiative to involve this community and establish the city as an LGBT-friendly destination.
Tourism Australia must be one of the most organised Pinterest accounts among these destinations, with only seven boards for Native Wildlife, Luxury Experiences, Conscious Travel, Health & Wellness Travel, Adventure & Outdoor Experiences, Beaches & Island Getaways and Food & Drink Experiences. By being organised, straight to the point and aesthetically pleasing, Tourism Australia’s page gets 1.2 million monthly views and 18.9K followers.
Like Tourism Montreal, the visitor won’t find any Pins related to safe trips or promoting after-pandemic travel, which is understandable considering the country’s boards are still closed for both inbound and outbound travel since the outbreak. Despite this, Tourism Australia shows a slight hint of hope for the future while maintaining its image and brand through the page’s banner that refers to the 2020 campaign “With love from Aus”.
If you’re looking for a destination where you’ll never get bored, Greece is the place to be and Visit Greece’s Pinterest shows you why. This account has 154 boards putting it right in first place for “Accounts with Most Boards” in this list, and it covers almost everything, from multiple-city travel and to-do experiences.
Visitors get to have a look at what the country is all about - sun and sand, nature, history, food, sports, weddings and of course, beautiful scenery for filming locations. At this point, there’s nothing Greece can’t offer; it’s for every taste and welcoming to any traveller. The Pinterest’ banner is not wrong...indeed, “All you want is Greece”.
Help travellers imagine the future: Inspire travellers by curating high-quality content, creative guides and itineraries and heart-warming storytelling content that will lead first-time and returning visitors from dreaming to booking.
Establish your branding throughout your campaigns and content, this will help travellers to easily identify your brand and most likely to remember the destination and the experiences it has to offer, especially focusing on safety and trust.
Understand your audience and how the current trends can be applied to their wants, needs and passions while being aligned with your brand. Use passion and interest to personalise what you showcase.
Don't stop here. Have a look at other relevant resources:
At its core, Pinterest is a bookmarking site. The average user of Pinterest is not simply bookmarking links, funny videos and reminders, but goes to Pinterest every day to plan for their vacation and get holiday travel inspiration.
Travel searches on Pinterest increased 60% year on year, along with the number of monthly users. Going from 250 million to 459 million between 2018 and 2021, with 100 million of these users coming in 2020.
459 million people use Pinterest every month and 240 billion pins have been saved since Pinterest launched, making an average of 533 pins per user. Furthermore, Pinterest is growing in the younger generation with the number of Gen Z users increasing by 40% between 2019 and 2020 and the number of millennials growing by 35% in 2020.
A lot has changed, especially in the last year but the numbers show that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, people never lost their interest in travel. Currently, there are 40 thousand Pinterest boards named "travel inspiration".
More people coming means new changes in travel demand and consequently new trends. According to Pinterest, eight travel personas are growing in importance for travel marketers and that destinations should pay attention to shape their travel products and services.
Pinterest also notes that organisations should use Pinterest to help travellers imagine the future by inspiring new trip ideas, reassure travellers with safety and trust plans, promote staycations and short-haul trips and base their message on people’s emotions.
Ashish Arya, Global Head of Strategy & Marketing for Travel at Pinterest, takes us through the big picture on how destinations can use the platform: How Brands are Inspiring Travel Again.
Although Visit California's Pinterest account only has 11.9K followers, it includes 30 boards and receives 10 million monthly visitors. This tourism board reached an audience outside of its community by implementing current trends such as road trips, which is being promoted through the Pins series "We Believe…" that aligns very well with their global brand positioning 'Dream Big'.
Like Visit California, Visit San Diego is another destination with limited followers (4.3K) but a high monthly viewership (1.8M).
The tourism board is currently promoting the 'Happiness is Calling You Back' campaign, part of its tourism recovery programme. The $5.8 million recovery advertising campaign ran through the end of 2020 and its goal was to invite "visitors from nearby markets back to San Diego, reinforcing our authentic, welcoming, laid-back attitude fuelled by good vibes while encouraging a culture of safe and responsible travel".
The San Diego tourism recovery programme comprises three distinct campaigns, with "Happiness is Calling You Back" for brand awareness, "Always-On" for education and storytelling and a "Pull-through" digital campaign for consideration and booking.
Again similar to Visit California, the tourism board highlights short weekend getaways and road trips.
Another destination with a successful Pinterest account is Tourism Ireland, with 25.4K, the account is the number one on the list with an astonishingly 10 million viewership.
The most recent Pins project represents the vibes of cottagecore, which is the perfect aesthetic for this country considering its amazing rural landscapes and culture - one of the reasons why this destination is often used as a filming location for historical films and series.
Visitors can find a total of 46 boards, unveiling the Irish culture and what can be enjoyed in this country, including boards for Dublin and Belfast, the most popular places; St. Patrick’s Day, the iconic national holiday along with the Traditional Irish Pubs board, another popular element of the Irish culture known worldwide; and of course, boards for the series Game of Thrones and Vikings.
Like Tourism Ireland, Visit Scotland has a good number of followers - 9.1K - and a very high viewership with over 10 million monthly visitors. Visit Scotland drives focus on their adventure and outdoor activities.
The Adventure board with 43 Pins - one of the board with most Pins, right after the shared board for Edinburgh with 319 Pins where visitors can see user-generated content alongside content created by stakeholders as Dundas Castle, Mercat Tours, Rabbie’s Tours and Radisson Blu Edinburgh. Despite not having many Pins overall, this Pinterest account still serves as a go-to for travel inspiration, the perfect place to find helpful information and itinerary ideas for those in the first stages of the visitor cycle.
Another board people will find interesting is the ‘Scotland on Screen’ where visitors can see filming locations of different shows and films. The most predominant Pins are for the ongoing series ‘Outlander’, a period fictional drama set in the 18th century and based on the novel series by Diana Gabaldon.
This series has filming locations across Scotland, including The Highlands, Glasgow Cathedral and Stirling University. Using the popularity of shows and their filming locations is an excellent opportunity for destinations to promote the whole country, including “off-the-beaten-path” areas and disperse the number of visitors from the popular places which would avoid mass tourism and help preserve those locations.
Visit Durango in Colorado has over 749,000 followers on their Pinterest account and is undoubtedly one of the most successful accounts on the social channel. They also have over 69,000 monthly viewers. The destination's focus on Pinterest is to demonstrate that Durango is an adventure wonderland, providing plenty of activities for visitors to enjoy. Each of the 32 boards that Visit Durango has included highlights different aspects of the DMOs outdoor recreation and historical offering.
As Pinterest users are looking for ideas for holidays on Pinterest, Visit Durango have been quite successful in inspiring specific activities such as cycling, the railroads, outdoor sports, wildlife and winter sports. Visit Durango have added the most interesting pins for each board, encouraging users to save these on their own boards. Due to the visual way of presenting different experiences and themes, Visit Durango is providing inspirational content to get people dreaming and ultimately drive visitors to the destination.
Pure Michigan is narrowing down its Pinterest presence to pinning guides covering outdoor activities, seasonal activities, itineraries and bucket lists and support of the local business. Pinterest users can actively suggest boards they are interested in by tweeting about it. Pure Michigan grew its following from 23,000 to 749,000 followers in three years, has 22 boards and over 2.4 million visitors. Each board has fewer pins added, making it easier for users to review the pins quickly rather than scroll through an abundance of pins.
Because of Pure Michigan’s focus on food, the destination has created a board featuring Michigan restaurants, bars or recipes from local influencers. This variety in content is quite interesting, as the board really gives its Pinterest followers a good sense of the destination. Pure Michigan is managing the board but local influencers can be added as contributors and add some of their favourite foods and places. This is a great way of collecting great ideas and building a Pinterest community of influencers that help to share the best that the destination has to offer.
MySwitzerland is another interesting example, as the destination is tying in all its social media channels with its overall strategic focus and campaign activities. Switzerland is doing great with 27.6K followers and 325.3K monthly viewers. Like other social media channels, MySwitzerland is building a community of engaged users to share and help pin the best that Switzerland offers.
Each of the boards is essentially used as a hashtag across their online activities. This is quite smart, as it is easier to find other content on other platforms through common hashtags. Two of the boards are the recent 'I need Switzerland' campaign that includes the hashtag #IneedSwitzerland and the past '#inLOVEwithSwitzerland' campaign.
Currently, MySwitzerland is promoting their '100% women' campaign, launched on International Women's Day. The aim is to incentivise women travellers to visit Switzerland for adventure sport and outdoor activities and promote 100% women travel offers and events created by women for women and led by a female guide. This campaign came with the six-month 100% Women Peak Challenge that encourages female mountaineers to climb Switzerland's highest peaks between 8 March and 8 September 2021 in all-women rope teams.
The campaign proves to be successful across their social media platforms, with thousands of people sharing content and Pins with the hashtags #peakchallenge and #IneedSwitzerland.
Have a look at what they say in the annual report.
Discover LA is using Pinterest to give an overview of all things LA. With almost 37K followers, 4K monthly viewers and 24 boards, the destination mainly shows many parts in line with their website presence. Working with a mix of boards containing saved Pins by the destination and user-added Pins, Discover LA is providing a pool of inspirational content and involving the Pinterest community to share their take on the city and what it has to offer.
Pinterest is a pool of ideas and inspiration for users and Discover LA, it is also a great opportunity to highlight wedding vacations, including promoting LGBT weddings. The 'LA Weddings' board is the one with the most Pins (107 Pins) with around 8K followers, and the 'LGBT Weddings' shares the same number of followers despite having only 33 pins.
Tourism Montréal is certainly one of the most captivating and colourful pages, with all the Pins duplicated in two languages, English and French, as these are the city’s official languages.
With 4.1K followers and 82.3K monthly views, their Pinterest shows what a traveller would see on their official tourist website but in a fun and exciting way, showcasing the true essence of Montreal. The Boards focus on the multiple types of experiences that visitors can have instead of promoting a specific trait of the destination or the most current trend, which demonstrates how versatile Montréal is.
Most of the content consists of “thing to do” guides that could be seasonal such as “Spring break in Montréal”, monthly like “Thing to do in April 2021”, or food-related guides. Visitors can also find current events like exhibitions for art, music, and museums, which is great because not only attracts international visitors but can also be used for locals who are interested in exploring more their city.
The QueerMTL’ s #curfewcomforts is a campaign aimed to show the “spirit of #çavabienaller🌈 (“It will be OK!”) and despite the curfew, the city’s LGBTQ+ community has kept that rainbow bright”, a fantastic initiative to involve this community and establish the city as an LGBT-friendly destination.
Tourism Australia must be one of the most organised Pinterest accounts among these destinations, with only seven boards for Native Wildlife, Luxury Experiences, Conscious Travel, Health & Wellness Travel, Adventure & Outdoor Experiences, Beaches & Island Getaways and Food & Drink Experiences. By being organised, straight to the point and aesthetically pleasing, Tourism Australia’s page gets 1.2 million monthly views and 18.9K followers.
Like Tourism Montreal, the visitor won’t find any Pins related to safe trips or promoting after-pandemic travel, which is understandable considering the country’s boards are still closed for both inbound and outbound travel since the outbreak. Despite this, Tourism Australia shows a slight hint of hope for the future while maintaining its image and brand through the page’s banner that refers to the 2020 campaign “With love from Aus”.
If you’re looking for a destination where you’ll never get bored, Greece is the place to be and Visit Greece’s Pinterest shows you why. This account has 154 boards putting it right in first place for “Accounts with Most Boards” in this list, and it covers almost everything, from multiple-city travel and to-do experiences.
Visitors get to have a look at what the country is all about - sun and sand, nature, history, food, sports, weddings and of course, beautiful scenery for filming locations. At this point, there’s nothing Greece can’t offer; it’s for every taste and welcoming to any traveller. The Pinterest’ banner is not wrong...indeed, “All you want is Greece”.
Help travellers imagine the future: Inspire travellers by curating high-quality content, creative guides and itineraries and heart-warming storytelling content that will lead first-time and returning visitors from dreaming to booking.
Establish your branding throughout your campaigns and content, this will help travellers to easily identify your brand and most likely to remember the destination and the experiences it has to offer, especially focusing on safety and trust.
Understand your audience and how the current trends can be applied to their wants, needs and passions while being aligned with your brand. Use passion and interest to personalise what you showcase.
Don't stop here. Have a look at other relevant resources:
.webp)