Shortlisted 2021

Travel and Tourism

Brand

Kaunastic routes

Entered by:

Kaunastic routes

Kaunas IN

The Challenge

Public Institution Kaunas IN creates favorable conditions for business, tourism, and international marketing development in Kaunas, Lithuania. Its activities contribute to improving the image of Kaunas city and developing tourism. In other words, Kaunas IN is the only official tourism sector nourishing organization for the second-biggest city of Lithuania.  Our geographical scope is extremely wide since our work regards it. Our goal is to make Kaunas stand out in our own country, Lithuania, as well as to represent Lithuania abroad. We often partner with other agencies, when we travel to exhibits in Europe, Middle East, etc.  The tourism sector in Lithuania creates 55 000 jobs (out of 2,8 million residents) and is responsible for 5 percent of the country’s BVP. Kaunas is the second-largest city in the country with an economy and population that is not distant from the capital.

Before Covid-19, we had long-time chosen target markets (Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Israel, and Japan). We had marketing and communication campaigns to attract in these markets every year, as well as creating significant marks of these cultures in Kaunas, e.g. creating Scandinavia, Japan, and Israel themed guided tours, negotiating flights, and their schedules with airlines and so on.  Being in a lockdown and surrounded by uncertainty every citizen deserves an opportunity to have a break and while most of us can’t travel far, a holiday or weekend getaway is still possible. We saw a huge opportunity for Kaunas city to become a tourism destination for its citizens because many people who live in Kaunas choose familiar routes and don’t spend enough time exploring the city they live in. We decided to embrace the digital and offered a wide range of themed tours/ routes in and around the city online.

The Creative Solution

R&D. Being in a lockdown and surrounded by uncertainty every citizen deserves an opportunity to have a break and while most of us can’t travel far, a holiday or weekend getaway is still Product. Ranging from street art, weekend with children, city’s architecture, film shooting locations, green spaces in the city to trails of Lithuanian ethnic, Japanese, German, Jewish culture

Edgy, yet lovable design. How these tours are different from the competition? Most competing cities and regions collect info about what a tourist can see. But we went the extra mile and Please see all the maps here: https://kaunastika.lt/  We believe, this digital travel offer to be outstanding among its kind in the region because it’s totally free, easily customizable, has its own #kaunastic vibe, and invites getting to know his.

The Media/Content Amplification Solution

Covid-19 created an environment where everything is uncertain: lockdown may be lifted or interrupted a well-planned trip. Everything changes within a matter of hours. For this reason with our communication, we decided to help our visitor (customer) and provided holiday scenarios. This helped a tourist to spend less time on preparation and easily plan an entirely new trip on e.g. Thursday for the upcoming weekend.

We targeted three neighboring countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland because visitors can come most easily the entire year. Actually, in summer, the Baltic region formed a first in the world trip bubble at the time, meaning citizens from these three countries were allowed to travel without a quarantine period.

Examples:

Poland – https://www.mywanderlust.pl/things-to-do-in-kaunas-lithuania/

Latvia – https://viensplusviens.lv/2020/01/kaunastic/

Estonia – https://reisijuht.del􀃕.ee/artikkel/90570995/kaunastiline-suvi-mida-tasub-kogeda-kuni-see-veel-kestab

The main target market was our own country Lithuania in 2020. Though we were having communication campaigns directed to Lithuania every year, this time we reached the most distant corners of the country. We used national (Delfi, Diena.lt, Treatwell platform) and regional media (Alytaus gidas, Panevėžio sekundė, Šiaulių naujienos) to deliver our message.  Cities were targeted as well as towns and rural areas (Valstiečių laikraštis). So, an invitation to come to Kaunas would be heard by young and by older. 55+ audiences are often overlooked in marketing campaigns, but we so the opportunity, as this TA has guaranteed their prosperity and still is burning with a sense of wonder. We heavily used printed and online media outlets because those are the greatest platforms to provide a huge amount of information and to give full trip scenarios. The campaign took place from October to the end of December 2020. Here we presented audiences with 3 scenarios:

  • Weekend trip
  • Street art tour
  • Holiday shopping unique opportunities

The Result

The reach of our online and printed media campaign was at least 3,2 million which is huge compared to the existing 2,8 million citizens of Lithuania.

We are in a unique situation where we are unable to accurately measure the success of our campaign because of two reasons:

  • printed media is not as easy to track as online
  • native travellers do not always choose to stay at the hotel. Instead, they often stay overnight with friends or families.

Nonetheless, we saw an increase in social account following and website visits.