Türkiye Tourism: Detour Türkiye

Challenge

Türkiye is already one of the world’s most recognisable destinations, but global perception still leans heavily on familiar tropes: its beaches, resorts and ease for short city breaks. Beneath that surface sits a far richer story, but one that is often unseen by international audiences.

The challenge was to move beyond the expected and reframe Türkiye as something more layered: a year-round destination defined by culture, food, landscapes and its people. The opportunity was to shift perception at scale, building emotional connection with culturally-curious travellers who are increasingly seeking meaning, depth and authenticity in the places they choose to explore.

Strategic Solution

The strategy started with a simple truth: travellers are no longer just visiting places, they’re searching for a connection to them. Not surface impressions, but something felt, lived and understood.

That insight shaped the idea of the detour. A detour is not a route, but a decision: to step away from the obvious and find something more honest, human and real. It became our lens through which Türkiye could be seen differently.

Brand:

Entered by:

Rather than presenting a single destination story, the campaign unfolded as a series of regional detours, across the Aegean, the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Anatolia. Each one offering a different rhythm, texture and emotional tone of the country.

The approach was deliberately human led. Local voices guided every story – with chefs, makers, guides and adventure-seekers, not as narrators of tourism, but as participants in it. This shifted the perspective away from “showing” Türkiye, towards experiencing it through the people who live it every day.

It also responded directly to a broader audience shift identified in BBC Travel insights: audiences want depth and meaning, not messaging. They are drawn to stories that feel personal, culturally rich and emotionally resonant.

At its core, the strategy reframed Türkiye as a series of experiences – layered, unpredictable and deeply human. A place where no two journeys feel the same, and where the most memorable moments are often found when you take the detour.

Content Solution

Detour Türkiye was created as a cinematic, episodic video series, but more importantly, as a connected way of seeing a country.

Each episode followed a local voice, using their perspective to open up a different side of Türkiye.

The films were deliberately observational rather than scripted, allowing moments to breathe, conversations to unfold and environments to speak. There was structure, but also spontaneity. It was designed to feel discovered, not delivered.

Beyond the films, the storytelling expanded into BBC.com articles designed as digital travel journals, not traditional editorial, but layered experiences with annotated moments, visual fragments and personal “detour notes” from the people featured in the films.

Audio pieces added another dimension: ambient and immersive. Markets, kitchens, streets, conversations; the sound of a place as much as its image.

Social cutdowns distilled the series into human moments, faces, gestures, fragments of story, designed to spark curiosity and pull audiences into the longer-form world.

Across every format, the creative remained anchored in one idea: Türkiye is best understood through people, not postcards.

That consistency allowed the campaign to feel expansive without losing coherence. Whether film, article, audio or social, everything fed the same narrative, that the most meaningful journeys are not the planned ones, but the unexpected turns in between.

Media/Content Amplification Solution

The amplification strategy was designed as a connected ecosystem across BBC platforms, not a fragmented media plan, but a single narrative moving across formats, moments and audiences.

At its centre was the BBC StoryWorks environment, using BBC News TV, BBC.com, BBC Podcasts and social channels to extend the series globally while maintaining editorial integrity and contextual relevance.

On broadcast, two 60-second cutdowns ran in premium BBC News TV slots. These acted as distilled expressions of the series, high-impact, emotionally led entry points that introduced audiences to the idea of “the detour” in its simplest form.

On BBC.com, the three hero films and supporting articles were housed within a dedicated Detour Türkiye hub. This became the narrative home of the campaign, a space designed for exploration. Traffic drivers across BBC.com guided users into the hub, ensuring discovery felt natural within a trusted editorial environment.

Social channels extended the storytelling in a more immediate, human way. Short-form edits and portrait-led content brought forward the people behind the stories, chefs, guides, makers, creating moments of recognition and curiosity that encouraged deeper engagement with the full films.

Podcast distribution added a different kind of intimacy. Audio storytelling placed audiences inside the environments themselves, not just seeing Türkiye, but hearing it. This layer strengthened emotional immersion and extended the campaign beyond screen-based consumption.

Media selection was intentional throughout. BBC StoryWorks was not chosen for our scale alone, but for context: a trusted environment where audiences seek cultural understanding and long-form storytelling. This mattered as much as reach.

Across all channels, the amplification strategy maintained consistency of idea. Every placement reinforced the same narrative thread: the detour as a way of seeing.

Rather than pushing content outward in isolated bursts, the campaign built continuity, allowing audiences to encounter Türkiye multiple times, across different formats, in a way that felt cumulative rather than repetitive.

The result was not just distribution, but progression, a journey that unfolded across platforms, deepening engagement with every touchpoint.

Video views

Page views of long-form content on BBC.com, including 77k unique visitors.

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Increase in awareness. Favourability also rose bvy 51%.

Results

Detour Türkiye delivered strong performance across awareness, engagement and brand perception, with results consistently outperforming benchmarks across platforms.

The series generated 1.9 million video views and 5.8 million social impressions, demonstrating strong global reach across priority markets. TikTok alone delivered over 3 million impressions and 1.3 million visitors, with food-led storytelling emerging as a particularly powerful driver of engagement.

On BBC.com, pre-roll formats significantly outperformed benchmark, achieving CTRs of 11.49% and 10.38% against a platform average of 0.18%, highlighting exceptional creative cut-through.

Engagement on the long-form content was equally strong. The campaign delivered 83.6K page views and 77K unique visitors, with an average dwell time of 135 seconds, well above benchmark, showing genuine audience immersion in the storytelling.

The brand impact was clear across all key metrics. Awareness increased by 25%, favorability rose by 51%, and both consideration and travel intent increased by 53%. Recommendation uplift reached 73%, indicating strong advocacy potential.

Perception shifts reinforced the emotional effectiveness of the campaign. Trustworthiness increased by 56%, while vibrancy rose by 41%, signaling a deeper reappraisal of Türkiye as a culturally rich, dynamic and emotionally engaging destination.

Importantly, 76% of viewers reported learning something new about Türkiye, confirming that the content delivered both emotional resonance and cultural discovery.

Taken together, the results show a clear shift from exposure to connection. By combining episodic storytelling, human-led narratives and trusted media environments, Detour Türkiye successfully repositioned the country as a multi-dimensional, year-round destination, driving not just attention, but lasting perception change.