Sojern, a leading provider of digital marketing solutions for the travel industry, today announced its Co-Op Marketing Program designed to help Destination Marketing Organisation (DMOs) drive traveller demand in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Europe. The program, which first launched in North America in September 2019, is also expanding in scope. Marketers at DMOs and their partner organisations can now reach customers directly with multichannel digital advertising across video, display, native, Facebook and Instagram.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on travel and tourism. This program enables collaboration on digital marketing campaigns between the DMOs, hotels and attractions, to support market recovery together.

Early adopter, Linn Totland, head of B2C Marketing, Fjord Norway, said, “As a DMO, we have been looking for a solution that would make us better equipped to measure the direct impact of destination marketing on the bottom line for the tourism businesses in our region. The tourism industry has been massively affected by Covid-19, and now, more than ever, we need to make sure that our marketing budget is spent wisely and is generating a positive ROAS. Sojern's Co-op program is definitely a huge step in the right direction for our industry in terms of; making data driven decisions, effective collaborations between DMOs and our partners (hotels, attractions) and measurement.”

Venessa Chen, regional consumer marketing manager, Asia at Tourism New Zealand, said, “What sets Sojern apart from other display channels is its strong remarketing capabilities to drive conversions. During tactical campaigns, Sojern effectively remarkets to our audience, pulls them down the purchase funnel and delivers the highest conversions for us and our airline partners.”

“With the industry now seeing some early signs of recovery as some destinations gradually re-open travel both domestically and regionally, coordinated cooperation between all industry stakeholders is needed now more than ever in order to build a more resilient, responsible, and sustainable travel and tourism industry. PATA is encouraged by the collaboration between our members, partners and industry colleagues across the various sectors in working towards this goal. Our partnership with Sojern is just a small example of how we as an industry should be working together so that we can look to rebuild travel and tourism,” said Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO, Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).

Sojern’s Co-Op Program can be customised to meet each participant’s specific goals, whether that be generating awareness for a destination or driving incremental visitation. Regardless of the campaign objective, Sojern will find travellers and influence them to visit the hotel, attraction or destination, wherever they are online. “We know when someone is looking to travel and can influence them. We’ve delivered over €11bn (£10bn) in bookings for 10,000+ global travel brands including destinations, attractions, hotels, airlines, cruise operators, and more. In this program for co-op marketing, we have removed the operational complexity of executing and measuring joint branding and performance campaigns and provide discounted media to co-op participants. Now, you can boost local tourism with our all-in-one advertising and analytics package,” said Chris Blaine, VP of APAC & EMEA at Sojern.

Sojern was nominated by UNWTO as a semi-finalist for its ‘Healing Solutions for Tourism’ award which recognises Sojern for helping to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the wider tourism sector. UNWTO received over 1,000 applications from over 100 countries for the Healing Solutions for Tourism Challenge, launched to identify the most disruptive startups, entrepreneurs and drive solutions to mitigate COVID-19’s impact on tourism.

We have set our 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development and our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of our SDGs is ‘partnerships’ - because of the cross-sectoral nature of tourism, which strengthens private or public partnerships and as such, engages multiple stakeholders including international, national, regional and local to work together to achieve common goals to support tourism,” said Alessandra Priante, director for Europe Region at UNWTO. “In our current times and also looking into the future, we believe that public or public cooperation and partnerships are a necessity and core foundation for the development of tourism,” Priante added.

Sojern uses travel data and proprietary machine learning technology to show an ad to travellers when they’re searching and booking travel. This allows engagement and conversion at the right time, with the right message. As a result, travellers are shown engaging ads across multiple devices and channels including Facebook and Instagram.

For more information about Sojern’s Co-Op Marketing solutions, visit www.sojern.com/destinations/.