The Stay in Prague promotional marketing campaign attracted tourists away from neighboring Vienna and Berlin
12 January 2022, Prague - The digital marketing campaign Stay in Prague, launched in autumn 2021 by Prague City Tourism and its partners, recorded almost 800 million impressions in selected markets. The campaign was most successful in Poland, Italy, Spain, Israel, and Germany. According to available data, Prague has become much more popular with some target markets than neighboring competitor cities such as Vienna and Berlin. The campaign started in mid-October and ended at the end of December and had an allocated budget of CZK 40 million (EUR 1.6 million).
The autumn and winter Stay in Prague campaign presented the capital city as a cultural destination offering quality services and primarily targeted travelers aged 30 to 55. Over eight million people accessed the campaign website thanks to the stayinprague.eu. marketing campaign.
“ We are working together with Prague City Tourism to change the position of the Prague brand among foreign clients. We want them to start seeing it as something other than a cheap party destination. We therefore target our marketing campaigns to an audience that comes to the capital mainly for its high-quality services, monuments, culture, and restaurants. These campaigns are also a response to new travel trends,” says Hana Třeštíková, Councilor for Culture and Tourism.
“Thanks to the campaign, we’ve built up a broad base of people in selected markets that we will target with further marketing campaigns. By continuously optimizing the campaign, we reached almost 230,000 people on the accommodation booking portal, which we consider a very good result,” adds František Cipro, Chairman of the Board of Prague City Tourism.
Recent campaign data has shown that tourist behavior has changed during the pandemic. Tourists increasingly book accommodation at the last minute, buying their tickets at most a week in advance, and prefer a city break (long weekend) for their trip.
“Despite the restrictions on tourism, the campaign succeeded in bringing foreign tourists to Prague. The campaign is valuable as a tool for building long-term awareness abroad of our capital city as an attractive tourist destination. This is, therefore, an investment for the future and we believe that thanks to the joint memorandum we will be able to build on this campaign before the spring season starts. Such campaigns are also very effective in helping to ensure the preservation of employment opportunities for Prague residents,” says Václav Stárek, president of the Association of Hotels and Restaurants of the Czech Republic.
All input data for the successful setup of the campaign was provided by Mastercard, the Association of Hotels and Restaurants of the Czech Republic, and Prague Airport. After one month of the campaign, the number of passengers checked in at Prague Airport also grew, and the week-on-week increases in flight searches were even higher than in 2019, according to available data.
“We are proud partners of Prague City Tourism and wholeheartedly support their activities, which work to create favorable conditions for the renewal of inbound tourism. The targeted campaign was successful, as evidenced by the figures from Prague Airport, where we’ve recorded an increase of about 27% in the number of passengers on flights to countries that are typical for inbound tourism in the fourth quarter of 2021,” says Jaroslav Filip, Director of Air Commerce at Prague Airport.
“I’m glad that it paid off to bet on the new image of Prague. Thanks to our campaign, week-on-week increases in searches for flights to Prague were higher than in 2019. Our campaign demonstrably ‘lured’ tourists from Vienna and Berlin in particular,” concludes Jana Adamcová, member of the Board of Directors of Prague City Tourism.