EF Ultimate Break is a group travel company for 18–35-year-olds. Translation: Our audience is hyper online and on a never-ending search for the next big thing. So, to ensure we’re offering both the product (tours) and the content they crave, we put trendspotting and reactivity at the heart of everything we do.
When we noticed that Thailand was constantly popping up in social content, pop culture, and travel media, we responded by dropping 13 new trips to Thailand—aka The Thailand Collection. But a new trip drop wasn’t enough, we needed to find a way to spark legitimate interest in traveling to Thailand with Ultimate Break.
Our objective was to showcase the life-changing, culturally-immersive experiences that happen on our trips to Thailand in a way that both resonated with our audience and showcased why people should travel with us, instead of doing it on their own.
Thailand is both half a world away and nowhere near your classic travel destination. If we were going to drive interest in The Thailand Collection, we knew it was our responsibility to showcase what traveling to Thailand is really like. So, we went there.
An all-star cast of influencers, Brand Ambassadors, and staff traveled to Thailand, creating content that highlighted Thai culture, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and emotional moments from the road…in real time. A team back at home was standing by to receive content, cut it into bite-sized episodes, and distribute it across owned channels.
We called it On Location | Thailand. The campaign enabled our audience to follow our cast on their adventures, watching people they could relate to and connect with take on experiences straight out of Ultimate Break itineraries. With 9 episodes in total, the content took us from ethical elephant sanctuaries to Buddhist temples, Muay Thai boxing rings, serene beaches, and beyond.
This project was beyond complex to execute, even the moving parts had moving parts. Throw in a 12-hour time difference and things get really complicated. But throughout, we kept our audience engaged, created a suite of videos to support an ambitious product launch, and showed our audience what it’s really like to travel to Thailand with EF Ultimate Break—no stock, no tourist traps, no BS.
The campaign was supported by blog posts, a “find your trip” quiz, emails, press outreach, and other tactics that put Thailand in the spotlight. And the result? Interest, and intent, and most importantly…bookings.
The On Location video series resonated with our audience in a major way. The combination of relatable creators, immersive content, and engaging support tactics was the secret sauce to driving sustained interest and booking intent throughout the lifetime of the campaign.
On Location received over 9.5M impressions and 280K organic engagements, with an earned media value over $720K. The video series also lead to tangible business results—site traffic to Thailand-specific pages was up 3,035% YoY, and Thailand bookings were up 172% YoY.
On top of all that, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (aka Amazing Thailand) named our campaign “Most Inspirational” in a competition against other tour operators.
