The PortadaLat Awards have announced the 2017 Travel-oriented Award nominees. Voting is open through May 19 to determine the winners of two categories: Top Travel Marketing Campaign and “Viajero Inteligente” Business Traveler Award. Below are the 15 shortlisted nominees. Peer-to-Peer recognition is a foundation of the PortadaLat Awards and it’s up to you to vote which candidates win. Check out the nominees and vote for your favorite now!
Don’t forget to register to join top travel industry leaders and game changers in Miami, June 7-8 for the ninth annual #PortadaLat Conference. The event kicks off on June 7 with a spotlight on travel marketing in the U.S. and Latin America. Learn more about Portada’s new ticket options and full agenda.
‘Viajero Inteligente’ Business Traveler Award
Individual business travelers, including journalists, as well as companies. The nominees explain why and how traveling to Latin America has substantially helped them to get new ideas/perspectives to grow personally and in business.
Ian Mader
Ian Mader is the Associated Press Florida news editor based in Miami. His Spanish skills and his international experience are an asset to AP’s coverage of the cosmopolitan state of Florida.
Ignacio Cassinelli
Social Media Maven and Soccer Expert Ignacio Cassinelli was born in Latin America (Uruguay). Cassinelli’s thorough understanding of the Latin American sports fans are a very important asset he uses as a key executive at Charlotte, NC, based AC&M Group.
Las Travel Blogueras
Amanda from “Las Travel Blogueras” is a globe trotter, she’s constantly traveling, not only for campaigns and coverage but for inspiration and motivational as well. She moved to Mexico as a student to learn Spanish, and also participated in an abroad program in Ecuador where she lived there to immerse in the culture. With her friend Andrea from Argentina, their blog “Las Travel Blogueras” has taken off as a top US Hispanic social platform to share experiences from all over Latin America and the USA with a Latino twist. Traveling has definitely helped her get new ideas and perspectives to grow personally and in business.
Layla Caballero
Media executive Layla Caballero has extensive sales and operational leadership experience defining and developing business opportunities in both traditional and new media environments. Her Latin American background and passion have been an asset for her career in multicultural media.
Mariana Ferrari
I have an online education platform. I publish a video every week called HappyMonday. However, the way to really grow my business is to visit my top markets (Mexico, Spain, Argentina) and meeting my fans and followers. When I do that, I get to understand exactly what is it that they really need to overcome in order to move a step forward in their lives. In one of my visits last year to Madrid, I realized that the one key thing that Latin’s fear is to be criticized.
So, I did to videos (one celebrating my birthday from Madrid and talking about the city and one speaking about how to overcome the fear of being criticized.
Accomplish your dreams (video from Spain) which mix travel tips with personal development tips: https://youtu.be/amRK9RmLeU8
Myriam Marquez
Myriam Márquez is the executive editor of el Nuevo Herald, the largest Spanish-language daily in the U.S. Born in Havana, where her mother taught school and her father shuttled tourists around in his taxi, Márquez’s life in Cuba came to an abrupt halt when Fidel Castro seized power. Márquez, who began her career as a local news reporter, found her niche in sharing views as a columnist and editorial writer, exposing wrongs, advocating for the rights of all citizens and sharing tales through the lens of a bilingual, bicultural experience.
Sandra Cires Art
Doing collaborations with other influencers in Mexico helped Sandra Cires to grow her Youtube channel and learn a more human and successful approach to business partners.
Traveling WIth Gaby
I recently met Gaby, and she quickly jumped on my travel influencers radar because of not only her social presence but because of her travel/work hustle. Gaby is a micro social media influencer (Traveling With Gaby), works with Airbnb in a variety of ways, and runs her family-owned Travel Agency in Miami Beach. Gaby is a travel expert when it comes to deals, experiences, social, and Airbnb. She’s constantly traveling all over the world, including Latin America, she is from Venezuela. Traveling to LatAm constantly helps her get new ideas and perspectives to grow personally and in business.
Yined Ramirez
Yined is a Puerto Rican writer based in Miami with a big passion for traveling and very little time. As the name of her blog www.backpackovalija.com shows, Yined’s work is continuously enriched by her Latin American background.
Top Travel Marketing Campaign – Presented by HSMAI
Brands and their agencies (Brand/Agency) who have done campaigns promoting travel and hospitality related services. The campaign should have targeted audiences in the U.S. and/or audiences in Latin America over the last 12 months. Please provide information about brand/agency, objective/media (earned and paid) as well as the results of the campaign.
“Discover Your Aloha” Hawaii Tourism / Expedia
The Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) and Expedia joined forces on a travel marketing campaign, promoting vacations in the Hawaiian Islands with new facial-recognition software. Titled “Discover Your Aloha,” the campaign made use of a microsite, discoveryouraloha.expedia.com, that offers users a chance to view drone video footage captured in the Islands. As the video plays, the site’s facial-recognition software, developed specifically for the campaign, identifies which imagery elicits the most positive response from the viewer.
A facial recognition algorithm then identifies the viewer’s personal preferences and creates customized travel recommendations within Hawaii. Site users can then book a personalized vacation package that offers discounts of up to 50%, including exclusive offers from participating Hawaii hotels.
The yearlong campaign, launched Sept. 26, functions on desktop and mobile devices and is aimed at consumers across the U.S. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with promotional advertising running on Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz and Travelocity.
brands travel/ visit Houston
Brands Travel has been in charge of the development of a fully integrated marketing campaign to create awareness of Houston as a leisure destination, increasing overall inbound travel from Mexico as its leading international market.
As the marketing agency of record for Mexico and Latin America, Brands Travel has worked with Visit Houston in the development of a fully integrated marketing campaign; named HOLA HOUSTON that includes branding, social media, PR, content, special events and media, with the objective to generate both offline and online awareness as a leisure destination.
As a result, visitors from Mexico have surpassed the 2 million mark. Additionally, social media has exponentially grown 450% in the past year.
We integrated a social media influencer strategy, generating more than 10 million impressions on a target market and over 2 million USD in media ROI.
Fairmont/Sojern
Fairmont wanted to create a better experience for people researching hotels and set their sights on using Facebook to reach potential guests with lower-funnel, dynamic retargeting efforts. Fairmont initially managed Facebook ads in-house, but with frequent changes and expanding complexities of the Facebook ads platform, the team began looking externally for expertise in setting up a range of new tests and optimizing campaigns to expand on their results. A long-time Sojern partner, Farimont used Sojern’s Sojern’s Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT) and its expanded targeting parameters Sojern was able to reach in-market travelers in a more granular way with deeper audience segmentation with which to bid and tailor messaging. DAT also automated the creative process, once a tedious job managed in-house by Fairmont across 65 properties. And Facebook’s deterministic matching means that campaigns are inherently cross-device, crucial in a time where people increasingly start their search for travel on a mobile device before booking on a desktop. The results were striking. From the initial tests, Sojern improved revenue by 20% and Cost-Per-Booking by 34% on DAT, and drove more than 2,500 bookings directly to fairmont.com in a single campaign.
MasterCard Priceless Cities / Universal McCann
A priceless Journey: FROM I WISH I WERE THERE TO I WISH YOU WERE HERE
Mastercard looked to develop an exclusive user Journey to drive card usage and preference by leveraging Priceless Cities and inspiring cardholders to experience travel in a different way, the Priceless way.
In a recent US Facebook travel study, 53% of travelers were found to be inspired to travel by what they saw on Social Networks, and 59% noted that watching an online video can inspire them to a visit a new place. We concluded that the Social space is a major place of inspiration for travelers, and therefore an effective place to drive preference for MasterCard through the discovery of Priceless Cities.
The idea was to lead potential card users through a whole funnel trip: From the upper part, generating awareness, consideration, and preference through a strong brand experience, and then, for the lower level, drive preference and usage through pairing product benefits with specific offers and audience interests.
Palace Resorts/Ariadna Communications Group
The Palace Resorts goal was clear: Rethink a creative strategy for both the Moon Palace and Leblanc brand websites and redefine the Palace Resorts digital consumer experience.
After an extensive creative and technical brainstorming, Palace Resorts in collaboration with Ariadna CG created a new creative concept, combining usability and design, bringing Moon Palace Resorts and Leblanc Resorts brands to life, by captivating the visitor with a story that flows intuitively.
Spectacular large photography and design elements immerse the visitor through the various unique experiences a guest can have at Palace Resorts.
Through this initiative, Palace Resorts achieved to bring the Palace Resorts brands to a new level, create an outstanding user experience and improved site sales performance.
Visit Orlando/ Ariadna LLC
Orlando is one of the top vacation destinations that outshines many other vacation spots around the world. Brazil is the biggest country to bring visitors to Orlando within the Latin American market. To that end, Visit Orlando which is the Official Tourism Association in Orlando and the Disney Amusement Park family, Sea World and Universal Studios, work to support the Company’s goal of making Orlando the go-to destination for Brazilians.
The campaign objective was as follows:
– Maintain Orlando as the number #1 US travel destination in Brazil.
– Increase Orlando`s market share travel to the US.
– Increase the number of visitors from Brazil to Orlan
The main message was focused on having new experiences in Orlando together as a family with the campaign’s slogan: “The Never Ending Story”.More than 360 spots were aired on AXN and Sony channels during Prime Time for a period of 2 months.
Through the CARAS influencers, we achieved more than 1.1M likes on Instagram. More than 23MM of impressions delivered. 591,942 Audience on the publiposts and more than 475K visitors to the Orlando Blogs in which 292K were unique visitors. Total reach of 114,418,855 (103,647,191 from digital and 10,771,664 from print), 288,302 views on 7 videos on Youtube. The campaign lasted 2 months.
