10 Highly effective Tourism Advertising and marketing Traits for 2026 You Can’t Ignore

TiCSA ran a webinar on 2026 advertising and marketing tendencies with Hannah and Liz from Medium Order. It was an hour lengthy. For those who run a tour, a cellar door, an lodging, a restaurant, or any type of visitor-facing enterprise in South Australia, here’s what issues. (Scroll down for visible slides that I used to publish a Carousel on Instagram.)

The headline

Authenticity is now the premium. AI-generated content material is flooding each feed, and audiences have turned on it quick. Coca-Cola launched an AI Christmas advert final yr and received dragged for it. Gross sales dropped over the interval. The phrase “slop” entered the Macquarie Dictionary awards due to how a lot lazy AI content material persons are sick of seeing. What this implies for a tourism enterprise is easy. Content material that’s visibly made by an actual human, for an actual place, is now the factor that stands out. Not polish. Not manufacturing worth. Actual.

Vertical video shouldn’t be optionally available

Reels are 50 % of all content material consumed on Instagram. YouTube Shorts serves 200 billion movies a day. The typical human consideration span is now beneath 9 seconds. If you’re nonetheless posting single nonetheless photographs to your grid as soon as per week, you might be posting for a feed that now not exists. The repair shouldn’t be a much bigger digicam. The repair is extra video, shot on a telephone, shot typically, and edited loosely. Tough is ok. Tough is definitely higher than slick proper now, as a result of slick reads as produced, and produced reads as sponsored, and sponsored will get scrolled previous.

Your employees are your finest asset and you might be in all probability ignoring them

Posts from staff get twice the click-through charge of posts from model accounts. Solely 3 % of staff really publish, and those that do drive a 30 % carry in whole engagement for the model. Individuals belief folks. They don’t belief logos. The takeaway is to not hand each employees member a script. Scripts are apparent they usually kill the factor you needed. The takeaway is to seek out the one or two folks in your group who’re snug on digicam, and construct a easy weekly rhythm the place they share one thing actual from the day. A behind the scenes second. A visitor story. A primary pour. That’s your content material technique.

The metrics modified and nobody advised the CFO

Likes and follower counts are useless as measures of efficiency. What issues now could be saves, shares to DMs, watch time, and replies. If somebody sends your reel to a buddy in a non-public message, that’s price greater than 100 public likes. In case your reporting nonetheless leads with follower development, replace it. In case your board nonetheless asks for follower development, educate them. The platforms are rating content material by non-public engagement now, and so do you have to.

Communities and ambassadors beat influencers

Influencers nonetheless work, however the shift is towards smaller creators on sustained partnerships as an alternative of one-off huge names. Even higher, the pattern is towards model ambassadors. Actual clients who already love the enterprise, introduced in and celebrated. Person-generated content material outperforms influencer content material on belief each time. The job is to seek out the folks already advocating for you and make it straightforward for them to do extra of it.

On-line and offline must marry

Customers, particularly the youthful ones, need actual world experiences. Meetups, activations, occasions. However the on-line neighborhood is how they discover the offline second, and the offline second is what they doc and ship again on-line. One feeds the opposite. In case your content material technique is simply digital, you might be lacking half the loop. In case your occasions are solely bodily, the identical.

Blogs usually are not useless. They’re how AI finds you

This one caught me. AI search engines like google like ChatGPT and Google’s AI overview pull solutions from someplace, and that someplace is more and more well-written weblog posts that straight reply actual questions. If a customer asks an AI “finest family-friendly wineries within the Barossa,” the AI is quoting somebody. Be certain that it could possibly quote you. Write the weblog publish that solutions the query clearly, in plain language, and hold it present.

What I might do on Monday morning if I ran a tourism enterprise in SA

Choose one employees member and begin filming them as soon as per week on a telephone. Cease reserving huge annual shoots and begin reserving smaller, extra frequent content material days. Audit your final ten Instagram posts and ask what number of are reels. If the reply is beneath six, that’s the first repair. Write one weblog publish a month answering an actual query a visitor has requested you. And cease measuring likes.

The quick model of the entire webinar is that this. The viewers moved. Belief moved with them. The manufacturers that can win 2026 are those that sound like a human wrote them, seem like a human shot them, and behave like a enterprise that truly talks again.

For those who run a tourism enterprise and any of this resonates, here’s what I supply.

A $100 Adelaide Reel is the foot within the door, one vertical-first reel constructed for the feed that truly performs. An employee-led content material day the place I come on web site, discover the individual in your group who belongs on digicam, coach them, and hand again a financial institution of content material shot on a telephone that appears like a human made it, as a result of one did.

Ongoing podcast and content material partnerships for operators who need a month-to-month rhythm as an alternative of a one-off. And if you’re studying this overwhelmed and undecided the place to start out, e-book a free name – quarter-hour on WhatsApp video the place I inform you what I might really do first.

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