The Capital of Massachusetts has been elected World Best Creative Destination by the jury of the 8th Creative Tourism Awards, composed of international experts in tourism marketing and creative economy, who took on the heavy task to select the winners among a total of 206 applications, from 26 countries.
Created by the Creative Tourism Network® – the official organization for the development and promotion of creative tourism worldwide, collaborating with UNESCO, UNWTO, and Ministries – these prestigious Awards aim to reward companies, projects, and destinations that foster creative tourism in all its forms and vehiculates its positive values. The main criteria were the use of creativity to design unique experiences and to create an ecosystem at a local scape.
For Caroline Couret, director of the Creative Tourism Network®, “Boston represents a model for creative tourism worldwide and how it generates virtuous tourism by valuing its own DNA, its people, and its soul! All Inclusive Boston campaign enhanced Boston’s uniqueness by involving the local communities and fostering their most universal asset: creativity. The result is impressive and completely sustainable as visitors and locals are co-creating their life and tourist experience, generating an ecosystem in all the areas of the city.
More specifically, the Jury of the Creative Tourism Awards highlighted the following values of Boston All Inclusive campaign (*) :
- The innovative reinterpretation of the city’s attractiveness, converting weaknesses into differential elements that highlight Boston’s cultural DNA and human richness.
- A holistic strategy – and its implementation – focused on local communities’ empowerment.
- Meaningful storytelling and story-doing, are totally in phase with Boston’s reality.
- The philosophy of the campaign is completely in line with creative tourism’s aims and (human) values: All Inclusive Boston campaign represents the beautiful diversity that characterizes Boston’s true narrative.
- The creative vision of Boston is to seize the crisis as an opportunity to enhance its tourist model and to convert it into a lever of sustainable development, based on inclusiveness, communities’ empowerment, and intangible heritage recovery.
- The communication campaign is respectful and pays tribute to Boston’s cultural diversity.
- The marketing campaign bridging local reality and global aims: The campaign focused on people with a propensity to travel and locals looking for a meaningful staycation.
- The successful results both internationally and locally: “The All Inclusive Boston campaign generated 57.2 million impressions and 68,000 clicks, and the campaign video—narrated by Boston’s poet laureate—garnered one million social media views, with an average video completion rate of 80 percent. Most notably, the campaign increased traffic to visitboston.com, Boston’s official tourism website, by 400 percent.
Congratulations BOSTON!
(*) All inclusive Boston Campain and photos are managed by http://www.proverbagency.com
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About the Creative Tourism Network® missions:
• The identification, training, consultancy, mentoring, and promotion of destinations willing to position themselves within the creative tourism global market, through the label CreativeFriendly Destination.
• The academic and professional customized training: Creative Tourism Academy.
• Conferences, curation of content, and events organizations on creative tourism.
• Research on Good Practices and Code of Ethics of Creative Tourism.
• Annual organization of the Creative Tourism Awards.
