Title	REMOTE TOURISM
Brand	VISIT FAROE ISLANDS
Product/Service	THE FAROE ISLANDS
Category	A04. Travel, Leisure, Retail, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Entrant	MENSCH Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation	MENSCH Copenhagen, DENMARK
Media Placement	VERIZON Copenhagen, DENMARK
PR	MENSCH Copenhagen, DENMARK
PR 2	VERIZON Copenhagen, DENMARK
Production	MENSCH Copenhagen, DENMARK

Name	Company	Position
Rune Hørslev-Petersen	Mensch	Partner

Why is this work relevant for PR?

Remote tourism was 100% PR-driven. There was no media spend, so the initiative relied entirely on PR to succeed. Of the 549 news articles and the estimated online readership of more than 5 billion people, none of it was paid for. Launched with one locally versioned press release and invitations to major news media to join the first tours, remote tourism spoke for itself throughout the entire corona lockdown and managed to save and expand the Faroese tourism industry during a global crisis.

Background

Tourism is the third largest industry on the Faroe Islands and makes up for 14 % of the islands’ total number of jobs. Like the rest of the world, the Faroese tourism industry was severely affected when all travel and tourism activities shut down in March due to the corona pandemic. Greatly disappointed, Visit Faroe Islands had to ask guests to postpone their planned trips to the islands indefinitely. So how could we save the Faroese tourism industry, while giving people the chance to experience the Faroe Islands without being there in person?

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

We invented Remote Tourism. The world’s first remote-controlled tourism experience. The concept enabled tourists to experience the Faroe Islands via a local guide, controlled via a joypad on mobile, tablet or PC. The guides were equipped with a live camcorder mounted on a gimble stabilizer, a microphone and headphones from which they got instructions from tourists. The “remote tourist” controlled the guide via a joypad on the remote-tourism.com website. Just like an arcade game, tourists could make guides jump, run and maneuver. That way, tourists could control the route of the tour and experience the Faroese nature in real time through a local guide.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

With $0 to spend on media, our strategy was simple. To get as much attention as possible without having to pay for it, which was not an unfamiliar approach for Visit Faroe Islands. Previous campaigns such as Closed for maintenance and Google Sheep View had achieved great results by focusing the budget towards the creative idea and making this grand enough to not have to spend money getting people to talk about it.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

So all we did was send out one locally versioned press release for each of the markets and extend a special invitation to global news media, so they could try out remote tourism on their own. To create buzz on social media, we also reached out to major travel influencers and invited them on VIP tours, where they could capture their experience on their social media accounts. On April 15th, just ten days after the official lockdown, remote-tourism.com was open for all virtual visitors with several tours a day.

List the results (30% of vote)

Within 24 hours of its launch, the Faroe Islands had more virtual visits than usual physical visits in a whole year. The average view time was 4.11 minutes which is 2500 % above Facebook’s tourism video benchmark. On average, more than 20,000 people viewed each trip. 1,88 % commented, shared or liked, which is 1600 % above Facebook’s benchmark. By week 21 remote tourism became the biggest tourism news story in the world with 549 news articles and an online readership of more than 5 billion people. Through influencers, the story reached 40,3 million people on social media. In just six weeks, 700,000 people ‘visited’ the Faroe Islands and two weeks after the reopening of the islands all hotels were sold out. This way, we managed to save some of the threatened jobs and give millions of people a travel experience from the comfort of their home quarantine.