Driving Domestic Tourism through Local Audience Activation for Tourism Northern Ireland

Tourism Northern Ireland is responsible for developing tourism and marketing Northern Ireland as a destination for domestic travelers and visitors from the Republic of Ireland.

345%

Y-o-Y Uplift in ROAS for Republic of Ireland Market

148%

Y-o-Y Uplift in ROAS for Northern Ireland Market

59%

Reduction in Cost per Click Y-o-Y

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Driving Domestic Tourism through Local Audience Activation for Tourism Northern Ireland

Market: EMEA       Channel: Meta, Paid Search, Paid Social, Programmatic

Background

The autumn travel season reflects a key window for domestic tourism, with audiences actively exploring short-break options in and across Ireland. Travel decisions during this period are increasingly shaped by evolving consumer preferences, where destination appeal, relevance, and perceived value play a stronger role in influencing choices today. As the governing body of tourism in Northern Ireland, Tourism Northern Ireland is responsible for developing the region’s tourism industry and promoting Northern Ireland as a destination for domestic travellers and visitors from the Republic of Ireland.

Objective

We designed our campaign for Tourism Northern Ireland to increase visitor volume and in-market spend from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during the autumn travel period. A key focus was to convert existing travel interest into confirmed bookings, ensuring that consideration did not drop off before conversion. This required driving stronger action from audiences already in the market, while delivering against broader tourism revenue and visitor targets.

Challenge

Intent to book autumn short breaks in Northern Ireland declined by 5% year-on-year, signaling a drop in conversion despite continued interest in domestic travel. Audiences were engaging with travel content but hesitating at the point of decision-making. Increased exposure to international travel options, combined with more cautious and value-driven spending behavior, meant that users were taking longer to commit or opting out altogether. Our campaign needed to address this hesitation and create stronger momentum from intent through to booking.

Creative Strategy

Our strategy focused on activating domestic demand through an audience-first digital approach, designed to increase relevance, strengthen engagement, and drive conversion from existing travel intent. Creatives were developed at the segment level to align with the motivations and decision drivers of audience groups.

Each cohort was served tailored messaging reflecting specific travel needs, whether cultural exploration, relaxation, or short breaks. This ensured that communication was directly relevant to the user’s mindset, thereby increasing resonance and the likelihood of conversion.

Media Strategy

Our media approach prioritized high-value domestic audiences over broad reach.

A data-led segmentation framework was used to identify and size distinct audience groups based on interests, behaviors, and travel motivations. This moved beyond demographic targeting to build psychographic profiles of travelers more likely to engage and convert.

The audience was segmented using a psychographic approach and GWI data, grouping travellers by their motivations, lifestyles, and travel behaviours rather than just demographics. Three key cohorts were identified:

  • Natural Quality Seekers – mature, comfort-focused travellers who value quality accommodation, sustainability, and well-planned nature-based experiences.
  • Indulgent Relaxers – affluent travellers focused on comfort, romance, and quality experiences.
  • Open-Minded Explorers – culture- and nature-driven travellers looking for authentic experiences.

These cohorts were then targeted across domestic Irish and international markets based on:

  • travel intent and repeat-travel potential,
  • demographics (age, income, relationship status), and
  • media/channel behaviours during both inspiration and booking stages.

These audiences were activated across Google (affinity and in-market audiences) and Meta (interest-based targeting), enabling precise targeting of users with relevant intent signals. The approach ensured that media investment was focused on audiences with a higher propensity to take action, improving overall efficiency.

Audience Targeting

We defined our ‘indulgent relaxer’ cohort as those who fit into the following travel preferences:

  • The most likely segment to take a ‘romantic’ break as their next break,
  • Prefer to stay in large, comfortable hotels,
  • Like to ‘indulge’ themselves when on a break,
  • Enjoy good food and music,
  • Motivated by the opportunity to spend time with family or friends on short breaks, and
  • Interested in shopping opportunities while on a short break.

We also targeted based on a high-value, lifestyle-driven audience by leveraging a combination of interests, behaviors, and life-stage signals, defined as follows:

  • Interests: Premium lifestyle and experiential categories including luxury travel (first-class, international), boutique hotels, resorts, fine dining (restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, foodie culture), organic food, fashion & luxury retail, spas, weddings, and publishers such as Vogue, GQ, Condé Nast & Condé Nast Traveler.
  • Behaviors: Frequent travelers (including international) and engaged shoppers.
  • Life Stage: In a relationship or engaged, with recent or upcoming milestones (new relationship or anniversaries within 60 days).

Channel & Format Strategy

Channel execution was guided by audience behavior and platform interaction patterns.

Ad formats were selected based on how different segments consume content. Older, culturally driven audiences were more responsive to information-rich static and carousel formats that supported consideration. Younger audiences required high-impact, short-form video designed to capture attention quickly, delivered through UGC content across Reel/Stories placements.

This alignment between audience behavior, format, and platform ensured that both message and delivery were optimized for effectiveness.

Launching Demand Gen campaigns for the first time drove a significant uplift in Google-driven traffic, expanding reach beyond existing intent signals. This unlocked incremental click volume by engaging users earlier in the discovery phase with a variety of long- and short-form content.

Search activity was restructured using shared budget portfolios across six webpage-focused campaigns per market, followed by a shift to click-based optimization from website button clicks. This combination enabled a stronger balance between maximizing overall click performance while distributing spend more evenly across keywords and webpages, improving both CPC efficiency and coverage.

Results

From September 2025 to November 2025, the overall marketing campaign delivered an impressive +300% increase in combined ROAS across both markets despite operating with reduced year-on-year budgets.

We also tracked a 111% increase in traffic from Google and 45% in Meta.

345%
Y-o-Y Uplift in ROAS for Republic of Ireland Market
148%
Y-o-Y Uplift in ROAS for Northern Ireland Market
59%
Reduction in Cost per Click Y-o-Y
36%
Increase In Website Visitors Y-o-Y.

Conclusion

By prioritizing high-value audiences and improving relevance across media and creative, it drove more effective engagement and conversion, translating into measurable impact on visitor revenue.