DMOs Share Their Top Tips for Creating a Successful Pass

Through conversations with multiple destination marketing representatives, we’ve built a library of case studies that highlight specific topics such as rural destination marketing, launch parties, restaurant week campaigns, passes aligned with citywide events, driving overnight stays, and more. 

During our chats, we’ve seen many of the same tips for success shared again and again. Here are a few strategies our destination partners consistently attribute to their most successful passes. 

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If You Build It, Promote It 

All of the destinations we talked to agree that it’s important to put marketing behind  your pass. Visit Tampa Bay says ongoing marketing has been vital to the success of their passes. The destination’s marketing team runs an evergreen digital campaign targeting visitors who have already booked a stay in the destination. By using data to identify these visitors, the team ensures the right message reaches the right audience.

Travel South Dakota has found that two things have been crucial to the marketing of the passes: integration and consistency. Katlyn Svendsen shared, “It's really been a part of almost every single touch point that we have – from printed guides, email programs, web, social – you name it. We're finding ways to tie it into almost every program that we're doing.” 

Kari Kauffman with Experience Columbus shared similar thoughts and said, “All of our passes and trails are a huge part of our messaging. When appropriate, we are constantly pushing it out within our marketing.” One easy thing they are doing is including their trails in relevant blog posts. 

There are budget-friendly marketing tactics you can use, and one thing that all destinations agreed on was the importance of utilizing digital and social media marketing. Downtown London has seen success with creating videos to use on their social platforms. They shared that they see increases in pass sign-ups pretty quickly when they launch the videos. Mackenzie Preszcator stressed how important the videos have been to the success of their trails and said they don’t have to be professionally produced. She did share one tip though, “The businesses are really excited when we include them in the videos. When we film a video, we usually try to choose five locations to go and visit and film there.”

In addition, many of our partners such as Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau also participate in local events and have a booth onsite where they encourage people to sign up for their passes. 

No matter what type of marketing you’re doing, all agree that it’s imperative to make sure you’re promoting your passes. If you need help, Bandwango offers a marketing services program and can assist with creating a destination marketing campaign to promote the experiences you build.   

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Choose Prizes That People Want (and Use Gamification to Your Advantage)

Those who have created check-in challenges consistently share that choosing the right prize(s) is imperative. Our partners often have a variety of prizes available at different point values and things like stickers, t-shirts, and hats are popular. 

Travel South Dakota has a variety of prizes to motivate passholders such as stickers designed by local artists, a children’s activity book, posters, puzzles, socks, t-shirts, stuffed animals, an ENO hammock, a North Face backpack, and a Rumpl blanket. Some partners also have other unique prizes that are specific to the themes of their passes. For example, Experience Columbus offers passholders the chance to win a stainless-steel pizza peel when they participate in the Columbus-Style Pizza Trail. 

Downtown London’s creative prizes have had an added benefit of driving thousands of dollars into local businesses. The organization had already created a Downtown Dollars program that utilized cards redeemable at almost 200 merchants in downtown London. Instead of just letting people purchase these as gifts like they had originally intended, they decided to also use them as prize incentives for their trails. This furthered the economic impact of the trails by giving passholders another reason to visit downtown businesses and spend more money. 

The Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau also added on a short-duration sweepstakes to their Flight School pass last Valentine’s Day, in addition to their ongoing prizes. Passholders who purchased three flights in February were registered to win a couple’s weekend getaway in Juniata River Valley. Buffie Boyer shared, “I was hoping more people from outside the area would participate to earn that entry, and they did. We had a winner from almost three hours away.” 

The Frankenmuth Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau is also using the prizes from their Frankenmuth Gnome Hunt as a way to get travelers into their visitor center. Once someone has found 15 gnomes, they accumulate enough points to earn a prize that can be picked up at the Frankenmuth Visitor Center. Lydia Walker shared that this has been an extra bonus of the initiative. “Getting people into our visitor center opens up their eyes to all that’s in Frankenmuth. You’ve got to talk to the staff when you pick up your prize, and that’s likely going to open up a conversation about something else in town – so it’s good to drive traffic into the Visitor Center.”

Don’t forget that Bandwango also provides prize fulfillment services. If you want to have a variety of cool prizes, but don’t want to pay for them upfront and don’t want to deal with distributing these to passholders, this may be a good fit for you. 

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Stay Top of Mind With Smart Messaging 

Many of our partners have also shared the importance of messaging their passholders. Amber Rottinghaus with Travel Iowa uses Bandwango’s managed messaging service and shared why this is critical to their success. “I think it's really important because it is easy to save a pass on your phone, but it's also very easy to just forget about it after the fact. With text messages, it's so easy to remind people about their passes.” Some messages focus on increasing sign-ups for certain passes, while others aim to get passholders to use their passes more. “We've been really excited by the results that we've seen so far,” said Rottinghaus. “Every time a text message is sent out, we get immediate sign-ups if that is the goal of that text message, or we get immediate check-ins.”

Bandwango passes also include opt-ins that allow destinations to grow their own databases. Some destinations are using that information to communicate via email as well. Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island is using zero-party data to create specifically targeted emails that are sent monthly to W.E. Heart Local passholders. Each message highlights specific offers from participating businesses and includes a recipe featuring ingredients from local partners. Jessica Riley explained, “For instance, if there's carrots in it, we tell them where they can get carrots locally. So we're actually bringing the pass back into the recipe as well.”

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Give Partners the Tools to Promote Your Passes 

Getting your participating businesses to help promote your passes is important, too. Visit Indy’s Jeff Robinson said, “You want to make it easy for people to share your story. I think that's really critical to success.” He created a social media toolkit to share with participating locations on the Indy Hoops Pass and he’s not the only one using this strategy. ‍Travel South Dakota has a landing page where others can find easy-to-access promotional materials. Their partners can download posters, find social badges, and find answers to their most common questions about the program. 

Buffie Boyer with the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau shared that it’s important to make their passport program easy for the participating businesses. She supplies them with graphics they can use to promote the trail on social media, and also gives them collateral such as flyers, table tents, and coasters to have onsite at their businesses. She said she’s noticed the businesses that have had the most check-ins are the ones that have been promoting the trail through the tools her team has provided. She incentivizes the businesses as well, and once they hit certain levels of check-ins, she provides prizes for the business and/or their employees. 

Visit Dublin, Ohio also created resources for the participating businesses on their Espresso Martini Trail. Sara Blatnik shared, “When the pass launched, we sent out a promotional toolkit of things that our partners could use to create their own social posts, to put it up on their website, and to use in their e-blasts. We were shocked at how much we've seen from our partners saying that they're an official stop on the Espresso Martini Trail. I think they're seeing the momentum. After seeing the media and community talking about it, they want to make sure that people know that they're part of this.”

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Use Points Strategically to Drive Desired Behavior

Some partners are creating check-in challenges and are being strategic about point values. For instance, if you want to incentivize passholders to visit a lesser-known business that is further away, you may choose to make that check-in worth more points. However, it is also very easy to adjust point values for a short period of time to create an immediate call to action as well. 

Dorothy Ouellette from Downtown London said they’ve taken advantage of the ease of Experience Builder and have added in short-duration incentives when they’ve had events downtown. She said, “We’ll invite people to check in at a location within a short timeframe during an event. You have to be there, and then you can get like 200 or 300 points for the check-in, but it’s only for a few hours. That gives people more incentive to go to the downtown events.”

Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau often hosts launch parties when they launch new trails and has created coupons within their passes that allow party-goers to get things such as free beer and ice cream during the parties. The DMO covers the expense for the items redeemed during the event, and as soon as the party ends, the coupons are removed from the passes. To build on their momentum, Matthew Simmons also introduced “Bonus Weekends,” where check-ins earn double points. He uses Experience Builder to quickly adjust point values and uses Bandwango’s messaging tools to notify passholders. The result has been even higher engagement. He believes the combination of launch parties and bonus weekends has taken their success to the next level. 

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Create a Landing Page That Showcases All of Your Experiences

While each pass has its own identity, many partners also have all of their experiences in one spot on their website. Experience Columbus has created an easy-to-navigate marketplace that has all of their passes and trails. This includes their attraction passes as well as their check-in challenges. Their team feels this is important, as the marketing directs visitors to that page where they can see all of the things they can experience in one place. 

The Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau follows the same playbook. Just like Experience Columbus, on their homepage, there is a “Things to Do” tab that has a tab under it that takes visitors to the page that houses all of their passes. Even though each trail also has its own individual page, having all of them listed on one page has value as well. 

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How can Bandwango help you in 2026?

Bandwango works with hundreds of destinations across the world to drive visitors and revenue into communities. We work with small and large destinations, but also work with other business verticals such as nonprofit organizations, food and beverage associations, higher education, and more. These are just a few tips for success from our current partners, but our crew is happy to meet and chat about specific ideas for your destination or organization. Book a meeting with our team to see how we can help you meet your goals.

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