The global payments technology company leverages digital communication to drive tourism in the Middle East
Dubai, UAE – 09 June 2015: Visa (NYSE: V), a global payments technology company, today announced the launch of NotATourist, an innovative, full-fledged regional campaign aimed at driving international tourism during holidays, and making the summer holidays of cardholders rewarding. Running in key Middle East and North Africa markets until 31 August, 2015, the campaign provides cardholders with real and rich destination-related information to help plan their travel as well as access Visa’s global merchant offers and exclusive promotions.
The NotATourist campaign is designed to inspire travel beyond the regular tourist sites to savour truly local experiences that are the essence of making a destination unique. The campaign is poised to help travellers explore destinations as local inhabitants – not as tourists - by providing local knowledge using crowdsourced digital content that is showcased on Visa’s NotATourist website and the Visa Explore mobile app. NotATourist also offers travellers a platform to describe the many facets of a destination by sharing their own images, videos, posts and comments, making them ambassadors or tour guides of their favourite travel spots. Visa will supplement the crowdsourced content with essential travel information and its global merchant offers across destinations.
Karim Beg, Head of Marketing at Visa MENA, says: “A destination is best described by the people who belong to that place or visitors who are just as passionate about it. This was the inspiration behind the highly successful #MyEverywhere campaign, which we now have revisited with the NotATourist initiative.”
The campaign invites users to share content on social media using the hashtag ‘#NotATourist’ and will give participants a chance to win a weekly prize of US$500 for submitting pictures, videos or tips on how to find ‘secret’ and little-known spots or experiences in key travel destinations. In August, Visa will announce two Ultimate #NotATourist content contributors who will each be awarded a travel package worth US$5000.
Visa’s highly #MyEverywhere campaign, which ran in April this year, invited people to share 15 to 30-second videos of their favourite travel spots in Cairo, Luxor, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Petra and Aqaba. When the campaign concluded in May, it had received over 700,000 post interactions on social media, more than 1,200 video submissions and 4.7M+ video views of the user submitted content Visa showcased through its channels.
Beg added: “The Visa Global Travel Intentions Study 2015 shows that travellers are more digital-savvy than ever before, with 78% of global travellers using digital information while planning their trips, and 66% resorting to digital sources for travel tips at the destination. This is a phenomenal representation of the impact of digital engagement on the travel sector, and one of the main drivers for our efforts with NotATourist. Besides driving home the message of safe and convenient payments with Visa at target markets, we also want NotATourist to start a conversation with people on easy, unique and fulfilling cross-border travel.”
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About Visa Inc.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world's most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 56,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, pay ahead of time with prepaid or pay later with credit products. For more information, visit www.visamiddleeast.com