Visit Santa Barbara

Nestled between south-facing beaches and mountains, Santa Barbara has frequently been a retreat for those seeking year-round sunshine and a relaxed lifestyle. While they receive over 5 million annual visitors, almost 70% are day trippers: visitors who are coming for the day but not staying overnight. From a strategic standpoint, this audience was identified as one to target, helping to move their day trip decision to an overnight (or multi-night) stay. We also found that when people were visiting the Santa Barbara website, Santa Barbara was part of an overall consideration set, but weren’t convinced that Santa Barbara should be the only place in their consideration set.

The interactive strategy was a combination of providing the inspiration to convince undecided visitors to come, and highlighting the diversity of activities and attractions through suggested itineraries and trip extension calls-to-action for the day tripper to show there’s no way they can possibly accomplish everything in one day. This was accomplished through a variety of content initiatives.