Case study: Travel & Tourism

Inspire, inform, facilitate and increase loyalty

Tourism Flanders’ overall goal is promote Flanders internationally

as a tourism destination and to increase the number of overnight

stays in Flanders. Their marketing-communication strategy focuses

on inspiring potential travelers and providing easy access to

information about what Flanders offers in the hopes that they book

a flight or stay.

Following the traveler’s decision-making process, the main goal

of their website is to inspire, inform, facilitate book and create

customer loyalty.

Looking for a unified approach

Tomas Vanderplaetse, Online Marketing Manager at Tourism

Flanders, says, “Previously, we worked mostly with microsites and

external landing pages. Each of the 14 markets all worked with their

own web agency and CMS system. This meant that a lot of time and

budget went to selecting these agencies and in developing content

for each market.”

“We decided to centralize this process through a single system, to

reduce costs and to enable all of the markets to work together,”

he continues. “We chose SDL Tridion since we knew we wanted

a system with a strong central approach that provides the same

functionality to all of our sites and the ability to manage languages.

Among the vendors we short-listed, SDL’s BluePrinting capabilities

provided the clearest solution to our objectives,” says Vanderplaetse.

Tourism Flanders

“We chose SDL Tridion since we knew we wanted a system with a strong central approach that provides the same functionality to all of our sites and the ability to manage languages. SDL’s BluePrinting capabilities provided the clearest solution to our objectives.”

Tomas Vanderplaetse

Online Marketing Manager at Tourism Flanders

Web Content Management Solutions: SDL Tridion

Marketer empowerment

Customer experience

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Tourism Flanders approaches their international

audiences by creating uniquely tailored messages

for all of the regions in which they promote the

beauty of Flanders.

This market specific approach means that regional

teams create and collect the most relevant messages

and offers for the 14 markets in which Tourism

Flanders operates.

Adapting to local markets

Using SDL Tridion, Tourism Flanders now provides

local markets with website design, branding and

navigation, making it easier to provide consistent

navigation and identity for their regional markets.

Local markets have the ability to tailor content for

their target audiences along themes that will appeal

to local audiences.

Regional content editors can provide themes,

images, accommodations and events relevant to

local marketing initiatives.

Integrating with social media

“We recognize that today’s traveler uses external

review sites and other sources for information when

they research and plan their trips. So we’ve included

links on our main site that lead website visitors to

both social media and external review sites.”

“Rather than creating this functionality on our own

site, we decided to use the sites that people already

go to,” says Vanderplaetse. “When someone who

has visited Flanders has a good experience and

reviews a hotel or activity, this positive feedback also

benefits our marketing goals,” he concludes.

Rolling out the site

Following the launch of their US website, Tourism

Flanders will launch thirteen sites in nine languages

to service their regional markets.

“We have been very happy with the implementation

of SDL Tridion by SDL partner, Amplexor. They

clearly know the system very well and were able to

capture our requirements in the implementation,”

concludes Vanderplaetse.