How to Change Perceptions of a Tourism Destination

Changing how people see a destination takes more than a new tagline or campaign. Perceptions are shaped over time by stories, experiences and the people telling them.

For destination marketers, that raises an interesting challenge: How do you introduce a different perspective without losing what makes a place feel real?

We’ve learned that meaningful perception shifts start with understanding what’s already there. That means listening to how people talk about a destination, making room for local perspectives and finding creative ways to challenge assumptions without replacing them with a different oversimplified story.

Here are some of the principles we keep coming back to.

Start by Understanding How People See Your Destination

Before you can shift a perception, you need to understand what’s shaping it.

It’s easy to rely on what we already know about a place or what we hear within an organization. But people outside the destination may have a very different picture of it.

That’s where research and listening become important. Social listening can help uncover the conversations already happening online. Media analysis can reveal recurring narratives. Surveys, interviews and conversations with visitors and residents can add context that numbers alone might miss.

It also helps to get specific about whose perceptions you’re trying to understand. A nearby audience may see a destination very differently from someone across the country or someone considering it for the first time.

A few places to look include:

• Online conversations: What are people saying when they’re talking about the destination in their own words?
• Media coverage: What stories, descriptions and themes keep appearing?
• Traveller and resident feedback: Where do their perceptions align, and where do they differ?
• Direct conversations: What do you learn when people have room to explain their experiences in more depth?

The goal isn’t just to collect opinions. It’s to understand the gap, if there is one, between the story people know and the fuller story you have an opportunity to tell.

Make Room for Residents in the Story

Destination marketing is ultimately telling a story about a place people call home. That makes local perspectives an important part of understanding what that story should be.

There are different ways to involve residents depending on the project. They might participate in research, workshops or interviews. They might share stories directly. Community organizations might help identify perspectives or experiences that haven’t traditionally been represented.

What matters is being thoughtful about the role people are being asked to play.

Are residents helping shape the story, or are we asking them to validate a story that’s already been decided? Are we hearing from a range of perspectives? Are we making room for complexity, even when it makes the narrative less tidy?

These are questions we’ve learned to ask through our advocacy marketing work, too. Building campaigns around lived experience has reinforced for us that listening isn’t just a research exercise. It can change the direction of the work.

Destination marketing has its own considerations, but the principle carries over: the closer you get to people’s actual experiences, the more material you have to tell a story that feels specific to the place.

Find the Story Between Perception and Reality

Once you’ve gathered those perspectives, the next challenge is making sense of them.

A destination is never just one thing. Residents may have different experiences of the same place, and outside perceptions may contain a mix of truth, outdated ideas and assumptions.

That complexity isn’t necessarily something to solve. It can be where the interesting story begins.

We find it useful to look for a few things:

1. Where are the gaps? Identify where outside perceptions differ from what you’re hearing from people who know the destination well.
2. What keeps surfacing? Look for themes, experiences or ideas that appear across conversations.
3. What’s worth challenging? Not every perception needs correcting. Focus on the ones that are limiting how people understand the destination.
4. What complexity should stay? A more compelling story doesn’t have to make everything neat. Contradictions can make a place feel more real.
5. What do we want people to reconsider? Get clear about the shift you’re hoping to create before deciding how to communicate it.

From there, messaging pillars can help give the campaign some consistency without reducing the destination to a single story.

Use Creative Storytelling to Challenge Assumptions

Research can tell you which perceptions are worth addressing. Creative work gives you a way to make people reconsider them. That might mean playing with expectations, using humour thoughtfully, connecting through shared values or telling specific stories that reveal a side of the destination people haven’t seen before.

We’ve seen this in our own work. For Travel Manitoba’s Portal to Manitoba, we brought pieces of the province, from the Northern Lights to honey dill, directly to a Toronto audience. Nearly 80 per cent of survey respondents reported a strong positive change in how they viewed Manitoba, while 88 per cent said they learned something new.

The creative idea still needs to stay connected to what you’ve learned about the destination. Getting attention is one thing. Giving people a credible reason to see a place differently is the bigger opportunity.

Give the Story More Ways to Travel

Changing perceptions is difficult if the only voice telling the story is the destination itself.

Partners can help a story reach different communities and bring their own perspectives and credibility to it. We’ve seen this in our own destination marketing work, where collaborations with local businesses, creators and community partners have helped destinations expand their reach and give audiences different ways to experience the story.

Depending on the campaign, that might mean:

• Connecting with cultural moments: Look for relevant conversations where the destination has something meaningful to contribute.
• Working with trusted advocates: Consider creators, community voices or other people who already have relationships with the audiences you want to reach.
• Collaborating with local organizations and businesses: Look for partners that can bring their own experiences, audiences and perspectives to the campaign.
• Supporting earned media: Give journalists access to strong stories, useful context and people who can speak from their own experience.

The goal isn’t simply to get as many people as possible repeating the same campaign message. It’s to create a story that other people can engage with and carry into their own communities in ways that still feel credible.

That may mean giving up a little control. It can also give the story a life beyond your own channels.

Keep Listening After Launch

Launching the campaign isn’t the end of the perception work. It’s the point when you get to see how people actually respond.

Some messages will connect in the way you expected. Others might spark questions, take on a different meaning or reveal something you missed. That’s useful information.

After launch, we pay attention to:

• How the conversation is changing: What are people saying in social channels, earned media and community spaces?
• What’s connecting: Which stories or ideas are people responding to, sharing or building on?
• Where there’s confusion: Are people interpreting something differently than intended?
• What partners are hearing: What are community organizations, creators and other collaborators learning from their audiences?

You don’t need to change direction every time someone reacts to a campaign. But staying curious about the response gives you a chance to learn and adjust when it matters.

Perceptions rarely change because of one campaign or one moment. They evolve as people encounter new stories and experiences that give them a reason to see a place differently.

Key Takeaways

Shifting perceptions of a destination isn’t about replacing one simple story with another.

It starts with understanding what people already believe, listening to those who know the place firsthand and identifying where there’s an opportunity to add something to the story.

From there, creative work can challenge assumptions, partners can help the story travel and continued listening can show you where perceptions are beginning to move.

There’s no single formula for getting it right. But we’ve found that staying curious about the gap between how a place is perceived and how it’s actually experienced is a pretty useful place to start.

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