The Portorož Tourism Board views this year’s season as very positive, beginning with an excellent number of hotel visitor registrations in May. These were up by 17% compared to the same period last year. June and July accounted for a slightly lower number of registrations than the same time last year, while August’s results were once again positive with 2% more registrations than in August 2017.
The Municipality of Piran recorded almost 898,000 hotel visitor registrations from January until the end of August, which is about the same as the same eight-month period last year, when the results were fantastic. Foreign visitors accounted for three-thirds of hotel visitors, the majority of which, came from German and Italian-speaking countries. Compared to last year, there were more Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Slovak visitors.
Piran’s tourism and information office were stretched to the limit, assisting up to 900 tourists a day. Igor Novel, Director of the Portorož Tourism Board, said that the visitors are interested in the experiences they have offered. Activities related to the sea and trips to Piran’s hinterlands are amongst the favourites. Many visitors compliment the excellent cuisine and local hospitality. Tourists like visiting the destination again.
Portorož and Piran with a new online image
The Portorož Tourism Board have brought together all the varied experiences Piran and Portorož have to offer in one place online at www.portoroz.si, where the three options to discover, experience and plan your stay, offer all the information a visitor might need for his or her visit. It is possible to search for offers using filters which tailor the results to a visitor’s preferences (stay active, be romantic, be authentic, be relaxed, be with family, eat and drink, and corporate.) The filtering of categories customizes the search and personalizes offers based on preferences, which links well with the modern design of a 360° panoramic view.
The website offers a lot of content tailored to the unique experiences provided by Portorož, Piran and Slovenian Istria. The close working relationship with the tourism boards of Izola, Koper, and Ankaran, which together promote Slovenian Istria under the name of Love Istria, can be seen in the shared content of our redesigned website.
Portorož and Piran are selecting the best experiences
The promotional campaign, Choose an Experience, represents communication support for interesting tourism products in Portorož and Piran. Its primary goal is to increase the awareness of these products. The secondary goal is the promotion of the new website and thus the destinations. The campaign began with a game online at www.portoroz.si, where the user votes between two experiences and enters the weekly draw to win one of three experiences. The user will then go on to participate in the final draw, which will be on the 25th of September 2018. The winner will receive the prize Taste and Experience Piran’s Hinterlandspackage for two.
To support the campaign and the game, they also advertise digitally on the German and Italian-speaking markets, for which we have received grants by applying for a tender from the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, added Petra Rebec, the supervisor of digital projects at the Portorož Tourism Board.
The promotion of the experiences offered by the destination, as per the tender, will occur outside the tourist season so as to encourage an increase in the number of inquiries outside the season.
The digital promotion has also been supported by the advertising on outdoor billboards more than 150 locations throughout Slovenia and at five special locations, where they advertise on three-sided billboards. The aim of this campaign is the visualization of experiences. There is a female figure in the middle, representing a first-person observer and that is why she is seen from the back on all visual material. In front of her, and all around her (180opanoramic photos) are two experiences, shown in equal proportions from which the female figure has to hypothetically choose from. The photographs of the experiences have been wholly shot on location, without studio altered photos adds Petra Rebec.
