Help Your Visitors Find the Hidden Gems that Will Keep Them Coming Back!

How to Build Itineraries for Your Destination

We all know it — Content is King. And as a destination, it’s critical that you create new and exciting content to entice returning visitors and attract new ones. How about adding some itineraries? 

In its simplest form, a travel itinerary is a list of things you plan to do during a traveling excursion. It’s a descriptive step-by-step guide of how a traveler should spend their time. As a bonus for your destination’s website, itineraries also tend to provide a natural SEO boost, and they often help your destination marketing organization improve its relationship with any partner businesses or attractions you feature.

These simple trip planner guides can be relatively quick to put together, while being super useful for travelers to your destination. After all, you’re the insider expert with all the hot information about the best spots in town. Itineraries are a practical, helpful way to share that info and build excitement about their next visit.

Visit Atascadero and Visit Concord are two of our destination marketing clients with strong examples on their respective websites dedicated to their various itineraries. These plan out different types of trips that visitors may want to follow. From Girls’ Weekend to Escape Outdoors Without the Crowds to Pets Welcome Here, there are endless different itinerary themes you can focus on depending on what’s special about your town and what its visitors love to do. 

Now let’s build your own itinerary in three simple steps.

Pick a Theme

Like the examples above, you’ll want to pick a theme to center your itinerary around. Consider your audience, budget and the best attractions in your destination. Having specific themes can help attract visitors who know what they want or inspire visitors who are exploring their options. 

Common themes involve food, wine or another edible specialty in your area; tours or attractions that are based around accessibility; history, art and culture; or a major event that your community hosts. You can even do a trending theme that resonates with viral fads, like this Coastal Grandmother Road Trip from our client Visit Arroyo Grande. Get creative!

Choose Activities to Fill the Time

Whether the plan is for a week or just a weekend, find activities that will fit into the chosen timeframe. 

Your itinerary should break down the trip into days. Each day, highlight what your visitor would do during the morning, mid-day, late afternoon and evening. Be sure to link to specific locations, businesses and activities to make it interactive, informative and fun to plan. Include photos of people enjoying these activities to help your visitors envision themselves in your destination, following your itinerary. 

Put It All Together

Write in an active voice about your itinerary, show what they are and why they are must-do activities not to miss out on. Include the photos and links for more information that your audience might be interested in. The more quality images and helpful links, the better. 

Beyond the Webpage

Remember to leverage your itinerary content. It doesn’t have to be information on your website. It can go further. If resources are available, providing descriptive, interesting printed maps to distribute to local hotels is one way to put the itinerary out into the real world. 

Reach out to businesses on the itinerary for cross-promotion on social media, or ask businesses to provide special discounts to people who follow your itinerary.