57Hours is an online marketplace that connects adventure tourists with certified outdoor guides. As the global travel industry ground to a halt in 2020 we were forced to think about out-of-the-box solutions to keep brand coverage lively and reach new audiences. Purple Orange shifted toward hosting live and recorded webinars with professional guides and major media outlets. 

We also shifted focus around data-based content tactics focused on the adventure tourism industry and how it was fairing as the pandemic progressed.

2020 presented an opportunity to develop fresh marketing communication strategies with 57Hours. In turn, the adventure travel brand saw tremendous growth in both web traffic and trip sales — a reverse outcome from nearly every other travel-related brand in 2020. 

We helped 57Hours launch their “Epic Adventures” webinar series early into the pandemic, where viewers could tune in to hear firsthand tales from guides of the most incredible bucket list adventures–sail to ski adventures in Norway, climbing in Chamonix, trekking in Iceland, and kitesurfing in the Caribbean…to name a few. 57Hours launched the webinar series to inspire virtual adventure and encourage long term trip planning for 1-2 years in the future, partnering with a media outlet for each episode to help further its reach. 57Hours started receiving over 1,000 registrations per episode, which quickly translated into trip bookings. They subsequently invested into developing their YouTube channel to showcase the webinar recordings, and the channel quickly surpassed 20,000 views. The webinar series gave potential clients the opportunity to “meet” the guides hosting each episode and learn about these once-in-a-lifetime trips that many people didn’t even know existed. 

Purple Orange also developed survey-based PR tactics, with questionnaires sent to 57Hours’ network of independent guides. After analyzing the data and building graphics to represent our findings, we turned to the media to place the results. The first survey we conducted aimed to demonstrate the effect of COVID on the guiding industry, and we did a follow up a year later to see how opinions had changed as the pandemic continued into its second year. Another survey focused on the prevalence of discriminatory route names and the efforts of those in the outdoor community who are spearheading movements to change these names. 57Hours seeks to be a disruptor in the adventure travel industry, and these surveys are just one example of how the company has become a thought leader in the outdoor community.

These shifting marketing strategies allowed 57Hours to uniquely thrive as a travel brand during a pandemic. Their trip bookings increased 2-3x from what they were pre-COVID. 57Hours’ organic site traffic increased 10x, with available trip offerings and site content growing on average 20% MoM through all of 2020 and into 2021.