From Recovery to Record Growth: How Tourism Fiji Perfected Personalized Destination Marketing
Transforming 13 million website visitors into engaged travelers—powered by ZEPIC's AI-driven segmentation and behavioral insights.
Matt Nicklow,
Head of Digital
ZEPIC has been central to Tourism Fiji’s digital transformation. By unifying our data and enabling personalized engagement at scale, we’ve connected more travelers to Fiji than ever before—delivering real outcomes for our operators and the wider tourism industry
Tourism Fiji operates as the national tourism organization (NTO) under the Ministry of Tourism, serving as the official destination marketing organization responsible for promoting Fiji internationally. With a mission to attract visitors from around the world to experience Fiji's natural beauty and warm hospitality, Tourism Fiji manages digital marketing, website operations, paid media campaigns, and customer relationship management across six key regions globally. Led by Matt (Head of Digital), Haaziq (Digital Marketing Manager), and Liana (Website Officer), the digital team has played a key role in Fiji’s post-COVID tourism recovery, driving record website traffic and deeper customer engagement. With a strong focus on personalized experiences, they guide potential visitors from that first moment of interest all the way to booking their dream trip.
Serving a wide range of travelers, from families and couples to solo adventurers and groups, Tourism Fiji needed smarter segmentation and targeted messaging to turn interest into real-world visits.
The Challenges
Post-COVID growth without the infrastructure
Tourism Fiji experienced an incredible recovery after COVID-19, with website traffic surging from 2 million to 15 million sessions following the launch of their new website in April 2024—an almost 650% increase. While this growth was great, it did come with a new challenge: segmenting and nurturing this massive influx of potential visitors without losing the personal touch that makes Fiji special.
Moving beyond generic marketing
Tourism Fiji used MailChimp for their basic monthly newsletters, but were limited to country-wise segmentation, which treated all visitors the same way. With Google's impending deprecation of third-party cookies, they needed their own data strategy to identify different traveler personas and deliver personalized messaging that actually converts.
Multi-regional complexity at scale
Managing six different regional markets included creating customized content and campaigns for each region while maintaining brand consistency. Each one had different seasons, cultural preferences, and booking behaviors. And a one-size-fits-all approach just didn’t work. They wanted a platform that could manage all this complexity in one place, without juggling multiple tools or relying on tech teams.
Fragmented customer journey insights
With data spread across MailChimp, GA4, and various reporting tools, Tourism Fiji missed out on a unified view of the customer journey from initial website visit to newsletter signup to eventual booking. Beyond standard web metrics like bounce rate and time on site, they needed deeper insights into positioning Fiji as the destination of choice and successfully nurturing leads to local tourism operators. Without unified tracking, they couldn't optimize touchpoints or understand what truly influenced travelers to choose Fiji and book with their partners.
Haaziq Buksh,
Digital Marketing Manager
Before partnering with ZEPIC, our EDMs were largely generic, segmented only by geography. Our vision was to go beyond location-based targeting and understand our audiences on a deeper level. By identifying whether someone is a family, couple, solo traveller or group, we’re now able to deliver more relevant, personalized communications that truly resonate with their travel motivations across each of our core markets.
The Solution
Tourism Fiji partnered with ZEPIC to transform their fragmented marketing approach into a unified, data-driven strategy that could handle their explosive growth while delivering the personalized experiences modern travelers expect.
Building a First-Party Data Foundation
With data spread across MailChimp, GA4, and various reporting tools, Tourism Fiji missed out on a unified view of the customer journey from initial website visit to newsletter signup to eventual booking. Beyond standard web metrics like bounce rate and time on site, they needed deeper insights into positioning Fiji as the destination of choice and successfully nurturing leads to local tourism operators. Without unified tracking, they couldn't optimize touchpoints or understand what truly influenced travelers to choose Fiji and book with their partners.
Optimized Lead Capture Strategy
Working alongside Tourism Fiji, ZEPIC helped strategize and execute smart pop-up campaigns using Optimonk. This enabled seamless lead capture and transfer into ZEPIC's platform, which led Tourism Fiji to discover that desktop users showed significantly higher conversion intent compared to mobile visitors, giving them more insights to optimize their lead capture approach across different devices.
Smart Segmentation Beyond Geography
Working alongside Tourism Fiji, ZEPIC helped strategize and execute smart pop-up campaigns using Optimonk. This enabled seamless lead capture and transfer into ZEPIC's platform, which led Tourism Fiji to discover that desktop users showed significantly higher conversion intent compared to mobile visitors, giving them more insights to optimize their lead capture approach across different devices.
Streamlined Multi-Regional Operations
Instead of juggling multiple tools across six markets, Tourism Fiji now manages all regional campaigns from ZEPIC's centralized platform. Each market maintains its cultural relevance and seasonal timing while benefiting from shared insights and consistent brand messaging.
End-to-End Journey Optimization
The integrated approach replaced outdated metrics like bounce rate with meaningful insights about lead-to-operator conversions and destination positioning. Tourism Fiji can now see which touchpoints actually influence travelers to choose Fiji and successfully connect with local tourism partners.
Feature Deep Dive
Website Integration & Visitor Tracking
ZEPIC's simple WebSDK integration gave Tourism Fiji instant visibility into their 15 million website sessions without requiring complex setup or technical resources. The team can now:
Track visitor behavior patterns across their extensive destination content, from resort pages to activity guides
Identify high-intent customers who view multiple pages on their site or spend a lot of time on booking-related content
Build behavioral segments based on content preferences (example: if they were interested in their Deals & Offers or if they were looking at specific Places to stay)
This allows them to understand not just how many people visit their site, but also what type of Fiji experience each visitor is seeking.
AI-Powered Segmentation
ZEPIC's Zenie AI helps Tourism Fiji automatically identify and categorize visitors into meaningful traveler personas like Family Travelers, Couples, Solo Adventurers, Group Travelers, and more..
Strategic Partnership Integration: Working with Optimonk integration, the team identified the optimal timing and targeting for pop-up campaigns, resulting in qualified lead generation that directly fed into ZEPIC's AI segmentation engine.
These AI-driven segments update in real-time, and ensure that every campaign reaches the most relevant audience with messaging that resonates with their specific travel interests.
Campaign Personalization
With ZEPIC, Tourism Fiji can now create highly targeted campaigns for each of their regions. For example, they could:
Promote Fiji's warm weather to Northern Hemisphere markets during their winter months
Tailor messaging and images to resonate with different cultural preferences and travel styles
Display relevant pricing and package information based on visitor location
Adjust tone and terminology to match regional communication preferences
This intelligence has contributed to their impressive 30-50% email open rates across different markets.
Smart Targeting
ZEPIC's behavioral tracking has revealed valuable insights that Tourism Fiji couldn't get from GA4 alone:
High-Value Segment Discovery : Visitors interested in diving experiences are 5x more likely to fill out forms and have higher spending intent
Actionable Intelligence : Based on ZEPIC's insights, Tourism Fiji now runs targeted diving experience ads to attract these high-value visitors
Behavioral Conversion Tracking : Understanding which content types and visitor paths lead to the highest conversion rates
Their recently launched nurture program generated 100 conversions in less than 24 hours, compared to just 300 newsletter signups over the previous four months, demonstrating the power of data-driven targeting.
Results & Impact
Since implementing ZEPIC in July 2023, Tourism Fiji has transformed their digital marketing capabilities and achieved remarkable growth:
Building a First-Party Data Foundation
With data spread across MailChimp, GA4, and various reporting tools, Tourism Fiji missed out on a unified view of the customer journey from initial website visit to newsletter signup to eventual booking. Beyond standard web metrics like bounce rate and time on site, they needed deeper insights into positioning Fiji as the destination of choice and successfully nurturing leads to local tourism operators. Without unified tracking, they couldn't optimize touchpoints or understand what truly influenced travelers to choose Fiji and book with their partners.
Before
Generic country-based campaigns with MailChimp
16.3%
Open rates
1.6%
Click-through rates
After
Persona-driven campaigns achieving
50%
Open rates
60%
Click-through rates
Explosive database growth
Improved signup velocity with 100 conversions in under 24 hours from new nurture campaigns
Higher-quality leads through behavioral segmentation rather than just geographic targeting
Improved email performance
Consistent 40-50% open rates across all campaigns, with some regions achieving 50%
Average 22% click rates with strong regional performance variations
Advanced Segmentation Insights
Identified distinct traveler personas: couples (43%), families (35%), solo travelers (16%), and group travelers (6%), allowing for personalized campaign strategies
Regional Market Intelligence : Australia emerged as the top market , followed by New Zealand, highlighting Tourism Fiji's strongest conversion markets
Persona Performance Variations : Group travelers showed the highest email click rates (70%), while couples demonstrated strong engagement (48% click rates), revealing distinct behavioral patterns across traveler types.
Operational efficiency
Consolidated platform replacing multiple tools and reducing complexity for the digital team
Easy migration from MailChimp without disrupting ongoing campaigns or email deliverability
Real-time insights enabling faster optimization and campaign adjustments
Liana Kwong,
Website Officer
The visual aspect has gone up a notch as well. Customers appreciate that we put more effort into the design and how we're consistently getting our emails in their inboxes. That's reflected in our metrics month over month.
Looking Forward
Tourism Fiji continues to expand their destination marketing with ambitious growth plans that position ZEPIC as central to their strategy:
Complete journey automation
Tourism Fiji is developing a comprehensive nurture program covering the entire travel journey—from initial destination discovery through booking confirmation to post-visit follow-up. This end-to-end automation will ensure no potential visitor falls through the cracks while providing personalized guidance at every stage.
Multi-channel expansion
Plans to integrate WhatsApp into their communication strategy will enable more immediate, conversational engagement with high-intent travelers. This will complement their successful email campaigns with real-time support and personalized recommendations.
Organization-wide Expansion
Tourism Fiji plans to expand ZEPIC usage beyond the consumer marketing team to include: - Corporate websites for business travel segments - Travel agent programs for agents specializing in Fiji destinations - Cross-platform integration across their broader tourism ecosystem
Matt Nicklow,
Head of Digital
Our ultimate goal is for the website to be the essential source of truth for all things Tourism Fiji. With ZEPIC, we have significantly more data points to make that happen—keeping people in our ecosystem and delivering personalized information that helps them ultimately decide to book their travels to Fiji.
Key Takeaways
30-50%
Average open rates across six regions
100
new conversions in under 24 hours
15 million
website sessions successfully segmented and nurtured
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