Top 12 Digital Passports to Launch This Fall
Promote the Magic of Fall With Digital Passports
As the first day of fall approaches, it's time to gear up for the colorful and cozy travel season. With families planning autumn getaways, kids excited about seasonal activities, and travelers eager to discover new locations, there's no better time to create fall-themed digital passports. Many destination marketing organizations already have fall guides—lists of places and activities curated to showcase the best of the season. Fall digital passports take these guides a step further by gamifying the experience, which increases participation and helps capture first-party data. This enables destination marketers to grow their email lists and better target participants for future campaigns.
What is a Digital Passport?
A digital passport, also known as a tourism trail or check-in challenge, is an innovative tool in destination marketing that promotes attractions and drives visitor engagement through gamified check-ins. Visitors follow curated tourism trails, digitally “check in” at each place, and earn digital badges often accompanied by enticing prizes. Digital passports can be location-based to drive visitors to specific points of interest or experience-driven, focused on encouraging engagement with unique activities and memorable experiences.
These digital passports are perfect for the fall season, encouraging visitors to tour scenic routes, festive events, and local businesses. The engaging leaderboards, social sharing features, and incentives make digital passports inherently viral and offer destinations and events unique opportunities to market to both local and broader audiences. When visitors check-in, they upload a photo and destinations collect valuable user-generated content, which helps them further connect with their audiences.
Why Launch Digital Passports This Fall?
Fall is a unique travel season with its own set of challenges and opportunities. Travel trends show that while summer and winter see peak travel, fall often experiences a dip, making it essential for destinations to find creative ways to attract visitors. According to recent data, fall travel sees a significant increase in interest, with a 28% year-over-year uplift in searches for fall getaways on HomeToGo. Despite this, overall travel during fall remains lower than the peak summer months, making it a prime time for innovative destination marketing strategies.
Launching a digital passport this fall can help combat seasonality by offering fun and engaging activities for both locals and visitors. These passports promote local businesses, increase visitor engagement through gamified check-ins, and collect valuable first-party data such as visitor preferences and email addresses. This data helps destinations with future marketing efforts, ensuring they can continue to attract visitors long after the fall season ends.
To maximize the impact, consider using our Digital Passport Launch Kit, designed to streamline the promotion of your Fall Digital Passport.
Top Digital Passports to Launch This Fall
Get inspired by these festive digital passport ideas, tailored to make the fall gems of your destination stand out this season. Each concept can be customized to fit your unique attractions and target audience, ensuring an engaging and memorable experience for visitors and locals. Whether you're looking to promote local businesses, highlight natural beauty, or create fun family activities, these Fall Digital Passports will help drive visitor engagement and boost your destination's appeal.
Pumpkin Spice Tourism Trail
Celebrate the fall flavors with a tourism trail dedicated to pumpkin spice, s’mores, and other seasonal flavors. Include stops at cafes, bakeries, and restaurants offering pumpkin spice lattes, pies, cookies, and more. Engage businesses to provide special menu items and discounts to participants. Visit Williamsburg offers a similar concept with their All Things Pumpkin Guide, which highlights various spots in Williamsburg where visitors can enjoy pumpkin-flavored treats including chocolate pumpkin mochas, smoked pumpkin coffee, and pumpkin ale.
Trick-or-Treating Digital Passport
Guide families to the best neighborhoods and events for trick-or-treating. Highlight safe, well-decorated areas with lots of candy and fun activities. Include stops at local Halloween events, haunted houses, and community centers. The San Francisco Standard offers a guide to the best neighborhoods for trick-or-treating, featuring top areas to find sweet treats. This content would make an excellent digital passport.
Leaf Peeping Digital Passport
Attract nature lovers with a passport that highlights the best spots for leaf peeping. Include scenic drives, parks, and hiking trails where visitors can enjoy the fall foliage. Encourage check-ins with foliage-inspired incentives like digital badges and grand prizes. Vermont Tourism provides a detailed guide to the best leaf-peeping spots, including outdoor art, mountain biking, and farm visits showcasing the vibrant autumn colors and scenic vistas that Vermont is famous for.
Pumpkin Patch Passport
Create a trail of local pumpkin patches, each offering unique activities like hayrides, corn mazes, and pumpkin carving contests. This passport will be a hit with families and fall enthusiasts. For example, Visit California provides a curated guide on the annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, including the Safeway World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off, where farmers, family teams, and other various green-thumbed growers bring in their heavyweight pumpkins—some tipping in at over 1,000 pounds—to be lifted via crane to the scales. The winning gourd-grower typically takes home prize money pegged to their product: $7 per pound.
Haunted History Trail
Dive into the spooky side of your destination with a trail of haunted houses, historic sites, and ghost tours. This passport is perfect for thrill-seekers and history buffs alike. Visit Baton Rouge offers an excellent example with their Haunted Tour, providing detailed information on the eerie histories and paranormal activities associated with each place. Experience firsthand the legends and ghosts of Baton Rouge. Listen to the tales as you ride and walk the historic areas as the time-traveling guide leads you to some of the most reputed haunts in town. Join in a "ghost hunt" at documented haunted sites with actual paranormal investigation equipment.
Fall Harvest Passport
Highlight local farms and farmers' markets with a focus on fall produce like apples, squash, and pumpkins. Include stops at u-pick farms, harvest festivals, and farm-to-table restaurants. Visit Lodi puts on an annual Lodi Grape Festival, where for over 80 years, people in San Joaquin County have been gathering. What started out as a small food festival in downtown Lodi has now evolved into a four-day event filled with great entertainment, food, vendors, grape and commodity murals, competitive exhibits, carnival, wine tasting, and so much more.
Cozy Coffee Crawl
Warm up with a trail of local coffee shops and cafes offering seasonal drinks and cozy atmospheres. Encourage visitors to try unique fall-themed beverages and pastries. Experience Columbus has an enticing guide, Fall Coffee Drinks from Columbus Shops, featuring many delicious coffee drinks including Roosevelt Coffeehouse’s incredibly Instagram-worthy S'mortado. It’s a fan favorite that adds chocolate and crumbled graham cracker to the rim of a mocha-based cortado topped with toasted marshmallows.
Scenic Fall Hikes Passport
Promote the best hiking trails to enjoy the crisp fall air and stunning scenery. Include trails of varying difficulty levels to appeal to all kinds of hikers, from families to seasoned adventurers. Explore Asheville provides an excellent list of fall hikes, showcasing trails that offer breathtaking views of autumn foliage and natural beauty. The iconic trails of the Asheville area can be explored during any season but many of these trails in the Blue Ridge Mountains offer a truly special experience in the fall. There are few better ways to soak in the colors of fall foliage than with a hike.
Fall Bucket List Digital Passport
Create a Fall Bucket List Digital Passport that highlights must-do activities before the season ends. Include iconic experiences like visiting a pumpkin patch and carving pumpkins, going on a scenic fall foliage drive, experiencing a haunted house, apple picking and enjoying fresh cider, taking a hot air balloon ride over autumn landscapes, and hosting a cozy bonfire with s'mores. For instance, Visit Music City in Nashville offers a Fall bucket list featuring unique activities such as trick-or-treating at historic sites, savoring seasonal drinks at local distilleries, and participating in Thanksgiving celebrations at renowned eateries.
Corn Maze Challenge
Create a passport featuring a top corn maze in your area and pair it with before and after activities to make it an unforgettable experience. Corn mazes are elaborate paths cut into fields of corn, designed to challenge visitors to navigate through intricate designs and find their way out. Some corn mazes even offer nighttime adventures with glowsticks, adding an extra layer of fun and excitement. Highlight the main maze, noting its difficulty level and any unique features. Include nearby activities such as visiting a pumpkin patch, enjoying a hayride, or sampling seasonal treats like apple cider donuts. The MAiZE, a network of corn mazes across the country, can inspire your trail, offering visitors both challenging and enjoyable experiences as they navigate these seasonal attractions.
Apple Adventure Trail
Guide visitors through local apple orchards where they can pick their own apples, enjoy cider tastings and participate in apple-themed activities. Perfect for families and apple enthusiasts, the Apple Hill Growers in California offer an immersive experience celebrating the apple harvest season. Located near the Sierra foothill town of Placerville, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, Apple Hill is a vibrant agricultural community with a rich history in farming and winemaking. Visitors can explore various orchards, sample freshly made apple cider, and partake in seasonal activities like apple bobbing, hayrides, and pumpkin patches. The area also features beautiful picnic spots and guided farm tours, providing a full day of autumn fun for all ages.
Flavors of Fall Ale Trail
Tap into the seasonal beer trend with an ale trail dedicated to pumpkin and fall beers. Include stops at local breweries offering seasonal brews, pumpkin ales, and Oktoberfest-style beers. Engage breweries to provide special tasting experiences and discounts for participants. The Utah Ale Trail offers a Fall Crawl, a self-guided tour of breweries that showcases the best of the season’s flavors. Participants can enjoy unique autumnal brews, meet the brewers, and even get behind-the-scenes tours of the brewing process. This trail not only highlights the rich variety of fall beers but also promotes local businesses, creating a vibrant community event that draws beer enthusiasts from near and far.
Get Started With Digital Passports This Fall
If you’re a destination or organization with fall-themed guides, you’re only a step away from creating an engaging digital passport. By not leveraging this opportunity, you're missing out on collecting valuable first-party data and growing your email lists, which ultimately enhances your fall-themed offerings and retargeting campaigns. Plus, digital passports incentivize participants through digital badges, leaderboard rankings, and rewards increasing engagement with your destination.
Explore is a destination marketing platform that is designed to help you quickly and easily launch a user-friendly, on-brand digital passports. Bring your fall content to the next level with a digital passport. Book a demo of Explore to get started.
