Visit Hamilton County Puts a Fun Spin on Restaurant Month

Restaurant weeks and months are no new concept to many across the nation, but turning the ordinary into something incredible is exactly what Visit Hamilton County accomplished through “The Great Dine Out” passport. Instead of your run-of-the-mill restaurant month, Visit Hamilton County decided to partner with Bandwango to add an extra aspect for their patrons, a check-in challenge.

The Great Dine Out was created as a way to drive business through the doors of local dining establishments that are continuously recovering from the effects of COVID-19. The Great Dine Out was hosted from January 2-31. “In January, the holiday season is over but patio season is still a few months away and needs support to drive excitement and support to their businesses,” says Ashley Ledford of Hamilton County Tourism. The passport was used to promote deals and discounts at over 50 local restaurants for both dine-in and carry-out options!

Due to success in previous years, more restaurants were involved than ever before! Each of the merchants donated 3 $25 gift cards to use at their establishments to be involved in the passport. After passholders checked in at 5 of the restaurants over the course of January, they won a gift card! Between the discounts provided and the opportunity to score a gift card, the Great Dine Out saw overwhelming success. Merchants were pleased with the turnout throughout the month and passholders loved being able to try out restaurants they hadn’t yet been able to enjoy. It was a win-win for all!

Ledford says that the success of this campaign is due to a layered marketing strategy. We always encourage our clients to use many different forms to market and Visit Hamilton did just that. The pass was heavily marketed on social media as well as partnering with influencers (one of our favorite ways to get the word out). Public relations strategies and both paid and organic earned media in print, local radio, and television news were also very helpful and played a large part in the success of this passport.

Now for the fun part, the numbers!

This pass saw over 8,700 signups in the course of it running through the month of January!

Of those signups, 4,217 passholders opted into future marketing messaging for Visit Hamilton County to promote events and passports.

The pass had 1,094 redemptions, 2,386 check-in’s, and 230 gift cards were awarded to those who checked in at 5 establishments.

Through organic social media posts on Facebook and Instagram, The Great Dine Out achieved almost 74,000 impressions with an engagement rate of 4.2%!

Visit Hamilton County was overwhelmed with support and love from both merchants and passholders and hopefully this pass will continue to drive traffic to Hamilton County’s growing food scene long after the pass’s end.

Restaurant weeks and months clearly have the potential to be wildly successful as we can see through Visit Hamilton County’s The Great Dine Out. If your organization is facilitating a restaurant week/month, consider building a Bandwango passport to go along with it! You may just see more success than ever before. Book your demo here!