Multicultural Travel Marketing Is Broken… and Costly
August 25, 2025
If you ask most destinations who their marketing is for, the answer often sounds the same: “everyone.” But in trying to speak to everyone, many DMOs end up resonating with no one.
Multicultural marketing in travel isn’t just lagging, it’s stuck in a performative loop. The intent may be there, but the execution remains superficial. While audiences have grown more diverse, more vocal, and more culturally aware, much of the industry is still clinging to outdated strategies that fall flat in today’s market.
It’s not just a matter of visibility. It’s a matter of relevance, and increasingly, that comes down to not just what you say, but how you say it.
the illusion of inclusion
On the surface, it might look like the industry is making progress. Travel campaigns are beginning to feature more diverse faces. Websites offer translations. Social media posts mark cultural holidays with the appropriate hashtags. But inclusion isn’t just about casting or language.
In too many cases, what we’re really seeing is a carefully staged illusion: marketing that checks boxes without actually shifting perspective.
When campaigns are built around diversity but lack depth, it creates a veneer of representation. Travelers may see themselves in your ads, but if the messaging isn’t grounded in cultural understanding, those efforts will ring hollow.
Representation without resonance is decoration, not strategy.
Inclusion isn’t a series of tactics… It’s a mindset. And it needs to live at the core of how a destination communicates, not just in seasonal content or isolated media buys. When multicultural marketing is treated as a parallel campaign instead of an integrated philosophy, it inevitably falls short.
Multicultural Audiences Are Leading, Not Emerging
This isn’t a fringe opportunity… it’s the center of the marketplace.
In 2023, Black U.S. travelers spent over $145 billion on leisure travel. That’s 11% of the total market. Latino travelers are projected to spend $165 billion by 2025. And these aren’t isolated spenders, these travelers are often leading trends, traveling in larger multigenerational groups, and prioritizing destinations that reflect their identities.
Despite this, multicultural media still receives only about 5% of total U.S. ad spend. That gap between who’s spending and who’s being spoken to is one of the travel industry’s most critical blind spots.
The Missing Piece: Strategic Code Switching
At the heart of effective multicultural marketing is something few brands are doing well: code switching. Not in the linguistic sense, but in the brand and communication sense.
Think of code switching as the ability to shift your style, language, or tone based on the cultural context of your audience, while still staying true to your identity. It’s not about being inauthentic; it’s about being intentional. It’s about understanding how the same story can mean different things to different people, and having the flexibility and cultural fluency to tell it in a way that resonates across audiences.
The brands that do this well don’t compromise who they are… they express it differently depending on who they’re talking to. Nike doesn’t change its brand for each audience. It just knows how to speak each audience’s emotional language.
The Formula: Context + Culture + Consistency
When code switching is done right, it follows a simple but powerful formula:
- Context: Understand the platform, the moment, and the mindset. How your message shows up on TikTok should look and sound different than how it shows up in a print guide or a long-form brand video.
- Culture: This is about nuance, values, humor, pain points, and pride. It’s about knowing not just who you’re talking to, but how they interpret what you say.
- Consistency: You don’t need to reinvent your brand. You need to express it in culturally relevant ways that still feel unmistakably you.
It’s not about fragmentation. It’s about fluency.
Destinations Aren’t Just Selling Attractions, They’re Selling Identity
Today’s traveler isn’t just booking a hotel room. They’re buying into a destination’s values. They’re seeking places that align with how they see themselves (or how they want to be seen).
In that way, a destination is more than a place. It’s a brand. And the most successful brands understand that the product is only half of the equation. The other half is how you make people feel.
People travel to see something different. But they also travel to feel something familiar.
How to Build Truly Inclusive Travel Marketing
So where should DMOs begin?
1. Start with the formula.
Use the Context + Culture + Consistency model as a strategic filter. If the message feels off in tone, lacks cultural specificity, or doesn’t align with your brand, it’s not ready to launch.
2. Include real voices in the process.
Don’t rely on your own assumptions. Bring in collaborators from the communities you’re trying to reach. If they tell you your message is tone-deaf or off base, believe them.
3. Treat feedback as fuel.
Release. Listen. Adjust. Then repeat. Effective multicultural marketing is iterative. Each campaign gives you insight into how to refine your message and grow your relevance.
What It Looks Like When It’s Done Right: Visit Portland, Maine
One standout example of how we’re working toward inclusive, culturally attuned travel marketing starts with the Spring/Summer 2025 campaign for Visit Portland, Maine. The destination began with a set of strong general market ads: clean, coastal, and evocative of New England summer: tall masts, cold pints, and golden days by the bay.
But here’s one way we’re proposing to evolve the campaign: instead of stopping at broad appeal, the creative team also prepared concepts involving parallel executions tailored to multicultural audiences, without losing the soul of the Portland brand. The voice shifts, the vibe evolves, and the work demonstrates how ads can be crafted that don’t just represent new audiences visually… they can speak their emotional and cultural language.
For the African American market, the copy flipped from quiet and classic to confident and culturally rhythmic:
“You bring the heat, we’ve got the breeze. Portland’s serving lobster, live beats, and fly fits by the sea. There’s no layover on this kind of vibe… just pull up direct.”
For the Asian American and Pacific Islander market, the tone becomes more serene, with culinary and sensory nods that feel personalized and poetic:
“Soft landings and sweet moments await. Portland’s a direct flight to matcha mousse, sea breeze, and serenity by the slice. Your calm is calling.”
And for LGBTQIA+ travelers, the ad leaned into freedom of expression, creativity, and community with messaging that felt both open and celebratory:
“Express it all. Portland’s just a nonstop away: where bold art, fresh seafood, and rainbow skies meet. The coast is clear. Come through.”
These aren’t one-off attempts at diversity; they’re intentional concepts, rooted in context, culture, and consistency. They show how the core Portland experience – and the destination brand – can come to life through different lenses. The destination’s identity remains intact, but the storytelling shifts. That’s code switching in action.
What these examples make clear is that inclusion is not about dilution. It’s about dynamic storytelling. It’s about knowing your audience well enough to communicate with fluency… not just familiarity.
Final Thought: It’s Not About Being Louder. It’s About Being Clearer.
The future of destination marketing belongs to brands that know how to shift their voice without losing their identity. To those who can balance empathy with strategy, and adaptation with authenticity.
Multicultural travelers aren’t asking to be spoken about… they’re asking to be spoken to. With clarity. With relevance. With intention.
This isn’t about being politically correct. It’s about being culturally fluent, and building a brand that actually resonates in a diverse, dynamic world.
