At Career Gappers we believe that having a career and travelling the world are not mutually exclusive. Career breaks and business trips are well established, but we are running an exciting campaign to tap into the huge new market of remote workers.
Position your destination as the hottest place for a new kind of travel experience: a ‘workation’. Work with us to reach the right audience, create the right content and reposition your destination.
Reach the right audience
Utilise our dedicated workations facebook group and mailing list of 2000+ subscribers to promote your destination to proactive workationers.
create the right content
Work with us to create a professional suite of articles, social posts and emails that drive workationers to book their next trip with you.
Reposition your location
Transition from a tourist mindset to a workationer mindset by sharing how great it is to work in your destination and attracting visitors all year round.
Our 2024 workations campaign
Career Gappers was originally created to inspire and help people to take travel career breaks. We have reached a powerful audience:
- 25k monthly page views to our blog website
- 5,000+ followers across our social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
- 2,000+ email subscribers
- Our primary audience is professionals aged 25–40
- By location, our top two audience countries are the UK and the USA
The idea of taking a workation has a natural appeal to our audience. Career break travellers are career-driven and ambitious, but also adventurous, eager to explore the world, in search of a healthy work–life balance, and with disposable income to realise this lifestyle. These are all characteristics that fit with taking regular workations: combining work with play, and harnessing a new way to travel more regularly.
Since launching the campaign, we have:
- Published an ultimate guide to workations, which has been featured on Forbes and Authority Magazine
- Worked with several tourist boards to produce a series of destination workation guides, such as Barcelona (see more below), Cornwall, Lisbon and Hamburg
- Worked with hotels like Hilton Malta to promote workations
Barcelona workation campaign - case study
We partnered with the Barcelona Tourist Board to create a suite of articles, social media posts and email automations, positioning Barcelona as a perfect place for a workation.
Our central article Workation in Barcelona: how to plan your perfect experience is underpinned by 11 supporting articles, including articles such as 7 great coworking spaces in Barcelona (with day rates), 25 amazing Vrbo apartments in Barcelona (with work space!) and A complete guide to visiting Barcelona in winter – all designed with the workationer in mind. More than 5000 people have read this specific workations content.
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All articles were written from our own experience, and were specifically designed around target keywords and optimised for search engines. The central aticle (or pillar article) currently ranks at number three on Google when someone is searching for information on workations in Barcelona.
When visitors land on any Barcelona article, they are invited to sign up to the mailing list and receive a free Barcelona workation guide. We created a five email email automation that provides more content on the destination and keeps workationers interested. The open rate for this sequence is 50%, well above industry standard.
One video reel was produced from the campaign and shared on Meta platforms. Each article was also accompanied by a social media post on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to all followers, with more specific posts in our Facebook workations group.
This rounded campaign continues to engage people with the idea that Barcelona is a fantastic destination for a workation. Each article will remain on the website indefinitely and will continue to grow in authority, with it being updated once per year to ensure the content is still relevant. This is a lifelong promotional campaign that only gets better over time.
The team behind career gappers
Meet Lisa
Head of Marketing at an international organisation, I currently blend work and travel by taking workations. We took a travel career break in 2017–18 and never looked back. I want to inspire people to have a work and travel mindset. It’s life-changing. I support with campaign development and I love being creative with video, image and brand.
Meet Alex
Dipping between international communications consultancy work and running blog businesses, I use my remote working freedom to explore as much as I can. I want to share ideas for incredible places to work and travel. I have extensive experience in copywriting and search engine optimisation and I love to produce great quality content.
What exactly is a workation?
A workation is simply a vacation or holiday that involves working while you are there. It is typically a short break, around 1–2 weeks, combining a few days of working with using downtime to explore the destination.
Workationers are not entirely location-dependent; they have a permanent ‘home’, and so they are different from digital nomads, who continuously travel and work. However, destinations that are set up for digital nomads are usually suitable for workations too, as they have a good infrastructure of co-working spaces, suitable accommodation options and strong wifi connections.
Background: The rise of the workation
The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for tourism around the world. However, every crisis also brings about opportunities. The mass closure of offices created a situation in which many millions of people had new flexibility to work remotely. In the UK, the number of people working from home reached 49% of the workforce in June 2020.
Businesses made huge investments to facilitate remote working in order to continue operating through the global health crisis. And while hybrid working is the new fashion, when their employees are seen to be more effective when working from home, the stigma surrounding productivity and remote working no longer exists. Remote working remains a valid option for most employees. Some workplaces have even introduced workation policies.
This means great things for wellness and work–life balance, with long commutes becoming a thing of the past. It also means that many more people can work from anywhere they choose, whether that is a home office, a city coffee shop or a sunny beach resort. Enter the workation.
Why are workationers good for your destination?
Workationers have a full time income and minimal restrictions on when they travel. They put money into the local economy through both engaging with the popular tourist attractions and supporting small businesses like cafes and coworking spaces.
They like to visit in off-peak times, giving you business all year round, and they will spend higher amounts on organised tours because they have less time to experience your destination than the digital nomad, backpacker or holiday maker.