Visit Philly launches campaign drawing visitors deep into its neighborhoods

Philly just jumped on the bandwagon of early adopters who have watched travel trends shift towards local, authentic experiences and taken the opportunity to showcase lesser-known neighborhoods and boost local economies via tourism.

The tourism board Visit Philly unveiled its new website and media campaign celebrating the diversity of 14 of the cities’ visitor-ready neighborhoods early this morning.

Each neighborhood page features recent uwishunu blog posts, visitors’ Instagram photos taken around the neighborhood, venues with the most check-ins on Foursquare, and an interactive map of nightlife, shopping, and restaurants.

Videos were also created for each of the neighborhoods (below). Several focus on an individual and her favorite spots in the neighborhood, and the others highlight scenes of daily life within neighborhood.

The neighborhood pages are a stunning compilation of social media assets alongside practical information including brief descriptions of the area and tips for getting around. The pages’ integration of constant updates and steady facts make them a great example of what the future of travel guides can look like on the local level.

This; however, is just the first stage of the initiative that will grow over the next two years.

The neighborhoods trend grows

Philly isn’t the first to aggressively push neighborhood tourism. New York launched its own Neighborhood X Neighborhood campaign last month and Los Angeles encourages visitors to explore the city by region.

Visit Philly is one of the best at its trade when it comes to social media innovation and community outreach. It’s blog, uwishunu, was visited by 2.62 million people last year and their research shows that 94 percent of locals actually attended an event they read about on the blog.

Visit Philly’s legacy of successful initiatives leaves little doubt that its neighborhoods campaign will take off in a similar fashion.