Best travel videos this week: Sunsets in Montreal, Virginia, and New Jersey

Summer tourism promotion is full swing and with it comes generic images of boat, beaches, and family travels.

These cities and travel tools have distinguished themselves by adding an emotional layer on top of the ad or by focusing on a specific type of outdoor travel.

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Expedia continues its Find Yours campaign with a new Find Your Friend ad spot. Expedia’s overplayed emotional appeal is present from the start, but the ad manages to slip in an attractive image of its mobile app before continuing with its supposedly heart-tugging anecdote. Expedia will roll out more Find Yours spots throughout the year.

Thomas Cook launches a new year-round TV ad campaign on June 1. Each ad highlights a specific product, but the company’s failed attempt at humor makes ads too confusing to learn about the focus feature. The two videos above highlight online hotel previews and Tripadvisor reviews on Thomascook.com and Thomas Cook’s money exchange service. The ad ends with the cutesy slogan, “Don’t just book it. Thomas Cook it.”

New Jersey’s Stronger Than The Storm campaign is one part of the state’s media-heavy tourism push meant to show Americans that the shore’s boardwalk is ready for summer. The campaign does as much to attract tourism as it does to boost the morale of Jersey Shore residents; however, New Jersey Governor Christie was criticized for using his appearance in the ad as part of a re-election campaign.

Last month Tourism Montreal launched a summer campaign that asks residents and visitors to hashtag Instagram photos of the city with #MTLMoments. The photos will be posted on Tourisme Montreal’s blog as part of crowdsourced branding-building initiative. Montreal has also followed its first video with a series of short vignettes like the second video above.

June is Great Outdoors Month, according to the Virginia Tourism Organization. The above ad is a nice look at the state’s national parks, beaches, rivers, and mountains that many Americans outside of the region don’t know about.