VISIT MARIBOR
TIK TOK

Many tourist destinations use a similar approach on social media: they showcase landmarks, views, trips, and tourist attractions. This type of content can be visually appealing, but it often fails to create a long-term connection with users. In the Visit Maribor project, we therefore faced the question of how to present Maribor on TikTok differently. The goal was not only to increase video views, but to create a recognizable destination identity, increase user engagement, and build an active community of followers.

TikTok trend analysis shows that users are increasingly looking for authentic stories, local characteristics, humor, and personalities they can relate to. That is why we designed the communication strategy around the character of the city and the people who help shape it every day.

For Visit Maribor, we developed the communication concept “Toti Mariborčan,” giving the city a recognizable and authentic voice on TikTok. Instead of relying on classic tourism promotion, we presented Maribor from a local’s perspective. We placed humor, the Styrian dialect, self-irony, and everyday situations at the forefront: moments locals know well and visitors can use to better understand the character of the city. An important part of the content strategy was also the group Prijateljčki, four Styrian winemakers whose directness, humor, and connection to the local environment further strengthened the sense of local identity.

This approach allowed the profile to feel less like another tourist page and more like a person with a clear identity, communicating with users in a relaxed and authentic way.

We measured the success of the new strategy by comparing the five months before the introduction of the new communication direction with the first five months after its launch.

The results showed significant growth across key performance indicators:

• organic video views increased by more than 160 percent, from 224,000 to 588,000 views,
• the number of likes almost doubled,
• the number of comments increased by more than 225 percent,
• the profile recorded more visits and faster growth of its follower community.

The project confirms that a tourist destination can achieve above-average results on TikTok when it builds a distinctive tone of communication and places authentic local stories at the forefront.