Opportunity
Discover Puerto Rico set out to explore how destination marketing could move beyond awareness and drive measurable traveler engagement, trip planning and partner impact.
Rather than building a traditional seasonal campaign, the team leaned into one of Puerto Rico’s strongest differentiators: its music and dance culture.
The goal was to create an immersive experience that connected travelers emotionally to Puerto Rico while naturally guiding them into trip planning.
Key focus areas included:
- Turning cultural storytelling into measurable traveler action
- Increasing engagement through immersive and interactive experiences
- Connecting cultural discovery directly to trip planning
- Driving partner handoffs and referrals across the island
- Demonstrating measurable impact from upper-funnel destination marketing
Strategy
Discover Puerto Rico embedded Mindtrip into their custom campaign experience centered around Puerto Rico’s music and dance identity.
Rather than treating AI-powered trip planning as a standalone site feature, Discover Puerto Rico integrated it directly into the campaign landing page with several AI prompts throughout.
Travelers could listen to the music of Puerto Rico while building personalized trips around the experiences that interested them most.
The campaign included:
- Interactive Music Hub: A custom digital experience featuring six original tracks created with Grammy-winning composer and producer Ángel “Cucco” Peña, alongside cultural storytelling and Spotify integrations.
- Immersive Audio Exploration: Visitors could interact with individual instruments and sounds, creating a more participatory and memorable experience.
- Embedded Trip Planning: AI trip planning was integrated directly into the campaign, allowing travelers to instantly turn inspiration into itineraries.
- Multi-Channel Distribution: Partnerships with The New York Times, Pandora, Meta and Teads extended the campaign across culturally relevant channels and audiences.
- Cultural Moment Alignment: The campaign launched in alignment with Bad Bunny's residency in Puerto Rico, amplifying visibility and relevance during a moment of heightened cultural attention on the island.
Impact
The campaign demonstrated how cultural storytelling could translate into measurable traveler action across every stage of the journey.
From September through December 2025, Discover Puerto Rico's Mindtrip integration drove significant month-over-month growth:
- 64,616 activations (+138%)
- 7,141 chat messages (+26%)
- 819 partner handoffs (+90%)
- 114 user registrations (+58%)
- 1,359 itineraries created (+54%)
Beyond engagement metrics, the campaign demonstrated how AI-powered trip planning can help destinations better understand the impact of brand and cultural storytelling.
By bringing trip planning directly into the campaign experience, Discover Puerto Rico gained deeper insight into what inspired travelers to plan, which experiences drove the most engagement, and how interest translated into traveler action and partner referrals.
Those insights are now helping shape future campaigns, partner collaboration and content strategy across the destination.
"
Music got them curious. But AI helped us prove that curiosity converted.
Storm Tussey
CMO, Discover Puerto Rico
What emerged was more than a successful campaign. It became a new model for how destinations can turn cultural storytelling into measurable traveler action and partner impact.
Ready to turn inspiration into traveler action?
Let’s talk about what AI-powered trip planning could look like for your destination.
