Omar Perez
Sure, Old San Juan's cobblestone roads, historical forts and colorful buildings are often the big draw for tourists to Puerto Rico, but Leah Chandler, chief marketing officer for Discover Puerto Rico, wants visitors to take note of other aspects, even some beyond the metro area. And the bureau is taking steps to help raise their awareness of what the island has to offer.
Last week, Discover Puerto Rico announced a revised "Live Boricua" marketing campaign, one that aims to do just that on television as well as on digital and social media platforms. Since its inception in 2022, the campaign has directly generated more than 625,000 trips to the island and more than $2 billion in visitor spending.
Choosing a more cinematic, first-person-narrative approach than in the
past, the campaign features videos of a hiker in El Yunque National
Forest, famed Puerto Rican chef Mario Pagan discussing the virtues of
boricuan cuisine, and dancers at La
Factoria, a popular San Juan nightspot.
Leah Chandler Photo Credit: Discover Puerto Rico
"We've seen that campaign take off in a really, really powerful way in the first couple of years, and we felt the need to really evolve into a bit more of a storytelling approach," Chandler said, adding that the updated campaign is in its third revamp. "3.0 is really going to connect visitors to the island's people and the stories in a way that we never really have before. And we think that it's going to leave a real, lasting and emotional imprint on the people who see these spots. It's not just a voiceover spot that's showing lots of pretty images."
In part, the campaign aims to encourage guests to not just stay in the San Juan metro area but venture beyond. The rise of short-term rentals on the island has facilitated that, particularly in the central mountain region of the island, which has seen increased interest from travelers. In the past five or six years, the number of short-term rentals islandwide increased from about 3,000 to roughly 16,000 to 17,000 today, Chandler said.
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"Short-term rental product is really important to us because people today are able to visit areas that they wouldn't have before because there weren't hotels there," Chandler said. "So it's really helping us to disperse travelers into areas that maybe haven't had a lot of tourism before and create an economic interest."
The island will also see its room count grow in the next couple of years, with resorts opening or breaking ground. The Ritz-Carlton, San Juan is expected to open late this year, while the Hard Rock San Juan and Nayara are expected to begin construction sometime in 2025. The island's ADR and RevPar last year were $286 and $208, respectively, according to STR.
Separate from the "Live Boricua" campaign, the "No Passport, No Problem" initiative, which launched in November, is a means to get that message across. A Future Partners study found that one-third of Americans did not know that a passport was not necessary to visit Puerto Rico.
"There were passport-processing issues last year with the State Department [regarding] wait times for getting passports, and we wanted to remind people [that we have] the spirit and the flavor of an international destination, and you don't even need your passport," Chandler said.
Overall, tourism brought in $9.8 billion last year, setting an all-time
record, and saw just over 8.1 million air and sea arrivals, according to
Aerostar, which is the managing company of San Juan's Luis Munoz Marin Airport, and the Puerto Rico Ports Authority.