With the worldwide lockdown affecting tourist destinations worldwide, Sentosa, Singapore’s holiday island, needed to find a way to innovate and ensure it was top-of-mind to capture crucial market share when it was time to open up.

By strategizing and playing on an entirely new platform, Animal Crossing, Sentosa tapped the zeitgeist of digital escapism, allowing visitors old and new to travel to Sentosa from afar safely from their sofas.

By having an ultra-cute answer to the anxiety of holiday FOMO, Sentosa managed to go from a little holiday island to one of 2020’s hottest destinations.

For more information please visit virtualsentosa.com

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Worldwide lockdowns were causing massive cabin fever with people desperate to leave the confines of their home. Sentosa was not as famous as Phuket or Hawaii but the playing ground was levelled as the pandemic kept every island resort off-limits. This was an opportunity for us to bring the best of Sentosa to people stuck at home, allowing them to go on a holiday from the safety of their sofas.

At the start of 2020, the world came to a standstill and countries closed their borders one by one. Holiday plans flew out the window, the travel industry came to an abrupt halt and government-mandated stay-home notices kept everyone at home. Overnight, Sentosa went from hosting millions of visitors each year to zero. This meant a huge disruption to the client’s key objective - island visitorship. With no end to the pandemic in sight, the brand had to quickly pivot and find a way to maintain (or even improve) top-of-mind awareness so that travellers worldwide will consider visiting when borders open again.

We moved Sentosa onto Animal Crossing, tapping the zeitgeist of digital utopias to escape reality. As a game that allowed players to create their own tropical oasis, Animal Crossing was the perfect place for people to escape to whilst under lockdown and the perfect way for visitors old and new to travel to Sentosa from afar - and by being the first brand to build an island from scratch, reaching more people than we have ever done with zero media spend.

Research was integral to the design and game experience. We used social listening and surveys to discover what people were missing the most, and watched hours of streams to understand how players’ social and gaming motivations.

Virtual Sentosa - the first tourism destination without any visas, restrictions or quarantine periods, letting anyone escape for a little break and putting Sentosa top of mind when the world opens up again.

Sentosa was the first destination to be recreated within 2020’s breakout game Animal Crossing. As the creative strategy was based on recreating the holiday experience digitally, Virtual Sentosa was an ultra-specific replica of real Sentosa. Upon arrival, visitors were greeted by a tour guide, received bespoke souvenirs, could explore 18 richly-detailed attractions, attend an impromptu dance party or step into a yoga session by the beach. We also built Instagrammable spots that made guests more likely to share their visit on social media.

We held many events: A press conference, media tours, invited fellow travel brands like Scoot Airlines, bookable private sessions for friends, a surprise birthday party and even a wedding.

Additional experiences widened our reach:

-On Facebook and Instagram, we ran island walkthrough videos, guided meditations

-We curated a Spotify playlist of songs inspired by Sentosa and Animal Crossing.

-Gaming livestreams on Facebook, YouTube and Twitch.

With no paid media, Virtual Sentosa became one of the most widely reported destinations, with over 300 headlines across every continent (except Antarctica) and category, entering the mainstream with over 7.5B impressions and $2.66M SGD in media value. It received kudos from TripAdvisor, top travel journalists and politicians, was featured on primetime news from Singapore to Peru, and mentioned in many social conversations.

Searches for Sentosa were higher (versus Hawaii and Phuket) in our key markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.

Over 44,000 visited the website and 15,000 individuals registered for a chance to visit, with visitors spending more than 15,000 minutes on the virtual island.

Virtual Sentosa was recognised as a breakout effort in tourism marketing by Hypebeast and Conde Nast has called it a case study in how tourism marketing can innovate and connect with future travelers, even as travel itself remains closed globally.

With all costs managed in-house, and zero media spend, the total cost of this campaign was approximately equivalent to the price of a Nintendo Switch, or USD299, on which the main Virtual Sentosa account was hosted. The other Switches were already owned by the team.