Branding and Digital Marketing Strategies for Inbound Tourism in Sri Lanka: A Strategic Framework for a First of Its Kind Travel Planning Platform

Abstract

Sri Lanka tourism is distanced from dire times and with the arrival of Spaniards in droves. But there remains a real-world problem: the absence of tailored, language-specific services to directly link these visitors with qualified local professionals. To address this gap, this design-based applied research project involved the development of a curated brand identity and an organised three-month integrated marketing strategy for a localised travel planning platform called "Vamos Lanka." This methodology uses a design-based approach during pre-production, production, and post-production phases. Pre-production: thorough research on tourism marketing, target audience psychographics and cultural adaptation. This project contains the following design outputs: a brand guideline, original multimedia assets, and localised social media content. provide empirical grounding, a visual identity and marketing material's comprehension was confirmed through a survey with the target audience that evaluated knowledge of brand perception as well as clarity on what the platform is about. The study results reveal that the visual elements tailored to a specific culture, in this case, logo, colour palette and content, successfully evoke the perception of energy and tropicality in line with the Spanish market. This research adds to the body of work within destination branding scholarship by showing how localised digital design and contextual multimedia marketing can successfully fill service gaps and enable brand trust in nascent tourism emergences.