The campaign represents how destinations can build lasting relationships with Gen Alpha whilst advancing sustainability objectives.
Traditional marketing approaches are increasingly failing to engage younger demographics. As destinations worldwide grapple with shifting visitor behaviours and platform preferences, Elena Gonzalez de Parga (Canary Islands Tourism Board) and Yurena Escobar Alonso (Flecher) share how the Canary Islands developed "Find the Seasouls", a Roblox experience that successfully bridges entertainment, education and destination promotion. In pioneering an innovative approach that challenges conventional destination marketing through strategic gaming platform integration, the initiative represents a fundamental reconceptualisation of how destinations can build lasting relationships with Gen Alpha whilst advancing sustainability objectives.
Traditional marketing approaches are increasingly failing to engage younger demographics. As destinations worldwide grapple with shifting visitor behaviours and platform preferences, Elena Gonzalez de Parga (Canary Islands Tourism Board) and Yurena Escobar Alonso (Flecher) share how the Canary Islands developed "Find the Seasouls", a Roblox experience that successfully bridges entertainment, education and destination promotion. In pioneering an innovative approach that challenges conventional destination marketing through strategic gaming platform integration, the initiative represents a fundamental reconceptualisation of how destinations can build lasting relationships with Gen Alpha whilst advancing sustainability objectives.
Traditional marketing approaches are increasingly failing to engage younger demographics. As destinations worldwide grapple with shifting visitor behaviours and platform preferences, Elena Gonzalez de Parga (Canary Islands Tourism Board) and Yurena Escobar Alonso (Flecher) share how the Canary Islands developed "Find the Seasouls", a Roblox experience that successfully bridges entertainment, education and destination promotion. In pioneering an innovative approach that challenges conventional destination marketing through strategic gaming platform integration, the initiative represents a fundamental reconceptualisation of how destinations can build lasting relationships with Gen Alpha whilst advancing sustainability objectives.
With 17.8 million annual arrivals, compared to a resident population of just 2 million, the Canary Islands experience significant tourism density whilst maintaining a 35% GDP contribution from tourism. However, beneath these metrics lies a concerning demographic reality: the average visitor age of 47 years signals a potential crisis looming on the horizon. This demographic concentration constitutes a strategic imperative to develop meaningful connections with younger audiences. The need to transition toward younger market segments becomes particularly urgent when considering that Gen Alpha is projected to become the largest generation in history.
The strategic complexity deepens when considering the destination's unique positioning requirements. The Canary Islands maintain extraordinary biodiversity with 160 endemic species, creating an imperative to balance tourism growth with environmental stewardship. Simultaneously, emerging opportunities are being presented by the film industry, with the destination hosting 180 productions in the past year. Most crucially, while only 17% of visitors travel with children, the DMO identified a clear opportunity to develop its family tourism proposition, recognising that 70% of children wield significant decision-making power over travel choices and 63% of parents choose destinations to ensure their children would have more fun.
The Canary Islands' decision to invest in Roblox represents the evolution of generational communication and a clear knowledge of platform-specific engagement dynamics. Rather than applying traditional digital marketing approaches, the DMO recognises that each generation develops distinct communication preferences aligned with the dominant platforms of their formative years. Yurena provided crucial context by mapping generational communication channels:
Roblox emerges as what Yurena termed "Social Media 3.0", transcending traditional gaming to create comprehensive social ecosystems. With 350 million monthly active users spending an average of 2.5 hours daily, the platform provides unprecedented access to Gen Alpha's attention. More significantly, Roblox enables users to seamlessly transition between consumption and creation, with over 4 million user-generated experiences demonstrating the platform's capacity for authentic engagement.
Unlike traditional advertising environments where brand messages interrupt user experiences, Roblox enables integrated storytelling where marketing content becomes the entertainment medium itself. The advantage of this platform functionality is the elimination of the traditional tension between commercial objectives and user experience, creating "natural" advertising integration.
The "Find the Seasouls" Roblox experience demonstrates how educational content can strengthen entertainment value when properly integrated into gaming environments. The game's three-pillar approach — playful interaction, destination showcase and environmental education — creates a cohesive experience that advances multiple strategic objectives without sacrificing user engagement.
Building the game around finding the 160 scientifically accurate endemic creatures required collaboration with university partners to ensure visual authenticity, whilst maintaining aesthetics for Roblox users. This attention to scientific accuracy reflects strategic thinking about brand credibility and educational legitimacy. Each creature carries names derived from the Canary Islands dialect, reinforcing cultural authenticity whilst raising awareness of regional linguistic heritage.
This focus on accuracy and authenticity also extended to the spatial design of the gameplay environment. Eight distinct maps, representing the seven Canary Islands plus an underwater environment, provide comprehensive destination exposure through exploration-based gameplay. Each environment recreates iconic landmarks and showcases authentic activities, creating detailed virtual replicas that inspire genuine travel interest whilst remaining engaging through familiar gaming interfaces.
Conservation messaging integration represents perhaps the most strategic area of destination-specific sustainability communication. Environmental education emerges through character interactions with the Seasouls and narrative progression. This approach acknowledges that Gen Alpha expects brands to demonstrate authentic environmental commitment through their core experiences rather than through separate messaging campaigns.
The game mechanics themselves reinforce conservation values. Players learn about marine species through discovery and interaction, understanding habitat requirements, conservation status and ecological relationships through engaging gameplay rather than traditional educational formats. This integration ensures that environmental messaging enhances rather than interrupts the entertainment experience.
The Canary Islands' approach transcends individual platform optimisation to create a "complete ecosystem with different touchpoints". This 360-degree strategy recognises that effective engagement for Gen Alpha requires presence across multiple interconnected digital environments, each serving distinct functions within a wider engagement landscape. This ecosystem operates across three primary components: the core Roblox gaming experience, Roblox Studio for user-generated content creation and amplification through traditional social media platforms. This structure acknowledges that digital engagement now requires both consumption and creation opportunities, enabling users to progress from passive participants to form a community of active contributors.
The amplification strategy demonstrates an intricate understanding of cross-platform content dynamics. User-generated content related to the Seasouls experience has generated over 200 pieces of organic content, 2 million TikTok content visualisations and substantial YouTube engagement. This organic proliferation occurs because the source content from the Roblox experience itself provides sufficient raw creative material for users to develop derivative content across multiple platforms.
Particularly noteworthy is the physical-digital integration strategy. The DMO created real-world events and merchandise that extend the Seasouls experience beyond digital environments, recognising that Gen Alpha, despite being digital natives, still value tangible experiences that connect virtual engagement with reality. This approach counters common misconceptions about digitally native audiences preferring exclusively virtual experiences.
The results of the "Find the Seasouls" campaign provide compelling validation for the strategic approach whilst revealing important insights about quality versus volume in digital engagement. Within the first two months, over 2.1 million visits were achieved from 26 countries, achieving a 96% positive review rating that positioned it as the highest-rated destination experience among the four DMO activations on Roblox (promoting Qatar, Singapore and Tokyo).
The international reach demonstrates the global impact of well-executed digital campaigns. Content created by Japanese users, despite the low probability of those users physically visiting the Canary Islands, contributes to global brand awareness and potentially influences future travel decisions by friends and family members in higher-conversion markets. At the same time, the cost-effectiveness metrics speak volumes as to the potential Roblox offers as a marketing platform, achieving approximately one-third the cost of conventional marketing campaigns, whilst generating substantially higher engagement depth and duration.
These metrics become more significant when contextualised within Roblox's recommendation system algorithm. The platform prioritises user engagement quality over advertising spend, meaning that the positive review concentration directly influences organic distribution. This creates a beneficial cycle where content quality drives platform visibility, reducing reliance on paid promotion whilst building authentic audience relationships.
Achieving success required significant internal organisational adaptation, highlighting the broader change management challenges that destinations face when embracing genuinely innovative digital strategies. Convincing DMOs to invest in emerging platforms, such as Roblox, requires overcoming both political resistance and risk aversion inherent in government-affiliated organisations. Collaborating with Fletcher, as Roblox's first tourism vertical partner, provided crucial strategic advantages for the Canary Islands Tourism Board in reducing execution risks and enabled access to platform insights and technical support.
The campaign also required reconciling educational mandates with entertainment objectives. The restriction on in-game monetisation, while limiting some platform features, forced creative focus on content quality and user experience rather than revenue generation. This constraint ultimately strengthened the educational credibility whilst maintaining entertainment value. With a long-term commitment to leveraging Roblox as a marketing platform for Gen Alpha, seasonal updates, the launch of new challenges and an expanded narrative will bring sustained engagement. This approach acknowledges that effective relationship building requires consistent presence and evolving content rather than periodic campaign interventions to build brand affinity.
Marketing Director
Canary Islands Tourism Board
CEO
Flecher.co
Created for destinations around the world, this programme will provide the insight to help you become a sustainability leader within your organisation.
Designed to teach you how to master must-have tools and acquire essential skills to succeed in managing your destination or organisation, be ready to challenge all of your assumptions.
Designed to teach you how to master must-have tools and acquire essential skills to succeed in managing your destination or organisation, be ready to challenge all of your assumptions.
.webp)
