San Marino: putting a lesser-known destination on the map in France

San Marino faces a challenge shared by many small destinations: strong intrinsic appeal, a historic hilltop republic within easy reach of Italy's Adriatic coast, with a distinctive identity as one of the world's oldest republics, but very low spontaneous awareness among French travellers, who rarely consider it as a stand-alone trip or even as an addition to a Northern Italy itinerary. The destination needed to build awareness essentially from a blank slate on the French market.

Our agency was appointed to run press relations and influencer marketing to build that awareness from the ground up. Rather than competing for attention as a major destination with a large marketing budget, the strategy positioned San Marino as a distinctive, easy-to-combine addition to an Italian regional trip, giving French media and travellers a clear, specific and low-friction reason to pay attention to a place they might otherwise overlook entirely.

The press relations programme focused on securing coverage in outlets that speak to independent and curious travellers, regional press, digital travel media and lifestyle titles, where a lesser-known destination has a realistic and credible path to placement, rather than competing head-on for the same national headlines chased by major destinations with far larger budgets. Angles were built around history, food, panoramic views and short-break itineraries combining San Marino with Rimini or Bologna.

In parallel, the influence programme selected creators whose audiences already show interest in Italy, city breaks and off-the-beaten-path travel, using our proprietary directory of French-speaking travel creators to identify the right editorial fit rather than the largest following available. This selectivity matters for a destination with a modest budget: every collaboration needs to reach an audience genuinely receptive to a lesser-known micro-destination.

The result is a steadily growing base of earned media and creator content that gives French travellers a concrete, visual reason to consider San Marino, and a body of published, findable content that continues working long after each individual placement, laying the groundwork a small destination needs before it can credibly invest in trade or paid activation.