“Enter to Win a Trip” – Confessions of a Travel Contest Junkie

“Enter to Win a Trip” is a more than just a lure, more than just an enticement, it is a siren song that calls out with the promise of adventure. Sure I know that I am unlikely to win. I took a fair amount of math in school and understand probabilities, but… someone has to win, right? I don’t gamble. I don’t buy lottery tickets. But, I do enter travel contests.

I must certainly not be alone in my love of or addiction to travel contests. When I recently created a travel contest area for the Amateur Traveler website I was quite surprised at the number of companies offering travel contests and sweepstakes. Fodor’s is having photo contests to put a picture on their guidebook cover. You can currently enter to win a trip to Japan, London, NYC, National Parks, Bali, Virginia and many other places.

It used to be that entering a contest was a simple thing. You gave the company your personal information in a form (which is why they are running the contest in the first place) and they entered your name in the drawing. But with the success of the “Best Job in the World” contest run by Queensland Australia earlier this year contests increasingly are asking you to shoot video, blog, take pictures and get votes. So now in addition to providing personal information contest junkies like me are fueling social media marketing campaigns with content and attention.

Is it likely that people will get tired of these offers? That does not appear to be the case. Certainly no one is getting the kind of free press that Queensland did when they held a competition to work for them for 6 months in a tropical destination for $100,000. Somehow that 2 free nights in a Day’s Inn in Portland are not going to be able to compete with that. But companies continue to run contests because users continue to enter them. Sometimes the contests seem odd, like one web company that wants you to describe your perfect trip to win a contest that is… well… a completely different trip (this one is from i-to-i.com).

So what is next for travel contests? No one has matched $100,000 as prize money so it seems that the big sort of contests will still be rare. But, I know of 2-3 different contests to get you to the World Series or to next Year’s All Star Game. One of the reasons that I enter contests may be that we have won contests before. Back in the 1980s my wife won a free computer, an Apple ][e, in the second chance drawing for Crest’s Back to School Sweepstakes. If you are not familiar with a second chance drawing, it implies that the person who had the winning entry never claimed their prize. So, someone will win. Someone will be lucky. Why not me?

Excuse my while I write a blog post about my ultimate trip to Timbuktu. I have a contest deadline to meet.