Well, that escalated quickly – #putuj387

Background story

Here are three things that we had in mind before starting our putuj387 (travel387) story:

First: COVID-19 pandemic canceled all of our international travel plans and limited us inside our national borders. 

Second: Bosnia and Herzegovina has dozens of breath-taking locations worth visiting that are not so popular among the wider public.

Third: Social media usage increased 44% globally.

So Bosnians and Herzegovinians cannot travel abroad, but they live in a beautiful country and use social media more than before? Hmmm.

Atlantbh has always been our country’s #1 fan, supporting everything from sports, education, technology, to the IT industry as a whole. We know that Bosnia and Herzegovina has so much potential in almost every field and we are always ready to help turn that potential into performance. So when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and many areas of our society were affected, we realized that we needed to back an industry which was arguably most vulnerable – our tourism industry. It initially began as an internal project. On our Slack channels, we began encouraging our Atlanters to plan trips around the country to support domestic tourism once measures were eased. We promoted domestic tourism sites – from the most well known to hidden gems. Then we realized that this initiative needed to be more widespread, we needed everyone to get involved, from sharing their favorite tourist destinations in the country to spreading the word far beyond our office. What better way to do this than by creating a social media challenge for everyone to get involved. That is how putuj387 was born.

The escalation

It all started our first Facebook post that you see below. We photoshopped Atlanters at the National Park Sutjeska and explained our idea. It was a very simple one – post a real or photoshopped image of you from somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, use the #putuj387 hashtag, and tag your friends to do the same. Oh, and we encouraged the use of less popular destinations, like someplace other than Sarajevo’s Baščaršija or the Old Bridge in Mostar, because let’s face it everybody knows about those and we need to explore more.

We tagged our colleagues from the industry and they liked the idea so much that they supported it immediately, challenging more and more companies to do the same. In the upcoming days, our followers also began participating in the challenge and they joined the ranks of international ambassadors, influencers, and even famous Bosnian and Herzegovinan athletes such as Edin Džeko, Džanan Musa, and Jusuf Nurkić.

Podrška za #putuj387 kampanju sjajne ekipe iz @atlantbh. Istražimo domaće turističke potencijale ovog ljeta! Hvala na nominaciji @josattler nominujem @DzMusa 🇧🇦🇧🇦🇧🇦 pic.twitter.com/xaKxFAApwQ

— Edin Džeko (@EdDzeko) May 18, 2020

At this time, there are thousands of pictures and posts using the #putuj387 hashtag across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. National media recognized our efforts as well and we discussed the campaign and idea with many news websites, TV, and radio stations.

Butterfly effect for good

We are ecstatic that we gave contributed to our country’s tourism and helped, at least a little, in the popularization of all the magnificent locations our country has to offer, such as; Lukomir village, Japodski islands, the sand pyramids near Foča, the arch known as “Hajdučka vrata” on Čvrsnica mountain and a lot more.  We are also very thankful for everyone who took part in this challenge, all the companies, organizations, and individuals. Together, with a single post and a lot of creativity, we rediscovered the jewels of our tourism and we are looking forward to visiting all of them this summer!