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Man approached bison too closely in yellowstone national park and was injured.

NPS / Jacob W. Frank

Contact: Morgan Warthin , (307) 344-2015

• A 40-year-old male, Clarence Yoder, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, approached a bison too closely (within 25 yards) on the afternoon of April 21, 2024, and was injured by the bison.
• The incident occurred on the West Entrance Road near the Seven Mile Bridge, located 7 miles east of the park’s West Entrance.
• Rangers responded to the area after receiving a report of an individual who harassed a herd of bison and kicked a bison in the leg. They located the suspect's vehicle near the West Entrance and stopped it in the town of West Yellowstone, Montana.
• Yoder was arrested and charged with 1) being under the influence of alcohol to a degree that may endanger oneself, 2) disorderly conduct as to create or maintain a hazardous condition, 3) approaching wildlife, and 4) disturbing wildlife.
• The driver of the vehicle Yoder traveled in, 37-year-old McKenna Bass, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was also arrested and cited for 1) driving under the influence, 2) interference for failure to yield to emergency light activation, and 3) disturbing wildlife.
• Yoder sustained minor injuries from the encounter with the bison.
• Rangers transported Yoder to a nearby medical facility where he was medically evaluated, treated and released from medical care. He then was transported to the Gallatin County Detention Center.
• Yoder and Bass appeared in court on April 22 and pleaded not guilty to the charges. At this point, these are merely allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
• Each violation can result in fines up to $5,000 and six months in jail.
• The incident remains under investigation, and there is no additional information to share.
• This is the first reported incident of a visitor being injured by a bison in 2024. The last reported incident occurred on July 17, 2023 . There was one reported incident in 2023 and three in 2022.
• Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are wild and can be dangerous when approached. When an animal is near a campsite, trail, boardwalk, parking lot or in a developed area, give it space. Stay more than 25 yards (23 m) away from all large animals – bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose, and coyotes – and at least 100 yards (91 m) away from bears and wolves. If need be, turn around and go the other way to avoid interacting with a wild animal in close proximity.
• Read more about safety in the park , including how to behave around wildlife. The safety of these animals, as well as human safety, depends on everyone using good judgment and following these simple rules.
• Protect the park today and for future generations by taking the Yellowstone Pledge!

Last updated: April 29, 2024

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PO Box 168 Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190-0168

307-344-7381

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5 Best Travel Facebook Ad Examples (And What Works)

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As you probably already know, social media works really in the travel industry. As the largest social advertising platform with a reach of over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook should be forming an integral part of your social advertising strategy.

Facebook's advertising platform is really intuitive which makes setting up an ad fairly easy, even for a first timer. However, getting an ad to perform according to your desired outcomes is a much greater challenge. In this post, we will take a look at a few Facebook ad examples for travel companies and highlight the key attributes that made them a success.

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5 Successful Travel Company Facebook Ad Examples

The first of our travel Facebook ad examples is TourRadar , a well-known online travel marketplace that specializes in multi-day tour group offerings. To boost conversions on their website they set up a campaign using Facebook travel ads and destination ads.

Results they achieved

The campaign was a great success, and over a twelve-month period they doubled their conversion rate and halved their cost per booking. Additionally, they reached over 1.2 million people with relevant ads every month.

Ad format used

How did they do it? They used carousel ads which provided tour headlines, gave prices, showed destination images, mentioned discounts, and had a call to action to showcase their tours to interested travelers who had browsed online but not booked.

To pack more punch, they also set up destination ads which used relevant images and product information to target people who had shown interest online in a destination. The goal here was to entice them to visit the TourRadar website. These ads were also directed to people who had viewed specific tours on their own website.

TourRadar targeted travelers who had already shown interest in a particular tour or destination with key information curated into one visually appealing ad. As a result of using their own first party data which they passed onto Facebook, they were able to fulfill the objectives of the campaign.

Trentino Marketing

Next on our list of success stories is Trentino Marketing . This public tourist board wanted to develop tourism in the very scenic Trentino in Italy. We’ve included them as one of our Facebook ad examples to show how they managed to raise awareness and reach new markets for the destination.

Campaign results

Their four-month Facebook advertising campaign saw a 4.2X year-on-year increase in holiday offers viewed, resulted in an 18.4% increase in organic search traffic on brand keywords after the campaign, and reached 13 million people across Europe and the US in that timeframe. Additionally, 1.5 million people viewed their videos adverts in full, indicating their relevance to the target group.

How did they do it

All of this was achieved using canvas with video ads and the carousel format. Canvas is an interactive media experience ad which encourages viewers to interact with it by swiping and clicking around to see it.

To kick off the campaign and grab travelers attention, Trentino used short eye-catching videos which encapsulated the scenery of the destination.

Next, they progressed to retargeting carousel ads to travelers who had either watched the video for a certain amount of time or who had clicked through to their website. These ads showcased the four different types of holidays travelers could to choose from.

Lastly, they set up five different travel Facebook ad examples in three different languages to take the final step and push conversions.

Ultimately the combination of ad formats captured travelers attention and drove people to the Trentino Marketing website. Furthermore, they helped raise the visibility of both the company as well as the destination on search engines.

Meliá Hotels International

As one of the best Facebook ad examples showcasing how dynamic ads for travel can be successfully used to target a broad audience and find new customers, we have selected  Melia Hotels International success story.

Their success story

The Spanish Hotel chain wanted to target new customers in the UK and drive down the cost per booking compared to their previous UK ad campaigns.

This time they managed to secure a 3.2X lower cost per booking, as well as a 2.8X higher return on ad spend compared to previous campaigns.

Ad solution

Melia Hotels had previously used dynamic ads for travel and been successful with it. However, they wanted to find a way to continuously draw-in new customers from around the world. This led them to try out the ad format using a broad audience target.

They ran their dynamic ads for travel with a broad audience target for one month and delivered them to people in the UK who had travel plans to a specific destination. The ads were customized to each individual, displaying a hotel in a specific destination that was likely to suit their needs.

Why they were a hit

After the trial run had achieved impressive results, Melia setup similar campaigns to run for all of its’ global markets. The very relevant and personally tailored experience that these Facebook ad examples delivered to their target audience made the campaign a huge success for the company.

Now we will take a look at an example of how Facebook ads for travel companies generated interest in El Al's flight fares and improved their click-through rate over a period of five months.

Campaign goals

The Israeli airline wanted to promote special fares and new routes, as well as increase flight searches on its’ website. Ultimately they achieved 5X more flight searches, had a 25% higher click-through rate, and 50% lower cost per flight search than previous campaigns using Facebook ad examples.

Products used

Using Facebook ads for retargeting with a website conversion ad objective, Fialkov Digital put together a campaign that saw El Al retarget travelers who had browsed flights within the last 21 days but not yet booked. The campaign featured ads showing the exact routes people had searched, and appeared across Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, they linked to flight auction site bid2fly to give travelers an even more attractive incentive to book.

Winning all the way

Because the Facebook pixel gives you the power to target a highly relevant audience, El Al was able to match their product with interested travelers. With a prominent CTA, their click-through rate shot up and their website views increased greatly.

Travel Department

To end off our list of Facebook ad examples that travel companies have successfully used to promote their business, we will examine a case study on Travel Department . This holiday company wanted to try out a new way of advertising, as well as boost awareness and sales.

Results of their campaign

They too worked with an agency, Wolfgang Digital. A three-phase campaign was put together and run for three months. Their video ads saw a 27X return on spend, the dynamic and slideshow ads saw a 30X return, while the dynamic ads saw a 131X return.

Formats used

To start with, they used video ads to showcase the stunning destinations and describe their expert services.

In the second phase, they retargeted carousel and slideshow ads to people who had interacted with videos from phase one of the campaign. Carousel ads allowed them to showcase up to ten destinations in one space, and the slideshow ads have almost the same effect of video ads without the related costs.

In the final phase, they used dynamic ads with the Facebook pixel to retarget travelers who had viewed products on the site or added to their basket without completing checkout.

The end story

Again, the various ad formats provided Travel Department with the opportunity to reach a wide audience. They were then able to narrow their audience down to those who expressed interest in their product and successfully target them with relevant ads.

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• Who Needs a Chopper? Blade Is Launching a Luxe Bus Service to the Hamptons This Summer

Sip Patron and settle into a plush seat as the coach takes you to the beach.

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It appears aspirational New Yorkers will no longer have to slum it in the Jitney.

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“The Hamptons is a market that can use a middle ground,” Blade’s chief marketing officer Roisin Branch said in a statement. “Until electric vertical aircraft are available, we can’t make helicopters less expensive, but we can elevate the ground experience that hasn’t changed in over two decades.”

Each seat is fitted with a call button that will get the attention of an attendant should you want a hot towel, cashmere blanket, or free snack. Passengers will be offered tasty treats to enjoy on the journey, such as Château La Coste rosé, Patron’s new El Alto tequila , PopUp Bagels, and Sweetgreen salads. You’ll also receive Hamptons Survival Dopp kits by Dria and dog accessories by Bonefly if you decide to bring Fido.

That level of service comes at a cost, of course. The Streamliner starts at $195 per seat, whereas the Jitney and Ambassador begin at $41 and $64, respectively. You can also fork out $275 for one of the Streamliner’s seven premium single seats, which is still cheaper than paying $1,000 to get the Blade Bell 407 helicopter to the East End.

The new service will run from Memorial Day weekend until Labor Day. That’s your summer commuting sorted, then.

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Tourist Service is a bus company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. It offers departures in 2 countries, such as Bulgaria and Greece. It is one of the many bus companies in Bulgaria, as it offers more than 64 daily departures, mostly from cities like Thessaloniki , Sofia , and Athens . Tourist Service operates regular bus lines. Bus rentals, Bus tours, and Intercity buses are also offered by Tourist Service.

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Facebook Just Made Tourism Advertising Easier

In case you haven’t heard, yesterday Facebook made it a lot easier for tourism companies to advertise to travelers. They just rolled out a new program called Trip Consideration to help travel companies target Facebook users from the very moment they decide to travel in the future, even before they’ve decided on their destination.

Facebook has concluded that there is an average of 43 days between the time that someone decides on traveling and when they decide on a destination, so during these 43 days, Facebook is making it easier for travel brands to influence Facebook users on where they should go.

68% of millennials found ideas for their most recent trip on Facebook, so Facebook knows it is the perfect advertising platform for those in the travel industry. In their mission to compete with Google, Facebook is optimizing their platform to make it as easy as possible for travel brands to target travelers.

Here’s how Trip Consideration works.

Let’s think of the huge number of people all over the United States that are dreaming of doing some hiking over summer. They’ve seen photos on Facebook of their friends having amazing trips in the lush forests of Oregon and Washington, but they are still exploring other options for a destination.

Facebook is able to identify these people who are considering traveling, even before they’ve settled on a destination.

And, it’ll let tour operators, hotels, cruises, destinations, and airlines target them with Facebook ads to influence their decision in the very early stages of planning a trip. As Facebook said, it’s an opportunity to turn travel intent into bookings!

So in this case, it’s a great opportunity for a Washington state whale watching tour operator to target this traveler to influence their decision to go to Washington. The Facebook user sees this ad and realizes that if they go to Washington, they can do some great hiking and also book a tour to see some whales. Or, it’s an opportunity for an airline to advertise a great deal on flights to the Blue Ridge Mountains to someone in New York for the dates that they’ve considered for their trip. Like everything in social media, tour operators want to make sure their content is stunning and alluring. You want to stand out against the other travel brands that are trying to attract the same travelers.

Get some great ad content ready, and start competing to lure travelers on Facebook.  Here’s how your tour and activity company can take advantage of Trip Consideration.

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How to use Facebook Ads for Tourism

Facebook advertising is one of the most affordable digital ad channels around. It’s also where a majority of people are spending their time. With 2.4 billion monthly active users , over a third of the total world population, Facebook remains one of the best channels for reaching people with messages. What does that mean for those of us working in the tourism industry? It means that a big chunk of your target audience uses Facebook. Whether you’re putting the ads together yourself, or working with an agency (like us!), these recommendations can help you assess your strategy when using Facebook ads for tourism purposes.

Optimization Strategy

Facebook offers several optimizations to choose from when running a campaign. Optimizations mean that the platform will serve the ads to the people most likely to take a certain action. So for example, if you are running a campaign that’s optimized for post engagement, Facebook will show the post to people who react to, comment and share posts.

While there are many optimization choices, for our DMO and attraction clients we focus on a top few. Keeping the goal of the promotion in mind makes selecting the right mix of optimizations easier.

• Link clicks. Drive traffic to your website page for what you’re promoting.
• Reach. This will reach the most people for your budget.
• Post engagement. Increase interactions on your post with this kind of ad.
• Event responses. Putting budget here means reaching people interested in events. And those people are your target audience. This also gives you the ability to post in the event and they’ll receive the notifications – so they’re getting more information even if they don’t like the page (yet).
• Page likes. This recently became more important to run, since the “like page” button was taken off of other kinds of ads in 2019.

Target Audience

Most destinations we work with have a solid idea of who they want to target for their promotions. It’s typically a drive-to market, so a geographic area reaching people within a 2-6 hour drive, depending on the promotion. Demographics vary based on the promotion. In tourism, women are typically the decision-makers but that isn’t always the case. We run Facebook ads for tourism around Genesee County’s golf packages program every year, and men are most likely to engage with those ads.

If you have a customer list, or leads list, you can use those to target specific individuals or to build a lookalike audience. A lookalike audience is when Facebook looks at your list, finds commonalities, then extrapolates those traits to find other users who relate to your original list. If you don’t have a list, interest-based targeting also works for tourism promotions. With the iOS 14 changes that took place earlier this year, lookalike targeting may not outperform interest-based targeting.

Measurement

Facebook automatically tracks many data points for the ads running on the platform. Measurement starts when you start building the campaign strategy. Know your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to the goals of the campaign when choosing the optimizations. If you really want link clicks, then I wouldn’t recommend only running post engagement ads. Your click results will be lower than if the ads were run with the link click optimization.

Another measurement component to keep in mind is the Facebook pixel . This requires a few more steps during setup, but can go beyond what happens on Facebook, and measure activity on your website as a result of the ads. This could be a form that people fill out, a button they click, or even a purchase they make.

The creative on Facebook ads is different from other digital ads. It’s all about the platform, so ads look like Facebook posts. There are no banner ads here and actually, highly designed images don’t do well. While Facebook did get rid of its 20% text rule earlier this year, people respond better to ads that look like native posts.

So what is in the creative? An image or visual, text in the “post,” a headline and a link. Those are the basic, main elements that you’ll see. Call to action (CTA) buttons are also a great element to add depending on optimization, and there are a selection of pre-written buttons to choose from. When making Facebook ads for tourism promotions, I recommend keeping the call to action clear in the text, supporting that with the CTA button, and using an eye-catching image or set of images.

If you’re not sure which way to go with the creative, testing can help determine between a variation on one element. If you want to test multiple variables at once, use dynamic creative, which can be used for some, not all, optimizations. I like using dynamic creative to see which combination of ad elements works best, while also testing different versions.

Want to dig in deeper? Download our ebook about getting started with Facebook advertising .

Camille Zess

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Thousands protest in Spain's Canary Islands over mass tourism

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Gunmen attacked a mosque in western Afghanistan on Monday night during prayer time, killing at least five people, a spokesperson for the provincial governor said.

Russia said on Tuesday that its air defence systems had shot down six U.S.-produced Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) launched by Ukraine over the last 24 hours.

An Oklahoma tourist says he faces 12 years in prison in the Caribbean after he mistakenly left 4 bullets from a hunting trip in his carry-on duffel bag

• Ryan Watson was on vacation when he was charged with illegally carrying ammo into Turks and Caicos.
• He and his wife, Valerie, say the four bullets in their duffel bag were unknowingly left there from a hunting trip.
• Watson now faces 12 years in prison, alongside several US tourists charged for similar offenses.

An Oklahoma man traveling with his wife in the Caribbean territory of Turks and Caicos faces 12 years in prison after four rounds of ammunition were found in his luggage.

Ryan and Valerie Watson arrived in Turks and Caicos earlier this month to celebrate his 40th birthday with several other couples, their families said in a GoFundMe. NBC Boston reported that the Watsons arrived on April 7.

But the pair, who have two young children, were arrested in the self-governed British territory after airport security found the four bullets in their carry-on duffel bag.

Their families' GoFundMe said the ammo had been left in the bag unintentionally, and was from a prior deer hunting trip.

"They were hunting ammunition rounds that I use for white-tailed deer, and I recognized them, and I thought: 'Oh, what a mistake.' I had no idea that they were in there," Ryan Watson told NBC News.

Valerie Watson was released from the charges on Tuesday and flew back to Oklahoma to reunite with her children.

But her husband remains in Turks and Caicos, and was granted $15,000 bail the day after by the local supreme court, according to a police statement.

He now faces 12 years in prison, which is the minimum custodial sentence for bringing firearms or ammunition into Turks and Caicos.

Ryan Watson must stay on the islands and report twice a week to a local police station while waiting for his hearing, which is set for June 7.

Meanwhile, his family is trying to raise $300,000 for his legal fees and housing in the Caribbean.

"Isolated from their family, friends, and children, they face mounting legal fees, living expenses, and the overwhelming stress of their situation," their GoFundMe reads. "The emotional and financial toll is immense, and they are at risk of losing everything."

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"We were trying to pack board shorts and flip flops," Valerie Watson told CBS News . "Packing ammunition was not at all our intent."

The Watsons did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider through their GoFundMe.

Eight US tourists prosecuted since February

It is illegal to bring firearms or ammunition into Turks and Caicos, and penalties apply regardless of the offender's status or country of origin, according to the local attorney general's chambers.

Several tourists caught under this law were previously let off with just a fine, while at least one was given a prison sentence under the minimum limit.

But in February, a court of appeal ordered that all offenders be given at least the minimum sentence of 12 years in prison.

At least eight tourists from the US have since been prosecuted under this rule, per the attorney general's chambers.

Another American tourist, 31-year-old Tyler Wenrich , was charged on Tuesday with possessing ammunition after he arrived in Turks and Caicos on a cruise ship, according to local police.

"While going through a security checkpoint, it was discovered Mr Wenrich allegedly had ammunition in his possession," a police statement said.

Amid the recent spate of tourist arrests, the US State Department published a September advisory warning US citizens that it wouldn't be able to secure their release if they brought firearms and ammo into Turks and Caicos.

"We strongly encourage you to carefully check your luggage for stray ammunition or forgotten weapons before departing for TCI," the advisory said.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Tourism is a key revenue for Turks and Caicos, and in 2019 provided about $787 million, or 65% of the island's GDP, to the territory, per a 2023 report by the Commonwealth Chamber of Commerce.

The Caribbean archipelago is a popular port of call for US cruise ships, and this year has seen a 127% jump in tourist arrivals — the largest increase in the world — compared to 2019, the United Nations World Tourism Organization said in February.

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