How Finn Partners Generated $50M Tourism Campaign ROI
Imagine being asked to transform the tourism fortunes of a country surrounded by geopolitical instability. That is precisely the challenge that Finn Partners tourism faced with the Jordan Tourism Board. The results of that campaign are as measurable as they are remarkable. This case study is not a story about clever PR stunts or viral social content. It is a story about what strategic, long-term Finn Partners tourism communications can achieve when built around real business objectives, executed over years, and measured against verifiable outcomes. If you are a tourism board, destination management organisation, or hospitality brand weighing whether communications investment delivers genuine ROI, the Finn Partners tourism Jordan story provides an evidence-based answer. Who Is Finn Partners? Before examining the campaign, understanding the Finn Partners agency itself is essential. Finn Partners is a global independent marketing and communications agency founded in 2011 by CEO Peter Finn. Based in New York City, the agency has grown from approximately $24 million in fees at its founding to nearly $200 million in global revenue by 2024. This is according to PRWeek’s Agency Business Report 2025, which reported global revenue of $199.8 million in 2024. The agency currently employs more than 1,300 people globally across offices in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. It has grown significantly through strategic acquisitions, including Hawkins International (luxury travel), Rice Communications (Singapore), and Claudine Colin Communication (French arts PR), among others. Finn Partners’ travel and tourism practice is one of its most established specialties. Additionally, the Finn Partners tourism team was appointed as the Global Agency for the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) to lead communications for the launch of the “Together in Travel” global community. Key Finn Partners Facts The Challenge: Repositioning Jordan in a Turbulent Region The Finn Partners tourism Jordan assignment began in 2000 and continues to the present day, making it one of the longest-running tourism PR relationships on record for any global agency. Jordan’s challenge was precise and difficult. The country had world-class tourism assets, including Petra, Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea, and Aqaba. However, the regional instability, limited airlift into the country, and a concentration of visitors in a narrow geographic corridor meant that Jordan’s tourism economy was both under-performing and structurally vulnerable. The Jordan Tourism Board needed a communications partner that could do three interconnected things simultaneously. First, it needed to lobby governments and airlines to improve air access. Second, it needed to attract major hotel investment. Third, it needed to grow the number of UK and international visitors year on year, despite a regional context that made casual travel decisions harder. Consequently, the strategy had to work at multiple levels, connecting aviation policy, hotel industry relationships, film industry partnerships, and consumer media coverage into a single coordinated push. The Finn Partners Tourism Strategy: What They Did The Finn Partners tourism team’s approach to the Jordan campaign reveals several strategic decisions worth examining closely, because each one addresses a specific business barrier rather than a communications preference. Lobbying for Airlift The first and most foundational step in the Finn Partners tourism strategy was solving the airlift problem. Without accessible, affordable flight routes, all the media coverage in the world would not convert into visitors. Finn Partners lobbied the UK Government on Airline Passenger Duty restrictions, a tax that directly affects the economics of long-haul routes. The agency also engaged directly with airlines to make the commercial case for new routes into Jordan. The result was that EasyJet introduced its first-ever flight route into Aqaba, Jordan, in 2018. That route was then doubled for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. New air access is not a PR metric. It is a business infrastructure outcome, achieved through communications and advocacy strategy. Film Tourism and Earned Media at Scale The Finn Partners tourism team identified a significant opportunity to use Jordan’s dramatic landscapes for blockbuster film productions. This generated multi-million dollar investments in film tourism and transformed Jordan’s global profile in the process. Working in partnership with Jordan’s Royal Film Commission, Finn Partners helped facilitate major film productions in Jordan, including Aladdin, The Martian, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. Each production generated enormous global media coverage that showcased Jordan’s landscapes and positioned the country as an aspirational destination for an entirely new audience. Film tourism, when executed correctly, delivers earned media at a scale that no paid campaign can replicate. The Finn Partners tourism Jordan film strategy demonstrates that PR’s value is not only in press releases and journalist trips. It is in repositioning a destination’s entire cultural story. Hotel Investment Attraction A destination without sufficient accommodation cannot grow visitor numbers sustainably. The Finn Partners tourism team recognised this and worked to attract major hotel investment to Jordan alongside its media and advocacy work. The outcome was significant. Major hotel groups Hyatt, Jumeirah, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and The Ritz-Carlton collectively opened nine five-star properties in late 2017 and throughout 2018. That level of hotel development does not happen without sustained stakeholder communications, confidence-building among investors, and a credible destination narrative that makes the investment decision defensible. Related: How Joele Frank Saved a $2B M&A Deal From Crisis Verified Outcomes From the Finn Partners Tourism Jordan Campaign The Finn Partners tourism Jordan campaign produced outcomes that are specific, verifiable, and directly connected to the strategic investments made. UK Visitor Growth: Welcoming more British travellers than ever before in 2018, Jordan saw visitor numbers from the UK increase by 21% year on year. In 2019, the country recorded a further 19% increase in UK visitors compared to 2018. Those two years of consecutive double-digit growth represent a sustained trend, not an anomaly. New Air Routes: EasyJet’s first Aqaba route, introduced in 2018 and doubled for subsequent seasons, created affordable, direct access that directly supported the visitor growth numbers above. Nine Five-Star Hotels: The hotel investment attracted during the campaign period added significant accommodation capacity and raised Jordan’s luxury hospitality profile