A content strategy for cycling tourism

Drawing on nine years across thirty-plus destinations in Europe, Africa and the United States, and campaigns generating more than 110 million earned views and over a million Komoot route clicks.

Understanding the audience

The committed cycling tourist is a rider first. Travel is a consequence of cycling, not the other way round. They research from a cycling perspective: Komoot for routes, Strava for segments, cycling media for editorial, creator networks for first-hand accounts. They trust peer recommendation above advertising. They want specific, accurate information — elevation, surface, distance, difficulty, seasonal conditions, resupply points. And they will travel internationally and plan months ahead for the right experience. They are not primarily price-sensitive.

Five principles

1. Ride first, produce second. Content from someone who actually rode the route is a credibility requirement, not a preference. Audiences catch an inaccurate elevation profile and a glossed-over condition, and both damage the destination. For Visit Luxembourg, routes in all four regions were ridden specifically to produce accurate documentation, demonstrating rather than arguing that Luxembourg could sustain a multi-day holiday. More than ninety thousand Komoot clicks.

2. Specificity over superlatives. "World-class cycling infrastructure" tells a cyclist nothing. "217km of signed gravel across four regions, climbs averaging 8%, maximum elevation 560m" tells them everything they need to plan a trip.

3. iPhone before production budget. At the high end, production quality is inversely correlated with credibility. A shaky clip of genuine surprise on a climb typically outperforms a colour-graded, drone-assisted video. It is not a universal rule, but in cycling the instinct to solve a reach problem with a bigger budget is almost always wrong.

4. Distribute where they already are. Komoot is the primary route-research platform and contributed to more than a million combined route views across our campaigns, partly through the Zuiderwaterlinie bikepacking collection, which Komoot promoted organically as a flagship example. Then cycling media, Instagram for discovery, YouTube for shelf life, and email as the one channel no algorithm can take away.

5. Time it to the planning cycle. Cyclists start planning summer trips between January and March. The same content published in that window generates significantly more planning-intent engagement than it does in July.

The Komoot opportunity

More than thirty million registered users globally, with strong European penetration. Unlike social media, where the half-life is measured in hours, Komoot route content accumulates engagement for years. A well-documented 2021 route is still generating clicks in 2026. Most destinations have routes. Few document them to the standard Komoot rewards.

Measurement that matters

Impressions are the easiest to generate and the least meaningful: ten million general travel impressions produce fewer cyclists than a hundred thousand impressions from committed cyclists in the right places. Route clicks and downloads measure planning intent. Email captures measure conversion to an owned relationship. Bookings and enquiries, trackable with UTM parameters and lead attribution, are the real measure.