Dec. 4, 2025

This piece is sponsored by Travel South Dakota.

As more than 1,300 bison were corralled at the Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup, a small group of journalists got an up-close look.

In 2024, one of those journalists was a travel writer from the Netherlands who first learned of the Buffalo Roundup one year earlier at Brand USA Travel Week.

That immersive one-on-one visit to South Dakota led the travel writer to produce a 24-page feature on South Dakota in their coffee table-style book published shortly after their visit.

“It included incredible photography and long-form storytelling,” said Katlyn Svendsen, senior director of global public relations and content services at Travel South Dakota. “The publication can now be found in airports and travel agencies throughout the Netherlands.”

The team at Travel South Dakota continually undertakes that sort of strategic, targeted outreach to attract global travelers to the state.

A three-phased approach includes public relations, marketing and trade outreach designed to result in group or individual tours.

“In the last 10 to 12 years, we’ve really upped our game,” said Cole Irwin, senior director of global travel and trade.

“My team and I go overseas two or three times a year to meet with tour companies and airlines to educate them,” Irwin said. “We also host tour companies in South Dakota so they can go back and promote the destination directly to their clients.”

Each October since 2019, the team has attended Brand USA Travel Week U.K. & Europe, an event where they meet one-on-one with major decision-makers and learn about industry trends.

“These are curated groups of people,” Svendsen said. “You really start to build relationships that lead to international travel in the state.”

Those curated relationships led Travel South Dakota to bring journalists to the state. But while here, they’re not just seeing the well-known spots. Svendsen said they also make sure to show off places like Sioux Falls, the Interstate 29 cultural corridor and other regions of South Dakota.

“We want them to experience the plains and prairie,” Svendsen said. “It lets us go deeper in telling the story, and it’s really fun to see how results have compounded over time.”

South Dakota also partners with other neighboring states in a marketing brand called Great American West to promote U.S. regional travel in countries such as the U.K., Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the Nordic countries and Australia. Irwin said focusing on these international trade and tour operators allows South Dakota to reach a larger audience.

For instance, a tour operator in Germany that flies travelers into Denver to spend four or five days in the Black Hills just added a new tour flying into Minneapolis to see eastern South Dakota before going across the state to the Black Hills and ending in Wyoming and Denver.

Travel South Dakota also hosted an event in Rapid City called International Roundup, bringing in 40 tour companies to meet with regional hoteliers, attraction operators, local tour guides and representatives of destination marketing organizations.

“Our main goal is visitor distribution,” Irwin said. “We want to make sure visitors aren’t just coming to one part of the state but spending more days and spreading the experience and revenue around.”

Travel South Dakota also continually considers new marketing opportunities. This year, Irwin went to India to meet with trade and media partners.

“It was our first exposure to that market, so I’m gathering information to see the potential and their visitor demand to determine if it aligns,” he said.

“We also contract with firms in several countries to gain insight about the market. Our international budget is not extremely large – we’re competing against destinations like California that have considerably bigger budgets – so we have to focus on markets we think have the highest potential to bring visitors to South Dakota.”

In some markets, South Dakota has been building relationships for more than two decades.

“A very strong foundation has been laid, allowing us to really hone in on markets where we have a strong presence and make it easy to book an incredible trip to South Dakota,” Svendsen said. “We know international travelers are coming here on their second or third visit to the U.S., so our job on the consumer and PR side is to tell the story and get them interested and intrigued so they book that South Dakota trip.”

That includes a focus on Canada, which generated 1,400 bookings this past spring through a short marketing campaign.

“We do optimized audience campaigns, so when potential travelers are online searching for U.S. destinations, we’re able to track some of those results and then reach them with digital content,” said Alexa Dorn, marketing campaigns and projects manager.

“Even though Canadian travel was looking tough, we decided to go all-in and encourage them to come see us and experience outdoor adventures, cuisine, open spaces and state and national parks.”

Travel South Dakota also partners with Brand USA, the destination marketing organization for the United States. The organization offers co-op marketing campaigns that open up additional funds to supplement the state’s marketing.

“On the video side, we’ve done some really effective campaigns, including one where influencers recorded social media reels that showed outdoor adventure, dining and coffee shops, and those results were all trackable thanks to our partnership with Brand USA,” Dorn said. “So we could see if people were watching the video and getting inspired to start searching flights.”

Many international travelers are looking for a taste of the Western-style TV shows and movies they grew up watching, the team added.

“The wide-open spaces we have in South Dakota blow people’s minds,” Irwin said. “It’s powerful to see how they react to it.”

Ultimately, what really sells the state are one-on-one interactions.

“It’s especially impactful when international visitors spend time in the state, Irwin said. “I take it for granted, but when we sit down with someone from another country and the waiter or waitress is super-friendly or the owner sits down to talk, that’s so powerful.”

“It sticks with people and becomes stories they tell for the rest of their lives.”