Costa Cruises is launching its new advertising campaign “The Holiday We Miss” online in its six main European markets: Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The campaign will be a trip down memory lane not only for cruisers, the company said.

For the general public, it ties in with Costa’s former “The Holiday You’re Missing” campaign. 

“Those commercials wittily portrayed the difficulty of readjusting to the daily grind after a vacation on a Costa ship,” Costa said, in a statement. “The new campaign again hinges on the concept of “missing” a holiday, this being more topical than ever at the moment, but develops and adapts the idea, turning it into a message of recovery and optimism for cruising and tourism as a whole, which came to a standstill in March.”

Costa said it had been inundated with photos, comments and messages from guests. Thus, in April, the company decided to officially launch a collection of these cruise moments with an international campaign using Costa’s social media and direct marketing channels, and at the same time inspiring its cruise bloggers and the various communities of brand lovers. The response has been overwhelming with over 6,000 contributions showing highlights of life on board, the joy of discovering new destinations, and the splendor of sunsets at sea that form the visual part of the new advertising campaign and were also used for the copy. 

“As a major brand in tourism we decided that our new campaign, which is also a communication platform, should be an upbeat message about revival of the industry and that it should be conveyed very positively with the involvement of the Company’s key stakeholders: our guests. It’s a way of sharing those special feelings that they have experienced together with us and that we’re all looking forward to enjoying again,” said Francesco Muglia, vice president of global marketing. 

The “hero video”, the core of the campaign used to grab attention, is made up of user-generated content. The female voice-over explains that it won’t be long before guests are experiencing feelings and moments like those depicted on screen, though this time they’ll be even more memorable.