How Visit Pittsburgh Turned NFL Draft Buzz into Partner Wins with Destination Signals™
Learn how a limited, six-partner Draft Bundle put local businesses in front of more than 1.2 million high-intent travelers planning their 2026 NFL Draft trip to Pittsburgh.
When the 2026 NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, it brought a surge of out-of-town visitors actively planning where to stay, eat, and spend their time in the city. Visit Pittsburgh saw an opportunity to connect that high-intent audience with the local businesses ready to welcome them, and to do it in a way that delivered real value to advertising partners during a short, high-demand window.
Challenge
Event-driven travelers are some of the most valuable visitors a destination can reach, but they are hard to capture. Travelers planning a trip around a single event move fast, research heavily, and make decisions in a compressed window. Standard evergreen placements alone were unlikely to put partners in front of this audience at the right moment. Local attractions, accommodations, and experiences needed a way to reach Draft travelers specifically, in a category where larger national brands often dominate travel-planning pages.
Solution
Visit Pittsburgh built two dedicated NFL Draft landing pages, the Pittsburgh NFL Draft page and the Plan Your NFL Draft Trip page, to capture trip-planning traffic ahead of the event. Through Destination Signals™, the team packaged those placements into a limited NFL Draft Bundle and offered existing advertising partners early, exclusive access on a first-come, first-served basis.
Only six partners were selected. Each ran from February 1 through April 30, 2026, across both Draft pages, for a $500 investment. The result was a focused, premium package that placed partners directly in front of travelers researching their Pittsburgh itinerary, without competing against an open field of advertisers.
At a flat rate per partner, the bundle turned a short event window into a high-volume, efficient way for local businesses to reach travelers at the exact moment they were planning their trips.
Results
1.2M+
Total Impressions
10,025
Total Clicks
$0.81
Average CPC
Partner Spotlight: Bakery Square
Bakery Square is an open-air shopping, dining, and entertainment development set on 5.1 acres along Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh's Larimer neighborhood, where Shadyside meets East Liberty in the city's East End. As a mixed-use destination that draws both locals and visitors, Bakery Square wanted to reach travelers planning trips to Pittsburgh specifically for the Draft.
As an Attractions advertiser, Bakery Square performed at the very top of the bundle.
2.52% click-through rate - nearly three times the 0.90% platform benchmark
5,130 clicks - the highest of any partner in the bundle
$0.10 CPC - a fraction of the $1 to $2 benchmark range
Its placement on the Plan Your NFL Draft Trip page reached a 3.65% CTR on its own, more than four times the benchmark. The accessible price point made this a low-risk, high-reward play for an existing partner, and the performance backed it up.
Partner Spotlight: Hostwise Stays
Hostwise Stays is a Pittsburgh-based short-term rental company offering more than 120 full-home properties across the city's best neighborhoods. They describe themselves as the highest-rated hosts in the US, with a fully managed guest experience that includes 24/7 support, smart locks, a proprietary app, and a Chore-Free Checkout. They offer direct booking at the best rates for travelers who want an authentic, local alternative to a traditional hotel.
Accommodations is one of the most competitive categories in travel planning, where hotel brands tend to dominate. Hostwise still earned a strong foothold during the Draft window.
1.28% click-through rate - above the 0.90% platform benchmark
2,611 clicks - in the highest-demand category of the campaign
$0.19 CPC - well below the $1 to $2 benchmark range
This was Hostwise's first Destination Signals™ campaign tied to a major event. Competing directly against hotel brands in a crowded category, the brand drove engagement above benchmark and turned a short-term activation into the start of an ongoing partnership.
The Takeaway
A focused, limited-availability package gave Visit Pittsburgh's partners a competitive way to reach event travelers at the moment of highest intent. The exclusivity of just six partners, the efficient $500 entry point, and the targeted Draft pages combined to deliver real reach and engagement, with standout results for partners like Bakery Square and Hostwise Stays.
