In partnership with ForwardKeys, Emprotur built a data-driven strategic plan to guide Rio Grande do Norte’s tourism development through 2025. Facing a rapidly evolving travel landscape, the goal was to go beyond reactive planning — and instead identify high-growth markets, improve air connectivity, and bring alignment across domestic and international promotional efforts.

By embedding ForwardKeys’ predictive travel intelligence into its strategy, Emprotur was able to segment demand across Brazil’s five macroregions and key international feeders, build evidence for route development, and deploy targeted, market-specific campaigns.

While Rio Grande do Norte is rich in natural beauty and tourism potential, Emprotur faced several challenges:

• Limited visibility into future traveller intent and market shifts
• A need to prioritize resources across domestic and international feeder regions
• Gaps in insight to support air service development and trade events
• Desire to align stakeholders using credible, shared data

ForwardKeys provided Emprotur with strategic data capabilities, including:

• Predictive booking trends (domestic and international)
• Segmentation by region and source market
• Insights on lead time, length of stay, and booking channel
• Performance analysis of airline share, seasonality, and travel purpose

This intelligence was embedded into Emprotur’s 2025 Strategic Plan — allowing for tailored, data-backed actions by geography and travel segment.

• 📈 +241% growth in bookings from Mendoza, Argentina (Jan–Apr 2025 vs 2024)
• ✈️ New route potential identified from Chile and Uruguay
•  🇧🇷 Southeast Brazil emerged as the top domestic source, with strong leisure intent and long average stays
• 📍 Trade event prioritization based on real booking data from key cities (São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Vitória)
• 🧳 Refined marketing messaging based on traveller segmentation: eco-tourism, sun & sea, cultural immersion

With ForwardKeys, Emprotur shifted from reacting to the past to acting on future demand.

Data guided everything from roadshow targeting to campaign resource allocation and route negotiations — helping the agency deliver more effective, more sustainable, and better-timed promotional strategies.

By closely monitoring year-over-year trends and monthly indicators for 2025, Emprotur was able to implement concrete internal and external actions. A key success was identifying a favourable trend in the Argentine market, supporting the launch of a direct route with one of Brazil’s largest airlines in late 2024 — now operational and performing strongly.

The same intelligence underpinned strategic discussions to connect key Brazilian cities to Natal, while also revealing the untapped potential of the European market. Although currently only served via Lisbon, insights prompted Emprotur to begin campaign talks with top European carriers and initiate technical and financial assessments to expand connectivity.

Additionally, strong travel signals from Brazil’s Northern region led to a shift in marketing focus to capitalise on regional demand.

Far from being a tool of passive observation, the data has become foundational to decision-making — informing priorities, stakeholder engagement, and the creation of public policies aligned with real market dynamics and future potential.