Take it from us, photo and video contests have become incredibly popular. At Strutta, we're proud to be responsible for some of the world's finest photo and video contests, and it is interesting for us to see which industries have been among the first to embrace the technology and services we offer.

The tourism industry is one of the first "trends" we've witnessed, with towns, cities, states and even countries employing our platform to promote their homeland.

It's no surprise either, since photos and videos are the best way to promote tourism (it's the closest you can get to actually "being" there). And the viewpoint of the public, through their lenses, is the most powerful and effective marketing message you can send out into the world.

Proving that our platform is flexible and scalable enough to accomodate all types and sizes of clients, we host all manners of tourism contests. Presently, we have the behemoth that is Tourism New Zealand's film competition, which is presently generating about 200,000 video views a day. Readers will also no doubt recall Tourism Queensland's "Best Job in the World" contest, a campaign that got the attention of the entire PR and advertising world last year (not one of ours, we're just fans).

At the local level, both Maple Ridge, BC and the tiny town of Bloomington, TN have used Strutta as well. Maple Ridge hosted photo contests, while Bloomington is looking for original video submissions to go with the new "unofficial" Bloomington song, recorded by Elizabeth Eckert.

The State of Wyoming is using Strutta for two contests consecutively; one for a Wyoming short film contest, and one for the Wyoming Rodeo.

Sunshine Village in Banff is hosting their second contest with Strutta- "Sunshine Village Rockstar" is a chance for bands to compete to be named the official band of the resort for 2010.

And of course, Tourism Vancouver has been hosting a video competition as well. There are still two weeks left to vote in that one, and it has generated some brilliant entries that reflect very well on the city.

For obvious reasons, we encourage other tourism boards to contact us to talk about how we can help with other promotions of this kind. Browse through the examples above, and click through the online tools we offer by clicking the green "Create a Contest Now" button at the top of this page.