Discover Puerto Rico's Live Boricua campaign uses all-Puerto Rican storytelling across TV, digital and social to drive record tourism and $2B in influenced
Discover Puerto Rico Bets on Boricua Identity to Drive Island Tourism
Live Boricua is Discover Puerto Rico's integrated travel campaign, launched in 2022 and expanded in 2024, that positions Puerto Rican culture, landscape, and community spirit as the primary reason to visit the Island, running across television, digital, and social media channels in both national and international markets.
Discover Puerto Rico announced the 2024 evolution of Live Boricua on March 12, 2024, according to discoverpuertorico.com. The campaign deepens its founding premise: that the word Boricua — meaning a person of Puerto Rican birth or descent — names not just a people but an experience available nowhere else on earth. Where earlier iterations of the platform established Puerto Rico's natural beauty and beaches, the 2024 chapter shifts the narrative weight toward locals themselves, with Puerto Ricans extending the invitation to visit in their own voice. Familiar, beloved locations anchor the content: adventuring in El Yunque, dining with chef Mario Pagán in Condado, enjoying Luquillo Beach, and dancing at La Factoría in Old San Juan.
The campaign is the work of an entirely Puerto Rican talent pool and crew, a production philosophy that is both a creative statement and a community investment. Director Luis Gerard and photographer Stephanie Segarra lead the creative execution, bringing an insider sensibility that distinguishes Live Boricua from destination campaigns built by outside observers. R&R Partners serves as the creative agency of record, according to resident.com, with Ketchum managing public relations and brand partnerships, Cinetrix handling production, and REAKTOR overseeing post-production. The integrated campaign runs across television, digital, and social platforms, targeting travelers across the United States and internationally. In Puerto Rico itself, the campaign functions as a statement of cultural pride as much as a tourism driver — a quality that Leah Chandler, Chief Marketing Officer for Discover Puerto Rico, identifies as central to its purpose and its impact.
Discover Puerto Rico operates as a nonprofit destination marketing organization established in 2018, competing for traveler attention in one of the world's most contested leisure markets. In Puerto Rico, the stakes are tangible: according to discoverpuertorico.com, the Island recorded approximately 1.0 million international arrivals in 2024, representing roughly 2.9% of total Caribbean arrivals, according to onecaribbean.org, which tracked 34.2 million international overnight Caribbean arrivals that year — up 6.1% year over year and 6.9% above 2019 levels. Puerto Rico's principal competitive destinations include the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Aruba, and Cancún. The Dominican Republic Tourism board led the region with approximately 8.5 million arrivals — roughly 24.9% of Caribbean share — in 2024, according to onecaribbean.org. Jamaica Tourist Board recorded approximately 2.9 million arrivals in the same period, per onecaribbean.org. Against those volume leaders, Puerto Rico's strategic differentiation cannot be scale; it must be depth of experience.
Live Boricua answers that competitive reality with a cultural authenticity argument. Rather than competing on price, proximity, or resort amenity — the conventional levers of Caribbean destination marketing — Discover Puerto Rico claims a category of experience that larger, better-resourced rivals cannot replicate: the specific, irreducible spirit of Boricua identity. The strategic insight is precise: travelers increasingly seek belonging and immersion over passive consumption, and Puerto Rico's culture, food scene anchored by figures like chef Mario Pagán, music, and landscape combine into an experience that is genuinely singular. Brand-perception tracking associated with Discover Puerto Rico's broader marketing activity showed positive perception rising from 38% to 48%, familiarity from 34% to 45%, and likelihood of visiting from 15% to 25%, according to discoverpuertorico.com. Those shifts reflect a long-term platform strategy, not a single campaign cycle, and Live Boricua's 2024 evolution continues building on equity accumulated since the platform's 2022 debut, as documented by mediapost.com.
Luis Gerard directs the 2024 Live Boricua campaign. That decision is the creative campaign's clearest strategic signal: by placing a Puerto Rican director at the helm and building the entire cast and crew from the Island's own talent, Discover Puerto Rico ensures that the emotional storytelling carries the weight of genuine insider perspective rather than curated tourism fantasy. Gerard's work on the campaign is complemented by photographer Stephanie Segarra, whose visual language across stills gives the platform a cohesive, documentary-inflected aesthetic that connects television, digital, and social executions into a unified sensory world.
The production approach — assembled by Cinetrix as production company and refined in post by REAKTOR, according to resident.com — treats Puerto Rico's familiar landmarks not as scenic backdrop but as living culture. El Yunque appears as adventure rather than attraction. Luquillo Beach is filmed as communal experience. La Factoría in Old San Juan becomes a portal into Puerto Rican nightlife at its most authentic. Chef Mario Pagán's appearance in Condado grounds the food narrative in real culinary identity rather than generic gastronomy messaging. Each location choice is deliberate: these are places Puerto Ricans themselves celebrate, which reinforces the campaign's core promise that visiting the Island means joining a community, not simply passing through it.
The 2024 evolution leans harder into emotional storytelling than previous iterations of the Live Boricua platform, which launched in 2022 using omnichannel media as documented by discoverpuertorico.com. The new work retains the platform's tonal warmth while escalating its ambition — positioning Live Boricua not as a campaign but as a movement, according to prnewswire.com, one that speaks to the national and international travel community simultaneously and invites participation rather than passive viewership. The all-Boricua production philosophy is the mechanism that makes that claim credible.
The Live Boricua platform has produced quantifiable results since its 2022 launch. According to discoverpuertorico.com, the campaign has generated more than 625,000 trips to Puerto Rico and more than $2 billion in influenced visitor spending through the campaign's lifecycle to date. Those figures were cited publicly by Leah Chandler, Chief Marketing Officer for Discover Puerto Rico, at the time of the 2024 campaign announcement, per prnewswire.com. Puerto Rico recorded a total of $9.8 billion in tourism activity in 2023, according to discoverpuertorico.com — a record for the Island — with Live Boricua's sustained platform activity identified as a contributing factor. Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport recorded more than 6.1 million passenger arrivals in 2023, an increase of 18.6% over 2022, according to insidertravelreport.com, providing independent infrastructure evidence of the tourism surge.
No verified third-party audit of the campaign's individual 2024 activation metrics is publicly available at this time. The structural effectiveness of the 2024 evolution, however, is legible in its architecture: an integrated television, digital, and social deployment commanded by a culturally credible creative team, anchored to specific and filmed real locations, and supported by a full agency ecosystem including R&R Partners, Ketchum, Cinetrix, and REAKTOR. The combination of platform longevity — now in its third year — and deepening creative investment creates the conditions for compounding brand equity, a dynamic reflected in the brand-perception tracking data published by discoverpuertorico.com. Clapboard rates the Live Boricua 2024 campaign 79 out of 100, recognising the platform's strategic coherence, its cultural authenticity, and the measurable commercial impact it has delivered across Puerto Rico's tourism economy.
Live Boricua is Discover Puerto Rico's long-running integrated travel platform, launched in 2022 and evolved in 2024. It positions Puerto Rican culture and identity as the Island's defining travel proposition, running across television, digital, and social channels. The 2024 chapter features director Luis Gerard and an all-Puerto Rican cast and crew, according to discoverpuertorico.com.
The Live Boricua platform has generated more than 625,000 trips to Puerto Rico since its 2022 launch. According to discoverpuertorico.com, it also influenced more than $2 billion in visitor spending. These figures were confirmed by Discover Puerto Rico Chief Marketing Officer Leah Chandler at the time of the 2024 campaign announcement, per prnewswire.com.
Luis Gerard directed the 2024 Live Boricua campaign. Gerard is a Puerto Rican director whose involvement reflects the campaign's all-Boricua production philosophy. Stephanie Segarra served as campaign photographer. Both were confirmed in the official campaign announcement published by discoverpuertorico.com and reported by prnewswire.com.
R&R Partners serves as the creative agency behind Live Boricua, according to resident.com. Ketchum handles public relations and brand partnerships. Cinetrix served as production company and REAKTOR managed post-production. The 2024 campaign was announced March 12, 2024, and distributed across television, digital, and social media platforms in Puerto Rico and internationally.
Puerto Rico recorded $9.8 billion in tourism activity in 2023, a record for the Island, according to discoverpuertorico.com. Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport logged more than 6.1 million passenger arrivals that year — an 18.6% increase over 2022 — per insidertravelreport.com. Live Boricua's sustained platform activity is identified as a contributing factor to this growth.
Live Boricua competes on cultural depth rather than volume. The Dominican Republic led Caribbean arrivals with approximately 8.5 million visitors in 2024, per onecaribbean.org, far outpacing Puerto Rico's roughly 1.0 million. Discover Puerto Rico counters by positioning Boricua identity as an irreplaceable experience unavailable anywhere else in the Caribbean, targeting travelers who seek immersive cultural belonging.
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