My last English post about the rather sad attempts of hopping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon by the Austrian National Tourist Office, the Austrian Railways and Austrian Airlines had quite an disenchanted flavour to it. Nevertheless, I am delighted that it has sparked quite emotional comments.
Stop wasting tax payers’ money asks Ronald from the Dutch Mindz-Blog and questions the efforts done by the Dutch Tourist board:
"These travelsites, even the ones you mention to be successfull, like
www.holland.com will never be succesfull. These sites are simply no
social networks: people often travel to a destionation once and why
should they start blogging, post videoos and more? There is simple no
personal reason for tourists do to so as they have no bonding, like
people have with youtube.com or tripadvisor.com .Holland.com uses already
"hired" bloggers, the activities on this recently started site are low
and so on. Hey folks, stop waisting our tax money! Only if European
countries are starting to work together on a European web2.0 project,
there may be change of success. In the end the private sector, like
ad-hoc cooperation between hotel-chains and airlines, working closely
together with local initiatives/people, will take over these activities
and (unfortunately for them) the traditional tourist boards are doomed
to disappear…"
I do not agree with him 100 percent. I doubt that a joint effort by all European countries would ensure success. Just look at the so called pan-European portal VisitEurope: too many different countries, too many different interests. No one is likely to benefit. Any pan-European cooperation in tourism is most likely to fail.
Furthermore, I do not believe that the private sector will start to cooperate successfully. Again, too many different interests at stake, not enough money and no human resources to coordinate such an effort. While the Swiss and Canada succeeded in establishing business cooperations with their national railways, the legal structure of other national tourism boards strictly forbids such efforts. One of the reasons, I am still a true believer of DMOs.
I would rather suggest any company to start with a blog. The Austrian National Tourist Office was wise enough to do just that. On top Martin Schobert is wise enough to address each critical blog post on their project CoolAustria in person. See for yourself:
"Thanks Karin for your critical
comment. Especially your refering to Helge´s comment brings it to the
point: what is the value for somebody to open his privacy in the www?
The only suitable answer: Only when there is a return on investment for
himself, for the time and the engagement to produce content which
possibly might not be interessting for anybody else. This is not only
valid for travel communities – each social web-platform has to follow
to this rule. If not – there is no chance to develop as "living
community".You know that coolaustria.com is "under construction". It is still a
beta version and our partner is still working on an improvement of the
beta version. And at the moment we (Austrian National Tourist Office)
develop our new social web strategy for the next few years. You know,
that there was an organisational change in our company and also the
responsible persons for online-strategy and e-marketing have changed a
few weeks ago.Please – give us some more time to find the best solutions for
future social web activities of our organisations. You will be one of
the first who are informed when we know more about this. Do you agree?"
To be fair, I believe companies and DMOs are quite brave to experiment with
the social web. But they should choose their agencies and implementers
wisely. That said, agencies and implementers should admit their lack of
experience and work closely with free agents who have gathered some
insight at a national and international level (no, this is not a
shameless plug for me!).
What are your suggestions? Please feel free to comment.
Update: Please make sure to read the excellent comments by Joe Buhler and Claude Benard.
Also read:
- Web 2.0 & Destination marketing – Holland.com leads the Way
- The Social Web in Destination Marketing – Canada & New Zealand relaunch
- Travel 2.0 & User Generated Content in Destination Marketing – Interview with William Bakker from Tourism British Columbia
This was my traditional English post on Monday. More to come in my English category. Every Monday, I promise.
Schön, dass Sie wieder hier sind :-) Kennen Sie schon meine Leistungen für Sie?
very interesting post, as always
Unfortunatly, DMO’s (in France) have “administrative” organisation and process, and political goals outside tourism.
So Travel 2.0 and social travel community are at the opposit of their “way of thinking”…..I beleive most of them can’t manage a social travel community…..
Yes, politics and wanting to please all different stake holders are the greatest obstacles for DMOs.
I’ve followed your coverage of the ANTO web 2.0 effort and pretty much share your assessment. DMOs, especially at the national level, face a new and difficult challenge that is different from those they faced in the past. They used to be the keeper of the most comprehensive, detailed and more importantly, often the most trusted source of information about their destination. That information was – and often still is – the core asset of their marketing strategy and web presence.
That situation has now changed and continues to change rapidly with web users becoming new information sources themselves. This collective “wisdom of the crowd” in addition is gaining the trust of an increasing number of travelers.
DMOs now try various strategies to integrate not only the information but also the sources into their own efforts by offering social networking platforms like the one on Holland.com
I don’t see anything wrong in this approach as most often a Google search for a country or city shows the DMO site on top of the organic search results. This makes their sites valuable assets that need to be leveraged.
I do not agree with the comment that Holland.com is wasting Dutch taxpayer money. The NBT is one of the most business driven NTOs with the highest industry derived income percentage compared to government funds, which by the way are an investment and not a subsidy. The comment that a visitor is not really interested in a longer term relationship with a destination is at least partly true and depends on the repeat visit frequency. Personally I don’t see many visitors becoming bloggers about a destination but that is different from being a valuable information source for others.
DMOs do face a more difficult marketing challenge than many businesses in the private sector and are often not given credit for their efforts at managing their dual-marketing strategies. Having to please different stakeholders is not necessarily bad as long as the key effort is focused on the visitor and not the supplier.
This also makes it necessary for DMOs to deal with outside advisers who understand their business model and the challenges it brings. Too much money has been wasted in the past ten years by DMOs at all levels on their web initiatives due to the wrong choices in agencies who lack the necessary know how to deal with these issues effectively.
The key to the success of any true social network is to gain critical mass in the network (Metcalfe’s Law). Ronald is right that most people wouldn’t join a social network around a destination they’re thinking about visiting.
To assume that a copy of Facebook/MySpace/Hyves/YouTube/etc. works for a destination website is a false one.
But travelers are eager to share experiences. Proud residents of a place are eager to share as well. And tourism businesses are eager to connect with consumers of course. Consumers aren’t looking to be part of a long term destination based social network, but they would like to tap into collective intelligence. We always hear from consumers “you live there, tell us what you do and where you go” for example.
The combination of official content, industry created content, resident created content and consumer created content can create the critical mass and the right combination content for a person deciding on a trip that will deliver on a consumers expectation.
The results we’re having with our first steps into User Generated Content are very encouraging, as I mentioned on my blog http://www.wilhelmus.ca/2007/08/results_of_our_user_generated_1.html
One way and mass communication by destinations won’t cut it anymore in the future, that’s for sure.
William, as always thanks for your input. Holland.com is combining social network features with industry and user generated content, just the way you suggested. However, only time will tell, if their approach is the best.
Ugh.
Unfortunately, many traditional DMO’s continue to ignore the advantaged position of being the officially designated promotion agent. Most still serve their constituents – travel suppliers, not visitors. Paralyzed, ossified, and hypnotized (by traditional agencies) is the current state of most old school tourism promoters.
Karin
I have refrained from commenting the Holland Com relaunch which I was surprised to see commented by you before i saw it on any of my Dutch sources….so they did a bad job already in their PR….I refrained thus far, because I find it blatantly biased in favor of Amsterdam…..I didn’t want to be too negative about it…..the funny thing of all is that it still did not hit Dutch news sources (are they stoopid?)
The key to succes is accepting that there is a new way people communicate. They do that themselves, amongst themselves, talking about productes and services, without the producer(s) being aware of this fact. Yes indeed: start monitoring the blogs about/around your destination, do your damage control. Better still: start facilitating these communication processes. Offer blog-facilities(with perks) to enthousiastic locals, hook up with local social networks, make sure that the longtail products of your destination (see Tourpro’s, in my opinion correct, reaction over the “blatantly Amsterdam attention in his comment) are getting the attention they deserve and thus adding the so needed extra value to your destination. Offer internet facilities to allow potential visitors virtually meet “local peers”(datingsite technique). Let those local peers become your sales persons.
That is where the money should go. That way you are “painting” an authentic impression of your destination and that is where DMO’s will have their one and only change they are going to get.
I still think that the private industry will show shortly some steps towards this vision. We are presently working with an airline (sorry, but i am not allowed to share the name with you) where passengers are linked to their designated cabinstaff of a flight, getting “insiders information” of the cabinstaff about hotspots, restaurants etc., so once they arrive at their destination they are up to par of what to do and where to go. Part of this information of course is available on the passengers mobile phones. Also, eg. by using mash ups around Google maps information will be offered outside the established DMO’s. I also know of other private industry initiatives, so if I was working for a DMO I would definately rethink where my taxpayers money should go to!
Believe it or not, I’m actually presenting a “whitepaper” to my bosses explaining what the significance of Tripadvisor is.
Here’s a little problem:
The taxpayers that DMO’s are answerable to are local – visitors are not. Typically, they are not answerable to the traveleing consumers, nor are they working from any profit-based mentality. Seems most DMO’s around here are more concerned about pleasing their most vocal local “constituents” and generating favorable CPI figures rather than providing the information travelers today want and expect. Add the fact that a good chunk of funding is comes from traveler tolls (bed tax), and one can easily see why even the acknowledgment of Web 2.0 is simply too much of a hassle.
I guess my hotelier background has left an indelible customer focus in my marketing style. I actually enjoy helping the customer, and I like to tell the truth if asked. Plus, I’m a cheapskate and want to get the most value from the resources available – taxpayers’ money or not.