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.

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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…..