Since the very earliest examples of destination internet marketing, the Visitsomewhere.com domain name has always been the format of choice for DMOs across the world.
NB: This is an analysis by, Richard Veal, managing director for UK Operations at New Mind/Tell Us.
In parallel with this trend, the Visit-prefixed domain is also internationally recognised by consumers as representing the "official" tourism website for any given destination.
As with any kind of nomenclature, once an association has been made in the minds of the consumer, it is very difficult to do anything that deviates from this as a certain level of expectation has been set.
Whilst in other circumstances this might be seen as a limitation, in the case of the DMOs the Visit prefix has effectively become a global brand, owned by no-one but clearly of collective benefit to any DMO who had the foresight to secure the domain for their destination from the very beginning.
For this reason alone, most destination marketeers hitch their wagon to the Visit-prefix, leveraging the power behind the "brand" as the great multiplier of their marketing budgets.
Analysis of the web statistics for hundreds of tourism web sites reveals that a full 40% of traffic comes without any referring domain, i.e. the visitor simply typed in visitsomewhere.com and expected to find the official destination web site.
Whilst consumers are predisposed to the Visit domain name, Google itself places enormous importance on these domains, affirming real authority to these often long established web sites due to the many thousands of backlinks, social shares and quality signals these official ‘visit’ domains acquire over a period of time, not to mention the huge amount of relevant destination content these domains provide.
By way of example, type the word "visit" and a destination of your choice into the Google search box. Nine times out of ten, the official DMO web site is right up there at the top of the natural listings.
But it is not just direct searches for the visit / destination keyword combination that yields these great results.
Try typing "What’s On Liverpool" into the Google search box and what comes back at the top of the natural listings? The DMO web site.
How about "Attractions Liverpool"? Again VisitLiverpool is right up there vying with TripAdvisor for the top stop.
This small, public/private partnership is going head to head with arguably the biggest travel brand on the planet and on many fundamentally important keyword combinations, is coming off the winner.
What this proves is the DMO has real "domain authority" as far as tourism is concerned.
This is something destination marketeers not only need to shout from the roof tops but also do everything in their power to ensure this fortuitous situation is maintained.
I have been working with DMOs for 15 years and, over that time, I have seen traffic to these destination web sites grow enormously such that even modest brands are consistently getting 100K unique visitors a month.
Let’s put it another way, 100,000 people who are pre-qualified as being interested in travelling to the destination are going to your web site every month and browsing through the tourism offer looking for things to do, places to eat and somewhere to stay.
And the very best bit is that "no marketing budget" is required. Just by having a well indexed, content rich and well maintained web site running at the Visit domain you will get this traffic month after month, year after year.
You can then focus your effort in curating that content, making it engaging, optimising the calls to action and facilitating ‘meetings’ between your tourism providers and potential visitors.
Speaking to destination marketeers, it is difficult for them to over-state the importance they place on their Visit domain.
NB: This is an analysis by, Richard Veal, managing director for UK Operations at New Mind/Tell Us.
NB2: Laptop beach woman image via Shutterstock.