Destination marketing, part 2: Opportunities in search and social

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, today travel and tourism supports one in 10 jobs worldwide and generates 10.4% of the world’s GDP - valued at $8.8 trillion.

Much of the responsibility for attracting those travelers to a community or region - and capturing some of that economic benefit - falls to destination marketing organizations (DMOs), also known by other names such as visitors bureaus and tourist boards.

DMOs have existed in various forms more than 100 years, initially with a focus on convention travel management and later expanding to encompass leisure travel as well.

But the work of these entities today is much broader than just drawing in visitors.

“The idea that you are just driving heads in beds is no longer good enough,” says Jack Johnson, chief advocacy officer and foundation executive director for Destinations International, a professional organization representing destination organizations from nearly 600 locations in 13 countries.

“Every visitor is a potential connection to expanding your economic base. Once you get people to pay attention, once you get people to visit, what follows is businesses and then customers come and investment comes and talent comes.

“And we will argue that every destination, every community is competing with every other community in the world, thanks to technology, thanks to the internet, thanks to cable TV, airlines."

One of the most important tools in that competition, he says, is a strong brand, supported by both engaging, shareable content and by stakeholders and residents that support the mission.

And increasingly, destinations are developing their brands through global search and social platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and WeChat.

“What we argue is destinations have to increasingly think about partnering with these big platforms rather than trying to go it alone,” says Chris Adams, head of research and insights for Miles Partnership.

“There is some degree of discomfort from some DMOs that they are no longer completely in control of their destiny - that their own website is becoming perhaps a less important part of the whole ecosystem. But broadly once people get involved, there is an understanding that the reach and the opportunities are pretty compelling.”

In the second piece in our series on destination marketing, we take a closer look at these opportunities and find out how destinations are using them to their advantage.

Google

In 2017, Google launched its DMO Partnership Program to improve the quantity, quality and accuracy of destination content it offers, particularly through Maps, Street View and Google My Business.

For destinations, the program provides DMOs free access to tools to improve their visibility and that of local businesses on the platform, easy-to-use interfaces to capture and post images and videos directly to Google and attribution and reporting data.

Adams says this opportunity is particularly valuable since destinations are starting to see a slowdown in organic traffic to their websites.

“Typically around 50 to 60% of traffic is coming from organic for a DMO website, but now year-on-year growth has stalled. And this last year it has slipped slightly into reversal,” he says.

Miles Partnership works with DMOs - about 85 from around the world - to facilitate their participation in the Google DMO Partnership Program. Adams says it begins with an assessment of the destination’s current visibility on Google, followed by content development and then education to help local business owners learn how to use the tools.

The Bermuda Tourism Authority is one of Miles’ clients that has embraced this opportunity. Since late May 2018, the DMO has uploaded 360-degree video of the entire island to Google and has taught more than 100 local business owners how to add video to their listings.

To date, Bermuda has had more than 23 million views of its images and Street View contributions on Google – free advertising with global reach.

For all DMO clients it is actively tracking on Google, Adams says there have been more than 226 million views of content and most have total views that are equal to or much larger than total views on their own websites.

But there is still substantial work to be done. Adams says 80 countries – including popular destinations such as India, Costa Rica and Nepal - have no content in Google Street View at all, inhibiting both the visitor experience and the opportunities for economic development.

And those that are getting involved still face challenges in investing time and budget in content development.

“What DMOs have to do is to demonstrate their value to Google as key content partners,” he says.

“I think it’s fair to say that even though several hundred DMOs are involved, it hasn’t scaled sufficiently yet to really capture the complete attention of Google. So DMOs have got to demonstrate value in terms of quality content at scale, not only initially to capture content but to keep contributing.”

WeChat

The Chinese Outbound Tourism Institute says  89 million Chinese citizens made outbound trips in the first half of 2019, up nearly 13% year-over-year.

Spending is up too. According to the Phocuswright report China Online Travel 2019: By the Numbers, Chinese citizens spent about $165 billion on travel bookings in 2018, and that figure is expected to grow about 10% annual through 2022, when it will reach $239 billion.

So of course tourism organizations around the world are vying to capture the attention and interest of those travelers, and one of the most effective ways to do that is through one of the country’s dominant social apps, Tencent-owned WeChat.

With more than 1.1 billion monthly users, WeChat is a super app, combining shopping, photo sharing, messaging, bill paying, food ordering, transportation, gaming and much more in one app.

Since early 2017, WeChat has offered brands the opportunity to create mini programs, cloud-based apps that live within the WeChat app, meaning users don’t have to download anything else to use them.

To prove the value of mini programs for tourism, Tencent partnered with Helsinki Marketing, the city’s DMO, to develop its WeChat mini program to assist Chinese consumers visiting Helsinki.

The mini program is powered by the MyHelsinki Open API, an open interface that provides current, curated information about events, activities and places of interest around the city. Content and recommendations are provided by hundreds of local residents, “tastemakers that these Chinese visitors can trust,” says Tia Hallanoro, director of brand communications and digital development for Helsinki Marketing. Design strategy has been provided by Idean.

The mini program also includes payment services through WeChat Pay and ground transportation booking through integration with Maas Global and its app Whim.

“Now you can plan, commute and pay within the same service,” Hallanoro says.

There is some degree of discomfort from some DMOs that they are no longer completely in control of their destiny - that their own website is becoming perhaps a less important part of the whole ecosystem.

Chris Adams - Miles Partnership

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“We are aiming for an end-to-end customer journey. But it doesn’t have that many extra things – sometimes good design is making things as simple as possible. The focus is having good content as we do on our website.”

Edinburgh Tourism Action Group also has a WeChat mini program, and the organization’s Chinese social media manager, Alice He, agrees content is essential.

“We create it all in-house. We know our audience, we know the destination, and we learn from experience what kind of content works,” she says.

For Edingburgh, He says stories from Chinese students studying there and photos showing the city’s beauty and also the filming locations for major motion pictures such as Avengers: Infinity War are very popular with Chinese travelers.

WeChat is also an effective tool for destinations to communicate with travel agents. Dragon Trail Interactive’s China Travel Academy is a WeChat-based course used by DMOs such as Visit Sweden and the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board to teach Chinese travel agents about their destination.

“From my perspective, I think it’s important to understand that WeChat is really useful not just for B2C marketing, but also for B2B, which is still very relevant for the Chinese outbound tourism market,” says Sienna Parulis-Cook, communications manager for Dragon Trail Interactive.

Facebook & Instagram

With nearly three billion monthly users across Facebook and Instagram, these two platforms capture a large portion of digital ad spend for all travel verticals, including DMOs.

Sojern’s general manager of tourism, Richard Black, says these platforms provide a way for destination marketers to do what they’ve always done, but much more effectively. “It’s always been about reaching people in the moments that matter,” he says.

“DMOs would love to have this consistent volume of web traffic, but the reality is they are now realizing that they need to have their content distributed wherever people are during that path to purchase.”

According to Sojern’s 2019 Report on Facebook and Instagram Advertising for Travel, travelers spend five times more time on Facebook than on travel-related apps, sites and searches, and 96% of travelers go to Instagram as they think about destinations to visit.

So it’s no surprise that Sojern’s survey of more than 600 travel marketers, including 117 DMOs, found Facebook and Instagram captured 23% of their digital ad spending in 2018, and more than half plan to spend even more on those sites this year. 

The platforms are recognizing that interest - and improving the tools they offer.

In March 2018, Facebook introduced Trip Consideration, which presents targeted ads to users that have browsed travel-related pages.

“It’s really provided an opportunity for DMOs to maximize that space ... to reach a broad audience of people that have intent to travel,” Black says.

“They are using machine learning in delivering ads to somebody who’s really likely to book a trip.”

In tandem with the targeted marketing, digital tools now provide sophisticated data capture and analytics to understand how those campaigns are performing – and whether they ultimately influence what a person does in-destination.

Arrivalist provides attribution insights using anonymized, aggregated mobile phone location data.

“Often we find as much as 60, 70, even 80% of [a DMOs] marketing could be better targeted,” says Arrivalist CEO Cree Lawson.

Along with advertising, Black says destinations are getting savvier about using Facebook as an instant, direct communication tool. He cites examples of DMOs in Amelia Island, Florida and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that recently used Facebook to let people know their communities were not affected by Hurricane Dorian.

“DMOs are that first line of defense of getting tourists back into town when tragedy happens to maximize economic impact,” he says.

• Destination marketing, part 1: The evolving - and expanding - role of DMOs