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.
As DMOs vie for attention from travelers, technology
can create a powerful competitive advantage, enabling them to maintain
communication with those travelers throughout their visit and to send them useful,
timely information to enhance their experience.
For the third piece in our series on destination
marketing, we consider the opportunities and
challenges along the road to in-destination engagement and share an example
that has found success.
Tech potential
As head of the Department of Tourism
and Hospitality, director of the eTourism Lab and deputy director of the International
Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research at Bournemouth University in
England, Dimitrios Buhalis is immersed in studying and speaking about
destinations.
What’s needed, he says, is “real-time
tourism,” in which destinations understand their visitors and engage with them
at the right time, with the right information.
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But they're not there yet.
"What destinations
do so far is pretty much nothing for the customers who are arriving into the destination,
because they see themselves as marketing agents to bring the customers through
the door but they don’t see themselves as the experience creators,” Buhalis
says.
“The destination of the future will need to take full
responsibility of the experience of travelers and to understand what they are
after - what are their requirements and how the local resources meet their requirements
best.”
Those visitor experience requirements can range from the serious
and urgent, such as instructions on what to do in the midst of a weather
emergency, to more entertaining information such as informing a visitor that
has shown affinity for tennis on social media that a tournament is taking
place nearby.
And with each passing day, the technologies to enable these types
of communications are becoming more accessible and more affordable, through apps,
messaging, augmented reality and integration with “smart city” infrastructure -
networks connecting smartphones, sensors and signage that provide data
regarding crowd flow, transportation, health issues, crime and other information
that can be used to aid tourists.
“Cloud computing, the Internet of Things and data analytics will
enable us to understand what is happening in real time and dynamically adjust
the product and service,” Buhalis says.
“You’ll be able to see when a flight is delayed, when a train is
delayed, and then all the other players in the value chain are going to come
together to adjust the experience of the customer in real time.”
The challenge for destinations, says Digital Tourism Think Tank founder
and CEO Nick Hall, is to figure out “how to be relevant in this very, very crowded
digital ecosystem,” particularly if the destination is asking visitors to
download a mobile app to activate the engagement.
“Destinations are, more often than
not, dealing with people who don’t have a relationship with them, and who are there
for a very limited time and then won’t have a relationship after,” Hall says.
“So how do you support them in the
mobile app space when it requires a certain amount of loyalty in the beginning
to download the app and use it. That’s why most are still heavily focused on
content and distribution and seeing what they can do there as opposed to
creating a more experience-oriented aspect.
"We do talk a lot to destinations about
using technology and having tech-enabled experiences, but from where there’s
potential to seeing it come to fruition, there’s quite a big gap actually.”
Swiss success
Destinations looking for inspiration on how to bring “real-time
tourism” to life can look to the Swiss ski resort of
Laax, where tech company Inside Labs
has created a digital engagement platform.
All the technology is there. But it takes the leadership and the vision to actually deliver it.
Dimitrios Buhalis - Bournemouth University
Founder and CEO Kristiaan Paasila says his goal is to eliminate
pain points and enhance the guest experience, all through a best-in-class
mobile app.
“If you do mobile well then you’ll find superior retention because
once you add some of the other elements we use like gamification, loyalty programs,
personalized communications – people actually notice a difference and it becomes
a pull transaction rather than you having to push your messages or, even worse, waiting
for them to Google you and end up on your website,” Paasila says.
The app combines basic services and information such as lift
ticket sales and weather updates with enhanced options such as buying reserved
parking and upgrading to the fast lift lanes. It’s also optimized for relevance
- a user opening the app midday sees information about lunch options whereas in
the evening it transitions to dinner suggestions.
Skiers can also use the app to view cameras showing lift lines,
track their ski meters, compete with friends and earn points that can be
redeemed for things like food or resort merchandise. And every one of those
interactions in the app creates data that improves future interactions.
“We know how you moved around the mountain, what you did, where
you ate and then we can create personalized communications and products in the
future,” Paasila says.
Since its launch in winter 2016, the Inside Laax app has been
downloaded more than 150,000 times, and during the 2018 to 2019 season there were 90,000
active users that used the app on average for 42 sessions each.
Paasila acknowledges a ski resort has different needs in serving
visitors than a city or other general destination, but he says the strategies that
have worked for Laax are still applicable.
“By providing useful information you provide value and can get
customers to really like you,” he says.
“But in terms of getting people to really use and talk about an app, both
gamification and personalized communication are super important. Digital then becomes
part of your experience so it fills a different need from just serving you with
information.”
Smart momentum
There are other examples of in-destination digital engagement
success. Helsinki has received recognition for its WeChat app, created in
partnership with Tencent and Idean, that’s tailored to the needs of the city’s Chinese
visitors.
Helsinki and Lyon have also been named the first European Capitals of
Smart Tourism, selected from 38 cities that applied through a program of the
European Commission.
Visit Oslo is
developing an augmented-reality app that brings one of the city’s playwrights to
life as a tour guide, and in June, International Data Corporation gave the Singapore Tourism Board the 2019 Top
Smart City Project award in the category of economic development, tourism,
arts, libraries, cultures and open spaces. The board has created a network to
collect and analyze tourist data to create better tourist experiences.
Destinations International is encouraging its members to embrace mobile devices, apps, video and social
media to engage their visitors.
Its 2019 2019 DestinationNEXT Futures Study,
produced in partnership with MMGY NextFactor, identifies “Digital Conversion” as one
of “three transformational opportunities” for DMOs.
The report states: “The goal of personalized, real-time, digital
connectivity with travel and other consumer brands is much more of a reality
than it was two years ago. The big shift has been the growing sophistication of
artificial intelligence (AI) and its more complex subset, machine learning. AI
is the personalization engine powering digital conversion across all
industries, giving brands the ability to deliver the right message to the right
customer at the right time to drive purchase behavior.”
But Hall cautions that destinations need to carefully weigh the costs
and benefits of these types of initiatives.
“They can be one shot,
maybe quite impressive examples of using new technology but perhaps not having
the legacy that they need to have to justify the investment."
Buhalis says there is still the
question of how the capabilities of modern technology can be brought to fruition
in the realm of destination marketing and management.
“All the technology is there. But it
takes the leadership and the vision to actually deliver it,” he says.
“Where does vision come from? That is unclear. It can come from Google,
it can come from telecoms and major companies dealing with technology. But
right now I don’t see tourist boards being innovative enough to be able to do
that.”