Tourism INTERNET Marketing Blog 1.0

According to Trendwatching.com, we live in a world of absolute INNOVATION OVERLOAD: clever entrepreneurs, inventors, and marketers from all over are coming up with so many innovative ideas, that even innovation blogs have a hard time keeping track. Which implies that:

1. Innovation isn't rocket science. It's an obsession with understanding or creating what makes consumers happy, what delights them, which problems they face, and then creating something that delivers to those needs.

2. Innovation is not necessarily about serious people in white coats puttering about in R&D labs. In an experience economy, marketing innovations rule.

3. Wherever you live, you have absolutely NO excuse to be unaware of innovations popping up in Austria, in The Netherlands, in Japan, in Brazil, in the US, in Turkey, in South Africa, and everywhere else all over the world.

But the most important piece of understanding innovations and leveraging them for your business, or even coming up with innovations yourself, is understanding the consumer. In order to understand the consumer, we need to be aware of the trends the impact our lifes. Let’s face it: never before has knowing about emerging consumer trends been as important as it is now. Why consumer trends? Well… Why not? In a nutshell, tracking consumer trends is a crucial way to understand what consumers are doing now and may be doing next. Which ideally should inspire you to dream up new goods, services and experiences for and with your customers to meet and anticipate their needs. And the latter should lead to more revenues, more profits. So consumer trends are as much about making money as anything else in the business world.

So, what is a trend?

How about: “A statistically significant change in performance of measured data which is unlikely to be due to a random variation in the process.” That won't get the creative juices going, though. So consider what we came up with a few years ago, and which is still holding up well: “A manifestation of something that has ‘unlocked’ or newly serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need, desire, want, or value.” Example? One of the core human needs is to be in control, or at least to have the illusion of being in control. No wonder then, that the online world (a new technology), which firmly puts the individual in the driver’s seat, is so addictive. The Net continues to put even more control in the hands of ordinary consumers, we're spotting sub-trends every day. This is why I believe that online marketers are the best trend-watchers of today’s time, and the web is a big virtual focus group. Once we fully understand what’s driving trends, why it is that some things take off and others sink, it’s time to figure out which of them will affect your business, and determining the impact of the ones who do. But it is not that easy – in the end it all comes down to execution, and the following three main challenges will almost always emerge:

The 3 main challenges

1. Management and corporate culture (Are they into trends and innovation or not?)
2. Resources (Information overload or starvation, lack of time and/or lack of funds)
3. Understanding and applying trends (How to think Big Picture? What to actually do with your point of view?)

Article written for Canadian Tourism Commission's Tourism Magazine - November 2006.

Marketing responsibilities imply the identification of goals, objectives and measurable results. Traditionally, the range of tactics employed was relatively standardized. Essentially, this involved making advertising, promotion, and media buys in target markets using newspaper, magazine, radio or TV ads. Then, along came some alternative channels, in the form of film spots in movies and through many other emerging non‑traditional partnerships. Today, the marketer must possess a much broader skill set, including strong analytical capabilities.

But the exponential growth of the internet has made all the difference, and even the role of manager of communications is changing somewhat. From staging publicity events or working with writers and travel media, these craftsmen and craftswomen of well‑targeted messages must now operate in a world where the communications outlets used by travel industry have all exploded into fresh, complex and often new incarnations. The travel writers are on the internet, blogging.

All industry players are seeing the advantages of leveraging technology for their needs, and they try relentlessly to harvest the benefits. Advertising and e‑marketing are not simply about putting banner ads on websites vs. using traditional media. (That would simply amount to shifting the billboards to where the consumers are.) The “Web 2.0” phenomenon is changing the way the marketers operate in technology‑driven environments. "Web 2.0" is the expression used to describe the second‑generation of internet‑based services which let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways.

There are a few pieces that are especially important for the next generation of marketing managers to monitor, and they are all related to the need to define consumer groups through segmentation. At the CTC we will use the “Explorer Quotient” (EQ) model, which bridges the transition from a product or channel‑focused approach to a customer‑centric model. For this transition to be successful, we need to make smart use of customer analytics and take stock of the needs of different consumers.

Web 2.0 may be a difficult‑to‑define buzzword at the moment, but it opens the way to making use of applications like “mashups” (the internet equivalent of a sandwich, bundling different applications together). In a "mashup" you will find hotel booking engines with reviews, maps and webcams, all in one place; Web 2.0 transforms the internet from a one‑way communication channel to a two‑way communication resource where the consumer suddenly is in control.

Prior to Web 2.0, the customer would go onto a hotel or destination website to get information or download a brochure. You would perhaps then go to a website like Tripadvisor.com to look at what other people experienced at the establishment of interest – how was the room and the service? Then you might post your own review on that website. (The growth of Wikipedia is just another example of how people collaborate in generating and editing Web content to create the world’s largest multi‑language encyclopaedia.)

Once you are aware of the opportunities offered by the Web, customer‑centric metrics allow enterprises to produce websites that act as virtual focus groups. We can turn the metrics into intelligence. Customer streams, traffic, hits, visitor numbers, and search words and phrases can reveal invaluable information about what customers want through analysis and the identification of the metrics most relevant to the organization. Only then can you become truly customer‑focused. It really starts with tracking the customer value and estimating where different value propositions are, and knowing which customers are most valuable to the enterprise or the organization. We will then be able to allocate the resources to those customers – it is like going for the high‑yield traveller.

So how does one deliberately make the transition? First, stay on top of the trends. (There are still organizations out there that are scared of the internet and don’t want to have anything to do with it.) But in the end, 82 % of US travellers use the internet either to research or purchase online, so that is where the consumers are. I talk to people who say "we won’t get into user‑generated content and blogs because what happens if they say something bad about us?" They are going to do it anyhow. They will write it somewhere else. That’s like talking behind your back – why not engage in a conversation with the customer, build a relationship, be aware of issues, and correct them. Stay current with the trends – not so much internet trends but consumer trends. >>>

The importance of registering .travel domain names cannot be underestimated. Canada is leading the way with .travel implementation because Canada is the global case study and our efforts are receiving a lot of attention, but many of you may have been wondering whether there would be tangible benefits to registering a .travel name for your tourism destination or operation. Let me remind you how important this is.

Place‑name registration provides a unique and intuitive channel to reach travel consumers around the world. For example, if someone is contemplating coming to Canada after reading an article about Tofino in an Australian newspaper, or after watching a TV show, this person might want to find out more about the destination through the internet. Without knowing the exact web address, a consumer might struggle to find the relevant website; using a .travel domain name makes that crucial first step more intuitive, especially when using the .travel‑specific search engine.

At the moment, all the different destinations in Canada use different domain names for their consumer websites since they were not able to register the most pure "dot com" domain name (i.e. Tofino.com). The current names are great (TravelManitoba.com, HelloBC.com, BonjourQuebec.com, OntarioTravel.net) but they are not standardized, and are therefore hard to find for consumers who are not familiar with our destinations. What if standardization was implemented? In the case of tofino.travel, the domain name would be much more consumer‑centric. Canada could become the most consumer‑centric country on the internet, where consumers only have to type in the destination, attraction, heritage site, etc., followed by "dot travel", and they would automatically get to the travel information they need. Just imagine the increased visitors to these destination websites, especially the smaller ones, leading to increased revenues to the operators in these destinations.

The World Tourism Organization has recently pointed out that the “exclusivity” period for countries to register their .travel domains will expire on December 31, 2006. This means, in effect, that Canada’s priority right to register place names will be over and the names of cities, towns, heritage sites, sacred sites, national parks etc. will no longer be protected from registration by a commercial entity (which may share a common name and could get the name authenticated for their business) after that date.

The advantage of trust

If you look at it from the customer’s perspective, .travel implementation brings a huge amount of trust and relevancy because it is governed by an authentication process. I wouldn’t be able to acquire Toronto.travel because I am not Tourism Toronto. In the same manner, I wouldn’t be allowed to acquire FranksFishingLodge.travel because the authentication process governed by all the different trade associations would prevent that.

There are plans for a .travel directory to be launched next year, which will be translated into 25 languages. This means the smallest SME will have access to a huge opportunity as a result of the directory’s global reach; it will link to your site and increase link popularity, along with search engine optimization. We estimate this will yield a high ROI because for $100.00 (which is the price of the domain name), you also get into the search.travel website – a search engine that brings authenticated dot travel domain names up first.

Providing consumers with multiple access addresses to your web site can clearly expand your exposure. It is forecasted that these kinds of names will grow in popularity and importance with the global migration of the sector into this space in the years ahead.

Have a look at my earlier article: "What is .travel?" To register you need a unique identifier number (that can be obtained through accredited tourism trade associations, like TIAC or HAC in Canada). You then go to your registrar and – using the number – submit your domain name registration. Once registered, you need to activate the domain name and make sure you get into the directory; then – you need to use it!

China has just launched China.travel on November 16, and is officially the second country after Canada to leverage dot travel for their overall strategies. Other countries such as Egypt, Singapore, several Caribbean islands, many US states such as Utah are embracing the dot travel initiative to be more consumer‑centric. We have already written about the generations of the internet realm: Web 1.0 (the first generation of the web, which is about a one‑way communications environment between organizations and consumers, also called the “read‑only web”), Web 2.0 (which is about seamlessly connecting applications and services to enable a two‑way communication environment on the web, also called the “read‑write web”) and Web 3.0 (which is about adding meaning to the web to help consumers find relevant information quickly, also called the “semantic web”); the .travel initiative brings a groundbreaking semantic dimension to the web. But hurry. Now is the time to stake our claim over a brand new virtual territory… before someone else does!

Viral Marketing concepts are great if they either add value to your life - we all remember the Hotmail phenomenom, and now once in awhile we get amused by Viral Marketing concepts that make us laugh by embarassing either ourselves or our friends.

Office Max released their new online seasonal greeting, called "Go Elf Yourself", which allows you to step into the striped stockings and virtually dance and jig your way to holiday merriment. This is all part of OfficeMax's Holiday Games section. Somebody (a friend I suppose...) sent me my own version.

Then there was the Wedding Crasher Trailer by New Line Cinema. What a great way to promote a movie and create some buzz. Have a look at my Hollywood aspirations, together with my buddy Jon.

If you know of any other great concepts like this, please post them here - we all need a good laugh once in awhile!