I started my career in the tourism industry working on websites in the late 90s. I quickly discovered the disruptive impact digital marketing had on the tourism industry. Then social media came about and the pattern repeated. I believed that in the future digital and social media will drive everything at a DMO.

Then I started thinking things through. It was 2007 when I read Purple Cow and realized that word of mouth was completely ignored by most of the tourism industry. When social media became a thing this realization only became stronger. Word of mouth is much more credible and generates a much bigger reach compared to almost any advertising.

The conclusion of the above is that the perception of a destination is largely out of a DMO’s hands and this lead our conclusion that a destination brand is primarily created through stories people tell each other. In this environment, how does a DMO build a destination brand?

By managing the stories people tell each other. And where does that happen? On the ground, through the experiences people have. That’s where the stories are created and that’s where you manage the destination brand.

But the experience isn’t the job of the DMO right? They don’t own the product. How can they manage the experience? The answer is simple. By leading. A DMO is the only player in the tourism ecosystem who truly cares about the overal destination experience.

Manage destination experience and it can go horribly wrong. Watch Bye Bye Barcelona is you want to see the risks of not having a plan.

DMOs need to lead tourism and non-tourism stakeholders in managing growth in the right way. Tourism should add to the quality of life of your residents, not take it away. The destination experience needs to remain remarkable in order to continuously build positive online and offline world of mouth. This means understanding your (ideal) visitors, their needs and wants, their customer journey, including their emotional journey and continuously make improvements.

Managing this process requires the support of tourism and non-tourism stakeholders. Just think about safety or public transit. They are important factors in the destination experience.

This is the new disruption. Significant resources will have to flow from promotional activities to managing the destination experience. This requires a whole new set of capabilities DMOs don’t have. As a DMO consultant we try to be ahead of the curve. At Destination Think! we have invested heavily in building these capabilities and we’ve