People love to talk about travel and share their stories with their friends. On the internet, people can now do this in a global context. BC residents love our province and they’re passionate about the way we market BC as a holiday destination. I have plenty of emails to prove it.
Throughout all the research we do, we keep hearing from our website users that they like our website and content. But they’re missing to hear about the things you only know if you live here. Nobody wants to be a tourist and they like to know from BC residents about what they like to do and the hidden gems we don’t mention in our official content. We call this insider information.
2005
To facilitate this insider information, we started a blog in 2005 where some of our staff at Tourism BC could share their own experiences and tips with our website users. It didn’t take very long before this became a great success. Our users liked the content and we received healthy traffic.
2006
In 2006, we expanded the scope of our writers. We have a network of over 110 Visitor Centres in the province, covering as many communities. We asked the staff at these Visitor Centres to join the blogging efforts, and many did. This expanded the content of the site beyond just Vancouver and Victoria, where Tourism BC’s offices are located. This made the blog website even more successful.
2007
The next logical step is to extend the party to the next group of stakeholders; out BC residents and past travelers. Today we’re launching the first phase a significant new release on HelloBC.com today. We’re asking people to share their BC Great Finds. These can be anything, from an awesome viewpoint after a four hike, to a great little restaurant in Chinatown.
We’re posting these Great Finds as regular blog entries. But we’re also categorizing every entry with a location and an activity. So a Great Find about a fishing trip in Ucluelet will be categorized accordingly. These categories mirror the website structure on HelloBC.com. This allows us to present relevant great finds alongside the official information. It will add credibility and depth to all content on the website.
In addition, we also post all entries with a photo on our Flickr photostream. This way, we’ll be able to reach a new audience who might not be aware of the great experiences in British Columbia.
In order to seed some great finds, we send an email blast to a select group of consumers in our database. The entries we have received are of great quality. This is exciting stuff, have a look yourself and submit your own Great Find.
Next
What’s next? The one thing I’ve learned it to be clear about your objectives and core strategies, but leave room in the tactics for learning and new technology developments. Our intent is to develop a community of past travelers and BC residents assisting new visitors plan their vacations to British Columbia over time. What that exactly will look like will be based on what we’re going to learn over the next while.
I accepted a new position as Director of E-business at Tourism British Columbia this week. That means my old position is vacant. If you’re interested and motivated to make the best tourism destination website in the world, then have a look at our corporate website and apply.
My colleague Janice send this article about a panel of travel bloggers organized by Budget Travel Online. There’s some great content in here about some of the things that are debated internally at Tourism BC these days.
User Generated Content, can we trust it or do we need a voice of authority?
Erik Olsen, editor of Gadling.com hit the mark:
Harnessing collective intelligence is a powerful thing and with an “editorial filter”, harnessing this power can be achieved within creative standards. TurnHere is a good example of this. It’s YouTube for destination videos with an editorial element. It ensures a certain quality standard. For site like YouTube, such standards are not needed. Just like any other development in the early history of the internet, the only successful strategy is to embrace change. Because in a future of user generated content, who will be the official source?
How should Tourism Boards deal with Travel Bloggers?
Mark Johnson from HotelChatter.com about how not to do it:
So what is the right approach? Erik Olsen again:
And an unidentified person from the audience:
But a word of caution from Randy Petersen from flyertalk.
They also share the number of traffic they receive:
No matter how you value a visitor, that’s a lot of exposure. So tourism marketers better take bloggers seriously and play by the rules of the blogosphere. It’s like what Josh and Rob told me the other day; “consumers have taken control and they’re not going to give it back”.
I’ve been back from Tokyo for about a week now but things have been very busy. I spend most of last week on Vancouver Island without a proper internet connection.
From the left, myself, Mayu, Yuka, Cindy (from Vancouver) and Tomoko
It was very nice to meet our staff in Tokyo and our web contractor. They are doing a great job with out HelloBC.jp website. Especially their blog is very interesting. They invite people from the industry who visited BC to write an entry. The comments are used for consumers to ask questions and results in direct business if the blog was written by a tour operator.
Tokyo is a nice city and the food is amazing. My co-workers took me to this magic club (I think it’s called 8 o’clock) and it was really cool. I had a day to wonder around the city, take in all the sights and absorb some of the culture. They weather was hot and humid but further than that, I’m looking forward to go back.
From left to right: Jens Thraenhart – Canadian Tourism Commission, Julien Cormier – Tourism Quebec, William Bakker – Tourism BC, Daniel Cayer – Travel Alberta, Cameron Spence – Tourism Banff/Lake Louise.
I spend last week in Ottawa at the Online Revealed conference in Ottawa. The conference was organized by the Canadian Tourism Commission and it included a one day session with all ebusiness strategists of the Canadian provinces and territories and a two day open conference where I participated on a panel discussing content and technology.
It was very nice to meet my counterparts at the other provinces and to hear about what they are doing. Like most conferences, the networking part was the best part although there were interesting sessions.
I enjoyed participating on the panel and I think we had a meaningful discussion. Beforehand we agreed I should talk about user generated content and HelloBCBlogs.com. So I didn’t get a change to talk about the incredible cool things we’ve done on HelloBC.com. I promise I will post some information about what we’ve done on this blog soon.
Daniel Cayer from Travel Alberta showed some of the great work they’re doing. He also shared his thoughts about technology and in particular how he favours building his own CMS tool instead of using a enterprise content management system. He was very vocal about this and his believes about how these applications are hard to implement and maintain. I mentioned I disagreed with him because we’re using Microsoft CMS and we’re happy with it. I also mentioned would like to talk about it over a beer but I never got the change unfortunately.
Afterwards, a few people asked me questions and thanked me for disagreeing (and they weren’t vendors of CMS systems) with Daniel and I even received a phone call about it. So I’ll elaborate a little further here. My main point is that Tourism BC is a marketing organisation, not a technology developer.
I agree to keep things simple and not letting technology drive your business. But to translate that into building your own systems is a risky proposition in the long run. By using a CMS tool, we can be ensured we have technology that will continue to evolve over time. And with Microsoft CMS, the tool will likely be around for a while and we have access to a variety of vendors and developers who are certified to work with the tool. A safe bet when you’re working with public money.
Jacob Nielsen, the godfather of usability recently wrote two alertboxes describing 8 stages of corporate usability. Reading these
two articles was like a trip through time. So allow me to take you on a trip through 6 years of HelloBC.com and usability, from my perspective.
Stage 0: Usability is Unknown
I’ve added this step because usability was simply not known. The first website at Tourism BC was launched in 2000. Although one usability test was conducted, usability wasn’t an accepted process. It was done by the web development company and none of the results were followed-up on. The website was build around the brand and most decisions were based on it. Including a navigation system that took up half the page and top level navigation with ambiguous names.
Stage 2: Developer-Centered Usability
I became involved shortly after launch as web technician (developer) and started analysing traffic patterns. I figured out that people seem to be stuck right on the homepage and concluded we had a usability issue. Testing was out of the question, I couldn’t convince people that testing with 5 people would produce actionable results so I made improvements by just analyzing the log files by trial and error (A/B testing), based on my personal judgement. When our advertising agency recommended a heuristic evaluation, and one of our research consultants compared web usability testing with putting together Ikea furniture (if you watch 5 people who can’t put it together, you don’t need to watch another 100), we moved to stage 3.
Stage 3: Skunkworks Usability
Two years after launch, we re-branded the website. This time, usability testing was part of the process. Mind you, it was at the end of the process, after the website was done and incorporating changes based on the result was difficult because the budget was gone. But nevertheless, the user gained importance although creative and brand was still front and center in the methodology. I remember a discussion with a visual designer about the use of text-on-images instead of HTML. Using test-on-images provided ‘more control’ was the argument. I hated myself for 3 years because I caved on that discussion.
Stage 6: Systematic Usability Process
Late 2003, we realized that the ‘old’ website wouldn’t be able to meet future objectives. A new unit within Tourism BC was created to manage websites and I moved from IT to lead this unit. This gave me a chance to incorporate the new methodologies I had been learning about. We built a great team and started a journey that ultimately lead to the current website using a User Centred Design methodology. The user was front and center and brand, content and technology worked in harmony, based on meeting business objectives by aligning them with our users objectives. We build personas, conducted research and tested frequently. The budget for IA and usability was approximately 20% of the overall budget.
Stage 7: Integrated User-Centered Design
The process is now proven and we’ve made changes based on the first go-around. Usability is front and center in our process. Everybody on the web team is basing decisions with the user in mind and we conduct frequent tests. But the user experience is also considered in all technology projects for all interfaces. Our Vice President of marketing showed our personas during a presentation at a conference, the highlight of my usability evangelism at Tourism BC.
Stage 8: User-Driven Corporation
This is my goal. Although I would define it a bit differently. It’s about transitioning into a Customer Driven Organization where (in our case), the Visitor Experience is the ultimate goal. Our websites, call centre and visitor centre network are integrated and geared toward delivering a world class tourism experience in BC, wrapped around personal (one-on-one) marketing. All based on a common methodology where we talk and listen to the users (visitors) of our province. Something Peter Merholz talked about at the closing plenary at this years IA Summit.
The internet is allowing planners to increase the awareness opportunities through word-of-mouth dramatically. Email and websites such as blogs are a great way to stay connected with loved ones.
Word of mouth is the most important source for destination awareness. Most trip ideas start by talking to friends and family about their trips or the desire to visit a friend or family member. Beside the official information, travelers consume information from a number of other sources of information while planning their trip. Word of mouth is the most important one.
The internet allows travel planners to meet the need for this information in new ways. The thorntree message board on the lonely planet website was one of the first places where travel planners would meet to discuss their trip plans. Since then, numerous websites have been created where users can write their travel stories, rate hotels and attractions, submit pictures and manage a travel guide collectively. Each of these websites either assist in creating destination awareness or assist in trip planning.
At Tourism British Columbia, we’ve learned through our focus group and usability research that travelers expect us to provide the official information but also ‘insider information’. This is the information only locals know; that cute little coffee-shop, a hidden hiking trail, a pub kayakers go to after their activities.
So about six months ago we started HelloBCBlogs.com, a blog site where a group of our staff can write about anything related to travel in BC. Most stories were related to personal tourism experiences from our staff members. But there are also tips travelers can use in their trip planning. The website was a success almost immediately with high visitation and a very high repeat visitation rate. So we knew we hit on something good.
Just a few weeks ago, we expanded our blog authors to include the staff of our Visitor Centres. There are over 110 Visitor Centres located throughout British Columbia, managed primarily by the communities and often with the help of volunteers who are passionate about their community and are also the local experts. So we invited them to join our blog and write about their communities to extend the information beyond the Tourism BC staff and provide the consumers with even more insider information. We’ve just started but I’ve already read some great entries.
I spent two days in Beverly Hills this week. I was invited on a panel at the Canada Media Marketplace to share some of our blogging experience on HelloBCBlogs.com. It was my fist stay in LA and beside the fact that it was raining, I noticed that a large number of people were walking/driving around with a blue-tooth device clipped at their ear that connects to their cell phone. I also found it strange that there were virtually no shoppers on Rodeo drive, although the weather might have had something to do with it.
Visiting a new city also gave me a chance to test Google Local for mobiles. Bell gave me a Blackberry 7130e with EVDO capabilities to try out for a few weeks. So I used the driving directions to walk from my hotel to to the conference. Very nice. When they manage to connect it with GPS or another location service, it’s a killer app. I also tried to post a blog while sitting in a Thai restaurant. It took me 20 minutes to type an entry only to realize that it wouldn’t save because of a browser limitation.
On the second day I had a few hours before heading back to Vancouver so I visited the Getty Centre. I was very impressed with the architecture of the building and gardens and their art collection of classic European art is very impressive. Any day I can see a van Gogh is a good day. It’s funny how a lot of people I talk to tell me they like the gardens as much as the art. I’m sorry but no garden can ever beat looking at a van Gogh, a Renoir, a Cézanne, a Manet, a Degas, a Monet or Millet.
After many months of work we have launched our upgraded HelloBC.com website last night. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of our processes and learning I’ve had on this project. I need to sleep first.
Friday we started the UAT process for our new website. It was amazing to see every we’ve worked so hard on for two years come together. It’s going to be great. Keep your browser pointed to HelloBC.com mid April and see for yourself why British Columbia is worth a visit.