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Travel & Tourism
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Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
What’s the point of a campaign website?
10.17.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsI don’t get it. Why do so many destinations build specific websites for specific campaigns? Are they seriously thinking that consumers are only interested in the content specific to the campaigns theme? Let me give an example. Queensland has a campaign called Outback Holidays. It has a campaign website with a unique URL; adventureoutback.com.au. It has a lot of content about the Outback. This Dinosaur Trails information is really cool, for example.
Queensland also has it’s regular consumer website, queenslandholidays.com.au. It’s a great website with a lot of great information. But is doesn’t have the nice Dinosaur page I found on the campaign site. But it DOES lists all kinds of tourism operators including Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways, also very cool. This information didn’t make it on the campaign website though.
There is a link buried somewhere on the campaign website to the main website, but good luck finding it. I’m picking on Queensland because I happen to know their website well, but it happens everywhere and I-don’t-get-it. My assumption is that there is some co-op marketing deal where partners who buy in are featured exclusively on the campaign site. There’s probably also an agency involved who produces content exclusively for the campaign site.
Imagine Amazon building a campaign website to promote the new Harry Potter book without any references to its main website or other products. And you can only buy the book on the campaign site, and the campaign site is completely disconnected from the main Amazon website. It would never happen because it doesn’t make any sense.
I’m sure there are a lot of things we can do better on our website (and I’d love to hear it), but when it comes to campaigns, I think we’ve figured it out. Campaigns motivate a consumer to start learning about or planning a trip to British Columbia. There might be a campaign landing page to follow through on a specific call to action, but after that, we put the consumer at the best place of the website to start planning their trip. And what do we see? Somebody that responded to a golf message could be looking at our ski pages next, or at a spa operator, or whatever else is relevant and of interest to that consumer. Just because the consumer responded to a golf message, doesn’t mean she’s not interested in anything else. Limiting information based what motivated the consumer to visit is a missed opportunity. -
Travel & Tourism
We need a video host
Tourism British Columbia is looking for an online ski video host.
We have an exciting opportunity for a competent skier who is also dynamic on camera to host a series of mini documentary-style videos of three BC ski hills. The videos will appear online within a specific page on Tourism BC’s www.HelloBC.com site and potentially on other sites.
Host role
The role of the video host includes travelling with a videographer to three pre-selected BC mountains for between two and three days each, to ski while sharing information about choice runs and après ski activities with an online audience. They will also encourage consumers to submit their own photos or video footage. The host will be
sharing their ski hill experiences with a targeted online audience of 35 – 55 year olds who are affluent and enjoy skiing as a couple, with friends and/or with their children.
Required Skills
The host should be able to naturally adlib, while at the same time, include factual information about BC and each ski mountain, within their monologues. Mandatory key facts and information will be provided ahead of time to the video host. The host should have a passion for BC and enjoy sharing travel experiences with friends and family. In addition, the host must be a strong skier and will be required to ski on the video. Timeline & Compensation Travel dates are set between November 15th and December 19th 2007 and may fall on weekdays and/or weekends. In addition one video will be filmed inside locally prior to the travel dates. Compensation will be in the form of a project fee plus transportation, accommodation and per diems included.
Application Details
Please submit, by email to kristine.potter at cossette.com, a 1-2 minute maximum video showing why you should be chosen as the 2007/08 Tourism BC Online Ski Host along with cover letter and resume. Please include “ski host audition tape” in your email subject line.
Deadline
All submissions must be received no later than 12:00 noon, Friday, October 19, 2007. -
Travel & Tourism
Canada-e-Connect Conference and Awards
Jens from the Canadian Tourism Commission is organizing the Canada-e-Connect Conference conference in November in Vancouver. I’ve spoken to Jens a few times about it and it looks like there will be great content by interesting speakers. Make sure you read the blog for updates, background info and related content.As part of the conference, the first Canadian e-tourism awards will be presented. If you are in the travel and tourism business, or if you are a traveler with a great story, photo or film, make sure you enter.
If you plan to attend the conference, make sure you drop me a note. I’d love to connect with some of my readers.
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Travel & Tourism
More Seoul
Our time here has been very productive.
We had good meetings with our Asian marketing team in Seoul.
We went to this great vegetarian restaurant for dinner, temple food, created by a former Buddhist monk. It was excellent.
All I have to do is tell people I’m from the same country as Hiddink and they’re my friend.After our full day of meetings we had some time to check out the sights of Seoul. It’s a great city. It’s not intimidating at all. We walked around and I felt at easy everywhere I went. Maybe the fact that I’m a foot taller than the average Korean helps.
It’s the rainy season so the day started with an insane downpour. So we changed our plans to walk around and hopped into a cab to go to a museum.
Our taxi driver was watching TV while driving! But it was a soccer game, Korea – Brazil in the Fifa U-20, held in Canada right now. It was the end of the game and Korea lost.
We went to the National Folk Museum where we learned about Korean history and customs throughout the ages. Including all about Kimchi.Above is the process of creating this famous, and delicious dish.
The rain had passed when we went back out and we explored the sights of Geyeongbokgung, the former royal palace.
I love the English that’s just a bit off you see everywhere (not that my English is much better).
Today, the city to host the 2014 Olympics will be announced. Korea is in the running. I know how they feel right now. UPDATE: Russia hosts the 2014 Olympics, sorry Korea.
Holly used the opportunity to check up on one of her Coffee House franchisees.
We walked across town and visited the Jongmyo shrine, Changgyeonggung Palace and Changdeokgung Palace, all very impressive.
So you can’t turn left, can’t turn right and can’t go straight. Where can you go? O wait, nowhere, it’s a one way street in the opposite direction! -
tourism bc, Travel & Tourism
Seoul
I’m in Seoul to meet our Asian teams about the future of our Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese websites. It’s my first time in Seoul and it’s a very cool city to visit.
I’ve always wanted to have a sign waiting for me on arrival!
Holly started taking pictures during our hour long hour taxi ride to the hotel.
We’ve only been here a few hours, we walked around the hip shopping area. Complete crazyness. Every store has a young and hip person with a speakers trying to get people into the store.
Tomoko from our Japanese office and Christine from Taiwain firing up their cell phones to explain to me how they can text, using 50+ characters on 12 keys. I get it now.
And of course I had to drink our Korean project beer Hite. -
Travel & Tourism
Holland.com’s US market website – The future of Destination Websites?
06.29.07 | Permalink | 4 Comments
I stumbled upon the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions’ US market website. User can be upload content direct or by using Flickr, YouTube and other websites and appears mixed in with official content from the NBTC. The website includes tag clouds, social networking tools, social rating and bookmarking and more. On top of that, the website looks very stylish. Very Dutch.
It’s definitely not perfect. I can’t figure out how to upload pictures from Flickr or movies from YouTube for example (more then a small usability issue). There’s also not real way to browse the website through navigation (or is this the new reality?).
Is this a glimpse of the future where destinations are promoted by consumers and residents alongside the tourism board? It might just be. In either case, it’s a brave step and demonstrate vision from the NTBC, not afraid to take a risk. But it’s a calculated risk, by limiting the execution to the US market, where I assume, the target audience is a younger one.
UPDATE 7/2: Karin Schmollgruber posted about Holland 2.0 as well.
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Travel & Tourism
New Australia.com, good strategy, questionable execution
Tourism Australia launched their new Australia.com recently. It’s a dramatic departure from the old website, both strategic and tactical.The new strategy quickly pushes users down to the individual state and territory websites. No more in-depth content provided on Australia.com. Only few things remain, such as video, promotions and travel essentials such as climate and visa information. And of course the giant map. Users can find the details on the state and territory websites. These websites have a link back to Australia.com, so users to move to the next destination website. There is a partnership with Google to provide a search across all destination websites and includes an advertising component.
This makes a ton of sense. Australia is huge. Providing all the content required for consumers to plan their trip is a lot of work, something Tourism Australia probably won’t be able to manage themselves. But individual states and territories can. These destinations deal with the scope of information a consumer needs. It’s big enough for consumer to deal with, but not too small, so users don’t have to visit many websites. And by moving consumer down for details instead of duplicating efforts, Tourism Australia can use it’s resources for other activities.
The search functionality across all states and territories is very well done (the tabs look familiar tough). The sponsored links aren’t contextual. That’s a miss. It’s delivered by DoubleClick, a company Google recently acquired so I’m sure that will change over time when Googles Adwords algorithms are integrated.
Some of the other execution is disappointing. There ‘s no overview of what each state and territory is about. Where do you start? One paragraph for each would probably be enough for a consumer to start. The interactive execution takes long to load, the map is not very useful and the videos are commercials. The attempt to create a network of websites by bolting on an Australia.com icon the the state and territory websites that links back to Australia.com is a bit clumsy. Every time I move back to Australia.com, the whole flash thing loads again, making it very annoying to move around. The experience also changes from website to website and there’s little consistency.I’m sure they’ll improve the tactics over time. They already changed some things. The introduction video doesn’t show every time when you move back from another destination website anymore, for example. But I hope for their 6 million visitors/year, they do it quick.
UPDATE 6/25:
Jens has additional thoughts. -
Travel & Tourism
The first rule of Destination Marketing
06.03.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsGet people to talk about your destination is the first rule of Destination Marketing.
I watched Seth Godin’s presentation at Google yesterday. It made me think about my trip to Prague and Destination Marketing.
Seth’s philosophy is that the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable. The old “TV Industrial Complex” model, where mass media (TV commercials) are used to drive sales, is dead. The new model is enabling the power of word of mouth..I have no research about what has happened from a Tourism perspective in Prague since the early 90’s, when communism ended, and Czech borders opened for tourism. But I do know that almost immediately, everybody started talking about Prague. And everybody who went there told me they loved it and that I should go “before it becomes a tourism trap”. This was true when we lived in Europe and continued when we moved to Canada. I’ve never seen a TV commercial from the Czech or Prague tourism board. I’ve never seen a newspaper of magazine ad. I can’t recall reading an article about Prague. I couldn’t even tell what some of Prague’s highlights were. Yet Prague was high on our shortlist.
When we finally visited Prague a month ago, I was shocked about the number of tourist, and the resulting tourism infrastructure. I’m convinced the success of Prague’s tourism is primarily a result word-of-mouth. Every visitor who returns from Prague is an ambassador for Prague, because Prague is remarkable, resulting in even more people wanting to visit. And as more people visited, the infrastructure developed, and as interest grew, tour operators noticed and started adding Prague to their product mix.
It doesn’t take much for a destination to get on somebodies shortlist. Forget mass advertising, a friend’s recommendation is often enough, so make sure every visitors experience is a remarkable experience. The hard part of a destination marketer’s job is moving somebody from there to the actual visit.
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personal, tourism bc, Travel & Tourism
Fasten Your Seatbelts Interview
Karin Schmollgruber provides great insights into travel and eBusiness. She also has great interviews. I found her interview with Ian Rumgay from Tripadvisor very interesting.
Karin interviewed me last week about our Blogging and User Generated Content efforts. It’s now published on her website.
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Internet, Travel & Tourism
CoolAustria.com – Tourism Austria’s Social Network
05.13.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments
Tourism Austria ventured into the Web 2.0 world by partnering with a Media company in the creation of CoolAustria.com, a full fledged Social Travel Website. Karin Schmollgruber asked me for my thoughts.
Well, it’s a very ambitious effort. I have to guess what the objectives of the website are. I assume it’s to create a network of residents and past travelers who generate ideas and assist other travelers, primarily in a younger demographic.
It’s impressive from a technology perspective. It has integrated some traditional community tools such as a message board with Web 2.0. hallmarks such as a tag cloud folksonomy and a Google Map Mashup. Oddly enough, RSS/Atom feeds are missing from the party, but that’s in the works apparently.
Success for this venture will depend on the success of Metcalfe’s law (the value of a network is proportional to the square number of users of the system). There has to be a user population that’s large enough to attract and be of value to passive users and turn them into active users.
To create a large enough user population, the website needs to be useful and usable. Successful social websites on a large scale such as MySpace have reached their population in part by creating a necessity to sign up. It’s useful because can passively read your friends information, but in order to communicate with your friends (additional usefulness), you have to sign up. MySpace doesn’t look pretty, but it’s easy enough to use (usability).
I hope that CoolAustria.com is useful and usable enough to be successful. I hope that there is enough appetite for users to become part of a “traveling in Austria” community. I hope the entry barrier is low enough (e.g. allow for anonymous questions) and the usability of the site is high enough so users who want to, can easily participate. I hope there will be an active marketing campaign to kick-start the community.
CoolAustria.com is a ‘big bang’ approach to create a social network. Our strategy at Tourism BC is to take it one step at a time, and fully integrate the User Generated Content into our official website. I’m going to keep a close eye on CoolAustria.com and I wish them great success.
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William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
