Authentic, beautiful, current: why Flickr could be the destination marketers dream
I wish that every tourist considering a visit to Scotland could have their taste buds tickled by the Scotland group on Flickr. 
Its stunning images, a selection are shown here in its group blog, represent the best visualisations of Scotland – both in terms of traditionally “postcard” imagery, but also of the daily life of a modern country.
Unlike photographs commissioned in advance for print, these images emerge in near real time, reflecting the changes in seasons and highlighting exceptional events and sights. As a result, I believe they reflect the heartbeat of the country.
But its not just tourists who should be paying serious attention to these destination groups on Flickr.
The people contributing photos to the Scotland group (and other destination groups like it) are producing an authetic, passionate commentary about a tourism destination, that is there for the world to read. It’s because of this that I think destination marketers and researchers should be paying more attention to Flickr than they currently are.
Using the example of the Scotland group, it is participative in a way that reinforces the attractiveness of the destination to the visitor. In the discussion threads, the comments and images of residents are combined with the reminiscences of ex-pats, former students and previous visitors. They are interspersed with comments from people expressing anticipation, excitement and desire to visit Scotland.
In a quick analysis of an 85 post discussion thread entitled “Who are you and where are you from?” I found that while around 60% of participants currently live in Scotland, around 10% are from England or elsewhere in the UK and 30% are from outside the UK.
The non-Scotland based members have an opportunity to maintain and even strengthen their bond with the country by sustaining the interaction with the place, despite the distance.
Having removed any personal identifiers, I ran the words in the discussion thread through a tag cloud generator, in order to identify some of the most frequent terms used:
The results are not just about traditional imagery, castles and scenery. Instead very dynamic, emotional terms emerge – living, love, beautiful, family, best, originally. This is a vocabulary that embodies connection and engagement.
And the Scotland group is not some lone exception. I’ve run similar threads from other destination groups through the same process and the themes are the same: “Love, living, enjoy, moved, feels, visit”
This is engagement and it is real. And it’s what potential visitors trust, often to a greater extent than the formal marketing messages a destination produces.
So how do destinations embrace the Flickr effect?
Firstly, I think it is important to recognise critical mass when you see it and not try to go head to head in competition with a force like Flickr. But I also think it can be used far more effectively than it currently is.
For market insight, yes.
But perhaps more importantly as an embodiment of the pulse of a place.
As an example, two weeks ago the city of Inverness where I live celebrated the end of its year of Highland Culture with an almighty fireworks display by the team behind the Sydney Olympics fireworks. Less than an hour after the event, the first very high quality pictures were on Flickr. The picture used by the BBC website was from a local Flickr star.
By the next day a dozen or more people had posted pictures – many of which attracted hundreds of views from people worldwide. I suspect the PR for the destination functioned more effectively in this Flickr context than it did in the traditional offline and online media, where grumbles about costs soured the coverage.
A destination’s marketing team can’t be everywhere, all the time. It can’t afford to constantly produce a high quality, real-time visualisation of what being there is really like. But on a site like Flickr, there are passionate individuals that can and will achieve this. This is an incredible opportunity as long as destinations can find a way to engage with these individuals, rather than expolit them.
Perhaps one answer is a destination endorsed “access all areas” pass for key Flickrites?
This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 12:37 am and is filed under Destination research, Marketing strategy, National tourism strategy, Online customer behaviour, Social media measurement, Travel 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.