The tourism and hospitality industry of Canada has been on impressive form this week and offer, I believe, some lessons for the sector worldwide.
I started this week at the University of Guelph, one of Canada’s most prestigious Schools of Hospitality & Tourism Management. It was a privilege to meet with and teach the next generation of industry professionals, ranging from hospitality MBAs to first year undergraduate students. In an industry where staff recruitment and retention can be so challenging, it was wonderful to observe both the job fair and alumni/student evening as well as the very practical approach to bringing the hospitality and tourism businesses together with its bright young future employees. This is something which must surely enhance Canada’s future competitiveness as a tourism destination.
Also contributing to Canada’s strong future focus is Canada e-connect, the e-tourism strategy conference running in Toronto this week.
Hosted by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada and organised by fellow T List blogger Jaime Horwitz, I feel e-connect day one successfully delivered attendees three critical things:
1. A dose of digital reality
Not only has the world has changed - “deal with it” – but here are some strategies to help you deal. (Strategies, note, not just tactics as is so often the case at tourism industry events). This was about a grown-up approach to e-tourism and emarketing – not just a bunch of cool stuff you can do, regardless of how relevant to your business and customer. This included:
The 4 ps of digital marketing. Because this conference was about so much more than tactics, it was interesting to hear Dr Ian Fenwick talk both accessibly and inspiringly about the shift in marketing fundamentals that lie behind digital marketing strategy. The traditional 4ps of marketing (price, product, promotion, place) take a shifted focus in a digital environment, a theme reiterated through the day. The principals of digital marketing, whether we’re talking mobile devices or email communications, come down to:
- Permission (opt in, easy opt out, non interruptive/invasive, frequency as agreed by customer)
- Participation (customer participation in content creation, what the brand stands for etc)
- Particulars (collecting customer data drop by drop)
- Personalisation (relevant, timely, valuable to customer)
What I found interesting about many of the speakers in the course of the day was that they didn’t simply focus on the 2nd P – participation – and managed to avoid getting fixated on promotion/user generated content at the cost of everything else. Exactly the lesson I was teaching to the marketing students at the University of Guelph earlier in the week.
Message before medium. In one of the best analogies of the day, Adam Keats of Weber Shandwick explained that when Moses chiselled out the 10 commandments from God, it wasn’t because he had some really neat stone tablets that he wanted to fill with content – it was because he had these messages to get across and the stone tablets were the best medium to hand.
He concluded by saying let’s not ask “how do I blog successfully?” but instead ask “what stories can I tell?”In both the mobile strategies session and the blogging session, it was illuminating to hear panellists say “this may not be for you.”
Likewise, in the mobile strategies session panelists urged businesses to think about what your customer does when out and about on their phone (and other mobile devices such as in car gps) – and define where in that process you can bring them extra value that is highly relevant and timely. If you don’t deliver extra value in that customer’s personal context – then maybe you don’t need a mobile strategy. And if of course you do, then contextual is a word you’re going to be uttering a whole lot more in future!
2. An enhanced view of customer centricity
The travelling customer was not invisible at this conference. Instead of being entirely supply-side or product focussed, there was talk of permission, personalisation, customer centricity etc. But it was Diane Clarkson of Forrester that really delivered a powerful reminder of the customer’s importance in her lunchtime address on delivering the valued customer’s experience in a web 2.0 world. Because economic conditions are meaning travellers are spending less, taking fewer trips and are reducing accommodation spend (either downscaling rooms or establishments).
“Travelers don’t care that the economy is tough on you too” Diane Clarkson, Forrester
Diane highlighted that critical to embedding the valued customer’s experience across the organisation are the principals that the customer must feel:
- Fulfilment of their needs, both in terms of the product delivery, but also their emotional expectations
- Respect – for their time, for their money, for their experience
- Communicated with – by name, authentically, personally
Right now, 3 out of 4 people do not feel valued in the email communications they receive – they are product/supplier centric, rather than centred on delivering value to the customer as an individual. She warned that based on the evidence of their research, it was clear that the current strategies of many tourism businesses focus inwards on the company, rather than outwards on the customer.
Fortunately, the conference content offered businesses strategies to address that!
3. A clear view forward, not a glance behind in the rear view mirror
I found, judging from day one, that e-connect was suitably forward looking and pitched very appropriately. It didn’t take the line of “you must get into web 2.0 or be left behind.” In many ways it took for granted that businesses were already in that space, or at least wrestling with the questions provoked by the 4 new ps listed above. Instead the conference looked intelligently ahead – based not just in terms of technologies, but more importantly in terms of customer needs, expectations and digital usage.
While not at the bleeding edge of travel innovation in the way that the PhoCusWright conference is, it nevertheless featured the thinking of those innovators and translated it into relevant terms for the mainstream Canada tourism industry, without (in my opinion) being either too basic or too backward looking. And that is critical to getting any form of innovation embedded into the wider market place.
Good job Jaime and TIAC – I think Canada is leading the way in e-tourism in so many ways.
And to give the final quote to Sean Shannon of Expedia Canada, who talked about balancing the intelligent use of information with respect for customer sensibilities:
“It’s not always what technology can do, but what you decide to do with it”.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Conference learnings, Future trends, Marketing strategy, National tourism strategy, Online customer behaviour, 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.