Around New Year, it’s customary to write posts and articles with ideas about what will happen in the coming year. Well, this post is a little late for that but I thought I would play with the question of ‘what will happen in the coming year’ and ask instead ‘what would I like to happen the coming year?’
By this, I mean things that could conceivably happen within the industry. Wishes about winning the lottery, the England cricket team winning the Ashes, somebody finding a pot of money down the back of their sofa that pays off the world debt etc are frankly too ludicrous to mention here. And so instead I am talking about those things that I think are more realistic (if still unlikely to happen!)
Wouldn’t it be great if…people understood the distinction between User Generated Content and social media?
This is one of the most common muddles that we come across and this confusion can have investment implications so it’s important to be clear about what the difference is between these two.
While similar information can appear on these channels, the tourism provider that says, “I’ve gotta get me a Facebook page” but is unaware of the stinking reviews they’re getting Tripadvisor and the videos of their cockroaches on Youtube is getting their priorities wrong.
Wouldn’t it be great if…businesses saw the recession as a long term opportunity rather than a short term one?
I have this (probably unfounded fear) that lousy tourism providers in the UK will get a boost this year on account of the weakness of the pound and the growth in domestic tourism. What I would like to happen is that this is treated as a rare opportunity to show visitors, domestic or otherwise, what’s great about travel in the UK. I fear though that some might feel that it’s an opportunity to gouge a market where demand has grown, while cutting back on service and value delivery as far as possible.
Wouldn’t it be great if…A/B and Multivariate site testing became mainstream?
That’s probably not the sexiest sentence I’m ever going to write but it amazes me how, given free tools to measure how changing a website layout affects response rates, few businesses (those in North America excepted) can be bothered with this. Come on folks – this is a quick and easy win! Surely, as Tesco would say, every little uplift in conversion rate helps?
Wouldn’t it be great if…people checked their assumptions before starting their marketing?
A case in point: we’re doing some work at present that reveals that a destination is wanting to attract Category X visitors and assumes that their marketing message is sufficient for them. But they are actually missing pressing the buttons of this category and are actually speaking directly to other less significant markets by accident.
They have assumed, rather than tested, that they know what Category X visitors want and have based all their spend around those marketing messages. But because they’re the wrong messages, all that investment is in essence wasted. Challenging those assumptions through testing at the campaign development and early roll out stage would have avoided this waste.
In a way, this is a repeat of the old adage that ‘you are not your customer’ but it’s something worth reminding yourselves and checking to make sure you are getting your comms strategy right.
Wouldn’t it be great if…protectionism didn’t return to travel?
I don’t think that there is any suggestion at the moment that protectionism is about to rear its head in travel but remains a fear of mine that it could make an appearance at some point. If it happens within the EU, I suspect that it would be under the guise of a green initiative but globally it would be about protecting home carriers. Watch this space if things get reeeally bad.
Wouldn’t it be great if…the issue of peak oil had gone away?
Well, in a sense, the issue of peak oil has gone away owing to the immense demand destruction we have witnessed over the past eighteen months but the fundamental issue is that demand outstrips supply in oil production was poised to come true at the beginning of 2008 and there is no reason why it won’t be true again when the world economy picks up. Which means that some of this stimulus money will have a lasting legacy if it is spent in a way that prepares the infrastructure for a world in which oil is really expensive.
Wouldn’t it be great if…over to you!
In writing this post, I am aware of approaching this issue from a specific perspective but am aware that there are probably a lot more ‘wishes’ out there to be claimed – so get contributing in the comments box below.
Post by Stephen
This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:11 am and is filed under Future trends, Opinion. 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.
