What business are you in?

Knowing what business you are in gives you clarity of purpose.  This, in turn, gives you focus and an enhanced ability to understand and meet customer expectations.  But surely we all know what business we’re in, right?

Well, think about Domino’s Pizza for a moment.  Domino’s are not in the catering business, they’re in delivery.  Fast, fresh, reliable delivery.  Customer’s don’t call them for a slice of authentic Italy – they want big, hot pizza and they want it now.

Likewise, people don’t buy a drill because they want a drill – they want a hole.  More important still, they want a hole to make a shelf to put their son’s first football trophy on.

In the same way, people don’t visit a destination because they want a tourism experience – they want any number of things, from privacy, to exhilaration, to a convenient place to break a journey – to complete brain-switch off in the sunshine.

No, what business are you REALLY in?

A simple answer to that might be “the one you’re customers think you’re in.” What is the fix you deliver to their problem?

That might initially sound a little too simple and prescriptive – after all, it seems to suggest that you can only ever be defined by what your customers think you do now and that any strategies or messaging to alter this are doomed to failure.

So it’s probably more constructive to start to answer that question by thinking in terms of: “It’s not about me, it’s about you.”

Those of you that have an awareness of strategic marketing might recognise this in terms of ‘features and benefits’.

In other words, it’s not about whether you have, for example, 30 museums and 100 five star hotels, rather, in this example, it’s about cultural enrichment and pampering. It’s not about a list of products and services, it’s about what these mean to your visitor.

Let me explain what prompted these musings….

The first recent occasion was at a conference in Glasgow launching the Scottish customer feedback initiative.  As well as discussing feedback, there were also destination presentation highlighting approaches that could be take in marketing an area .  I was comparing my notes taken during presentations by  Santiago de Compostela and Prince Edward Island and realised that very different approaches were being taken in how they were portrayed.

Santiago de Compostela seemed to concentrate on its features to define itself of the destination whereas PEI explained how they had done research among their visitors and had then defined itself based on the benefits it had found within this research.

Undoubtedly both approaches work – visitor numbers had risen in both location.  But I had a niggling sense that Santiago de Compostela could have gone a step further as they seemed to lack a distinctive narrative or personality (although Santiago de Compostela  would undoubtedly argue that it does indeed have a personality –  that it’s a culturally vibrant place to visit).  However, While they could come across as being a place with ‘lots of things to do’, they could be just be one culturally rich European location among many.

On the other hand, PEI’s research suggested that it’s visitors thought of it as ‘a gentle island’ and to me this seems a more meaningful and human differentiator.

Or, to put it another way, one was about the products and the other was about the customer.

But in this example, I’m still not sure whether one was was superior to another. From a personal perspective Santiago de Compostela sounds more interesting (I prefer cultural tourism to relaxation) but I’m not sure that I would choose it above many other culturally rich places.

Destinations everywhere – but how many really stand out?

While there is ambiguity in the examples above there was less experienced walking round the exhibition halls at  ITB in Berlin.  The choice of destinations  could be not so much mind-blowing as mind-numbing.

The trouble was that I often struggled to think of a reason why Destination X was better than Destination Y. Golden Beaches? Check. Local Cuisine? Check. Authentic experiences? Check. Compelling reason to visit above competitor destination? Not sure…

“We are in the happiness business”

So, to return to the conference in Glasgow where the last session was delivered by Gregg Patterson who runs the The Beach Club in Santa Monica.

For me, the key sentence Gregg used in his session was “we are in the happiness business.” Others might have said, “we operate a high-value members-only hospitality facility” or “The X Group run mid-market hotels aimed at the leisure market.” And they would be right – while also missing the point of why they exist, as they would be defining themselves from a product, not a customer perspective.

They would be emphasising their features, not their benefits.

Yet it is  this recognition of the benefits from a customer perspective that allows a “different” approach  taken.  One that more intelligently communicates with customers, connects with them emotionally and identifies how best to deliver to them at a product level.

It enables you to develop strategically and tactically. In the case of PEI, the local DMO has been liaising with the local authorities to develop facilities that help deliver on the promise of being ‘a gentle island.’

At a tactical level, it has shown The Beach Club how important the ‘dignity’ of customers is. This might sound like a rather odd or old fashioned term but it means recognising the visitor as a person, not as another number.

So how do you start to understand what business you are in?

For me, the starting point would be some form of qualitative research to determine what the area/attraction actually means to your customers. What is their emotional connection? What is the narrative behind their visit?

And there are many ways to pick up this information.  For example, there is user generated content online.  What are people saying about you and how are they saying it?  What images are they posting, how are they branding you?

Also, what terms are people using to find you online? What kind of sites things are they looking at as well as your own?

And there is always the more traditional research method of  destination audits, street research and focus groups which can also really help to drill down and identify what it is that really makes your destination memorable (or infamous!).

Ultimately, whichever research methods you choose – the challenge is to see yourself as others do.  And to react to those perceptions, even if they differ from your own.

Posted by Stephen (26/03/09)

“Tough times call for creative ideas”

There was an audible gasp at Canada eConnect a few weeks back, when Tourisme Montréal, Montréal’s destination marketing organisation, announced that they were spending their 2009 budget entirely online.

Rather than indulgent risk taking, Tourisme Montréal’s decision was the result of a reduced budget forcing tough choices – where would they get best results from a more modest spend?   It also reflects a strategic decision to target traveller motives, tap into emotions and intrigues – and do that in a very granular way that is both relevant and touches at travellers in multiple online places and in multiple formats.

“It is about interacting with the consumer….If we are choosing to be only on the web, we have to be everywhere”
Tourisme Montréal

Much of that spend will be going into online direct response, such as paid search marketing.  However 20% will be allocated to awareness/social media meaning a very different measurement and marketing environment.  Social media may involve litte in terms of media buy cost, but it certainly requires significant time to service and a new way of thinking about return on that investment.

As Carmen Ciotola, Vice President, Communication and Marketing of  Tourisme Montréal explained to the CEC audience:

“What is freaking us out the most is that the 20% will be 80% of the work”

She’s right of course, but Tourisme Montréal seem well placed to lead the way to the 100% online budget leap.  They appear to have a culture of online analytics running back to 1994 that has evolved in line with the sophistication of their efforts.

A strong focus on analytics, complete with an understanding of what is driving conversions and buzz means they are not making risky marketing decisions in the dark.  It is how they have the data and evidence base to know that their limited resources will deliver maximum results spent only online.

They may be breaking ground, but I suspect we will soon be hearing other destinations describing TV & print as “nice to do if we had the budget.”  It acknowledges the reality that travel research and purchase decisions are to a staggering degree made online.

Consumer research based on social values

Another of the reasons, at least as it seems to me, that we see a major destination from Canada tapping in so completely to social media and online marketing is that Canada has built a national strategy based on profiling and segmentation according to social values, not demographics.

One of the things that holds true online is that communities and networks of people online share common values and outlook characteristics, but may have little in common in terms of demographic factors such as age, location and income. People who share a postcode or zip code do not behave the same online.

“Brand Canada” has tried to build a solid online marketing strategy by tapping into the fact that social media allows us to tell stories and that at the heart of stories are shared experiences, personal emotions and excitement. By engaging with this, they are serving up tailored experiences that inspire action – ie conversions/a commitment to purchase – in the visitor.

Canada of course is hardly alone by trying to focus on visitor experiences and emotional factors.  Many of the DMOs and national tourism bodies I speak to are taking exactly the same approach and I have featured examples from Washington DC and several others.

But what the Canadian Tourism Commission has done is build a systematic research tool , now being rolled out across the DMOs and major tourism partners like Parks Canada (an example at the Tourism VC blog here) , that offers a new way to match visitors with experiences tailored to what they are seeking.

This Explorer Quotient tool is a method of identifying visitor needs, interests, expectations and desires based on their values about travel.  As Greg Klassen, vice-president of marketing with the Canadian Tourism Commission explains:

“The EQ model is unique to the industry in that it recognises and operates on social values, not demographics. Commonly held social values are in fact, much better indicators of consumer preferences – including travel consumption preferences – than demographics.” Read more in this DMO World interview with Greg Klassen.

The EQ model is based on a solid research foundation. Through adaptations of Environics Social Values model, the CTC can develop a user profile based on the reasons why people travel, including qualities of someone’s personality.

The CTC can then suggest Canadian experiences that are relevant to the traveller and consistent with the traveller’s EQ. The tool feeds back into segmentation activity and allows CTC to build a profile of travellers, and offer experiences, that are not just region based.

To create a profile travellers complete a 25 statement questionnaire dealing with travel habits and motivations. The tool includes an accuracy checker “does this sound like you?” Apparently 95% of EQ travellers say that the EQ groups partly or completely describe them.

Mine was certainly bang on!

Marketing activity then feeds into the visitor EQ type, presumably further building the visitor profle, and allowing for an ever more customised and granular marketing approach.

Tesco’s Clubcard meets travel?

So is it print on the bonfire and goodbye TV?

IF, and it’s a big if, you’re ready – then just possibly yes. Particularly if shrinking budgets force your hand.

But, I think a perquisite is a serious use of analytics and research to understand the visitor, their motivations and their online conversion behaviour.

Marketing must always be relevant – not to ourselves – but to the consumer. If your analytics data and your customer is telling you that online is the primary travel research and planning channel, then your customer is actually already giving you the answer to where should I spend?

‘Transparency’, ‘Trust’ and ‘Technology’ can seem like fashionable buzzwords. Overused to spice up worthy policy papers, with little real consideration for what they mean for the travel and tourism business. But we recently caught up with our favourite travel futurologist, Dr Ian Yeoman, who was keen to demonstrate how these ‘three Ts’ are already working together in the travel industry – and why they will continue to develop in importance in the coming years.

Although the concepts are clearly interlinked, lets take each of these themes in turn and examine their implications.

Transparency

At a broad level, transparency works in two ways.

Firstly, there is the need of businesses to be transparent. Secondly, transparency is imposed on businesses by the consumer whether that business likes it or not. But let’s unpack those two sentences yet further.

When we are talking about transparency, it is not just a case of being honest about the building site opposite your hotel but about allowing your consumer easy access to both your product and reliable information about that market.

Ian cited both:

• the demand for the right results fast, with absolute intolerance of slowness; and
• the desire to see through the blizzard of choice to get to where we actually want to get to

Added together this means a ‘culture of convenience’ in which consumers are simply more demanding and less tolerant of the slow and vague. As Joe Buhler discussed at Canada e-connect last week, the web 3.0 nirvana for the customer is the shift from searching to finding, from ‘pile ‘em high’ to personalised.

It should be appreciated that while the blizzard of choice might seem confusing at the outset, this blizzard is actually the crowded market place in which the consumer can be seduced by a huge variety of options and so the producer therefore needs to work harder to attract the consumer’s attention.

Until the semantic web nirvana arrives (see a great little video on what that means over at Buhlerworks), customers are having to do all the hard leg work of searching and researching. No wonder they’re impatient! It was suggested last week that people typically look at 17 websites while planing a trip (I don’t have a source on this, so don’t treat that as fact!)

Even the best website has just a few seconds to speak to and successfully sign-post the prospective visitor. 7 seconds used to be the number often quoted – now (as we’ve seen in user testing) its considerably less time than that.

“People want sites to get to the point. They have very little patience.” Jakob Nielsen

So in this context, transparency is about easy provision of information.

Trust

So, why do companies also need to be transparent? (Apart from the fact that whatever you’re hiding, it’s already on the internet somewhere!)

Because, in turn, transparency engenders trust.

From focus groups we’ve done, we’ve found that there is a residual distrust that areas (especially) marketed at a national level through a tourist board are simply not going to be how they are presented. It’s as though the consumer now feels that they are not going to get the full story about what the place is really like – is the pretty old town actually just a small part of a grimy industrial city for example?

It is no wonder, as we wrote about here, that the traveller places less trust in brand marketing than they do in user reviews and ratings. In fact, reviews/ratings from other travellers were seen as twice as influential in the online travel planning process than brand and significantly more important than recommendations from friends and family.

As Ian noted, “Less and less the consumer trusts advertising. One major consequence is that every tourism organisation or business needs to work hard to preserve whatever authority and trust-worthiness it has accumulated.”

So your brand still has capital, even though you can’t control communication. An organisation has to respect the fact that it is no longer the only information source, but acknowledge that it still has the potential to influence. By embracing – and having a strategy to manage and respond to – the authentic views of others, the business has the opportunity to benefit even when those reviews reflect an image removed from perfection.

Trendwatching have coined the term Brand Butler’s to express this concept:

BRAND BUTLERS “If consumers value the authentic, the practical, the exclusive, and they’re also forever looking to make life more convenient, even save some time, then why persist in bombarding them with one-way advertising campaigns? Instead of stalking potential and existing customers, why not assist them in smart, generous, relevant ways, making the most of your products and whatever it is your brand stands for?” Trendwatch Feb 09 Briefing

Technology

Of course, technology has been at the forefront of enabling this explosion of choice and views. If you think back to as little as 15 years ago, for ‘real’ views about a place we would consult either our travel agent or read a Lonely Planet guide (which I ended up not particularly trusting!). In terms of pricing, it was a lot simpler and often a case of ‘take it or leave it’.

The internet has of course opened up much of the industry to closer scrutiny as well as offering far wider choice (not that the choice wasn’t always there – it was just harder to find).

Search, meta-search & price comparisons, user generated content, dealing with multi websites simultaneously – and the fact that none of this stuff goes away – has changed the information gathering landscape.

Clear…as mud?

Interestingly, Ian also noted that

“There is a counter trend to everything transparent, in which opaqueness is accepted by tourists. Many tourists will accept an opaque offering, if that experience consistently delivers and surprises. Also, a lot of tourists like to keep things simple. They want to save time. They don’t want to make all the decisions. In other words, if you operate and deliver in a superior way, consumers may actually be happy and they don’t want to spend valuable time researching or engaging in conversations with you. They will trust you to do the right thing. Surrender control in order to get on with more important business. If your business or destination is opaque, it means you are one of the best, but you have to work at it to maintain that trust.”

It seems to me there are two things going on here. The first is the organisation that can anticipate and over deliver – the ability to surprise, and delight is trusted, presumably due in part to great word of mouth.

The second is the “easy life” compromise and sounds like the Easyjet scenario to me. Hidden extras I have to uncheck if I don’t want them added, a fairly unlovely experience alround and I don’t want to engage with them. But they get me there, its quick and its cheap. I’m not sure that’s trust, but its certainly willingly surrendered control, in exchange for convenience.

So what do I take away from this?

I guess for me this prognosis should be read as implying that these ‘Three Ts’ are about more than saying it’s a good idea to respond to user generated content such as hotel reviews. That’s certainly part of the environment but I think this is also talking about fundamental ways of doing business.

One of the cardinal lessons I would stress from this is the importance of ensuring access to the product. I don’t mean this in terms of being able to get to a destination but rather in terms of making sure that the custsomer’s voice is heard and served amidst the cacophony.

So, on a practical level, we’re looking at usability issues, we’re looking at understanding your customers and their behaviour, we’re looking at making sure that they are able to get information and maybe convert in a style that suits them, not you.

Ultimately then, it’s about trying to create a win/win transaction and the ways of getting to this state are indeed being fully explored both at the level of the here and now (see out recent post about the Phocuswright Innovation Summit for example) and as a meaningful future concept (again, see our post on Travel 3.0). 

And, for me, one of the most exciting parts of this is the fact that these developments are aligning themselves to the fundamentals of doing business – they’re not just filling some strange need for a new fad (although there are exceptions…) but rather they’re about building trust, they’re about delivering value to the customer in a way that suits them and they about enabling  voices to be heard in an ultra-competitive and challenging environment.

Filed by Stephen (29/01/09)

At an event as large as WTM, I find that a degree of mental fatigue can sometimes set in even to the most open-minded of souls. Yeah, I know that Country A is different from Country B in many important and significant ways and that the inhabitants of both would be very upset if I got them confused.

But the time can come when a man tires of stands offering similar offerings and needs to go in search of something else. Perhaps a walk on the wild side.

So, with that in mind, I decided to venture (within the safe confines of WTM) into the ‘axis of evil’ – in other words, I decided that I would visit the stands of countries that draw a fair amount of opprobrium and see how just how they were marketing themselves from a…errr…negative brand position.

The end result? In some cases, ‘ethical’ concerns might matter but I suspect that this can successfully be got round by some nifty marketing that addresses the emotional fears that unethical actions are a proxy for.

What do I mean by it being a proxy? Well, for example, if I believe that a government ready to imprison and torture its citizens seemingly on a whim, then I fear that there might be a chance that I might be subject to the same treatment, equally on a whim. But, there are ways and means around these unconscious fears that can help present destinations in a more favourable light. And the stands here are WTM might well be interesting insights into how to deal with these perceptions.

Take Cuba for example.

Cuba is not officially a paid up member of the axis of evil but Human Rights Watch (hardly a US stooge) notes that it is still a repressive country but the international public perception of it (outside the US) is that it is, at worst, almost a slightly wayward social democrat country that it is important to visit before it is ruined by nasty commercialism. I suspect that Cuba is well aware of this and, as such, its stand here at WTM is big, brash and confident. Ironically for a communist country, it is is a well marketed and professional destination marketed with considerable commercial nouce.

And it is fun.

As such, Cuba would appear to have listened to research and market forces and responded to consumer demands in improving and diversifying its product.

On the other hand, the Iranian stand (representing a country that is officially a member of the ‘axis of evil’) lacks this confidence. Like many of the Middle Eastern countries, it seems to rely on old images and on a slightly worth line of products. Their product appeals to a bookish person like myself but I think it communicates at the level of the head, not the heart. By this, I mean I need to be reassured that Iran, for example , is a safe place to visit where I won’t be stopped for a cultural misunderstanding. This doesn’t seem to happen and so, despite the attractions, there is still some nagging doubt. Overall, there doesn’t seem to be a suggestion of fun and the emphasis seemed to be on the historic, not the living.

However, fun seemed to be on the minds of the fellow evil-ites in the Syrian stand. Although the cliches undoubtedly abounded here as well, they were living cliches with people enjoying themselves – people laughing, people eating and people chatting. All of which are reassuring images common to all humanity.

While not an official ‘axis of evil’ country, China is nevertheless working hard to improve its image as a destination to visit. They’re not at the Iran level but neither are they are the Cuba level. I think their game is a longer one that will slowly build their brand to the point that they are perceived as a super-charged Singapore – no better or worse but certainly not grounds to avoid.

Finally, I went in search of the really evil Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. However, if they are here, their reputation for secrecy is intact as I couldn’t find them.

So, what can we learn from this slightly silly excuse of a post? Well, I think it is the lesson that destinations need to market to the heart as well as the head. As we noted a while ago, many of us carry conscious and unconscious prejudices and destinations need to address these in order to position themselves effectively. And although I have been using perhaps extreme examples, this lesson applies also to mainstream destinations – I don’t care if somewhere has a spectacular castle if it is an area where I’m likely to be mugged, for example.

Right, I’m off to find the Zimbabwean and Guantanamo Bay stands.

Update 1700: Well, after my mention of the Zimbabwe stand, I did go to and it struck me as traditional (safaris and all that) but…actually good. Despite the situation in the country, the stand suggested safety and fun. Not sure what that means for my theory.

External Links:

GoCuba (Canadian official site)

Iran Tourism

Syria Tourism (actually not a great site in contrast to the stand – you need to come and talk to us, guys)

China Tourism

Tourism in North Korea

Axis of Evil

I’m down in London this week for the World Travel Market and this is the first of a few posts with some thoughts and impression. Given an event of this size, there is always the danger that you are going to miss something and so this is by necessity a subjective account.

WTM Global Trends Report

OK, let’s start off with an overview of the WTM Global Trends Reports prepared in partnership with Euromonitor.

Despite the talk of markets that have growth potential, it is clear that in the next few years, there is going to be, at best, a slow down in the tourism and travel sector. Beyond that, however, there are new markets and new possibilities. So here are a few of the highlights for me from the report:

• Free and cross-subsidized pricing will become increasingly used (but regular Tracking Tourism readers knew that back in March!)

• Customers are downsizing in a variety of ways – but still travelling. In some cases, this downsizing happily coincides with a desire for more authenticity (home swaps, for example, so that you get to live like a local) and in other cases it’s simply a move to cheaper alternatives (good old price elasticity of demand coming into play).

• Destinations are having to cast their nets wider to catch customers. For example, the report cites the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands marketing beyond the traditional US market. Although not made explicit in the report, this surely means greater competition among destinations for similar pools of customers, something I’ll touch on a little later.

• The downsizing/authenticity nexus can arguably be described as resulting in a travel 2.0 experience in which ‘user generated’ social network interaction online result in real visits made to real people in real neighbourhoods as a logical extension of that way of interacting. Obviously, before we get to breathless about this, most of you will appreciate that this is a variant on ‘visiting friends and relatives’ and it’s what people do when they have less cash. But, I can see that Web 2.0 technologies can make this a more easily facilitated process than might have occurred in previous years.

• There’s an increasingly complicated pictures of inter-regional travel and tourism. For example, a Scot working in the Oil industry in Saudi and part of the large expat community there should be considered not only as a Scot in terms of travel preferences but also as a potential traveller defined by where he currently works. So, to take our example further, his circumstances mean that a jaunt to Dubai might be more appealing than a jaunt to Ibiza or somewhere similar popular with British people.

Some elements of the report I disagree with or feel that they occupy a really niche market. For example, there is a section on philanthropic tourism whereby rich westerners have a feel-good break that ethically engages with the local community (a bit like Fairtrade travel). I don’t deny that such travel exists and that there is some customer demand for it (as opposed to it being part of the Corporate Social Responsibility PR agenda of the supplier) but wonder how large such a market will be over the next torrid couple of years and their lingering aftermath. I’m not too sure how charitable I might be feeling in 18 months time!

The press release for the WTM Global Trends Report can be accessed here.

Increased competition

I also attended a press conference yesterday for Croatian Tourism and, as with most countries, there is a real recognition of the benefits of tourism for the economy and the image of the country. But seeing Croatia’s efforts also made me realise the sheer intensity of competition in some regions and the need to define a really clear proposition for the customer.

Put simply Croatia is a great Mediterranean country with a great coast that wants to get more upmarket customers. Great ambitions but I suspect that it has France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, the Balearics, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and the rest of the 25 countries bordering the Med. as competition and all adopting similar strategies.

This doesn’t mean that Croatia shouldn’t try but rather that each of these areas needs to have a clear USP, brand or market position to get ahead. And while ‘quality tourism’ remains an attractive prospect, I often wonder whether ‘good value’ (i.e. cheaper) tourism isn’t still a viable aspiration. Your thoughts on this one gratefully received.

Stop me!

Finally, I suspect that many of Trackingtourism.com’s UK readers are attending WTM so do email me if you want to meet up on Tuesday 11th November.

Google’s business model is simple. It wants you to spend your money wisely on Google business products and, to help you achieve those ends, there are tools to make your spending decisions more informed.

Looked at from another angle, they offer a bunch of tools that you and I can use free of charge.

This post forms part of a series over the next few weeks that will show you how to make the most of tools like this – as well asking some more probing questions about how far they can really help you.

This post originated in a question I asked myself recently, “what exactly does the tool data in Google Trends and Google Insight show and what has this got to do with travel and tourism?”

At a top level, the answer is quite simple. Google Trends shows data relating to traffic to websites while Google Insight shows data related to search terms. However, what they have the potential to give you is considerable and so for this post, I’ll talk just about Google Trends, followed in the future by Google Insights and then finally a post dealing with some more ‘philosophical’ questions these tools have thrown up.

What is Google Trends showing and why is it useful?

OK, let’s start with Google Trends. If you click here, you’ll open up a new window with Google Trend data for visitscotland.com. At this point, you’ll see a graph showing daily unique visitors to the visitscotland.com site over a period of about 2 years. You’ll also see a bunch of data below it. Let’s look at those two elements in turn.

Before I get going though, I would like to stress that I’m using visitscotland.com here as an example only. The point of this is to look at data for your own site (assuming you have sufficient traffic) and to use the techniques contained in this post.

The graph shows a representation of the number of times visitscotland.com has been called up via Google. Note that this is not searches for visitscotland.com in a search box but rather the number of times someone has visited the site and Google has been in a position to capture that data (with some caveats).

Now, this graph can show a lot more but I want to mention the lower half of the screen before getting into that as it is where the data starts to get really interesting.

On the left, you get an indication of where the visitors to visitscotland.com and coming from. In other words, you can see by geography where the warmest prospects are.

In the middle, you can see which other sites were also visited alongside visitscotland.com. In our example, you can see sites ranked that you might expect to see – and depending on your perspective, this might be comforting or unsettling. For example, if you saw visitireland.com as the most visited other site, you would know that there was a real fight at this level to attract visitors who were torn between destinations.

And on the right hand side, you see the search terms that are most often associated with that site. Again, this might be revealing or comforting. For example, if you run a website for a DMO in a whisky distillery town and people find you only by the brandname of your whisky and not under something more generic like ‘whisky tourism scotland’, then this would be a sign that your site isn’t attracting as many visitors as it could.

But the fun really starts because you can start to compare sites.

Let’s demonstrate this by taking our example above and adding a few more sites – visitbritain.com and visitsweden.com. It should now look like this.

Let’s start with the graph. It shows that visitscotland.com attracts more visitors than visitbritain.com or visitsweden.com. It also shows that visitscotland has different peaks and troughs to the other sites at a global level (predominantly the effect of Hogmanay I would guess).

In the bottom half of the screen, you’ll see that you can segment this data by region and by website. You’ll notice that under the ‘ranked by’ tab, you’ll see how each geographic area performs for each of these sites. You’ll notice in our example how Scotland and Sweden are broadly similar in terms of interest in Germany. If, in the upper right of the screen, you use the drop-down box to change ‘all regions’ to ‘Germany’, you should see something like this.

So what’s this saying? It’s saying that, in this instance, people in Germany have show a greater propensity to visit the visitscotland.com site at a different time to the visitsweden site. That might be on account of a campaign by visitscotland in Germany…or it might just show a different ‘natural’ search pattern (and I’ll show you in a coming post how you can go about finding that out). If we assume on this occasion that German’s simply are more interested in visitscotland.com at the periods suggested, wouldn’t it make sense to have the website ready to react to this niche interest at the time? The data suggests that it might be wrong to assume that people think of destinations in a uniform way and that you need to be ready to respond to the customer when they actually come calling, not when you think they ought to be calling.

Conversely, if the spike was the result of an advertising campaign, this gives an indication of how long its effect lasted and how big it was in comparison to the spike caused by possible competitor marketing.

(I’ll hasten to add, I’m not passing judgment on visitscotland.com but just using them as an example – for all I know they might well be doing all this already!)

What I’ve described rather quickly in this post is one, powerful view that the travel and tourism industry can use to get a deeper understanding of how it sits in the online world. But, as is often the case, you need to look at other areas in order to build upper a more mature understanding and so this represents just one part of the picture. In the coming weeks, we’ll develop this theme further with more tips on these free tools.

See post 2 in this series – Warning bells you can’t afford to ignore: courtesy of Google Insights

Further reading:

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Trends for Websites

Forget the political pollsters, Destination DC has its eye on different data

At last week’s eMetrics Summit I had the good fortune to catch up with some really switched on US based destination marketers.

One of those people was Andy Whittaker, Marketing Research Manager for Destination DC. We spoke about the challenges of marketing a place that is on every American’s travel must-do list.

And we philosophised about the incredible challenges of accurately measuring return on investment in destination marketing, when the influencing factors on the travel decision can be so emotional, intangible and thoroughly complicated! (Those guys selling planks of wood and software don’t know how lucky they are!)

He explained “Tourism marketing faces such a huge analysis challenge beyond those faced by consumer goods.  As an industry we’re trying to build awareness, increase loyalty, develop advocates, build visitors – but all these others factors are involved. There are perceptions of fuel costs, emotional responses to uncertainty, competition from destinations all over the world. With limited budget the challenge is to how manage and measure all these things and understand ROI – it’s really difficult.”

A marriage made in heaven

Andy is one of an increasing number of tourism marketers making the shift from pure market research, to a broader role that encompasses web strategy and analysis. With the offical DC Tourism website now coming under his remit, research is blending into web analytics and online data is being harnessed to drive strategy. Yes, it’s hard – but it is also critically important.

Andy is absolutely right to note that combining research and online analysis is a powerful tool in understanding visitor behaviour and improving marketing strategy and effectiveness on the back of that. So often destinations have been led reluctantly online by their own consumers – but standing back while other destinations nail online strategy simply isn’t an option.

“There must be a joined up research approach – the marriage between consumer behaviour and emotional aspects of travel has to be factored in across all channels”

Experienced base web messaging

So earlier this year, the city rebranded itself with a new marketing strategy inviting visitors to create their own “power trips” to Washington DC and emphasising the city’s neighbourhoods beyond the traditional tourist haunts of the Mall and White House. Following extensive brand research, key experiences/persona roles were developed that web visitors can self-identify with to plan their trip and “experience DC.”

Knowledge seekers, urban explorers, families and more all get differently targeted content, based on the pillars identified in the research and the expanded product offering. Andy explains:

“DC has a smaller number of repeat visits compared to competitor cities. Many visitors to DC are getting a surface level experience, just seeing the big attractions. But there is so much more to product, we’d love to attract more repeat business – taking visitors to a new level of experience by exposing them to different layers of the product”.

It seems to me that the experience customisation on the site is still in its early days – there is so much more potential. I would have liked to be able to create my personal experience then easily transfer it to my Blackberry or iPod and hit the streets. But the approach as it stands now is successfully delivering on these objectives of offering a depth and breadth of potential experience. They seem to be on the right track of a smart world city destination, rather than an urban theme park experience.

Innovating for the international market

And product innovation is a necessity. International visitors are lucrative business. They make up only about 8 percent of visitors to DC, but they account for more than 25% of tourism spending (contributing more than $1,000 per visitor on average, compared with less than $300 per domestic visitor).

Washington DC faces increasing competition worldwide – their UK and Canada markets, for example, are being heavily targeted by many other destinations worldwide. The India, China and French markets are growing – but Destination DC realise they need to understand the messages potential visitors are getting from other destinations globally.

Smartly and despite limited resources (Destination DC invests $1million a year in paid marketing/advertising – a small fraction of New York, Las Vegas or Orlando’s investment), they are focussing efforts on understand differing international market trends relating broadband, e-readiness, direct online purchase trends etc.

Traditionally international markets have been marketed to through trade channels – but this is changing too. Destination DC realises it needs to go direct to consumers through online marketing activities, because this is how travellers now plan and to some varying extents purchase their trips.

For Andy, the eMetrics Summit seems to have been something of an epiphany (of the data variety of course!)

“I came into this conference to better understand how to better utilise the basic web analytics data like pages views etc. But what I have seen is the bigger and more powerful picture. The opportunity to understand voice of customer online, to measure satisfaction and tie it all together in terms of how we are meeting specific strategic goals.”

Be very afraid New York, Las Vegas, Orlando and London! Destination DC have seen what they can do with their data and they’re not afraid to exploit it for unfair advantage.

Let us know how it goes Andy!

Great examples of the tourism industry successfully combining research and technology (and what the rest of us could learn from this)

My post last week was a bit of a moan – probably something to do with winter returning to Scotland and the general state of the world.  So, I thought I would balance out some of the negativity with some posts on people that are really getting things right.

Firstly, I would like to point you to William Bakker, director of eBusiness at Tourism British Columbia. As an area marketing agency, I think Tourism BC has one of the most sophisticated and advanced operations I have seen and the following paragraphs encapsulate one of the reasons why:

“We have conducted focus groups, phone interviews, card sorts and/usability tests to find the best way to organize the content on each website. We start with research about how our target audience in a particular market approach their trip planning; their mental model. We adjust our taxonomy where needed. For example, in North America a farm accommodation is called a ‘guest ranch‘. In the UK it’s called a ‘cowboy ranch‘ and in Australia a farmstay.”

What can I say apart from, ‘Wow!’  Although this approach might seem sophisticated to some, I recognise it as actually very simple at heart.  It’s the approach that says you should remember that your customers are human and need to be researched as such to get the full picture.

I particularly liked William’s comment about language.  This is something I think might be overlooked by a number of businesses and organisations but is vital if you want people to recognise what it is you are offering.  In some instances, you might get a clue to this if you are able to analyse searches made from within a site that have ‘odd’ terms but I think that the larger issue of language and its use is probably best started with real live people in focus groups.

Its an approach we always take in our tourism research projects as well – we recognise the immense value of quantitative data (whether that’s web analytics or traditional surveys) but feel that the best value is derived when you go that one stage further to probe the human element and combine it with the quant. I think this usually leads to a far more sustainable outcome.

You can read more at William’s blog here.

Another post that caught my eye was from the Karin Schmollgruber’s interview with Angela Zechmann(Director of E-Marketing and Internet for Salzburg Area Tourism) at the blog Fastenyourseatbelts.com. The interview is about about the Salzburg Area Tourism’s efforts to attract a younger audience to the area the site www.onebigpark.at and, in some ways, continues the theme from British Columbia that you need to understand that different audiences need information in a language specific to them.

But the other thing that made me sit up was that I was reminded of a conversation related to me a while ago about Austrian tourism to the effect that their ongoing research revealed that the country was having difficulty attracting young people.  I am not privy to the data for Salzburg so will assume that their research also suggests that, for mainland Europeans, Salzburg means Mozart and pretty mountains and, for people from the UK and the US, the Sound of Music – none of which suggests to me a largely younger profile of visitor (Angela, Karin – let me know if I am way off the mark here!).

And it’s not only a case of identifying an issue but doing something tactical about it with a considered Web 2.0 to help fulfil a strategy to encourage younger people back.  In other words, it’s a piece of joined up thinking and a good example of the intelligent application of 2.0.

The original is in German here and one of those rather odd internet translations for you non-German speakers can be found here.

My eye was also caught by this post at Phil Caine’s Tourism Tide on the potential conflict between Yield Management and Price Transparency.

To some of you, this might sound at best an arcane venture into a world far beyond your business.  I would disagree as it concerns something fundamental to all business – trust and transparency.  So, for example, reviews on tripadvisor at the moment just have people discussing the condition of an establishment.  What if those reviewers ever started comparing prices with one another?

Well, there are already moves that way in the accommodation sector with the likes of Farecast. This added-value price comparison site is essentially doing for the accommodation sector what price comparison sites have been doing for the transportation sector for a while.

For many establishments thismight not seem an  issue but, from experience, I know that accommodation prices can fluctuate at certain parts of the market and for much the same reasons as at the top end of the industry – such as sellers want to make a buck without having to pay an intermediary.

To that end of the tourism sector that thinks this is some far-off fad, let me say that this will happen whether you like it or not.  It doesn’t matter that you think of intercontinental air jouney is a big ticket item and your accommodation offering as small ticket item – customers will apply the same standards of transparency of value to both. Looking beyond the lowest common denominator horizon will help you prepare for changes like this.

Finally, I think the Canada-e-Connect Tourism Strategy Conference 2009 might just be the place if you are looking for intelligent debate and insight into how best to harness the new opportunities.  I don’t think the program is finalised yet but, judging on the people behind it, it won’t be looking at ‘lowest common denominator’ stuff but instead offering something for those with more vision.

“Tourism is everyone’s business”

From Scotland to South Africa, Beijing to the Cook Islands, it’s a much quoted maxim that “tourism is everyone’s business”.  Not surprisingly, it passes particularly from the lips of those national and regional marketers charged with putting a destination’s best faced forward to the world.  They are only too aware of the severe damage that gaps between the promise and delivery of experience can cause.

With all the multiple touchpoints that impact on a visitors end-to-end experience, one bad apple has the power to sour the visitor experience. Sometimes to the extent that the good businesses cannot fully redeem it.

As a result, the investment to win, satisfy and re-attract a customer at national, regional and individual business level is undermined.

Sound like I’m exaggerating?  Here at Highland Business Research we conduct direct visitor satisfaction research across countries, destinations and individual businesses.  We seek out visitors for face to face or internet research, plus they seek us out to share their experiences through our systematic customer experience measurement programmes.

Here are some first hand examples of the bad apple effect in actions.

“I just had to get this off my chest”…

I recently received a phone call from a visitor who’d just experienced the worst meal of their life.  The hotel in question was not our client and had provided no means for the visitor to give feedback.  But so incensed and upset was this individual that they went to the trouble of using a feedback postcard from a completely different business to track down our number and call.

They felt that had wasted money they could ill afford, a special occasion had been spoilt and their impression of the overall destination was unquestionably tarnished.  So they went to the effort to tell someone “in tourism” about it, in the hope someone cared.  Another person would have been on Tripadvisor, blogging or writing to the local newspaper.

Our client, who has invested in their business and in analysing and acting on customer feedback, not only lost trade to the bad apple but in effect subsidised the means for the bad apple’s customer to complain.

In another incident, a visitor almost shook with rage during a recent face to face interview as they recalled how a few days earlier they had been subjected to particularly patronising and abusive “service” in a shop where they were browsing for high end gifts.  They had decided to keep their money and weren’t planning any more shopping.

Because we spend a lot of time asking visitors about their experience and represent a disinterested party they can be frank with, we not only hear about some appalling examples of bad apples in action – we also get to see just how strong the emotional reaction is to the negative experiences.

The ripple-out effect is wide.

When conducting research for destination A it is common to be told about an emotive incident that occurred in destination B – completely beyond the scope of influence of those undertaking the research, but one and the same in the visitors mind.

Bad experiences stick and people want to get them off their chest by telling others about them.  And they now have the tools to tell a bigger audience than ever.  The ripple out is a problem because it takes more than an equal amount of good experiences to offset the damage from a very negative one.  Additionally the negative experience anchors satisfaction low, so that the visitor is also likely to rate the other tourism businesses that they encounter lower than they would otherwise have done.

Wired’s take on the anchoring effect: “If a customer watches three movies in a row that merit four stars — say, the Star Wars trilogy — and then sees one that’s a bit better — say, Blade Runner — they’ll likely give the last movie five stars. But if they started the week with one-star stinkers like the Star Wars prequels, Blade Runner might get only a 4 or even a 3.”

So what to do about the bad apples?

There’s no deny that tourists and therefore tourism and travel businesses are facing an economic struggle.  With vacation time and income tight, the sting of a very bad experience with the bad apple is potentially even more potent. And with competition fierce, a good business or destination that is making effort and investment is justified in being frustrated when future business is lost thanks to a bad apple.

So assuming that a Beijing Olympics approach to obstacles is not taken, what does a destination or a group of businesses do about the bad apple that is impacting on the experience of their own visitors?

I must be honest and say I have no grand plan – only some loose ideas below.  I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.  Here are my views on some possible options:

• Just let market forces take their toll. If they’re that bad they’ll go out of business.  The trouble with this one is that in current economic circumstances they’ll probably go out of business slower than a far better business that has debt from investment in its product and expensive well trained staff.  I’m not sure “do nothing” can be enough for a destination that is fighting hard to stay business.

• Provide a band aid, moral support and try to outshine the negative. The good business tries to offset the negative impact, by virtue of its qualities, winning the visitor round in the process.  The trouble is, the negative has already had an impact.  An anchoring effect kicks in, meaning that the rating the good business achieves may still be lower – despite them doing everything right – than it would have been after a series of good experiences by the customer.

• Name and shame – let the customers do the talking? Tourism businesses have always listened to their customers’ feedback on the associated experiences in their visit that they did or didn’t enjoy and have used these to formulate future recommendations for customers.  The popularity of online travel ratings and user generated content means it possible for you to have a wider than ever view of who the bad apples in your market are.  Visitors are talking and you can listen.  Whether you then encourage your customers to avoid the bad apples like the plague, or are tasked with trying to bring them up to standard depends on your job description!

• Apply the carrot of training/rewards and the stick of policy at a national or regional level. Not an option that tends to have teeth in free market Western democracies, but still wrestled with the world over.  But with so much of the tourism sector operating in a grey zone outside of official quality assurance programs, or impacted by businesses such as retail that may not even regard themselves as “in tourism” – taking this approach as a standalone seems doomed outside of planned economies.

• Lead by example to drive sector, community or destination level quality control activities.  Ah, a tough one.  Movements like Scotland’s Pride and Passion have taken this approach, with the private sector trying to lead by best practice example.  However, the concern is that they are preaching to the converted.  Are they ever successful in influencing the indifferent, ill-willed and the incompetent that make up the bad apples? (This is a genuine question – please do tell me if you know!)

If I had to pick one, personally it would be name and shame by letting the customers do the talking – and really utilise what you are hearing for competitive advantage.  As my recent distressed caller said “there are clearly so much nicer places about, I want other people to be able to find them instead of places that don’t give a damn”.

I’d love to hear if you know of different appraches to this issue that have worked.

So…we’re all open minded, liberal in outlook and, above all, lacking in prejudice aren’t we? Well, as with many things, the answer isn’t perhaps what you would like it to be and is more complex than it first appears.

The bottom line, in my experience, is that people are prejudiced and you need to be aware of this when marketing your destination.

When I say prejudiced, it should be understood that I don’t mean bigoted or chauvinistic (although there is a part of the market that is). What I mean instead is that we all have preconceived ideas about destinations that mean we unconsciously use these prejudices as filters in our decision processes.

But how do you discover what people’s prejudices are and, more importantly, how can you change them?

Well, the answer is, in the first place, to really get under your potential customer’s skin. And I don’t just mean doing a quick survey but really getting into their way of thinking because a glibly expressed prejudice (”I don’t fancy a holiday in Germany” for example) can actually be just the visible expression of a complex set of ideas.

We’ve just finished an evaluation of a UK wide marketing campaign for an overseas destination and its reminded us of how powerful qualitative research is at revealing the kinds of small preconceptions we all carry that act as barriers in our decision to choose one destination over another.

I’m not going to name the destination and I’m not going to discuss specific results – the clients paid me to deliver the work to them and not broadcast it openly on the internet, so you’ll have to bear with me on that one! But I can use heavily disguised fictitious examples of the kinds of the insights we received to illustrate the points.

Before I do, I do appreciate that a lot of people remain wary of qualitative research – the term ‘focus group’ especially seems to provoke some pretty sceptical reactions. It seems to have connotations of flimsy insight, people telling you want you want to hear, management fads and slightly distasteful associations with unprincipled political processes.

Handled badly this is indeed what you will get for your money. Handled well, however, and you start to gain a richness beyond bare numbers.

So, lets look at some of those disguised examples:

“I like the marketing campaign image of the jet skiing – I just thought the area was rainy and grey but the blue sea makes me realise that it could be a warm beach destination as well!” 

Note that the original intention of the image being discussed in the example above was to convey a more active and sporty image for the destination, not one that was suggestive of the climate. However, it revealed that other people in the target group had the idea that the destination was cold and grey – this was their prejudiced view of the destination.

Now, before we go further, perhaps a little more about prejudice. As I suggested above, prejudice is one very human way of making decisions quickly. I’m not saying that the decision is rational (a suspicion of someone based on skin colour is clearly irrational in a modern person for example) but just because it is an ‘unthinking’ response, it doesn’t mean that it is an irrelevant response. Lets go back to the example above to illustrate that point further.

People who go on holiday with young children know that climate plays a much more important role in the experience than it might for a childless couple. If a destination is too hot, your children need to be protected. If it’s too wet, they need to be entertained. And you can’t just go to the pub/museum/cinema/shops with them – they need appropriate attention for young children. So, reassurance that a destination has a good climate is ticking an unconscious box in the minds of parents, despite the fact that the message contained in the original image was aimed at someone different (hedonistic 20-30 year olds for example).

In our example, the parents’ prejudice expressed as ‘cold and grey’ was a mask for a more complex and rational set of deliberations they employ when making a decision about the right destination to take children to.

“It’s great to experience local culture but a good hotel offers a sense of real sanctuary from all that – there comes a point when you want to shut the door and relax and know you will be safe and unhassled”

Now, a statement expressed in terms like this is probably not one that would not be made in every part of the world, although a variation of it might well be universal. The underlying desire is for security and a sense of ‘circling the wagons’ in order to catch your breath at the end of the day. But would you necessarily express it like that if you were holidaying , say, in North West Scotland? My guess is that it more likely to be something said by someone who expects to experience a vibrant but slightly chaotic culture destination. There are positives in this person’s statement (they think they can interact safely with the local culture) but it should also be recognised that they think there is a slightly wilder element and so need reassurance that they can (literally) shut the door on all that.

So what?

The examples above both demonstrate that certain market segments have preconceived ideas about an area that mean that they quickly discard some options without serious consideration. Understanding the reasons behind these notions means that you can start to answer them head on. In the examples I used above, the person speaking needed reassurance that their discomfort and bother would be minimised, and even though they received this tangentially, the destination’s marketing did tackle their concerns.

The point is, however, that you won’t know what really makes your customer’s tick unless you listen to them. And it’s not just about listening – it’s also about hearing what isn’t being said and what is being said, but in a disguised way.

Quick! Call the police!

There’s probably another blog post altogether in this observation but I’ve often been struck at how the techniques used by the police in interviews and techniques used in a focus group are similar. I’ll stress that I’ve never been interviewed myself by the police but policemen I know have described their interview methods to me and there are a lot of similarities – you’re both interested in peeling away the outer layer of stories to see if there is anything more underneath.

So, if any of you know policemen or women, ask them about ‘softly softly’ interview techniques – they might just come in useful when listening to your customers!