Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Marketing strategy’ Category

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!

But burying your head in the sand is not an option either…

Yesterday I met with a tourism business that has been spending a considerable part of its precious marketing budget with a search engine optimisation consultant. Results had been slow, but their consultant had said it would take at least 6 months and they thought things might now be starting to pick up, just as predicted.

Still, they had asked if I would take a look at their web analytics data and see if I could shed some light on how their 6 month SEO investment was going and whether I had any tips based on that data for further improvements they could make.

What I found, to mutual distress, was yet another tourism business who had been ripped off - either through ignorance on the part of the consultant, or quite possibly through deliberate greed and laziness.

I do not profess to be an SEO expert (though happily I know a few). But I am a web analytics and customer insight professional. I can recognise how people arrive at a site and the behaviour they undertake when they get there. I can also recognise when marketing expenditure has had no discernible effect in relation to its conversion objectives.

So, with those provisos in mind, I thought I would share these tips with you.

1. The search charlatans are still out there

There is no “no work” option when it comes to SEO. It is your page content, architecture, headers, titles, linking, images, videos, key phrases, relevancy etc etc etc that a good SEO company will work on.

When people promise no effort, no site alteration results, be suspicious.

Here’s some alarm bell generators:

Keyword meta-tags - “armed only with some keywords in the meta tag, we will magically search optimise your site, propelling it to the top of the search engine rankings.”

If you’ve heard this one, you’re not alone, for this is the one I come across the most amongst small businesses and was the issue yesterday.

There is much debate about what (if any) value the keyword meta tag has. It has been declared completely dead by many in the SEO field, while others make perfectly valid demonstrations that it is still a factor for some search engines in some cases.The point is that is just one of hundreds of factors that may or may not influence rankings and never the only one.

If keyword tags are the only thing your SEO consultant is proposing, get more proposals or save your money and tinker yourself. This SEOmoz post gives you hints on choosing a good SEO vendor and this post by Eric Enge has tips on how to spot the bad ones.

Tricks and naughty stuff that will make search engines frown

Keywords stuffing, whited out text, junk links, cloaking, nonsense content that clearly isn’t written for people - this is the world of bad SEO and your business will most likely suffer as a result.

This article has Top 10 Google Dont’s - things you (or for that matter your paid supplier) should never do for search engine optimisation, while this post from the Tri-city commerce group Web Development blog is a good round up on Avoiding common SEO rip offs.

It may sound tedious, but I think the most useful thing you can do is try and educate yourself just a little on SEO (a resource list is at the end of the post). If people are trying to exploit your lack of awareness, a little bit of knowledge will help protect you from the bulk of the ignorant and ignoble!

2. You cannot ignore search engine optimisation

Just because “there be dragons”, that doesn’t mean hiding is an option that will help your long term business survival. As I mentioned in the last post, just 25% of traffic typically arrives at your website through the home page - the rest come deep in, via search. Google alone drives nearly 40% of all UK Internet traffic.

Jupiter Research and iProspect’s Blended search results study shows that appearing on page one of the search engine results is now more important than ever:

“The data indicates that more search engine users click the first page in 2008 (68%) as compared to than in 2006 (62%), 2004 (60%) and 2002 (48%). Inversely, fewer search engine users are willing to click results past the third page in 2008 (8%) as compared to 2006 (10%), 2004 (13%) and 2002 (19%).

So more than ever, it is vital for search marketers to ensure that their digital assets appear within the first three pages of search results, and especially on page one.”

I’m actually surprised their data finds that many people making it past page one. I saw usability expert Jakob Nielsen presenting a few week back and his eye tracking data was showing that only a tiny fraction of people even made it below the fold of the first page (people basically do not bother, or do know know how to scroll). He also found that if they don’t get the results they need on the first page above the fold (that could only be 3 organic results in a highly competitive paid earch environment) they simply refine their search and try again, rather than bother to scroll or go to page 2 or 3 of the results.

You are only going to appear on those search terms for which your page or site is the most relevant. How do you get onto that front page? Well you either pay your way there through paid search marketing, or you optimise your way there to pull in “free” traffic. Your budget will determine whether you outsource that optimisation process, or whether it is another of your critical DIY web tasks.

3. Universal and blended search is changing the playing field

Google has designed Universal Search to present search engine results in all forms of media including video, photos, PDF files, maps, and news items, all in one result page. “Blended search” is what they call Universal Search when it’s by anyone but Google.

I saw search guru Mike Grehan speaking at the London eMetrics Summit last week and he was talking about vertical creep - essentially how Google’s univeral search results are pushing the organic results down below the fold of page 1 (into nowheresville).

As you can see in the image below, on my laptop, if I search for Edinburgh hotels on Google, there is now only one old style organic result above the fold - the organic hotspot to be for tourism businesses now is beside the map that dominates the page (and the eyeballs)!

The impact is that there is even tighter competition for the organic search spots on page 1 and tools like videos, images and map placement have a roll in that.

Add if you’re not on the map you can add your business free over at the Google business center - its simple and worth the effort.

4. Relevance, relevance, relevance

Ultimately a search engine’s ongoing success is dependent on it delivering to its users the best, most relevant results for the terms they are searching on. The search engine is looking for pages that are relevant to the searcher.

If your pages are well tailored to your specific customers’ needs, using the vocabulary they use and answering the specific problems they are facing, better search results will be a side effect.

Optimising for your customers (ie real human beings) mustn’t be swept away in the quest for search rankings - because once you win a visitor from a search engine, you next need to ensure that person can do what they came for (and what your site exists for).

5. Paying for a click is not the same as paying for a customer

If you pay £1 per click for paid search advertising, and 99 out of 100 people immediately turn around and leave your site without doing anything else, you are paying £100 not £1 for a potential customer. If only 1 person in 1000 actually does want you want them to - say buy a ticket - then that customer is costing you £1000.

Whether you are working on paid search marketing or organic search engine optimisation, judge your success not in terms of how many people click into your site, but by how many people come and then do what you want them to.

It is a waste of money if you use paid search adverts to drive people to pages that are not relevant to their needs, because they will turn around and leave again. Likewise, with organic search, you can have highly attractive content that pulls many people into your site (a game or giveaway for example) - but if none of those people actually convert into doing what your site exists for, is that really a success?

Importance of measuring your website

There is no need to only take someone else’s word for what is working and what isn’t - the web analytics tools are there that will let you see end results in terms of uplifted sales (or other conversions) for yourself.

Some elements of search are shrouded in mystery (the mythical components of Google’s algorithm for one!) However, “is this working for my business?” does not need to be one of those mysteries. I will follow up with a specific post on how web analytics can help you understand how your web visitor’s search.

In the meantime, here are some resources to help:

• A detailed beginner’s guide to search engine optimisation from SEOmoz
• Wikipedia on the subject
• A Plea to Stop Treating SEO as an Afterthought
• Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine
• How Search Engines Work
• How Search Engines Rank Web Pages
• Why the Vast Majority of SEOs No Longer Target Individual Search Engines

Now, I appreciate that when you write for a blog with an emphasis on travel and technology, you’re supposed to be positively evangelical about new media and technology opportunities.

The man who couldn’t see the point of Twitter? Image copyight of www.hmbateman.com

But I have a guilty secret. I think a lot of the online social networking phenomena are downright silly and I generally refuse to participate in some aspects of it.

Notice that I say ‘some aspects’ though. I have embraced blogging for example. I watch clips of ancient cricket matches on YouTube when I think no-one is looking. I have checked out my accommodation on trip advisor and I follow the debates on WIWIH as well as those on sites by my fellow bloggers.

But am I the one being silly? Heavens forfend but could some of your customers feel the same way as well?

So what’s my problem?

Well, here are three thoughts to start with:

• Just because a new 2.0 site is cool, it doesn’t mean it will remain that way. Mass migrations can render them useless in months.
• Because a site is cool, it doesn’t mean I have any use for it. My own dancing badger might be pretty cool to own but I don’t actually have a use for one.
• Anyway, I don’t care about cool, I want a site or technology to have proved itself and know that it will continue to prove itself.

Let’s take those in turn:

I find the propensity for rapid mass migrations from one ‘cool site’ to another a little unnerving. There are already signs that Twitter (the yet-to-come ‘next big thing’ for some people) is old hat and that people are really just gearing up to run off to their next watering hole. Myself, if I go somewhere I like to think that can at least catch my breath before my travelling companions decide that we have to sprint from location to the next…and to the next….and to the next. And if I’m left behind or told to make my own way there…well, there’s a certain pleasure in taking things at your own pace and looking before you leap.

I was a member of Facebook for a while but ultimately can’t see any purpose for it. Despite my penchant for wearing loud tweed, I’m quite a quiet fellow and don’t feel the need to broadcast my every move. I don’t think anyone beyond me would really give a hoot knowing that my current location was a bothy in Sutherland or that I had thrown a sheep at someone I vaguely know.

Putting those thoughts together means that I will invest my time in something if it will still exist meaningfully in six months and if it has a enhanced use beyond something I am currently using.

So what?

The lesson is that although you might be wrapped up in the latest tech developments, your audience might not. They might be creatures of habit who are slow to change. Developing a marketing strategy based on the latest NEW! IMPROVED! TWOOTA! TECHNOLOGY! might sound like a good idea but you are taking a risk and people like me will ignore you.

But the refusniks are obviously not all standing athwart the Web 2.0 yelling “stop!” I’m not reinstalling a fax machine in my office and I don’t intend hand writing a letter to a hotel to enquire if they have rooms. But neither am I going to be at the bleeding edge of the next cool thing.

Eternal Verities of the business mind

For me, a business idea works if it fits into the framework of The Five P’s (click here for an overview and explanation). I’m usually a little suspicious of seemingly glib frameworks like the Five Ps but I have found this to work time and again in my experience. I’ll expand on this framework in a later post but suffice to say, new solutions for me must fall within this framework – just because we have news ways of working doesn’t mean that we have become fundamentally different types of beings.

For those of you with hazy memories, the Five Ps are:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• People

It is my conviction that your business decisions are all geared to getting these Ps right – Twitter, Facebook and so forth are just tools to achieving these aims. If they don’t do that, then they are irrelevant.

Now I expect some disagreement with my views – so what are you waiting for?

(Disclaimer: unlike me, Vicky is a very happy Twitter/Facebook/Xing/LinkedIn user. Luddites have not yet completely taken over TrackingTourism.com)

New 100% online eMarketing courses for businesses

We’ve been really working hard in the background with the University of the Highlands and Islands to develop a series of ground-breaking new, practical courses aimed at organisations who want to get more value from their web activity. I’m posting about it here in case you or your colleagues might benefit from this hands-on course and because I hope to ensure the class I’ll be teaching will be packed with enthusiastic people!

The first course is in eMarketing starts w/c 12th May and runs for 15 weeks. (The date has changed). The course will be 100% online, is non-technical and is aimed at helping marketing managers, business owners, tourism organisations and web/communications managers to get more results from their online efforts. Further courses in web analytics and web value optimisation will follow later this year.

While the course is aimed at businesses and organisations of all types, it was nevertheless designed with our tourism sector experience in mind. The course reflects the challenges and issues we see tourism industry businesses and organisations facing time and time again as they try to maximise returns from their online activity.

Why take this course?

• During the sessions you’ll devise specific, actionable improvements for your website
• Understand how visitors use your site so you can improve their experience and your results
• Improve your ability to brief and manage third parties such as designers, developers and SEO agencies
• Build an online marketing strategy for your site
• Learn to optimise your paid search activity and search engine rankings
• Understand conversion and how to measure and improve the return on investment from your activity

You’ll learn from your fellow students, from me and by working closely on real-life examples from your own business sectors.

Who is the course aimed at?

• Busy people like you
• Non technical people - business owners, marketing and communications staff, web and
• Its not just e-commerce!
• Tourism organisations, destination marketers and business owners

Unlike many text books and existing courses, this is not aimed only at those in e-commerce. People in tourism, the public sector, voluntary organisations and with business to business sites will get as much value from this course as those with pure e-commerce sites.

We know you’re busy (we are too). That’s why the course is 100% online to allow you to progress in your own time. The support/teaching will be delivered online too,for maximum flexibility.

You don’t have to be based in the Highlands (or even the UK) to take part - the online approach means time zones are not an issue!

For more information

The course is being run by UHI, but has been developed and will be taught by Vicky Brock of Highland Business Research. To book or for more information about the eMarketing course is available from UHI’s department of Continuing Professional Development - or you can email cpd@uhi.ac.uk .

There is more information about the course in this 3 minute video

I’m also happy to answer any questions about course content etc if you want to email me direct, but I’m not involved in the booking/admin process, so its best to direct that kind of enquiry to UHI.

Post Summary

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, surmises that ‘free’ services will be a driver for business in the years to come. This post considers ways in which this could apply to the travel and hospitality market.

Chris Anderson, the man responsible for the idea of the Long Tail, has been at it again.

This month’s edition of Wired features an article called Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business which is about how items and services for which we are traditionally charged become free while as the potential to make money lies in ancillary services.

So, for example, you make your money not on the cost of a printer but instead the lifetime value of ink supplies. Or a newspaper becomes free on the internet as the increased audience enables it to earn enough from the increased advertising opportunities to cover the loss of income from people paying for a paper copy of the paper.

I have some issues with the articles conclusions but it is an interesting concept and one that is already being used within the travel and tourism industry.

Two examples:

1) Ryanair makes its money through food, drink, premium reservations - not just through seat sales. Michael O’Leary is on record as wanting to offer seats for free -and you just know he’s not doing this out of charity but because he knows there’s a workable business plan behind it.

2) Free Wifi Access in Hotels - it helps to differentiate one hotel from another but, presumably, could also be used to encourage cross subsidization of the service in other areas. For example, making WiFi access free could encourage guests to stay in their rooms and order more from the on-site catering.

Free Hotels?

When you come to think of it, there is little difference between a hotel room and a seat on a plane. Both are perishable commodities - once the fight takes off or the night is passed, there is no getting that unsold stock back. So, could we see the introduction at some point of the free hotel room?

Actually, I don’t see why not but I think it would need significant economies of scale to work - or a degree of monopoly provision to help things along. What I mean by ‘monopoly provision’ is this: if you are flying, you have little choice but to purchase water (for example) from the cabin crew if you have not planned ahead. You can’t pop out mid flight to get a cheaper bottle of water from the nearest newsagent or drugstore.

In other words, if there isn’t too much choice (as opposed to no choice) around, then there is a greater chance that you will be able to make money on incidentals. All airlines also have the appearance of a temporary monopoly for the duration of its flights in the form of a captive audience on the flights which means that they can sell advertising in the form of inflight magazines.

There’s no such thing as a free room.

So my thoughts are that this model might work in other areas of the tourism industry - but the trick is to identify those areas where choice is more restricted. Off the top of my head, I would suggest some remote rural locations might work under this model - there have been times when I have probably spent more on catering than accommodation in B and Bs in the North of Scotland because there simply isn’t any other alternatives.

Using my example, however, does raise the obvious question: “If I can charge £25 per person per night lodging and they spend £30 per person per night on meals, why should I make the room free and cut my income by £25 per night?” Well, the answer to that I guess is good old ‘price elasticity of demand’ - if the offer attracts enough new guests then it pays for the £25 per night loss.

Competing on Price and Quality?

So, in conclusion, I have reservations about this but I think that some brave tourism provider could well try this and if their business model is right then they will succeed. I have always been taught that to fight on price alone is a mug’s game unless you have deep pockets - however if you are able to fight on price and quality (in the form of meals, for example, that people will pay more for) then you perhaps have the makings of a winning combination.

Any thoughts?

When you’re low on fuel, its even more important you take the best possible route to your destination. Not only do you need a map, but you need a map with the fuel stations clearly marked.

In business, research is that map.

When economic storm clouds gather, businesses and organisations naturally to look to cut back on their spending. And research, like advertising, is often one of those areas that is first to be cut back.

Yet I’d argue that research can be a key to businesses survival and growth, especially in the toughest economic times. But there is little room for waste and frivolous spending. When recession looms – and the debate out there as discussed in this great post suggests it may well do - the focus needs to be on getting the biggest possible business bang for your research buck.

The research balancing act

Research is always a compromise - a fine balancing act between cost, speed, accuracy and relevance.

There is a reason researchers don’t census the whole population every single time they need a question answered. It would cost a fortune, it would take forever and the usefulness of the results to the business wouldn’t be so much greater than if they’d just asked some of the people.

Similarly, valuable insight rarely comes free. The accuracy, trustworthiness, reliability and most importantly actionability of information tends to come with a proportionate price tag, whether you are conducting research in house or bringing in outside experts.

But here are five tips that will help ensure your research stays as lean as it is effective.

So how do you get more results from less research spending?

1) Ditch the duplicated efforts

There is a tendency in larger organisations for different teams and project groups to commission their own new research, when the answers already sit in work done by different teams and departments. Existing research, if read with an open mind, can be usefully applied to new questions.

Instead of spending on overlapping research, invest in formally pooling what you already have within the organisation and start using what you already paid for. It may take a little effort to make the research available in accessible, easy to digest chunks - but in a larger organisation, those efforts will soon pay for themselves.

Doing more with the research you have also has the benefit of reducing participation fatigue amongst those key contacts being asked their opinion for the umpteenth time!

2) Work with the data you already have

Be creative. Half eaten lunch portions, sewage outflow, postcodes, website data, customer testimonials/complaints, stock usage rates, footfall and basic business data can all be used to reap actionable insight. Think about all the contact points that occur in your business and look for the associated evidence trails. Using data you already have generally has immediacy, low costs and high relevance. Working with it smartly can also make it accurate and actionable.

3) Has someone else already found the answer?

Before you commission research or set a staff member to undertake a project, it is also worth thinking about whether the answers you need already exist externally.

Yes the Internet is full of data, some of it useful, much of it wrong. So when using easily accessible, free information online information, have your quality control filters set to extra high. There are some free sources I do use regularly - National Statistics, Google Trends and ComScore’s public releases to name a few. But I always pay close attention to accuracy, timeliness and proximity to the data source (meaning whether the data is a third hand repetition/distortion, or comes direct from the researchers themselves).

Quality research generally costs money. However, purchasing a relevant, recent analyst’s report, such as those produced by PhoCusWright, will generally be more cost effective than undertaking the same research yourself. (As long as it addresses your key questions).

You may also find that your local council, chamber of commerce or development agency may already have commissioned research in the field you are interested in. Some smart web searching is likely to reveal this, even if it doesn’t show you the findings. It then does no harm to call and find out if you can see this research - they may even have an internal library you can visit.

These organisations also more likely to subscribe to longitudinal research, like long term footfall studies and market trends. Even if they can’t give you direct access to the research, there may be a knowledgeable contact willing to discuss the findings with you.

4) Consider teaming up with others when commissioning research

The DIY research route is not always the best approach and there are certainly times when bringing in the experts will deliver you more accurate, useful insight in a shorter timeframe.

One option to reduce costs of commissioned research is to team up with one or more non-competitive parties. With jointly commissioned research, you can agree to share the findings openly amongst all parties or pre-agree who will have access to what findings. (Just bare in mind overcomplicating things can erode the cost savings of sharing).

5) Will it make your roadmap clearer?

Keep your recession busting research very goal and strategy focussed.

The “so what?” factor matters more than ever when times are tough and “it’d be nice to know” has to be replaced with business critical questions.

Think of it as though your business road map is made up of Google Earth pictures – and the resolution of some of those images is pretty poor. In times of potential recession, your research needs to be sharpening those images until the resolution is acceptable enough for you to more clearly see the dangers and opportunities en route. And then you need to act swiftly and decisively based on what you see.

No need to ditch the research completely

Whether or not we do see conditions of economic recession, there are already plenty of businesses who are limiting their spending where they can.

I hope these tips show that rather than throwing the research road map out of the window completely when times get tough, there are instead ways to make it work far harder at delivering tangible business results.

What do you think? Are conditions worsening and is research on your list of things to cut?

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?

I came across an article recently at tourismus.org (in German only) about a hotel in the South Tirol. To cut a long story short, there is a site extolling the benefits of staying in the South Tirol. The main entrance is www.urlaub-suedtirol.it and you’ll find there a full and informative page to help you book your stay in the South Tirol.

However, there is another url pointing at the site: http://sex_in_suedtirol.hotel-4-stelle-it.it/

The second link is safe to visit at work* and simply leads you back to the original URL. As a knock on effect, Google will also point you in this area should you be using search terms such as ’sex in sudtirol.’

A couple of minor observations before I launch into the bigger idea this provoked:

1) it has generated a lot of publicity for the site but does it water down or confuse the brand message?

2) do all the reports drown out the original site or are they augmenting it?

One thing the site really does fail on is its lack of ’scent’ - if you are wanting to find that perfect place for a saucy getaway, the landing page gives you no instructions on how to follow the trail and make a booking based on your criteria (this is something we’ll blog about specifically in a future post).

Mainly though I read the article in light of scenarios and trends affecting the tourism industry and wondered where this cheeky attempt at publicity actually fitted in.

On the one hand, this is little different from the something like Sandals with their ‘vacations for two people in love’ - it’s just more blatant appeal. And the ‘dirty weekend away’ is hardly a recent concept. What I’m left wondering is whether this actually fits into the themes of greater liberalism, greater hedonism and a greater emphasis on personal wellbeing - all of which are expected to become more important customer drivers.

In other words, is the ‘dirty weekend away’ is becoming respectable and repackaged as a ‘rejuvenating all-body and senses’ break?

Looking a little further down the customer lifecycle, ‘procreation vacations’ are of course a well developed concept. I think its possible this type of holiday could be a flip side of the issue of the aging (and/or shrinking) population as people look to address demographic challenges as well as taking time off from increasingly busy lives (in part caused by the need of the post-Boomer generations to support the retiring Boomers).

But lets look further ahead still. Medical tourism is a familiar concept but is it possible to imagine this medical tourism serving a rich aging population for an ‘end of life’ tourism experience?

Put simply, is there a market for people wanting to die in a nice place?

I’m not especially thinking of euthanasia here although it could be argued that this is indeed a form of medical tourism when carried out away from the patient’s home area. For example, the activities of Dignitas will probably have a small impact on the local accommodation sector.

What I’m thinking of is when people might decide that they want to come to the end of their natural life in more pleasant surroundings, such as a better climate, while others might feel the need to be in the lands of the ancestors, for example.

I probably have more questions than answers to many of these issues. For what it’s worth, I think the concept of ’sex tourism’ has a looooong way to go before being a positive term but it’s something that has always happened in reality. But I do think that the more overt marketing to ‘couples in love’ along the lines of liberated wellness will increase.

To my mind ‘procreation vacations’ will only increase as demographics bite.

And who knows about the ‘death tourism’. Like ’sex tourism’, it already happens although probably not in a way that it can be marketed as such.

My feeling is that death is mainly local/unpredictable/expensive (take your pick) and there would be considerable risk attached to this market (after all, you’ll probably expect a high number of your guests to die) meaning that the costs could be very high indeed. If it did emerge, I suspect that it might morph out of the hospice system worldwide but, as the link suggests, there are considerable hurdles to overcome.

Any thoughts?

*The URL was safe for work at the time of writing on the 21st Jan - apologies if I become responsible for the dismissal of tourism industry experts worldwide on account of the page changing!

Five tips to keep costly market research from gathering dust

I have a sneaking suspicion that the more a piece of market research costs, the less likely it is to actually be read.

All around the world, tourism research carefully generated by government bodies, universities, DMOs and private companies is propping up wobbly desks, mopping up spilt coffee and gathering dust in forgotten corners.

Meanwhile killer competitive insights remain undiscovered by those that could turn them into profitable business decisions.

The problem does not so much lie with the quality of the research, nor the competence of those that commissioned it. I believe the biggest make or break factor for the usefulness of any knowledge is how effectively it can be transferred out of the researchers’ brains and into the brains of those who are in a position to act on it.

I recently asked some busy, busy clients how I could better help them consume the research they had paid for. The most common answer (almost unanimous in fact) was to implant it straight into their brains!

Now, I’m not sure those direct-to-brain research implants are quite ready to hit the streets yet (something to do with short-circuiting ipods).

So in the meantime, here are my top tips for ensuring the insight from research gets successfully transferred to those who can actually do something based on it. (Brain image by Cloois on Flickr)

1. Put a human face on it

People trump numbers and charts every time. Finding a way to bring your numbers and analysis back to people is a sure way to get people paying attention.

One of the techniques I use for this is the development of personas (see the simple example in the graphic below). I distil key customer segmentation information and put an appropriate human face on it, based on known characteristics, phrases and behaviours.

The impact is massive, because well-crafted visitor personas are intuitively grasped by people that would otherwise struggle to get their head round research data in other forms.

When you hear businesses in a DMO referring to a visitor segment by name, you know knowledge has been transferred to where it belongs.

But a human face doesn’t just mean complex persona development. Researchers are great at stripping the human element out of the research process until nothing but hard data remains (and there are some good reasons for this).

Yet for effective knowledge transfer, look at getting some of those real words and real people back in.

A real person expressing their own views (whether on video, audio in writing) will have way more impact on an audience than pages of skilfully crafted data interpretation.

The human face is also invaluable in transferring insight to staff members with little customer contact. You should see the look on the face of a member of staff when they understand for the first time the impact of their efforts on a real person’s life.

2. Apply to so what factor (or addressing what’s in it for me?)

Research agencies and academics may not object to research for research’s sake, but the rest of the world tends to ask “so what?” or indeed utter less polite equivalents.

So what?, Why should I care?, What’s in it for me? – fail to address these objections at your peril. I’ve written lots about the “so what?” factor, so I won’t labour it here. But in short, forget the “this is so fascinating” and skip to the “this will make you a lot of money”. Ears will soon prick up.

3. Less is more

It takes way more time to write a short report than it does to write a long one. Tough, because less really is more when it comes to acting on research.

If you need different lengths, styles and formats different internal audiences, take this into account from the start. Just don’t send the CEO the 100 pager and expect it to be read!

If you are commissioning research, think about being specific with your agency about how little you want to see, as well as how much. I’d love a client to challenge me to distil my research findings to a 50 word SMS message!

4. Resonance – or the subtle art of letting people hear their own words

Generally speaking, people like taking part in research. But they become jaded if they are continually asked for their input, yet they see no changes or improvements.

Resonance is the delicate art of letting research participants understand you heard them and their views mattered and is particularly useful in destination, community and internal organisation research. People recognise the echo of their own words and respect that you took them seriously. The outcome tends to be that they then take the research more seriously, improving acceptance and actionability.

5. Keep it simple, keep it pretty

Final tip? Keep it simple, keep it pretty. No, I’m not suggesting you dumb down the ideas, not at all.

Just that for every 5 minutes spent on being the clever old genius you undoubtedly are, you commit 55 minutes to distilling it so it can be clearly understood by others.

And hey what harm can pretty do?

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I’ve been travelling non-stop for the last week and part of my time was spent in Stockholm, where I was speaking at the Internet Marketing Conference.

Naturally, this trip involved hotels, planes (and in my case trains). And as I recently wrote here about how social media sites like Flickr and You Tube are changing the behaviour of visitors and I thought I’d share this classic example from my own experience, because I think there are lessons to be learned for tourism businesses.

When I was invited to the Internet Marketing Conference, I started my search for a hotel at the recommended conference hotel’s website. I wasn’t overly impressed, so next stop Trip Advisor.

A mixed bunch of reviews, but with a recurring theme – bad bathrooms. I really hate a dingy hotel bathroom and the hotel had done nothing to reassure me the fears were needless, so clearly the conference hotel wasn’t for me.

And so I started a search for my perfect hotel in Stockholm, beginning with scanning the reviews in Trip Advisor. In just a few moments, one hotel with great reviews caught my eye – the Hotel Rival.

Here are some examples of the comments:

“Just returned from a 2 night stay at the Hotel Rival in Stockholm, chosen largely based upon reviews in Trip Advisor. It was just as nice as we had anticipated.”

“My husband and I stayed here for two nights at the end of September. We loved it and my husband said it was his favorite hotel ever!”

“Just returned from a stay at the Hotel Rival. It’s every bit as hip, cool and luxurious as everyone says.”

“I chose this hotel because it is the No1 most popular on Trip Advisor and I was so pleased I did.”

Notice a theme? People are mentioning in their review that they chose the hotel because they read the reviews. Then they are validating their decision by informing others that they made the right choice. Without realising it, I did exactly the same thing when I added my own review earlier this morning.

Super-charged word of mouth

Hotel Rival is getting great reviews, because people booked on the strength of the great reviews and are “passing it on”. Supercharged word of mouth in action – and despite the fact that none of these people are likely to ever meet.

Once I’d read the reviews, I was excited – maybe this was the hotel for me. Could I afford it? Next stop Expedia, where there was a great deal.

Did I book? No – not yet.

Next I visited the hotel website – music (a big minus point for me – I’m at work, people will be wondering!) but excellent apart from that and lots of information about the practicalities I needed to know.

So, did I book? Again, no – not yet.

I thought I’d get some independent views from my trusted community on Flickr, the photo sharing site. Even before I added my own shots, there were a massive 132 pictures of the Hotel Rival – reflecting its photogenic-ness and quality of product. I looked at a selection of pictures from different photographers, showing different rooms and aspects - clearly, this place was something special.

Decision made. I went back to Expedia and booked. And over the coming weeks before my trip, I continued to look at pictures on Flickr and read reviews on Trip Advisor – even though the decision was made and I had pre-paid via Expedia.

Do I do this for every hotel? Of course not – a Travelodge (which I frequent regularly on business trips) is a room by the right road and not something I fret over for longer than it takes to print directions.

But this was different; it was turning into a quest for an experience. In my scouring of info about Hotel Rival, I was turning into a tourist, not a business traveller. I was enjoying the anticipation before my stay had even begun.

Because of its great product, social media sites are generating vast amounts of word of mouth for Hotel Rival and are driving business.

Is this online buzz being harnessed?

So, is Hotel Rival (and potential other sites lucky enough to be in this position) really doing enough to capitalise on this online buzz?

I don’t think so. (But if you’re reading, please feel free to disagree!)

While Hotel Rival has hundreds of blog mentions, it has no blog of its own where I can continue a dialogue with it and happily act as a champion.

It has some of the best reviews on Trip Advisor, but has not taken advantage of the free feed that Trip Advisor offers, to import these into its site and share them with pride to potential customers.

Many of its customers made their decision on the web and like me were posting great images and reviews online before they’d even left the hotel – as a manager, I’d reconsider the 99Kr per 24 hours of Internet access (roughly £10) that is being charged to let them do this.

Because they have their product so very right, I came away wanting to tell the world how clever I was for having chosen this hotel. I know I am not alone.

Any tools (from a photo album uploader to a group on Facebook) that Hotel Rival chose to invest in would be utilised by its fans (sorry customers). The result would be that it could therefore use its word of mouth more strategically in supporting its business development goals, rather than being a haphazard beneficiary of good will.

The lesson for all businesses with a great (or even an improving product) is monitor this buzz and goodwill and thing how you can harness it. Understand where you are being talked about and what is being said. And good or bad, plunge into the conversation in an authentic way.

If, like Hotel Rival, you have real champions out there – work with them to achieve you marketing goal. They’re your fans and they want to have contact with you – and your potential customers will trust them more than they trust you!