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

It has been said again and again. Your competition is not the business next door. Your competition is not the next town or the next region. Your direct competition is are the other destinations (and other distractions) all over the world that could cause your prospective visitor to never even arrive on your shores, yet alone at your doors.

But sometimes, pictures speak louder than words.

This week at ITB the world’s tourism destinations were on display. An attractive, dizzying whirl of infinite travel possibilities, all chasing a finite visitor spend.

So take a glimpse at your competition.

Which destinations really stood out?

India was again incredibly impressive. I have previously posted here about the Incredible India campaign and I am a big fan of the marketing and strategic efforts being made by India to dramatically grow its inbound tourism. Those efforts were in full flow at ITB and business was clearly being done.

The efforts seem to be paying off - compared to 2006, foreign tourists earnings grew 33.8%, with 2006 having previously registered a growth of 19.2% over 2005 (more facts and figures here). As hosts of the 2010 Commonwealth Games and with an aggressive tourism growth strategy in place, it seems likely that growth will continue.

Poland – not surprisingly given its geographic proximity to Germany, Poland’s presence at ITB was extensive and compelling. With dramatic landscapes, historic buildings and deep culture it represents an interesting potential competitor to Scotland. Poland also now has an extensive expatriate population working across the EU and beyond, who are effectively prospective return visitors (just as the Scottish and Indian Diaspora represent prime targets in their “home” markets).

Euromonitor predicts the hosting of Euro 2012 will be a significant development factor for Poland’s tourism industry: “This third largest sports competition in the world will intensively impact the development of such sectors as hotels, foodservice and transportation. Rough estimates are that about EUR50 billion will be spent in the coming years to ensure that the complete infrastructure is in place for this large event.”

The Faroe Islands – now with a direct flight from London’s Stansted Airport, Faroe is in its own words “bypassing Shetland” where the visitors from London previously used to land. Like Shetland, its remoteness is an attraction, but it comes at the price of high transportation costs (though it does not regard itself as being as expensive as Iceland, for example). Also like Scotland’s Northern Isles, the Faroe Islands lead on the natural environment and historic culture and it is focussing product development on areas like cycling, hiking, seabirds, diving and fishing.

Scandinavia – sited right next to the UK stand (embracing an individual presence for Scotland, Wales, England and London) was the united front of Scandinavia. Featuring Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the Scandinavian group has some of the strongest destinations for natural beauty, environmental and eco-tourism. Most of the group are experiencing fairly consistent tourism growth.

Like parts of Scotland, some of Scandinavia suffers from extreme seasonality in its tourism, with summer the most popular time to visit. Iceland, according to Euromonitor, has managed to curtail this somewhat in the past few years with strategies to attract convention and incentive travellers as well as those looking for a city break. Evidence suggests it is en route to becoming a major destination.

So, how does a destination compete with the rest of the world?

To get insight into this I’d recommend checking out the Country Brand Index research by FutureBrand. This highly useful and in-depth annual research ranks key tourism destinations according to factors such as assets, reputation, experiences and perceptions.

Australia leads the overall country brand index. India was number 1 for authenticity in the 2006 country brand index, with New Zealand leading in 2007 (all extremely strongly marketed destinations). Sweden topped the environmental rankings in 2007, with Croatia named as rising star. (Poland also appears in the top 10 places on their way to becoming major destinations).

In their 2006 report, FutureBrand explained:

“A country’s ability to be authentic, deliver authentic and communicate authentic is probably one of its biggest destination advantages today.”

“People want to experience the true essence of a different place. This is the magic of a country brand.”

But in such a competitive market, destinations are struggling.

“Within the sea of print collateral, few country brands stand out. In addition to having similar language and tone, many ads and brochures share a similar look and feel. In fear of narrow-casting or focusing on one core asset, many countries go in the reverse direction and link to sweeping and generic words like “truly” or “amazing.” They feature hero shots of sky, beach and other stereotypical images of “paradise” and “culture,” employing a wide palette of bold colors. This attempt to grab consumers and invite them to think about vacationing as the realization of dream, discovery and relaxation has become undifferentiated in a saturated marketplace.”

The destinations I highlighted above have not made this mistake (nor do other leading destinations, including in my opinion Scotland). They have a strong sense of identity and authenticity and they focus on the core values at the heart of the brand.

Many of Euromonitor’s top 150 city destinations worldwide, which account for 27% of the global inbound tourism in terms of arrivals, also demonstrate these same features. This suggests that authenticity and a focus on unique, defining character is a far more potent strategy than attempting to promote a destination as a generalist “something for everyone”.

Do you agree? What country destinations do you think the competition should be aware of?

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?

Austria’s national visitor statistics success

In a recent interview in this blog, leading tourism attraction owner Freda Rapson of Jacobite explained why she believed joined up destination visitor data should be a research priority for Scotland’s tourism industry. She mentioned how a learning journey to Austria had really opened her eyes to just how valuable nationally collected visitor information could be.

So it was terrific to be able to discuss this very subject with Martin Schobert, from the Austrian National Tourist Office (Österreich Werbung). Martin is Region Manager for Austria and responsible for both research and knowledge transfer. He is also one of regular bloggers at the Austrian National Tourist Office’s corporate blog: Kulinarisch Reisen.

Martin explained the practicalities of the Austrian visitor data system:

“In Austria there is a central register of residents (population) and therefore it is ruled by law that also each visitor has to register when he/she stays at a commercial accommodation. So it is Government requirement to log everybody that arrives in Austria. Each region/city is responsible for collecting this data and they send it to a federal data collection organisation. It is then sent to a national organisation called Statistik Austria and they are our partner organisation.”

The paper based system is all implemented through the accommodation provider and data collection is a governmental regulation. Visitors register on arrival, using a simple form (one per party) and then there is no additional time or resource required. While only one person fills it out, the form records group size and where the visitor came from, and of course, this also ties this back to the specific type and class of accommodation visited.

The official form has four copies, which means that not only does the government and national statistics office have access to the data, but the individual business also has a full and standardised record of all guest data.

Martin adds “it is very easy for us to access this data but it’s a huge and difficult process to organise!”

Yet the data is typically then available just 2 or 3 months later, which strikes me as pretty quick. All the statistics are available online and can be seen for free at TourMIS. It is a system everyone can use.

As Martin explains “it helps benchmarking for destinations and federal provinces but it also means businesses do not have to do this work themselves.” Its no surprise then that Martin says Österreich Werbung is “very glad with the system - and it costs us nothing because it’s a governmental regulation.”

There is also potential for the TourMIS system to be used by other countries. As Marin points out, the data is there and in co-operation with the European travel commission and other bodies, it is a model others can use.

Due to data protection, the personal data is only allowed to be used for marketing purposes by the individual accommodation businesses. These retain their own copy of the personal registration details of their own guests.

But the Austrian National Tourist Office may use the anonymous data for marketing “intelligence” and market research purposes, which given the completeness of the data set, is still powerful stuff.

Going forward, Statistik Austria is looking to include more country of origin references (for example, singling out Dubai from the Arabic countries now they have opened new office there).

Martin adds “the only thing we can’t solve right now is the difference between business and leisure travel – because there is no official need to differentiate on this on the official form. It seems pretty simple, but actually it is difficult to get form amended.”

No doubt this is something the team will overcome, making there data even more powerful and allowing even greater targeting and segmentation of Austria’s national marketing.

Is this something Scotland can do?

To come back to the question Freda Rapson originally posed - if Austria can get this data, why can’t Scotland? - I asked Martin if he thought their system was something Scotland (and indeed other destinations) can emulate.

His answer: “Yes. But it has to be Scotland-wide, because if collection is not obligatory (and ideally organised by the local authorities, because tourism organisations never would be able to afford this registration-process) and nation-wide on the exactly the same criteria, it doesn’t work. The results will not be good enough to compare to each other.” And normally, businesses have to do this research themselves so they do not get this standardisation or quality, which is why Scottish tourism organisations have to make a case for a national system.

Certainly, Austria’s paper based system of national visitor registration clearly works for them and is enhancing both national marketing and the performance of individual businesses.

Is there any reason why the same approach wouldn’t work here? I’d especially love to hear from you if you have first hand experience of visitor data capture systems used by other destinations worldwide.

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At the Business Tourism Conference recently, Rick Antonson of Tourism Vancouver was extolling the virtues of a bed tax. In the British context, bed taxes are anathema and so I appreciate that I am being provocative in considering the case for it.

Subsequent to Rick’s talk, I discussed bed taxes with a representative of an industry body representing small accommodation providers and his objections can be described as follows:

• It’s unfair - why tax accommodation providers and then use that money to benefit the whole tourism industry?
• It would be another nail in the coffin - prices are high enough and this will kill the industry as visitors will chose to go elsewhere; and
• It’s too bureaucratic - can you imagine a Bed and Breakfast owner struggling to deal with the tax implications of this?

Although I continue to keep an open mind, I am not yet convinced by these arguments and think that the benefits could outweigh disadvantages.

If it assumed that a bed tax is used to fund developments, initiatives and promotions that would otherwise have been funded by central government, I think the following advantages follow:

• The central marketing agency (bodies like Tourism Vancouver or VisitScotland) has a more defined stream of income. Funding for public sector bodies usually follows political imperatives and timetables - wouldn’t it be great if they followed industry needs instead?
• The central marketing body has a stake in making sure this works - if fewer visitors visit, the central marketing body suffers as a result. It therefore makes the body much more responsive to industries needs on a results basis.

Obviously, the bed tax process also lays the ground work for much more robust visitor data collection and statistics (as I believe has happened in Austria for example)

But in response to my friend’s original observations,I would say

• A bed tax indeed is collected by the accommodation providers and it benefits the entire area - but people rarely visit an area just so they can sleep! They come to you place because of the other things in the area and so you are all in it together.
• People still visit New York, Vancouver, New Orleans and many many other great destinations despite the imposition of a tax - if your area has value, visitors will come. If your area has little value, a bed tax will be a determining factor but, if this is the case, perhaps you are focusing on the wrong issue?
• It’s no more bureaucratic that any other tax you currently pay.

I appreciate that this is an emotive issue. No one likes paying tax and I’m sure there will be many that disagree with what I have written. Perhaps what’s needed is a change of terminology - from the antagonistic ‘bed tax’ through to things like ‘environmental levies’?

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Industry interview with five star Loch Ness attraction owner, Freda Rapson

Jacobite, the five star attraction owned by Freda Rapson, offers cruises and a wide selection of tours and charters sailing on the legendary Loch Ness throughout the year.

As Tony Mercer, Head of Quality & Standards at VisitScotland says:

“Jacobite is a worthy holder of the 5 star Tour accolade as it sets very high standards in the hugely important day trip market. Visitors and locals alike can enjoy the experience of viewing some of our most famous sites, Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle, from the loch itself on an informative and comfortable cruise combined with coach trip.”

Playing close attention to business data, visitor satisfaction and balanced scorecard KPIs has been of great significance in growing this successful business.

However, Freda believes that for maximum success, it is essential that a more joined up approach to visitor data collection and dissemination is undertaken at a local and regional level.

She regards overcoming dated and disjointed local visitor data as critical for tourism businesses like Jacobite, in order to fully maximise their marketing to geographically discrete markets.

As Freda explains:

“I’ve got a bee in my bonnet at the moment about the amount of customer information that is out there but is not joined up. We collect information mostly from our customer feedback cards. Nationality/visitor origin is one of the main statistics we pick out, so we’ve got that information. And somebody in another business down the road has that information. But nobody links it together.”

“If we all had three standard questions that were asked, and that data was centrally analysed and shared between businesses, it would be such a simple thing.”

The Austrian visitor data example

Freda describes her experiences from a recent learning journey to Austria, where she found near perfect statistics for accommodation occupancy, seasonality, year on year trends and overnight visitor nationalities.

“In Austria, organised by government, everyone that checks in has to give name and nationality. This added to the hotel specific (eg 4 star, location) which all goes into a central database. It means that everyone that spends a night in Austria is recorded. It is so simple, why can’t we do it? Clearly it would require legislation/central co-ordination but its not rocket science. Its so do-able.”

The Austrian research process that Freda refers to is described at some length in this very useful research paper by Karl W. Wöber (Institute for Tourism and Leisure Studies, Vienna University, Austria).

I would agree with Freda that the data collection process is both do-able and very important, though I would add that there are complexities and challenges involved, particularly of the political and administrative varieties.

It would, for example require not only careful planning, but a long term financing model that would allow the data to be collected of a number of years. There would be challenges to ensure that smaller or poorer areas were not overlooked or excluded.

As Karl W. Wöber writes about the Austrian experience:

“Due to the refinancing interests of data collection authorities and the lack of financial resources in the tourism industry, however, the data analysis for smaller tourism regions or report communities has been prevented in the past. This factor must be regretted since it can be assumed that the evaluation of key success factors in tourism marketing will significantly improve when they are measured in smaller regional units.

Also tourism managers, especially those operating on a regional level, usually have only very little influence in the organization of nationwide surveys. Therefore, many of the statistical series are based on administrative regions that are not always congruent with actual regional use and by tourists and subsequent flows.”

Nevertheless, there is no reason why the 20 years plus of learnings from regions like Austria could not be taken on board to ensure that any process developed in Scotland does not fall at obstacles that have already been encountered elsewhere.

How could such data be used by tourism businesses?

Clearly even the most accurate data has little value if it is not used. As Freda adds “its all very well recording it, but what matters is what you then do with it.”

She explains how such visitor information would be utilised by Jacobite, most importantly “to understand profile of customers.”

“Our customers don’t match the old regional survey data that was conducted on the street. Groups, for example, get missed. If data such as visitor origin were accurate it would clarify who we are marketing to, so we could target and promote accordingly. We’d ask what are we doing in the key areas where the bulk of visitors are coming from”

She continues “I do think that there is a lot of fallacy out there. People say we’re not a family market, or not a short break market. Or people say there are no German or Spanish visitors out there. There are.

I bet you if you counted them, there are significant numbers but they’re being missed. For example, the official stats say roughly 1% of visitors are Spanish – but that is not the picture I see in my business.”

“I know what our percentage of our individuals and groups are in terms of nationality – and somewhere, those people are staying here. As a visitor attraction, we see the key link as being with the accommodation providers. Visitors come and stay and then look at what they will do. There must be a point of contact to record that visit – even if that needs legislation – so the visitor data is accurate and truly reflects our business.”

At a destination and country management level, there are of course many other potential uses for joined up visitor data – from comparative regional profiles to package targeting. But what I think is significant about Freda’s viewpoint is that she makes a very strong case for how individual businesses themselves will also profit from better quality data.

And given that is individual businesses like Jacobite who will be responsible for achieving Scotland’s revenue growth targets over the next decade, I think Freda has a strong case for putting joined up visitor data at the top of the tourism industry wish list.

With London 2012 Olympics looming nearer on the horizon, the UK Department for Culture Media and Sport yesterday launched Winning: A Tourism Strategy for 2012 and Beyond, in partnership with VisitBritain and Visit London.

The full report – large, but worth a read – can be downloaded here.

Unlike the Scottish Tourism: The Next Decade - A Tourism Framework for Change, published in 2006 with a concrete target of 50% revenue growth by 2015, the UK strategy has yet to set its specific targets or measures.

Why is lack of targets a problem?

Though it acknowledges setting targets, measures and improving data collection as a keys priority, the strategy reads like a pre-report in many respects, because it sits divorced from a concrete growth goal.

To quote the report directly, objectives for the coming months include to:

• Agree a new tourism growth target by April 2008
• Look how to address issue of data improvements
• Agree performance indicators that indicate quality improvement in the tourism experience

The report also identifies research and monitoring challenges that include differentiating between domestic and inbound growth, standardising regional and local data collection and monitoring customer feedback.

While these challenges are common to both strategies, unlike the Scottish framework, the UK report has not included targets and measures for addressing these data and research challenges in the actual strategy, but has highlighted them as priorities to address.

Data collection, setting benchmarks, comparing year on year data is a slow process – and the UK-wide strategy is operating on a tighter timeframe than the Scottish strategy.

Personally, I think the strategy would be stronger by including targets and measures at this stage, even if some of those measures are workarounds, rather than perfect.

How is Scotland’s example relevant?

I think Scotland’s strategy is generally ahead of the UK-wide strategy in this respect, for When the Scottish Tourism: The Next Decade - A Tourism Framework for Change was released in March 2006, as well as defining an overall target of 50% revenue growth by 2015, it also sets out its wider targets and measurements of success.

It includes targets and measures for the tracking and monitoring of tourism effectiveness, even though some of those measures are (in my view) workarounds.

Can either strategy reach businesses on the ground?

Of course, these targets are only relevant if they are embraced and implemented by businesses on the ground. For example, I find this example from Scotland’s strategy interesting and challenging:

“Target 2 - Every tourism business, culture and heritage organisation and local authority will collect feedback from their own customers to help them “know their visitor” - who they are, why they have come and what they want out of their trip - and use this to inform their business strategies.”

Unsurprisingly, I love the idea behind this target – practical business improvement through customer insight. What researcher alive could argue! Every tourism business should be doing this in order to remain commercially viable, even if it is done intuitively rather than through structured research.

But, there is an education and awareness factor involved here. In my experience, tourism businesses are pretty good at collecting feedback and indeed knowing their visitor – the challenge is typically in using that data to inform business strategy.

Personally, in this instance, I think the measure that has been assigned focuses too heavily on the collection of data and not enough on the actions taken as a result of the data:

“Measure - Culture and heritage organisations, local authorities and the Tourism Innovation Group will provide qualitative feedback about the collection of data and its impact. Feedback will also come from the Tourism Research Network, which will require this information to be submitted.”

It’s a workaround, it’s a good start – and it’s better than having no target or measure in the strategy. But in this particular case I would have liked to see an economic measure of ground-level business profitability or growth in here too, as an indicator of whether successful business strategies were indeed being employed as a result of the collection of visitor data.

So is the Scottish strategy a measurement example to follow?

With London 2012 Olympics looming nearer on the horizon, clearly a monitoring and measurement framework is a priority for any UK tourism strategy. There are undoubtedly challenges in data quality and availability, but these are not challenges that can necessarily be addressed quickly.

I think the UK-wide strategy can indeed look to the Scottish Tourism Framework for Change and take from it some valid tracking and research targets and workaround measures.