Social Media and Destination Marketing
Over the last ten years the travel industry has witnessed how the Internet has revolutionized business practices. Now, the majority of travel-related business transactions occur over the Internet, reducing the demand for offline information resources and travel agents substantially.
Travelers use online resources to learn about travel destinations, service providers, and pricing options to inform and make their purchases. They generate their own content and exchange information via blogs, social networks, Twitter, and other modes of interactive social media. They are continually discovering new ways to find consumer products across all industries and now we find product information flowing from friend to friend across an expanding universe of contacts, allowing consumers to use trusted personal relationships to navigate the vast amount of information.
Social Networking has been the global consumer phenomenon of 2008. Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all Internet time.
A study conducted by comScore Marketing Solutions, for example, found that of the 2,000 Internet users surveyed in October 2007, more than 75% of review users in nearly every category of service said that they made a purchase based on the online review. Jupiter Research’s Travel Consumer Survey (2007) found that 32% of online travel researchers who used UGC (user generated content) did so early in their research process (when important destination decisions are made) and 56% used user-generated content to verify their hotel choices prior to booking.
In addition, travel writers, an important audience for destination marketing, also emphasize online social media in their research. A survey of 70 travel writers conducted in April, 2008, for example found that “Over half of the reporters surveyed said they spent more than an hour per day with online news sources and blogs.” (http://www.brodeurmediasurvey.com/).
If you are a tour operator or destination marketer, understanding social media and taking advantage of it should be on your “to do” list for 2010. I excerpted some interesting ideas from Natashaingreenland.com, the blog of Xola consultant and George Washington University graduate student, Natasha Martin.
“I’m thinking about what would be a good social media campaign for Greenland. Consider this:
- 96% of Americans between 18-29 are on a social network
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest (China’s Qzone social network is bigger than Facebook)
- 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content
- 78% of Americans trust peer reviews (Only14% trust traditional advertising)
Effective use of social media (by definition: media that is spread by social interaction) is probably the best tool destinations have for raising awareness about their destination: it’s cheap and effective. But it requires time, planning, good strategy and innovation. A Facebook page isn’t going to catch anyone’s attention anymore, (unless you get really serious: Pure Michigan recently hired Fluency Media to develop a strategy for their Facebook page!).
But beyond Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Knols, and Squeedoos (actually I just counted 67 “share” icons on Mashable)– what really gets peoples attention are elaborately planned campaigns.
Here are some other notable and recent examples of innovative social media campaigns by tourism destinations (thanks @Shalin for a good article on this)
- Visit Colorado invited people who had never seen snow before to participate in their Snow At First Sight contest. Three winners get to travel around the state for 90 days and blog like mad about their first experiences with snow.
- Ultimate Thailand Explorers launched by the Thailand Tourism Authority gave teams of two the chance to win six expense paid days exploring Thailand. To apply you had to submit a video and people around the world voted with clicks.
- Not a campaign but I like Austria’s approach to networking for travelers. Cool Austria is a site for travelers AND locals to find attractions/activities in Austria.
- Philadelphia has done a similar thing with www.uwishunu.com (You wish you knew) – a guide to going local.”
Read Natasha’s full post at Natashaingreenland.com.
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2009 Trends In Adventure Offerings
We recently conducted an analysis of some top adventure travel companies as rated by National Geographic ADVENTURE magazine. Our purpose was to spot important trends in adventure company offerings for 2009.
Trends Overview
In terms of the types of trips, family-oriented adventures and custom and/or private trips are clearly growing quickly. In addition, there seem to be quite a few more operators offering multi-sports vacations, cutting across types of activities such as a combination of hiking, kayaking, biking and/or rafting. It also appears that quite a few of the “specialty” niche operators (e.g., ones that focus exclusively on one activity such as paddling or biking or on one geography such as the U.S.) are diversifying.
Several biking specialists that once were exclusively biking in the U.S. now offer some combo trips of hiking and biking and have expanded geography-wise. However, we also observed that geographic diversification in many cases did not seem well-thought-out; it seemed as if someone in the company liked a country and simply set up a tour there, rather than it being done for strategic, systematic reasons.
Itinerary Similarities
Another trend leapt out as we began to analyze the details of trips in certain areas of the world. There is significant tourism-trip overlap, most particularly in certain countries, and we would be hard put to explain why one trip was any better than the other since they were described in exactly the same way! We would be very surprised if 2009 did not bring about some serious shakeout in terms of the trips offered in certain areas of the world by a wide range of companies. For example, it seems as if there are hundreds of trips to the Galapagos Islands, offered by many different organizations in many different types of boats and ships at different times of year and for different lengths of time; we simply gave up trying to count them.
Bandwagon Destinations
Another interesting phenomenon is the intensity in the number of tour packages in certain areas, while others appear almost completely neglected. For example, in South America, while Brazil is not completely neglected, it is considerably overlooked given its beauty, range of attractions, size, diversity, etc. in the region. On the other hand, Peru is dominant, with many operators offering a wide range of types of trips across the whole country.
Volunteering
We were a bit surprised with the results of our analysis of these tour companies’ charitable activities and volunteer programs offered. Given the level of publicity that voluntourism is getting in the press, we thought that we would find many more volunteer offerings than we did from this core group of adventure travel companies. Of the 194 NGA-rated adventure travel companies, only 8 of them offered volunteer programs, with 29 involved with charitable activities. Of these 8, three, not unexpectedly, dominate: Earthwatch, Sierra Club and ProWorld Services Corp. There were only four companies that were involved in both volunteer programs and charitable activities.
The volunteer programs are more oriented toward certain parts of the world, most particularly Africa. It may be that African destinations have been much more proactive in working with tour operators to develop such programs. Some of the more established, luxury-oriented adventure travel companies do not appear to be involved with volunteer trips. In fact, there has been recent coverage that has not been all positive about how the programs are run and whether they in fact contribute at all economically to the community in which the volunteer program takes place.
This may be one of the reasons that the adventure travel companies in the NGA database appear to be more involved in charitable activities locally than in volunteer programs. There are 29 adventure travel companies that are involved in charitable activities, mostly through foundations, with the vast majority focused on conservation projects (which is not surprising, given they are in the adventure travel business).
Although National Geographic ADVENTURE magazine’s print publication has been closed, we hope to see this company roundup continue in the coming years.
-Henrietta deVeer
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Carbon Emissions and Adventure Travel
It’s not uncommon for people to question the utility of adventure tourism as a means of encouraging conservation, when it so often involves air travel, something we all know generates a significant amount of carbon emissions. In this blog, we review a recent study entitled Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis (Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 43, No. 16, June 2009) and discuss its relationship to the tourism industry.
The authors believe that the complete value chain of consumption activities, from production through to consumption on a global basis, must be taken into account in order to get a true picture of a specific activity’s contribution to carbon emissions.
In general, food and services are more important in developing countries, while mobility and manufactured goods rise fast with income and dominate in rich countries. The carbon footprint (CF) of shelter is largely determined by climate and energy use for heating and/or cooling. The share of manufacturing in the overall CF is around 10-15% for most OECD countries, around 10% for emerging countries, and distinctly lower for poor countries.
The service sector, of which tourism is part, globally contributes on average 10 - 20% of total CF. Much of this across all countries is related to public services, education and health. The relatively even share across nations was surprising to the authors because the share of services in total employment and GDP is often taken as indicators for the level of development of many economies. For many countries, the contribution of construction is around 10%. The high levels in China (25%) reflect a general trend of large investments as countries develop. The authors state that the study confirms that the indirect impacts in the supply chain are more important than direct impacts in the household in terms of contributions to global carbon emissions.
We find wide differences between countries’ carbon footprints once their trade-linked global carbon intensities are taken into account. This is helpful in an analysis of various sectors of the economy when developing an argument for investing in one sector over another to help reduce a country’s carbon footprint. Even taking into account air travel as a major component of tourism’s contribution to the global footprint and to tourism as an industry, it may well be that adventure travel operators’ small carbon footprint, even when combined with air travel’ may still be considerably smaller than those of many other industries and economic sectors.
The study also confirms that there is a substantial degree of structural change in consumption patterns with rising income, with esults revealing that the carbon footprint by country is strongly correlated with per capita consumption expenditure. At high expenditure, mobility and the consumption of manufactured goods cause the largest GHG emissions. The authors expect the importance of these categories to increase with further increases in income as consumers around the world purchase more luxury items relative to necessities. Surprisingly, however, statistical analyses on the data show that the CF per unit expenditure is lower in rich countries than in poor countries, with carbon intensity decreasing over time with economic growth.
We believe that the results of this study have significant implications for the travel and tourism (”T&T”) industry, the quintessential global value chain, involving numerous industries, markets, and consumption patterns in and between countries. Since water as a scarce resource in many regions of the world is used in the manufacture of so many goods and is a key underpinning to the tourism industry, we believe that there will be increasing competition for the scarce resource.
In addition, it is our opinion that the tourism industry’s ability to create sustainable jobs while supporting the environment, including its water resources, will be critically important as competition amongst different industries and service sectors intensifies. The T&T industry must be able to present sensible and constructive mitigation and adaptation strategies to both the challenges of carbon emissions as well as water scarcity, not an insignificant challenge going forward. – Henrietta deVeer
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Adventure Tourism Challenges and Potential in Sardinia
Sardinia, the Italian island south of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea, is an adventure traveler’s paradise: rock climbing over turquoise waters, the ancient granite mountain top of Gennargentu covered in snow and mist, well-defined treks across the island, and a mysterious prehistoric past defined by 6000 year old stone temples. I recently returned from a rock climbing trip to the Golfo di Orosei on Sardinia’s eastern coast. I based out of the small town of Cala Gonone and either walked or drove to world-class limestone sport climbing.
What I saw was both inspiring and perplexing, yet another example of the tension tourism, even in our favorite form - adventure tourism - can introduce in a destination.
Closer to West Africa than Italy, the Italian government recognizes the Sardinians as a people distinct from the rest of the Italians; Sardinia also has retained its own language, Sardo, that is more closely related to Latin than to Italian. All of the locals spoke Sardo, the island’s own unique language, as well as Italian.
Their tourist season stretches from a very quiet beginning of May, with the apex in July and August, and peters out in October. Nearly the entire coast shutters its windows for the cool winter months. The food is unmistakably Italian, with incredible local cheeses and wines, yet the Sardinians have their own unique dishes, including a slow-roasted pork dish called porceddu.
Many travelers know Sardinia for the glitzy and glamorous Costa Smeralda in the north, and as the mining industry fails and the population of the country drops, the Sardinians are turning to tourism, increasingly looking to maximize nature and adventure tourism resources, as a source of income. The economic changes on the coast contrasts sharply with the rugged and rural agricultural interior.
The self-reliant Sardinians have kept a close eye on this progress, and have tenaciously defended their land against unchecked coastal development. Although Sardinia and the Costa Smeralda enjoyed a reputation as the destinations for clientele such as Jackie O’Nassis and a long list of the rich and famous in the 1960s, this exclusive resort has opened up to more than just the super wealthy. Tourists now storm in from all over Europe for the sparkling beaches all over the island. This has brought the Sardinians much-needed economic relief.
Yet when Silvio Berlusconi proposed developing the protected Costa Turchese wetlands, the Sardinians put their collective foot down and lobbied through years of protests and petitions to save the fragile area from thousands of new buildings, a golf course, and a new marina.
The Sardinians are a politically active people, and they have been enduring the onslaught of foreign interests since the Phoenicians and the Romans started fighting over the island over 2000 years ago, and they held fast in their fight against insensitive and unsustainable development. As a result, in July 2004, the government suspended all development along the coast, then turned this into a law, the Decreto Soru, which prohibited all new buildings within 2km of the oceanside. This law was named for the new president of the island, billionaire Renato Soru, who won his election based on a promise to address nagging environmental issues.
Sardinia is still plagued by environmental problems, including ancient water and sewage lines that cause frightening water shortages in the capitol city of Cagliari and beyond.
The charm in the rugged and old-fashioned ways of Sardinia are being pressed and tested by an influx of tourists who want to see this still-wild side of Italy but with the services of the more modern and connected mainland. Even the fierce independence of Sardinia has its down side: the strong regional identity of areas throughout the country creates division where the country needs unification.
So where is the balance? There is great hope that President Soru will be able to work his coalescent magic and help create a strong, unified Sardinia that honors its cultural and rugged past, retains the integrity of its stunning and untouched landscapes, yet keeps abreast of modern improvements.
But then there’s also the Sardinians’ long memory and the tendency of the arrival of foreigners to signal a negative deal, and the locals of the island seems to remain wary of this development—yet obliged to entertain it as a way to survive.
As in many places Xola works, Sardinia teeters on the edge of economic prosperity. We see a destination in which creativity and cooperation can drive adventure tourism as source of revenue while preserving an unspoiled landscape, but only if development restraint and strong environmental management is also be present. – Jessica Reilly
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Norway Takes Mountain Tourism Businesses On Tour
When Norwegians decide to do something, they really go after it. Take, for example, the Norwegian approach to nature and adventure tourism development. As part of a national “business cluster” development program, businesses in Norway’s Mountain Cluster have been traveling the world taking in some of the best in mountain tourism.
They’ve been to Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada/Rocky Mountains, New Zealand, Scotland and South Tyrol/Italy…. and Breckenridge, Colorado, where Shannon Stowell from the Adventure Travel Trade Association and I met them on May 30, 2009.
I love their take-the-businesses-on-tour approach to this – frequently consultants visit clients in their home location. But especially in the field of adventure tourism product development, nothing tops the value of having local operators see and experience other products for themselves.
Shannon and I gave a presentation on adventure industry trends and U.S. adventure travelers to the group, and then heard their perspectives on adventure tourism. In all their travels they’ve been meeting with people to learn more about how to make successful Mountain Tourism resorts, looking in-depth at:
• Sustainable Tourism
• National Parks
• Local/regional planning
• How to develop and commercialize new summer activities/concepts
• Different types of local/regional partnerships and business models used in product development and sale/distribution
In attendance were numerous tour operators and national park staff. The seven destinations in Norway’s Mountain Cluster:
• Rjukan
• Rauland
• Vradal
• Hovden
• Hemedsal
• Geilo
• Gol
Norway’s approach can be applied by national and local governments looking to expand into adventure tourism - think about how your development budget might be allocated to accommodate a best practice “field trip” for your local businesses.
Has your company ever participated in a learning mission of this sort? We’d love to hear from you.
– Christina Heyniger
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Skilled Professionals Apply Their Expertise Through Volunteer Tourism
It’s not too difficult to identify volunteer opportunities for individuals with specific skills around the world, but what about corporate groups? Doctors Without Borders is great if you’re doctor, but what about all you accountants and graphic designers? Is it possible to find compelling volunteering projects for skilled corporate people?
We think so!
Xola works frequently in parts of the world where adventure travelers are volunteering on community projects. Now we’re also turning our attention to how corporate travel groups might lend their professional expertise to projects.
Although these projects are not easy to find and the outreach and matchmaking can take some time, there are great rewards when appropriate projects are identified. In many countries there are enough people to dig ditches and paint schools – what’s often really lacking is professional expertise. When we bring this kind of volunteering to organizations the effects can be thrilling.
For most companies, the project management aspect of placing a group of skilled volunteers can be outsourced (to Xola! ☺). And if you’re taking it on yourself? Here’s a basic checklist of the things you should ask your corporate group to determine whether a potential project might be suitable for your team.
First, get to know your team:
– What cause or issue area is your company/group most aligned with?
– What are the main skill-sets your company as a whole offers?
– What are some of the services that you may be able to provide at no cost to a community or agency in need of those services?
– What products can your company donate and contribute to the project?
– Are there vendors or partners that your company has that could contribute product?
– What financial contributions could be allocated to the project?
– What skills can the individual volunteers contribute?
o Second Language / Translation Skills?
o Training or Teaching Skills
– Is there an area that the volunteer would feel comfortable training or educating a group of people on? For example, Computer training, How to…, Making a…
– Special areas of study/expertise? Culture, arts, sciences, history, technology
– Trade Skills? Artist, musician, wood work, welding, painting, stucco, other
Once these questions have been carefully defined, draft a one-page resume on your corporate group of volunteers and what the volunteer group is offering. This document will help recipient agencies decide if this is something they have a need for and are able to accommodate.
Also remember that group volunteer projects can sometimes be disruptive to the day-to-day operations of a non-profit trying to facilitate a service to the community. Corporate volunteer project managers can remove additional labor and potential disruptions from the project and make sure the volunteers are fulfilling a true community need.
I think we’re on the edge of something big in this industry - it’s somewhat uncharted territory but offers great promise for good. Now’s the time for us to figure out new ways we can support each other and share skills, resources, knowledge and expertise. Have you or your company participated in any skill-based volunteering? Let us know how it went and your thoughts!
– Elise Rollinson
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Saving Culture Through Tourism
In some cases, tourism signals an end to local culture. In other cases, it offers one of the few compelling reasons to retain it. Sadly, in the case Kashgar, an historic Silk Road City in western China, tourism’s being developed in a way that spells disaster for one very historic cultural place. A recent article in the New York Times exposes Chinese plans to raze Kashgar’s Old City in Xinjiang, China.
As part of a 2005 Adventure Travel Trade Association delegation to Xinjiang, we were shocked at what we learned about tourism development in this part of the world.
Once this historic city is torn down officials plan for to widen alleys into avenues and create reproductions of ancient Islamic architecture “to preserve the Uighur culture.” Why create reproductions when you have the real thing?!
In the adventure community we’ve been trying, through the 10 Principles of Adventure Market Competitiveness, to communicate the values of sustainable development - the values driving adventurers’ spending - in the hopes of discouraging this kind of cultural destruction.
Articles like this just remind me why its important that we not give up on initiatives like these. Want to learn more, or get involved? Comment here or send an email to info@adventuretravel.biz or info@xolaconsulting.com.
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Mountain Film Festival 2009 Highlights Adventure Travel’s True Spirit
I was lucky to spend last weekend at the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado as the guest of National Geographic ADVENTURE magazine, one of the event’s sponsors.
This was my first time to the Mountain Film Festival and I expected to see such films like the snow-boarding thriller “That’s It, That’s All” and “Solo,” which documents Australian Andrew McAuley’s ill-fated kayak trip across the Tasman Sea, but was happy to see the many issue-oriented documentaries. A couple favorites:
Without a doubt one of the highlights of the weekend was being in the audience for the world premier of Ken Burns’ new epic: National Parks: America’s Best Idea, which will air in six parts on PBS this fall. After Episode One, Ken took the stage with Bill McKibbon to discuss the ongoing saga between people and nature. Burns’ films explore many issues relative to the national park system in the United States, but I was especially caught by the tense interplay between tourism and the preservation of wild spaces that of course exists to this day.
Read more
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Meeting Planners Look to Volunteering
This is the first post from Elise Rollinson, Xola’s new Director of Corporate Volunteer Programs
Last week I attended an educational conference for members of San Diego Meeting Professionals International. It was great to talk with attendees and observe such interest from corporate groups to bring community service projects and volunteerism into their meetings and incentive programs. It’s clear to me that the increased focus on Corporate Social Responsibility combined with the many new outlets for group volunteering, puts meeting planners in a position to truly get creative, offering innovative programs while making a positive contribution in the destinations they visit.
Remarkably, even during a time when the tourism industry is seeing cutbacks in corporate travel and meetings, we see an increase in volunteer interest and giving programs. Why? I think because the benefits to communities and companies have become undeniable.
Read more
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An Alternative to Mass Tourism: The Adventure Opportunity the Wall Street Journal Didn’t Mention
Headlines like this make me cringe: “To see some of the most spectacular spots on earth before the tourist buses arrive, visit the sites being considered for World Heritage designation.”
Why? Because it assumes that the only way to bring tourism to a region is to bring it with loads of buses and inconsiderate people who destroy the place.
In the Wall Street Journal’s May 15, 2009 Weekend Journal the cover story is by Stan Sesser, who highlights a number of sites around the world that may become World Heritage Sites in 2009. This designation can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how destinations manage their resources, and Sesser quotes an official at the World Heritage Organization who rightly observes that the program “has been turned into simply a branding scheme.”
Sadly, what often happens in destinations is that once they earn this designation, they become overwhelmed by visitors who stress a resource – be it natural or cultural – beyond its capacity.
In the adventure tourism industry, we find ourselves more frequently drawn into these debates as we support developing countries and emerging destinations in creating products to attract adventure travelers, who, in demanding more than the thrills of extreme sports, are causing destinations to take another look at how they might better develop cultural and nature resources.
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Off the Radar
Visit us at travelofftheradar.com for the complete archive of past editions as well as beautiful photos, travel writing and video from our adventuring readers.