Marketing on the Smart Web

reads the headline of this article in Travel Weekly. While many destinations are talking about green travel and the environment, Switzerland has delivered on these points for many years and played a pioneering role in raising awareness on a global level. One of Schmid’s predecessors proclaimed back in the 1970s that “tourism should not destroy tourism” in other words with un-checked over development the very reasons for people to visit certain places disappear. Today’s reality has proven him right when more an more travelers are looking for authentic experiences far removed from the artificial ones created all too often to attract visitors. The Swiss tourism industry is positioned extremely well to capitalize on the trend in the coming years, even when visitor numbers are in a temporary downturn.

Below is a quote from the foreword of the 360i Social Marketing Playbook a useful guide on how to engage with customers in an environment where old marketing rules no longer apply:

Social Marketing eliminates the middlemen, providing brands with the unique opportunity to have direct relationship with their customers

There is a lot of chatter about the topic of social media and social networking but uncertainty still remains regarding the right approach by companies and how to correctly use the tools available to make their marketing successful. This paper touches on these issues and seems to be a useful guide.

Of course, widget are nothing new on blogs or sites but I found this new one introduced by VisualDNA adds an interesting twist that should make it much more fun for site visitors to use. Here’s Stephen Fry telling you how it works:

As a matter of fact, you can try it out right here on this blog. Just at bit down on the right hand side is an attractive selection of pictures to click on. Based on the clicks the tool will determine your preferences, or travel related DNA and offer the products it determines are most relevant to you.

There are different shop options and the widget can be personalized. If you’re interested in having your own, just go to http://shops.visualdna.com and click “Create a shop”, you should then be prompted for an access code. Please enter “buhlerworksvisualdnashops” and you should be able to set up a PRO shop of your own.

All are full of insights. One of my favorites, having been around for a while is #10

reports Springwise in their latest trends newsletter. YokMoK, a Spanish adventure travel operator came up with this idea and it seems to me a great example of customer involvement in product planning. At the same time it offers these past travelers a reward for recruiting others to travel with the company.

Knowing how influential recommendations by friends are in the choice of travel products and destinations this looks like an effective way to take advantage of this and also get useful word-of-mouth support. Should be a model to be copied more widely.

Old Media Strikes Back is the title of an article on Newsweek.com by Daniel Lyons writing about why Hulu, the venture founded by NBC and Fox is winning the online video race. This has made me realize certain similarities with the travel industry based on his lead in:

As the worlds of technology and media collide, the same contest keeps getting played out over and over again: lumbering old-media companies take on nimble new-media upstarts, and usually the new-media guys win, since it’s easier for them to figure out the content business than it is for the content companies to figure out the techie stuff involved in launching an Internet business.

We can replace “media” with “travel” and come to pretty much the same conclusion. Twelve or so years ago when the web first started to impact business, it was the new outsider tech start-ups like Expedia and Priceline that pioneered online travel. It was way before any of the traditional travel industry players entered the fray. The same was true in Europe and Asia.

It was again the case a few years ago, when travel 2.0 – the phase we’re presently in with online travel research and planning moving online – was ushered in not by the OTAs, the traditional tour operators or destination marketing organizations (DMO) but start-up companies like Uptake, Tripbase, Travelmuse, Triporati and others.

This seems to confirm how hard it is for established companies to break out of the status quo, innovate and, if necessary, change business models. While this might be understandable, what I do not understand why there are not more ventures where these new players are being sought out by the traditionalists to cooperate. This is especially true for DMOs who do not have to fear being a competitor to these companies but a potential partner. The only thing they need to fear is becoming irrelevant in a few years time by not being innovative enough and have their role being assumed more and more by the new disruptors and innovators.

is the title of a recent blog post by Seth Godin and as usual, when I read Godin, I start to think, I can’t help it!

He talks about marketing not being the same as, but much more than, advertising, which I thought everyone would know by now but it seems some people apparently still don’t. To get back to the question, the product obviously comes after marketing and he cites the example of the Prius.

Now, this gets me to the issue at hand, namely that destination marketing is one of the hardest disciplines in marketing! Why, you ask? Because in almost all cases – Dubai being one well known exception – the “product” is a given. The destination exists, often has for decades or centuries or more and can’t be significantly changed to suit the marketer. You play the hand your dealt and that’s why it’s more challenging than the so often hyped packaged goods marketing for example, or vehicles or almost any product. If research shows that your soap has to smell a certain way, be a certain color and shape your product guys will produce and deliver it that way. Try that with your resort, well maybe you can add or improve some infrastructure but it essence you’re still left with the given basics.

So, destination marketing experts should really be the ones who get the accolades and I wonder why they so often aren’t. Just watch how many marketers from the DMO world cross over to other industries based on their track record and compare that with the reverse. You’ll be surprised at the imbalance. What I’ve noticed over the years, is that a large number who face the challenge of destination marketing leave the industry after a few years.

What’s this got to do with the web, you ask? Well, similar principles apply when you hire a web marketer or an interactive agency. It pays to check if they truly understand the particular challenges they face and whether they have the right experience or not.

as reported here and elsewhere, NYC & Company has launched a new site and it takes a fresh approach to market the Big Apple.
The site design is on the hip side and a departure from the norm which for a city like New York is understandable and valid.

The key elements for me are these:

NYCgo.com includes information in nine foreign languages and will feature user-generated content such as personal profiles, user ratings and reviews, and peer-to-peer recommendations.

In addition, thanks to partnerships with Travelocity and OpenTable, NYCgo.com will be transactional so that visitors can book hotels, flights, car rentals, vacation packages and restaurant reservations directly from the Web site, thereby facilitating travel bookings with convenience, according to city officials.

The site makes use of interactive tools to give the user a voice and it has integrated commercial partners to allow more of a one-stop functionality. For a major city the inclusion of restaurant reservations is for me a must.

I like where they are going with this. Others should move in the same direction and focus on the customer experience and convenience and not politically correct supplier relationships.

TripIt Opens API, Third-Party Devs Pounce; Travel Sites Lag reads the headline in MarketingVOX today. What struck me most is the last part “Travel Sites Lag”. The same thing can be said about the API’s already available and being developed by the new innovators for travel planning like Tripbase, Uptake, Travelmuse as well as others and DMOs.

At last week’s Canada-e-Connect conference, I made a strong plea in my presentation for exactly such integration and co-operation in what is fast becoming the new focal point in online travel, the research and planning process that preceeds the actual booking. This is where 95% of the activity happens and it’s about much more than search, the present pre-occupation by the online players. It’s in this space, which PhoCusWright has termed the “Perfect Storm” where the most exciting developments will occur over the next few years. Today’s online travel consumers demand no less than a vastly improved experience in the pre-trip phase, an experience that integrates social media, social networks, UGC, etc. all the elements that need to be integrated to offer this improved experience.

For destinations – which are at the core of the planning process – this has important implications. Rather than trying to develop all this themselves, which most of them are not capable of doing anyway as part of their web development, new and forward looking partnerships need to be developed with the innovators who are already working on making it happen. The travel industry today still lives in too many silos without enough cross communications.

The conversation which is happening among the traveling public as consumers needs to start happening in the industry itself and that goes beyond the usual good will expressed at conferences but in the strategic planning and day-to-day tactics the various players deploy on a permanent basis. As the wisdom of crowd effect is important in the public at large, it can and should be applied more within the industry itself.

as so often, Seth Godin in this last post on Brands, social, clutter and the sundae is spot on about the latest craze, using social network sites like Facebook and Twitter as a corporate marketing tools. I especially like his comment comparing “Twitter making Dell a million dollars” – which would be chump change for that company anyway, with “the phone company made Dell a billion dollars – more than chump change! It’s about the difference between a marketing medium and a connecting medium. So, before you jump on this bandwagon, think about what else you can do to make your marketing relevant and effective.