Social Tourism Impact Study
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Here's a presentation from eTourism NZ 2012 in Auckland. It was just a quick talk on how social media should be at the core of destination marketing, how DMOs and other tourism businesses are evolving. There's also a few campaigns and examples along the way. This time I managed to put in speaker notes that talk to each one, so it might even make sense to people who didn't hear me speak! To see them, scroll down and toggle to 'Notes on Slide'.
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Social Tourism Impact Study
- 2. SQUAMISH, BC
- 5. ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY 2006 “$1.7 million”
- 7. Social at the Core Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 8. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 16. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 22. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Purchase Funnel Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 26. gapingvoid.com
- 28. Social Purchase Funnel Awareness Consideration Intent Book On Trip Repeat Recommend
- 29. COMMUNITIES FORM AROUND PASSION Passion Influencers Community
- 30. American Friends University Friends Australian Friends Think! colleagues Kiteboarding Friends School Friends Tourism Friends
- 31. Passionate communities passion influencers community everybody else
- 32. NICHES OVERLAP Stand Up Paddling Kite Boarding Windsurfing
- 33. Traditional Advertising Social & Digital Marketing
- 34. TOP-DOWN, BOTTOM-UP Destination Top Down: Bottom Up: This destination is This destination is a place where you the place to do can do these these things things niche niche niche niche niche niche
- 43. FLANDERS
- 44. Social at the core Amplified by PR and online outreach Supported by targeted and measurable digital Extended by traditional advertising
- 45. Unmapped
- 46. Unmapped Page Growth %: 86.9% from beginning of campaign
- 48. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 51. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 53. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 62. Lindsay 7,600 Friends of Friends
- 63. Impact on travel and tourism 83% of travellers 81% of travellers usually or always said reviews were consult TripAdvisor important when reviews before deciding which booking a hotel.** hotel to stay at.* 75% of travellers 52% of Facebookers said their holiday was better because they said “that seeing used reviews to make friends‟ holiday pictures sure they picked the had inspired them to best place for them.** book a holiday to the same place.*** * Forrester, 2011 ** Phocuswright, 2011 *** Skyscanner, 2011
- 64. Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 68. A new tourism model Research Learn your consumers Product Design Marketing Delivery Create a remarkable experience Generate awareness Exceed expectations R&D Recommendations Customer satisfaction Feedback Manage Community Extend Relationship Accept community input Empower product champions Maintain post-trip
- 73. Level 1 Ignore
- 75. Level 3 Social Media supports our marketing campaigns
- 76. Level 4 Our social strategy is fully integrated in our marketing activities
- 77. Level 5 Oh $@*&, our whole business just changed!
- 78. “Get people talking about Dallas”
- 101. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 102. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 103. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 104. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 105. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 106. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 107. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say „thank-you‟ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 108. WHAT WE‟VE LEARNED 1. Listen first 2. Be remarkable 3. Put social at the core 4. Over-deliver on your promise 5. Extend relationships post-trip 6. Empower advocates 7. Learn to love feedback
- 109. Tourism makes the world a better place.
- 110. We help DMOs all over the world adapt to a communication environment unlocked by the social web.
- 111. Sydney | Vancouver |Amsterdam |Detroit
- 113. www.thinksocialmedia.com Rodney Payne @rodneyp
Editor's Notes
- Think! Social Media is a leading digital marketing agency with a laser-focus on the tourism industry and its roots in social media.Everyone who works at Think! has a Passion for travel.
- Squamish is a town in Canada, that you drive through on the way between Vancouver and Whistler. During the 90s, the logging industry that underpinned the town’s economy started to decline.
- Test of Metal is a very challenging mountain bike race in Squamish. The 800 positions sell out every year within an hour. In 2001, the event managers wanted to use the race to help the town’s economy through tourism. At that time, most of the racers were locals or from one hour away.Their hypothesis was that if you visited from further than 3-hours drive, you couldn’t race 67km without staying overnight. Serious mountain bikers would want to pre-ride the course at least once, and if some people may even bring a partner or their family.
- The event organisers were mountain bikers themselves. Although Facebook,Youtube, Twitter and all of the other networks we have today didn’t exist in 2001, there were discussion boards and forums where mountain bikers connected. They spent a few hours online in conversations with other mountain bikers who would have to drive more than 3 hours to race. At the event, everyone who registered filled out a short survey to determine whether there were more out of town entrants.
- The crude survey revealed that the proportion of overnight stays from entrants had increased from 5% to 20% in the first year of their online conversations. They calculated that this was worth over $1 million to the local economy. Years later in 2006, the Western Mountain Bike Association of Canada released a study that revealed that; “Squamish saw spending from riders totaling over $1.7 millionas a result of non-residentriders visiting the trail system as well as training and participating in the popular Test of Metalmountain bike race held in mid June each year.”
- Social media isn’t about Facebook or Twitter, or Pinterest or Flickr. Its about communication. Human beings have evolved because of our extroadinary communication skills. More and more organisations are paying attention to social media because you can now clearly see these stories that we tell each other, online. Before the internet, the number of stories that people heard was more limited. DMOs created their own stories about the destination and worked with media so that they could tell new stories. Now every single traveler is a journalist.
- We believe that social media is fundamental to destination marketing because unlike many consumer goods, tourism is highly experiential with rich content for stories. This flow chart is a simplified version of our model for how a destination (or tourism business) should market itself in a time dominated by the social web.
- The first stage to the process is research. Everything that you do should be an informed by a sound understanding of your offering, your consumer and their behavioral habits.
- Social media provides a very powerful tool that enables people to see what people are saying. There’s a reason that we have two ears and one mouth. Its always important to listen first instead of constantly trying to create and broadcast new messages through social channels.
- If you’re not listening to online conversations, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. In 2009, Jet Blue Airlines ran an special where you could travel as much as you wanted for a month. They sold 10,000 All You Can Jet passes (AYJC) and most of the travelers who used them connected through JFK airport overnight in New York.
- An online community formed for people using the AYJC pass on forums on Jet Blue’s website and on Twitter #AYJC. Many of these travelers didn’t get hotels in New York because their connections were only overnight.A savvy hotel in New York could have been full during one of their quietest months, if they had listened to and catered to these travelers.
- Many companies are starting to monitor online conversation in a very sophisticated way. This is Gatorade’s round-the-clock listening station. Being proactive about monitoring consumer conversations in real-time is the future of business.
- I sent out a tweet for advice before I came to Auckland for the eTourism Conference. It’s easy to monitor twitter for words like ‘Auckland’ or ‘New Zealand’ and ‘tips’ or ‘suggestions’. Nobody wrote back to me.
- I also posted a similar question on Facebook, looking for ideas of things to do in New Zealand.
- Many of my friends wrote back to me with suggestions, and these are the people whose advice I trust most.
- Once you understand your consumers, and have an ongoing process for listening to conversation about your business or destination, the next step is to ensure that the experience produce or service that you offer is remarkable; meaning that people will remark about it in conversation.
- There’s a golf course in South Africa that has a 19th hole. The tee is on top of a mountain and the only way up there is via helicopter. The green is shaped like Africa, and if you get a hole in one, they’ll hand you $1 million dollars. That’s a remarkable product.
- You don’t need a helicopter to be remarkable. Customer service and forging relationships can be very powerful itself. Robyn works with me in Vancouver and was deciding if she should stay at the Coast Bastian Hotel or Buccaneer Inn on an upcoming trip. She posted a question on TripAdvisor looking for some advice.
- AnotherTripAdvisor user offered her some really detailed advice to help with the decision. BuccaneerDave essentially recommended the Coast Bastion. If you dig into his profile, you’ll see that he actually owns the Buccaneer Inn. Being transparent and credible, leads to trust. Trust leads to relationships and relationships lead to business. Robyn stayed at Dave’s Hotel because he earned her trust.
- Vulcan is a small town in Alberta that happens to share the same name as the planet from Star Trek. They’ve transformed their entire town into a Star Trek themed destination. The visitors’ centre is a space ship. There’s a scale replica of the Star Ship Enterprise. Even the city hall is now named the Interplanetary Headquarters. Each year they have a festival where thousands of Trekies gather. Its remarkable to people who like Star Trek.
- You don’t need to do much to be remarkable. Westjet have an amazing, employee-driven culture. This is a fundamental example a consumer-centric business. Westjet went above and beyond for a dying man. It didn’t cost much, but it did earn them unbelievable exposure. Over 250,000 people interacted with one person’s post on their fan page because they did something good. They focused on their product, not pushing a message through marketing. Westjet’s culture is very conducive for social media.
- Once you are satisfied with your product, the next thing phase is tell people about it and convince them to experience it for themselves.
- Traditional advertising required destinations to package all of their many offerings into one message, and broadcast that message to as wide an audience as they could afford.
- The decision process that travellers go through is complex. Before the social web, it used to look like a funnel shape that many marketers will recognize. A wide audience would receive a message and there would be drop-off at every level of the funnel after that.
- This is a photo of my mail room in Vancouver. It looks like this every Tuesday. Many businesses have not caught up with the consumer and as a result, much traditional advertising is ineffective. Creating awareness through traditional advertising is very expensive when there is so much competition. Its even harder when you are a destination marketing an infinite number of experiences.
- Advertising can also be quite intrusive. According to Neilson, only 47 % of consumers trust advertising comparde to 92% who trust their friends.
- Many-to-many communication has been extremely disruptive to different industries, and destination marketing is no exception.
- Consumers create their own awareness within their own networks and within niches.DMOs need to spend less resources on awareness and more time having conversations with and marketing to people lower in the funnel. The people who experience your destination are now the people doing your marketing for you.
- At Think!, we use a series of concentric circles to understand communities that form around niches. Passion is very strong interest. It follows that the more passionate a community, the stronger the trust and frequency of word-of-mouth communication.Some people have more influence in a community than others. We call these people influencers. Someone’s influence is a factor of reach and level of trust or credibility. Its easy to think of influencers as being very close to the center of a community. Influencers can often drive the direction of the community at large.
- This concept can also apply to our own personal networks. We all know which one of our friends to ask for advice when its time to buy a new computer or which people know most about sports or travel to a certain place. One person can be the glue between a few different communities.
- A community can influence people in other communities, ie everybody else.
- Passionate communities overlap because of people who glue them together.
- Marketers now need to understand that there is no one-size-fits all message, and the traditional ‘niches’ that many destinations use are still too broad. Targeted campaigns are like using a rifle instead of a shotgun. Targeted campaigns allow for a conversation with your audience, rather than a one-way pitch.
- As a result of the granularity of information available on the social web, destination marketing needs to change. It becomes bottom-up, rather than top down.
- Campaigns can be run very cost effectively to target different niches. The Kootenay Rockies Tourism region in Canada targets skiers and snowboarders with their Ultimate Ski Bum campaign. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9htN8s0ss&feature=relmfu
- The ‘Ultimate Ski Bum’ would win an amazing prize, including 8 season passes to some of the best ski resorts in the world, and 12 days of heli and cat skiing.
- To win, influencers have to get their friends to support their entry by voting. Many influencers go a very long way in order to prove that they are the ‘Ultimate Ski Bum’. All of this generates exposure for the destination within the ski and snowboard community.
- Richmond in British Columbia is also in the midst of a groundbreaking campaign that positions their destination around the Chinese Food niche. They have A LOT of Chinese restaurants. One food-blogger won $50,000 to eat at a different restaurant each day for a whole year.
- Lindsay made a fantastic video on YouTube explaining why she should be the one. Remember, this is just one entrant and the campaign itself hasn’t really even started at this stage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oemwq0eBu7k
- Thousands of people entered to win the food blogging role. Many of them ran campaigns to get noticed. This also got a lot of attention for Richmond, before the campaign even started. Lindsay’s friends from all over the world supported her with photos.
- Many traditional media outlets picked up the story because it is remarkable. Often, things that consumers want to talk about will interest the media too.
- Now Lindsay is eating her way through Richmond, and creating content on the destination. Richmond is right in the middle of the foodie community. You can see her work here: http://www.365daysofdining.com/.
- Flanders, in Belgium ran a ground breaking niche campaign this year to highlight their festival scene. To support a very large social contest, the campaign invited 100 bloggers from around the world to experience festivals of their choice. Flanders’ brand was in their hands. You can see more here: http://www.facebook.com/flandersisafestival
- Tourism is highly experiential with unlimited combinations of experiences. Marketing a destination is very different to marketing large consumer brands. We believe that tourism marketing should be consumer-centric, with social at the core. Social is so important to destination marketing that we’ve built our entire destination marketing methodology around it.
- Along the way, individuals and travelers could communicate with the bus and tell them where to go and what to do. Media throughout the destination also caught on. The social buzz was amazing.
- The trip also produced content on niches. The depth of knowledge within niches is hard to get without a real subject matter expertise. To solve that problem, videos and blogs relayed stories told by influencers about why NSW was the best place to visit for that particular community.
- In your marketing efforts, you make a promise about the experience people will receive. Once you have made a promise about what you offer, you need to meet or beat their expectations. Surprising people by exceeding expectations can result in many positive stories. Not meeting expectations will generate negative stories.
- Over-delivering on service can be a great for your marketing. Two years ago, I flew on Horizon Air to a wedding and left my suit somewhere along the way. I called the baggage line, but they said that it’d take two weeks to get me the suit and I wouldn’t have it in time for the big day.
- I wrote on the fan page wall with exactly the same information that I told the baggage line. All of my friends saw the post and rallied behind my cause, creating news feeds each time they clicked ‘Like’ and commented. They were going to the same wedding. Horizon Airlines got the suit to me the next day, and thousands of people saw their amazing customer service. Many things that businesses already do can be tweaked to over-deliver.
- One of the biggest advantages of social media is the ability for tourism organisations to extend relationships once people have experienced a destination.
- In order to extend relationships with past-visitors, you need to connect with them. Figure out a strategy to get people to click ‘Like’ on your Facebook Fan Page, follow you on Twitter, or subscribe to your email database.
- Once you’ve made connections, your job is should be to manage the community of people who’ve given you permission to talk with them.
- If you can engage the people who love you, you can leverage them to market to their friends. As Jesse from Tourism Australia says, ‘this is where the magic happens’.
- The key to marketing to Friends-of-Fans is engagement. If people aren’t clicking on your links, clicking ‘Like’ on your posts or commenting, no one is seeing your messages.
- Consumers want to be entertained. They don’t want to be yelled at. Entertain people with engaging content.
- The key to engagement is relevance. People have control over what they consume and they can filter out your broadcasting messages.
- Here’s a photo of Lindsay, my girlfriend. She’s from Calgary and recently went on her first big trip.
- She traveled with an iPad and posted on Facebook and sent emails as she traveled.
- Her friends saw her posts and commented.
- On the last picture from Greece, 40 people interacted with it.
- The average Facebook user is connected to190 friends. Lindsay’s post might have been seen by up to 7,600 people. The key point, is that having consumers tell stories in their own channels, is much more important than any content a brand can produce themselves. They’re more trust worthy and the aggregate reach will be much greater.
- Consumers trust each other, especially for complicated purchase decisions. We leverage relationships with our friends, and people who are similar to us at every level of the funnel. There’s even a few studies that have come out recently that are evidence to a correlation between seeing content from friends on Facebook and purchasing travel.
- The final stage is to truly embrace peoples’ feedback. Don’t be scared of negative reviews, just be human and engage in conversation. If you do a good job at this, your customers will feel very invested in your business. You can even take a lot of the risk out of business by involving customers in big decisions.
- The Seychelles Tourism Minister, understood the importance of feedback in his former role as CEO of the tourism board. Every Wednesday, he’d look at the tourism industry’s TripAdvisor reviews and personally call the people who’d dropped to see what was going on. If people expected a new hot tub, he’d help a business to improve their product or adjust their marketing to manage peoples’ expectations.
- You can also be proactive about getting feedback from your community. #SoMeT is a conference in the USA where delegates choose the location through a voting process that attracts tens of thousands of votes each year. Community input is also sought into the speakers and event schedule in a less formal way. The whole event is a Petri-dish for how social media can be rooted at the core of business.
- Here’s a screenshot of the final voting round for 2012. El Paso CVB did a terrific job of rallying their fans, followers and the local community to get them across the line.
- At Think!, we believe that these various elements are fundamental to tourism marketing.
- As a result of the social web, the definition of a destination’s brand changes. A destination’s brand is now the sum of all stories somebody hears about a business (but not all sources are equally credible) andall experiences during a trip (but not all experiences are equal)
- Letting go of control of your brand is not a comfortable transition and as a result, many destination marketers resist this change. We operate in a very political environment. Politics doesn’t encourage risk. Without risk and a willingness to embrace failure, innovation is impossible.
- The team at Think! have spent the last few years working with hundreds of tourism organisations to help them innovate.(Apologies in advance for the people I left off, for a full list, please see www.thinksocialmedia.com)
- We have noticed as a series of levels as destination marketers become increasingly sophisticated and more comfortable with digital marketing, with social at the core.For more information on the levels, see http://www.wilhelmus.ca/2012/04/5-levels-of-social-media-sophistication-at-the-dmo.html
- People start by ignoring social media.
- Social media is adopted in pockets of the organisation. Leadership likely don’t know about it.
- Social media becomes ‘tacked’ on to traditional advertising campaigns to support or push a message through one more channel. As a result, its often ineffective and people question its ROI. In our experience, this is where most destinations marketing organisations currently sit.
- Organisations at level 4 have realised the power of consumer-centric marketing and have created a comprehensive social media strategy.
- When you get to level 4, you’ll actually realise that it’s not an evolution at all. Your entire business model needs to change to be more effective.
- In 2010, Dallas CVB asked Think! to help with a campaign around the Superbowl. They wanted to highlight all of the new developments in the downtown core that had revitalized the destination.For detailed information on this campaign, please see: http://thinksocialmedia.com/2011/01/the-story-of-our-super-bowl-campaign-that-got-2-4-million-people-talking/
- Dallas was due to host the Superbowl and wanted to leverage this for exposure in social media.
- At Think!, we use a series of concentric circles to understand communities. Passion is very strong interest. It follows that the more passionate a community, the stronger the trust and frequency of word-of-mouth communication.Some people have more influence in a community than others. We call these people influencers. Someone’s influence is a factor of reach and level of trust or credibility. Its easy to think of influencers as being very close to the center of a community. Influencers can often drive the direction of the community at large.
- Football in America generates a lot of passion among supporters. The communities that we focused on were around the final two teams: Greenbay and Pittsburgh.
- A mystery man from Dallas visited both Greenbayand Pittsburgh in the week before the big game. If you could find the mystery man, and ask him a secret question, he would hand you two tickets to the event, travel costs and accomodation.
- You could only get the secret phrase by clicking ‘Like’ on DallasCVB’s fan page. The phrase was ‘Have you been to Dallas lately’.
- We identified influencers in the form of sports bloggers in both Greenbay and Pittsburgh.
- We worked with local sports bloggers in the two cities to help get the word out within the communities.
- Through Twitter, clues were released regularly on how to find the mystery man in each city. Every clue related back to Dallas’ unique offerings as a destination.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum building – twitter conversation
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- As thousands of people were chasing the clues around in the two cities, the local press got involved quite quickly.
- The story quickly spread as people searched for the mystery man. http://www.wtae.com/r-video/26656301/detail.html
- The mystery man was found in both cities on the second day of the campaign.
- One of the winners was homeless. She didn’t own a cell phone or a computer. She’d heard other people running around asking the secret phrase and joined in. Messages spread because of the content, not the medium in which they began. People don’t really distinguish between online and offline.
- Mainstream media picked up the story.
- Many major outlets were talking about Dallas and the Mystery Man campaign.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Here are some key takeaways that you can apply to your own business or destination.
- We believe that the travel experience enhances peoples’ lives and that tourism makes the world a better place. By improving all stages of the tourism experience for consumers, we can help DMOs to achieve their goals and share their region with the world. Weembrace the values of social media. Transparency and leadership through openness are fundamental to our business. We believe that relationships are paramount and lead to trust.
- Think! Social Media is a leading digital marketing agency with a laser-focus on the tourism industry and its roots in social media. We are comprised of a group of digital destination marketing professionals.
- We’ve now grown a team close to 25 people spread across 4 offices, in key markets around the world.
- Our most recent office is located in Sydney, where we will help DMOs and the tourism industry in the Asia Pacific region to innovate on a world stage.
- Please keep in touch.