Destination Marketing: It's about service, stupid

Let's recall how quickly things are changing these days. Remember the times when you had to actually go see your local travel agent to book a flight and when airlines had large offices in the capitals? Then came low-cost-carriers and ticket-free online-booking. A model that was quickly adopted by the traditional carriers in the aftermath.

Then hostels started adopting the low-cost-first-come-first-serve booking-model. Many even send confirmation SMS to make things easier for you. A free service! See the SMS AirBerlin sent me after I booked my flight to the ITB Bloggers Meeting. And I also got a free SMS plus a customised sightseeing and shopping brochure by the hotel booking platform I chose. All without ever coming near to Berlin's official tourist website.

Official tourist board sites "failed" me again, when I was planning my summer hiking vacation a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to hike in the Attersee region, a breathtakingly beautiful Austrian lake and mountain region where I spent a week in summer 2006. I was unable to find information on the official site of the Austrian Tourist board.

So I checked out the website of the regional tourist board www.attersee.at for B&B and apartments in the village of Unterach. I know there are dozens of places that rent rooms and apartments. Nevertheless, the online-results were so meager, that we decided to go hiking in South Tyrol (Italy) instead.

We will be staying in the wonderful hotel Schönblick Belevedere in St. Genesio where I gave a speech last October. I called their reception desk - using Skype - and checked the best dates, while screening the booking engine of the LCC Skyeurope at the same time. I loved knowing who I was talking to and where I will be arriving to. Again their tourist board's website is bad - but Flickr offers lovely views (here are my pictures).

Now don't get me wrong. This is not about Web 2.0, it is about giving the potential visitor what they need to support the decision, planning, booking (and bonding) process.

I have not mentioned this before, but the website of the village of San Pedro de Atacama in the desert of Chile made me decide to travel to South America in March 2004 within seconds. The term Web 2.0 had not even been coined then. And no, the site has not really changed since then. Why? Because they had already done a wonderful job without any Web 2.0 hocus pocus in the first place. But, and this is the message, they already made use of old fashioned tools to integrate pictures and comments of happy travelers. Social Web 1.0 so to speak! And they already featured short easy to stream videos back then. In 2004!

I recently read that online travel sales are decreasing. Given my experience I do not find it hard to believe. What is your opinion? Do you know any good tourism sites?

Comments

[Kommentiert von: Jordi]

Hi karen, finally I decided to post!! :)
I think that the point is about official websites are not launched as a marketing tools but as an institucional website where to put lots of static and sometimes not useful information.
Some of these official sites are talking about 2.0, but just in the way of sharing pictures/videos and let visitors interact between them, but not with the destination, which is the important point.

[Kommentiert von: Karin]

Wonderful input! Thanks for posting.

[Kommentiert von: Martin]

Dear Karin,
thank you for your post, it points out a clear message: Nearly all DMC's in Austria (Destination Mangagement Companies) and also the Austrian National Tourist Office are making still the same mistake: we take care on the offer and not on the demand-side of the "holiday story". Nowadays it is not anymore important to cluster touristic offers in marketing-topics. The only efficiant way to promote our destinations is to focus on the customer's needs. Also we have to design clearly the way through our sites with a focus on providing a high service level to potential guests - to meet their needs and wishes, which are mostly to find their suitable destination for the "perfect" holiday trip.

Our job definitely is to bring customer and supplier together - as fast as possible. And nothing else. We wont be successful, if we will keep on argueing, that you will find the most beautiful hotels in one of the most beautiful landscapes of the world. The customer is free to decide itself if this is true or not.

So - we know a lot of this intelligent stuff already. The points above are also important points of Online-Strategy of the Austrian National Tourist Office in the future: to focus our online-activities to the customer. But it takes time to transform strategy in reality. So there will be a re-launch of our international-websiteportal at the beginning of 2009.

Until then i advise you to use the google search at the best austrian tourism sites to find specific infos to austrian destinations, which we currently have implemented at our website.
cu

[Kommentiert von: Karin]

Martin, I appreciate your input.

I know it is not easy for a destination as varied as some countries are.

Just to set things right, I did use the search engine on your site. Please look at the screenshot.

[Kommentiert von: tistravel]

I just tried to find some information about attersee on www.austria.info and i got many results!?! sorry, but i can´t post a screenshot.

Gib Österreich noch eine Chance:-)

[Kommentiert von: Karin]

Keine Sorge, Österreich ist immer noch mein Haupturlaubsland :-) Vor allem Niederösterreich, Hallstatt und in erster Linie das Weinviertel.