DestiCorp 2.0

Can we Create "Intelligent" Destinations?

The trigger for this post came from another that I came across today by The IdeaHive and a conversation held late last night with a friend who asked:  “Why do we call tourism an industry?  It makes it sound so mechanical and sterile.”

I sighed internally at my friend’s question – not because it isn’t a very good question – but simply because I have spent the past 20 years arguing that tourism should not be viewed as an industry. The question rem inded me that I seem to have failed miserably in convincing others of that view. My sadness stems from a belief that until we change the way we "see" tourism, we'll continue down a destructive path.

In 1991, drawing my inspiration from Shakespeare I argued that tourism was not an industrial machine but a living organism, a body – a “body politic of tourism” with the flesh, bones and organs equivalent to its diverse sectors (lodging, transport, attractions etc); the energy and blood flow being the market; and the arteries and veins being the in and outbound transport sector. I further argued that the tourism body wasn’t a closed, self-contained structure but an open dynamic system involving complex sets of relationships - even thoughTim Berners Lee hadn’t even dreamed up the world wide web at that point. At that time, DMO managers and tourism operators thought I was either irrelevant or simply being academic – and I can’t blame them. What has a worldview got to do with putting “bums in beds tonight”? 

So you can imagine my excitement when the Internet did become reality and we started to think about creating a “digital nervous system” for tourism destinations that increased their intelligence. The vision was consolidated back in 1998 when we suggested at ENTER 98 that

The challenge at hand is to use the glue of information combined with the wires of telecommunication to bind the discrete elements of a region’s tourism industry into an intelligent whole; into an intelligent enterprise that is sensitive (can anticipate the demands of a marketplace before they are fully expressed); creative (can develop products and services that add value); and nimble – can generate more value faster than the competition.

We started developing an "Intelligent Destination Management System" and, as there were precious few systems  at the time, I was criticized by several academics at the conference for being pretentious in applying the adjective “intelligent.” But I had my reasons….

In terms of implementation and, with technology that was infinitely more cumbersome and expensive than today, a number of us made rapid progress developing and installing multi-functional information systems that enabled one rich database about products and providers to be distributed electronically across a number of channels (over-the-counter information and booking systems in Tourist Information Centres; kiosks, online information search, retrieval and booking systems via the web) – and all before 2001 when the “dot.com” bubble burst delaying the emergence of web services and proliferation of mobile apps for nearly a decade. 

But sadly what we didn’t shift was the metaphor for understanding the nature and structure of the industry and that is now what’s holding tourism back from realizing its full potential. Because the primary perceptual filter is that of machine and or assembly plant along which inanimate products are packaged for consumption by consumer markets; we’re not harnessing the creative force underpinning the phenomenon as effectively as we could. Machines don’t evolve or self-organize, people do. Tourism is a living system because it comprises people who live in and are supported by living systems. Ironically, the best innovative thinking within destination tourism is coming from those closest to technology not because of their technical knowledge but because they are applying a more effective mental model (ie a living network). The larger tourism community, on the other hand, is stuck because its leaders haven’t changed their mental models from static machine to living ecosystem. 

Other parts of our economy are changing their mental models as the full impact of what it means to be living in a globally connected network sinks in. Which leads me to The Ideahive post The author, likely influenced by such luminaries as Peter Russel (The Awakening Earth, 1976)  and  Howard Bloom (the Global Brain)  suggest that to deal with the global challenges facing our species we need to choose to become part of an emerging global mind.  I’ve quoted The Beehive post extensively below and ask my readers to read it with a tourism destination in mind. Ask yourself what might happen if we applied an understanding of neural networks to the way we do tourism? How could we apply their formula for success – either for competitive advantage or, better still, to create a better world?  How can we help destinations smarten up – because if they don’t, they’ll find their sterile, machine-like products as empty and ghostly as the badly planned,  vacant condos littering some costa somewhere on the Mediterranean. 

Here's the contribution from the The Beehive:

Imagine yourself as a neuron. You are connected to many other neurons. You are continuously receiving information from many different directions, deciding which information to pay attention to, and which not. You are constantly synthesizing this flow of information into some form of meaning — a best understanding of the current situation —  and then you share that best understanding with your friends. If neuron Bob is telling me that he thinks we don’t need to worry about global warming, and yet neuron Sarah is telling me that global warming is causing the flooding in Pakistan, then how do I make sense of that, what is the story I tell to others as a result?

What ends up happening, over time, is that each neuron starts to pay more attention to those connections whose information helps make most sense of the world, and pay less attention to those connections whose information increases confusion.

This creates a network that is an integrated, living mirror of the reality that it is experiencing. It is a system that is in a continual process of refining its model of the world, so that its experience of reality makes more sense. This is because it is only from seeing a world that makes some kind of sense, that you can begin to take more effective action.

The function of your brain it to make sense of your world; the function of your social network is to make sense of your collective world, whose complexity requires far more than a single human brain to understand.

By  learning from the stories of others, we can paint a better shared picture to achieve a clearer understanding of the world.

From this understanding arises an equation that describes the potential for a social network to leave a dent in the universe:

O x C x D x A x P = Better Future

O: the openness with which each node deals with information of all kind: its active willingness to learn — (multiplied by)

C: the amount of creative energy each node puts into the network: its willingness to synthesize & share (multiplied by)

D: the cognitive diversity of the network, so that we can collectively see things from the widest range of deeply informed viewpoints possible (multiplied by)

A: the degree of access to resource networks (multiplied by)

P: its shared focus around a common purpose to create a better future for all

This is the formula for how to be part of global mind.

Choose to act as if you are one of the neurons, to help create a better future

Perhaps so called "destination managers/marketers" might find it useful to take a closer look at the work emerging from neuroscience... more  to follow.

Samoa provides deeper meaning to the concept of branding

After some 37 years working in tourism, three themes now inform my thinking:

1. the industrial model that has dominated and underpinned tourism’s growth since the development of mass air transportation is now proving to be utterly non-sustainable (tourism cannot continue to grow exponentially when there is a finite supply of places);  

2. furthermore, the industrial model’s focus on the efficient consumption of products, tends to commodify and homogenize and, in so doing, violates the very reasons for travel – i.e., to venture from the familiar setting we call “home” to the unfamiliar setting we call foreign for the purpose of gaining fresh, alternative perspectives; 

3. it will only be possible to imagine and create a new model of travel when guests know where they have come from and when hosts know who they are. They can’t do that without developing a sensitivity to “place.” In the same way that each cell in our bodies is truly unique, so is every square inch of the planet. The true joy of travel stems from experiencing that uniqueness and valuing it accordingly.

The future ability of tourism to continue to generate net economic and cultural benefit depends on communities being able to express their unique relationship between a people and their geography (space) and history (time).  If human society becomes a monoculture, then why travel at all – especially if the physical act of moving one’s body through space becomes increasingly unpleasant?

 

Last week I was privileged to join a team from the Samoan Tourism Authority and Government of Samoa who were attending the The Shanghai Expo 2010 and celebrating Samoa’s National Day on August 1st. The trip provided ample opportunity to reflect on these issues. Somehow, within the  concrete jungle that is the sprawling Expo site and the surrounding metropolis of rapidly expanding Pudong, the tiny nation of Samoa managed to express its sacred relationship with its own unique geography and history in a compelling and effective way. 

First of all, it refused to conform to some external designers’ conception of a branded look for the South Pacific. Samoans live in thatched fales not the uniform “hardwood shells” designed to house individual country exhibits. 

Secondly, it animated the fale with people – not just paid staff (who were great, by the way), but real live Samoans with songs to sing, bodies to dance, stories to tell, and, most importantly, responsibilities to uphold.  (Several of the entertainment events were undertaken by Samoan students studying in China who could speak sufficient Mandarin to inform and delight their Chinese audiences). 

Thirdly, throughout the weeks leading up to National Day on August 1st, the fale became a sacred space for an ancient ritual (the tatau) that demonstrated how seriously Samoans view their relationship with “mother earth.”

A dear friend, Zita Sefo-Martel, celebrated fautasi  (longboat) skipper, High Consul to France, owner of Polynesian Xplorer, and devoted mother of four young boys, had agreed to receive her malu (tattoo) in public from the celebrated master tattooist, Tufuga Ta Tatau Su’a Sulu’ape Petelo. 

In western cultures, a body tattoo is an object of adornment; in Samoa it is a sacred covenant between the bearer and the earth and community that support him or her. 

Zita has described the meaning of the event in her own words: 

The generic word for tattoo in Samoan is tatau.   The Pe-a (tattoo for men) or malu (tattoo for women) is not only an eloquent form of living art and a record of ancient navigation and traditional culture, it is also a Samoan's spiritual connection to Mother Earth through the physical pain and personal sacrifice experienced in the act of being tattooed. 

The symbolism depicted on a tatau or malu represents a covenant between a Samoan and his or her way of life. It is “O Mea Sina”. It is sacred.   

The word malu means protect, shelter, security.  Malu also means house.  The woman is therefore seen in Samoan culture as the protector and shelter of of the children, the family, and the village.  She is the giver of bloodlines.

The symbols of the malu etched on the woman reflect the many roles of the woman in Samoan society.  The malu is applied starting from the knees and working up to and finishing at the top of the thighs.  

 

Now let me explain what that act of sacrifice actually entailed.  For four hours, Zita lay on a mat above a hardwood floor, while three skilled men worked expertly to adorn her thighs, upper legs and knees with a range of traditional symbols representing Zita’s environment, family connections and love of the ocean. That’s one way of describing it. Another is to say that for four hours she endured torture as the sharp teeth of the various instruments etched her skin, muscle, sinew and bone to leave this indelible testimony to her covenant. 

As illustrated in the first video, receiving a malu was, as with all things Samoan, a community affair. Zita was never left alone; initially accompanied by another tattoo recipient – Roger Warren, an internationally recognized Rugby player, who was receiving the male tattoo; and a respected elder Lei Lua and various Samoan musicians and performers who soothed her passage with gentle Samoan songs and chants. In the afternoon, the Honourable Prime Minister of Samoa and his wife plus the Chinese official delegation and media came by and the act was viewed by hundreds of the curious and somewhat perplexed Chinese visitors that streamed past the fale. 

At no point did this event descend into a marketing spectacle – that fale had become a sacred space, a setting for a rite of passage that was also a statement of profound connection linking all Samoans’ present to their homeland and extending an act of selfless welcome to their visitors. 

After four, painful hours, the work was complete and Zita’s bare legs had been transformed into a work of art that will permanently broadcast her unique identity and relationship to Mother Earth in a way that will evoke curiosity and respect in all who meet her – a living lesson; etched in flesh that gives a whole new meaning to the statement  “be the change you wish to see in the world.” 

After a quiet period of rest and reflection,a ceremony of blessing - the "Samaga o le Malu" could commence, starting with a prayer of thanks and song. The Tufuga Ta Tatau (master tattooist) Sulu'ape murmered a prayer while cracking an egg on Zita's head symbolising her rebirth into a new woman of the earth. Then a lotion of lega-tumeric mixed with coconut oil was applied to Zita's body starting with the Malu. Finally it was Zita’s turn to celebrate her passage and proudly reveal the Malu to her admiring community in dance as shared in the following video.

Zita Martel designed her malu in collaboration with the tattooist and in accordance with Samoan tradition. As a Tautai (skipper) of Samoan fautasi (longboats) some of the symbols depict Zita’s life, her personal journey as a Tautai and the  gift of being able to feel at one with the ocean waves, the winds, the crew and the fautasi.

Zita Sefo-Martel is one of many individuals who act as “agents of change” by living a different set of values to those that have dominated the prevailing industrial culture of the past 150 plus years. She acts as a bridge between an ancient indigenous culture (in this case Polynesian) and a contemporary western culture now engaged in a search for meaning and balance.  

I thank the Samoan government,  its people and Zita Martel herself for the opportunity to share a week with the Samoan team at the Expo in Shanghai and witness this remarkable event. I also wish to congratulate the Samoans in "breaking the mould" of conventionial tourism marketing. By sharing an authentic and sacred event they were able to communicate the essence of what it means to be uniquely Samoan and, in so doing, elevated the concept of destination branding to a new level. I am not suggesting that tourism marketers need endure pain - but am pointing to the power of knowing and living who you are. 

The Samoan Government has just approved a US $4 million budget to promote tourism and its marketers are aiming for an annual growth of 6-7%. (see news article here).   I can only hope that this focus on numerical growth does not blind Samoans to the the much greater opportunity to build a truly distinctive destination that values and portrays the essence of Samoan values. Just in case, you aren't sure why Samoa is so special, here the official video! 

And should you decide to see for yourself, then who better to give you an unforgettable experience but Polynesian Xplorer!

10 technology trends for 2010 - a strategist's perspective

While I have (for good or ill)  occasionally been described as ahead of my time, I resist describing myself as a futurist as the latter label sounds so pretentious. On the other hand, I do invest many hours a month reading, scanning, searching information that enables me to sense patterns so here are some things to watch in 2010. I’ll follow each of these topics over the next few weeks and identify what i think might be the consequences for places then – so stay tuned! The anticipated "buzzwords" for 2010 are highlighted in red. PLEASE feel free to point out serious omissions. Comments welcomed!!

 
 

1. Social Media Morphs into Social Business – you don’t need a social media strategy in 2010. That won’t be enough. You  will have to socialize your entire business, starting at home by engaging your employees, then your customers, in that order.  Keeping an eye on cost and returns  will be as important as it always was but more tools and metrics will emerge in response to the need to fine tune strategies and tactics and demonstrate accountability. Enterprises that remember it's all about people before process; purpose before profit, and passion before protocol tend to come out on top.
 
2. Integration & Identity - Thanks to widespread application integration and consumer desire to use multiple, diverse applications seamlessly and together,  identity will become a key issue in 2010 – who owns it, stores it, has access to it and under what terms? Could 2010 denote the "death of the login?" 
 Without  sharing my profile, how can I expect for the information I seek to be relevant and customized? But to whom  will I entrust data about me and who else should benefit from accessing it? Will we finally see travel-specific "widget" or web services shops to facilitate aggregation and smart mash-ups that can be used by amateurs and professionals alike?

3. Place-based Communities - we've seen the importance of community to people in the offline world and global connectivity has, in many respects, divorced community from geography. But thanks to the ying & yang of life, every trend has a counter-trend and technology will now enable people who share a common address (ie live in physical proximity) to find each other. I had no idea that YELP (one example of a hyperlocal site) attracts more visitors than Twitter. For whatever reason, I think we might slow down in 2010 and take more time to enjoy what is under our noses. Fed up with irresponsible national leadership, we'll see more community self-determination. Place brands won't be created - they'll emerge from the collaborative efforts of people identifying aspirations in common. They'll be recognized as social and emergent - now that is an important word. DMOs will recognize that they are, in fact, community facilitators, experience orchestrators and stage managers for a visitor's narrative. They'll invest in "destination webs" - the neural network that binds community members together and enables them to share intelligence and respond collectively to external threats and opportunities. 

 
3.Mobile phones and mobile apps will spread in number and intensity i.e., we’ll use them for more tasks; their content will get more real-time and richer, (more augmented);  more pleasurable to access; and smarter and more relevant to my activity, place and purpose.
They'll be used as content generators and payment devices just as often as communication devices - they might, one day, solve the identity issue identified in Trend # 2. But do you trust your mobile phone company more than Facebook. It's a tough call.
 
4.Content Curation. Content will threaten to bury us so the emphasis will be on curation, filtering and managing in and out of the cloud... Expect to see a number of companies try to bite at Google’s heels with more relevant, personalised, customisable search parameters that reflect the content being searched and the browser’s objectives. 

 
5. Video – it seems everyone wants to be on X Factor or a reality show. In 2010 their dreams will be fulfilled. Cheap HD cameras, Like FLIP,  that can stream to the internet in real time (UStream) will add to the mountain of pixels already clogging the airwaves. The new word for this is Vlogging and Cisco is leading the charge – well they would be, wouldn’t they? 
 

6. Customer Engagement & Crowdsourcing - while in 2009 content was being generated spontaneously by consumers, expect brands and destinations to take a more proactive approach to engaging customers in generating useful content and supporting their brand advocacy. BTW advocacay is the new buzz word for “word of mouth” and crowdsourcing becomes a way of engaging the entire destination community (visitors, residents, local businesses, associations and people) in inviting and caring for guests. 
 
7. Women – in 2009, more men than women were using social media and women’s purchasing power and style captured men’s attention. About time. So will 2010 be the year that women leap to the stage and start presenting at travel and tech events? Your guess is as good as mine. At the Phocuswright conference, women constituted less than 10% of the presenters but, as one of them was in charge of Google’s ad revenues, then maybe less = more.
 
8. Language – as many tourism businesses and enterprises rush to the developing world, where signs of the green shoots of recovery appear first, we’ll face a new challenge. The world is not WASP; cultures differ and people need to work in their own language. Expect to see a spate of translation services – automated and semi automated. Technology costs might go down but localization costs will make up for it. There might be a low cost solution (see trend 6) but you’ll have to wait till later in the New Year for my thoughts on that one.

 
9. Semantic or Synaptic Web – as humans rush up Maslow’s ladder in search of meaning, technology follows suit – hence talk of a Semantic Web. A new term that will crop up more frequently in 2010 is the Synaptic web – are they different?  Well the first is about deeper layers of meaning and the second is about connections and relationships. The network of the web is increasingly resembling the neural pathways in the brain. 

 
10. Collective Intelligence. 2010 will mark the end of the Age of the Individual and the emergence of a new form of collective thought  - a Global Brain - and action that emerges from the multiplicity of new, different and self aware connections. We’ll start to find ways of working without formal leaders and commands from above. We’ll emulate the working of computers while mimicking the behaviour of swarms. In 2009 a number of books on swarms and herd appeared on bookshelves – expect to see more in 2010 as we learn how to work across platforms, cultures and vast distances as a agile and adaptive teams. This is especially relevant to destinations. In 2010, expect to see DMOs focus on getting SMART and attending to the needs of the niche, smaller operators at the end of a "long tail."

And if this isn’t enough, the bloggers at TNOOZ have published their technology predictions for travel here. Surely enough food for thought to fuel and entire new year of feverish activity!!!

Inbound Marketing and The Power of Attraction

Long before social media erupted as "the next big thing, many observers noticed that,  as power shifted towards the consumer, PUSH marketing would be replaced by PULL marketing. We even wrote a paper called When Push Comes to Pull ( Download Push-pull)  back in 2002!

And I'm pleased to discover on a recent reading that our predictions then are now becoming today's reality.  For example, here are 3 prognostications dated 2002: 

1. There'll be a shift in focus from promoting to listening, from selling to serving, from control to relationship building and from marketing as sophisticated promotion to a committed form of customer care. 

2. A task/event driven approach will be enbled by the widespread adoption of open standards, XML-wrapped web services and service-oriented architectures. 

3. A collaborative, event-driven approach to satisfying consumer's needs will, in turn, be enabled by a new business ecology comprising service providers, brokers, channel managers, affinity agents and network providers........

Sadly, with every generation and every new, "next big thing", the lexicon is reinvented to distinguish those "in the know" from those still struggling to keep up. That trend is unfortunate because it only slows down the process of diffusion.

The word now being used to describe PULL marketing (ie where the customer assembles the information they need when and where it is convenient to them, is INBOUND marketing and I think Mike Volpe of Hubspot is the author. Not that I wish to appear critical of Mike as he is a GREAT communicator;  has done much to advance understanding of this critical marketing shift and his firm delivers practical solutions that deliver results. Hubspot's slides on the topic are a good place to start and The Social Times Consultancy has just published this precise summary of Inbound Marketing that is useful for those in a hurry. 

The graphic of the magnet - copied, without permission from the Social Times post - provides the thousand word summary:  PULL or INBOUND marketing is all about ATTRACTION. 

 STOP PROMOTING and START ATTRACTING

That means stop talking about how great you are and start living and modeling your values and brand attributes. For tourism destinations that means ensuring that you ARE friendly and welcoming. Have you interacted with airline check-in staff recently or the taxi drivers that provide that critical first impression?. If you claim to be green and sustainable, is that commitment immediately obvious to the visitor on arrival and throughout every aspect of their experience? If you have positioned your city as one that is cool and creative, is WIFI ubiquitous and free?

It's an old maxim that "like attracts like". The beauty being that customers will self select if you act authentically and consistently with your brand's values. Given that so many parties are involved in the delivery of the experience, such consistency cannot be assured without widespread community effort. Branding is not a task that can be delegated to an agency no matter how creative or clever. A destination brand has to "ring true" and reflect the past, present and future aspiration and values of the community and they way its residents would like to welcome guests. PULL marketing is really all about service delivery and exceeding guest expectations. The concept maybe about 10 years old now - hardly new - but from an execution point of view is hardly out the womb!

A Tale of Two Men and Two Canadas

Indirectly and directly Lester B Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada (1963-1968) saved many American lives and put this country on the international map. During the depths of the Vietnam war, it was customary for some American backpackers to sew the new Canadian Maple`flag (which Pearson introduced) on their backpacks to avoid being recognized as Americans.  Pearson also introduced universal health care, student loans, the Canada Pension Plan and helped raise Canada's status as a country and sustain its reputation as a peace keeper concerned about the developing world. 

How things change. Now many countries in the Commonwealth wish Canada to leave and the green backpackers are likely removing the maple leaf from their packs. Our international reputation and appeal as a country is in quick descent as evidenced in the Guardian article here and a few concerned citizens have assumed responsibility for presenting Canada's  brand to the world - see previous post on Reputation.

Increasingly Canada' s pristine image of wilderness stretching inifinitely into the horizon is being tarnished by scarred images of black, bitumen encrusted deserts. as described by John Vidal in this four minute video here: 

 

 

  

While Harper's policies were in alignment with the Bush administration - the world is literally and metaphorically a lumberyard to be exploited - the new US administration are expressing a different view (even if they are constrained by a conflicted Congress) and even China is shifting its position..

But this is not just a tale of two men but two countries. While Harper and the national government are dragging their feet on issues like climate change, Canadian leaders at the community level (across provinces, in cities and on First Nations lands) are actively stewarding the land and acting responsibly. While men in suits prevaricate in cities, hoards of caring individuals with varying levels of political status are showing they care about the land and are protecting Canada's vast forests as best they can as described in another article here. There are plenty of reasons to be both proud and stand on guard for Canada.

  

Canada's boreal forest - all 1.3 billion acres of it - stores the equivalent of 27 years' worth of current global greenhouse emissions, soaking up 22% of the total carbon stored on the earth's land surface. If that dries out, the release of greenhouse gases would be catastrophic. 

So given that we Canadians may have lost any right to tell the world what to do and how to behave (and appear to have little appetite to do that anyway), we can focus on conserving the precious green resources that provide the scenic backdrop to every tourist photo, provide succour to many of our iconic critters (beaver, moose and bear), soak up our carbon and provide the clean air we breathe. This is no longer a philanthropic action on the part of the tourism community but vital to its long term survival and credibility. Regardless of whether you believe climate change is occurring or even caused by human activity, simple housekeeping logic suggests that failure to take care of the food in the larder avoids hunger or sickness.

Escaping the Commoditization Trap - intro

In a resource constrained world, tourism, like all sectors, will have to deliver an honest return on the use of precious resources i.e., pay the true and total cost of its operations. 

 In the long run, cheap travel cheapens everything. The supplier sees his already thin margins evaporate and has to slash costs, standardize, homogenize and automate. Travelers’ experiences deteriorate and the host community ends up picking the tab – to cover increased costs of handling waste, congestion, economic and social dislocation (see earlier post on the new Death in Venice). 

Cheap travel is neither good business (prone to boom and bust and dependent on volume growth) nor sustainable.

If a destination is talking about being sustainable, it has to escape the commoditization trap. Here are three ways out of this nightmare – to start: 

1. stage experiences unique to a place and time; 

2. engage and enable customers to personalise their own experiences in meaningful ways; and 

3. enable the customer to have a transformative experience – ie, experience an inner change of perspective, being or value. 

The rest of this essay describes these three antidotes in more detail - read on here to learn about how places as far apart as Lapland, Canada, and Nevada are using experiences to avoid the gravitational pull of "commoditization" through experience design and innovation. Readers - please add more case studies to this discussion. A sustainable tourism depends on your efforts!

PhocusWright Innovation Adds Value to an already highly valuable event

Just back from Phocuswright's three day conference - worth every penny! Congratulations Philip and all the Phocuswright team not just for attracting a brilliant cross section of the travel & technology community; creating an incredibly rich program; superb organization but also for a really USEFUL innovation.

The decision to make online participation available for those who couldn't make the trek to Orlando was brave - so many traditionalists think that online meetings will diminish or cannibalize markets. 132 people participated this way from all parts of the world. I believe it just increased exposure and increased the appetite for the real thing. The very fact that it was a sell out in very difficult economic times further attests to the value associated with attendance. 

Live streaming the event was expensive but was of HUGE benefit to the participants. All major sessions were available in real time during the conference and will be available for review for the next 60 days. There was so much content to absorb and this innovation allows everyone the chance to review a second time and, more importantly, REFLECT on what was said; see linkages and connections that would not have been immediately apparent at the time; and share this knowledge with peers. Knowing that the live presentations are now "in the cloud" relieved the anxiety associated with many events when you want to chat with a colleague but also don't want to miss hearing the speaker...

Through use of event specific hashtags, real time commentary was enabled and can be aggregated to get a birds eye view of the content. Here's one participants experience before and during....

It'll take me a few weeks to complete that process of review and reflection and I will share what I think are the strategic implications over the days ahead. In the meantime, the travel bloggers at TNOOZ will be able to provide a faster review of specific technologies and useful insights on how to implement..

Finally, just to show I had a great time, here's a picture of me, Patrick Payne, CEO of QuickMobile, who created a brilliant i-phone application for the event; and Leslie Anne Palamar of Building Tourism Excellence who's organizing Canada's next e-connect event in Montreal in January. 

Picture courtesy and copyright of Phocuswright - see their stream on Flickr.

WTM Celebrates 30 years - video designed to encourage reflection

Thank you Dimitrios Buhalis for posting this video on Facebook. It's an 8 minute overview of the growth, evolution and potential future of what has to be the world's most global and pervasive economic and social phenomenon.Designed to inspire the 5000 exhibitors at the World Travel Market and the hundreds of thousands of visitors, who walk the trade hall floors,  to think reflectively about the future, it provides plenty of food for thought! It will be discussed at the Tourism 2030 event at WTM on 12th Nov - see here

Will Whitehorn, whose company Virgin Galactic aspires to move people carbon free, outside the earth's atmosphere, urged hotels to "become much more efficient through the use of solar, wind, waste and water power in order to live with the risk of expensive oil while dealing with a public that demands better, cheaper ecotourism".

While there were several heartening references to the need for responsibility, there appeared to be an implicit assumption that "industry" must also cater to what the public wants i.e. more, better, cheaper ecotourism...The Secretary General of the UNWTO, Taleb Rifai confirmed this by saying that "travel has become a human right, like the right to breath, the right to speak and the right to think" almost implying that any attempt to curb this appetite would be an infringement of those rights. 

Mr Rifai concludes with a bold and "optimistic" vision - "very soon, there will not be a single human being on ths universe who will not cross an international border as a tourist or as a businessman. This tremendous power of people moving all over the world is what is going to shape our industry and impact the world". 

You betcha... 9 billion people crossing an international border at least once a year equals a 10-fold increase in tourist arrivals...just as well they'll be flying in space. Now what kind of fuel will be used to defy the gravity sufficiently to lift off 9 billion souls eager to keep exploring? 

I'd like to think travel was a right but I think  its secondary to and dependent on the right to clean water, sufficient food to grow healthy bones, and a roof over one's head. So if Mr. Rifai's vision were to be realised, we've got much responsible work to do. 

Having spent my entire life serving this phenomenon we call tourism, I happen to really care about the future of the many dedicated and bright people engaged in it. But there won't be a future unless much higher standards of self-honesty and realism are applied. It's time to focus energy on creating a vision of a better , less harmful tourism and jettison ideas that we can continue with "business as usual." International tourism is a privilege NOT a right. It can bring benefits but incurs huge environmental and social cost - just ask the Venetians. Responsible tourism or Sustainable tourism will never fly unless both sides of the equation are recognized from the outset and we stop applying a woolly-headed, polyannnish, false optimism and got deadly serious about transformation.

Will DMOs* survive the next decade?

I was recently asked to write a paper on the likely changing role of DMOs. Having spent my entire career working with this institution in various parts of the globe, and intending to do so going forward, I’ve a keen interest in an accurate answer. 

This afternoon, two blog posts from very reputable sources caught my attention: 

Douglas Quimby from Phocuswright wrote a post titled Destinations: The Online Marketing Disconnect, justifiably bemoaning the fact that DMOs seem so unwilling to move significant chunks of their marketing budgets into the online space. I don’t know Douglas personally, but hope to meet up with him at the PhocusWright Conference in Florida mid November. I imagine him to be a bright, talented Gen X or Yer who ”gets it” i.e finds it impossible to imagine how destinations couldn’t see the obvious benefits of playing aggressively in the online space. 

The commentators to his post are each highly credentialed to speak and deplored the lack of appropriate measuring tools, lack of expertise and education. I suggested that the real problem is “culture” and to see why, please follow the thread…here.  As further evidence of the challenge, I’d  also recommend you read the last blog post from Vicky at Highland Business Research:  It Shouldn’t be This Difficult.   In this post, I can hear the frustrated anguish of someone who is incredibly talented and productive appear to hit a wall or be pushing a boulder up hill. I’m hoping it was her last blog post because she is sunning herself on a beach and has not given up the DMO community for good. 

The second very different post was from a DMO executive – one of the leading lights in social media (and, don’t get me wrong, there are many very talented people in DMOs pushing the edge of the envelope- see my blog roll as a starter. Troy from Denver was writing for the new e-marketing and travel site called, Toonz.com that should be bookmarked quickly by anyone in travel marketing. His post was called How The Industry Will Save the World – so you can see why it got my attention!!

Troy has a brilliant reputation for applying social media to marketing destinations.  So this was quite a step away from his normal territory. Having identified that climate change is an important issue, he appears to be applying travel marketers’ normal and contagious enthusiasm and proposes:  

The time has arrived to lend our voice to the congregation and become a part of the solution.  The travel industry…utilizing technology…can help lead the way.

Well I really hope so. And I welcome Troy and his highly talented e-marketing peers to join the conversation – quickly. But I doubt that the travel industry will save the world – if it’s at all fortunate, it might just save itself. But only if the DMOs recognize and own up to the fact that they are a major part of the problem. The transport cost of most international tourists constitute the bulk of carbon emissions. No one currently takes responsibility for that.  Tourism has to change if it is to make a positive contribution to a very different economy that is emerging from the melting rubble of the old. 

Take my word for it. There are no quick fixes. The current leadership of the tourism “industry” has first to shift its perception and see tourism as the analogue extension of the IT community – both simply connect people and places. They need to work together and fast to find a way of enabling the act of travel to coexist with the act of communication. Both have to find a way of delivering value without living beyond the physical means of the environment to support it. 

In summary – there are two major forces threatening and re-shaping DMOs: 

1. The need to deploy technology effectively or get out of the way; and 

2. The need to ensure destinations can live within the physical limits set by the host environment. 

DMOs could play a positive role in each endeavour but it will mean seeing things differently (a mindset shift); doing things differently ( a culture shift) and doing different things – a role change. Nothing serious – but certainly NOT “business as usual!!!”

To quote Troy – let the conversation continue but PLEASE may it soon lead to action. A good place to start is to join and support The Icarus Foundation, formed some 3 years ago to encourage the tourism industry to become more climate friendly. 

But  now we've started a conversation: what do think DMOs have to do to survive the next decade?

* DMO is the acronym used to describe Destination Marketing Organizations (responsible for attracting visitors to a place).

UK Tour Operators Lead in Thinking About the Future

Kudos to ABTA, British Airways, Carnival UK, Co-operative Travel, The Travel Foundation and TUI Travel plc  and Forum For The Future for leading the way towards some really thoughtful and intelligent debate on the future of outbound tourism.

The report, Tourism 2023, available here, should be mandatory reading for every tourism destination. It’s highly readable, full of substance and deliciously thought provoking. 

Even though it doesn’t quite achieve its own objectives – i.e. “to set out a clear vision of a profitable, successful future in which the travel and tourism industry recognizes its wider responsibilities to society,” it does makes a very good start. While designed to help the signatories identify and address the complex environmental, social and economic issues affecting outbound tourism, it contains enormous food for thought for all places that attract visitors.   

The talented team at Forum for the Future apply a scenario planning approach to paint a picture of four possible futures based on the inter-play of two key variables: the appeal of overseas travel and the presence of inhibitors to overseas travel. 


The four scenarios represent a caricature of a possible future but are described with compelling detail and logic. Sadly,  none is particularly attractive!

1.    Boom and Burst describes a world in which mass tourism continues to grow fast and furiously based on disposable incomes rising in developed economies and the middle classes of emerging economies exercising their right to roam the planet.  It’s a similar forecast to that outlined in the HBR article: Tourism: The Ticking Time Bomb and describes overcrowded, congested iconic destinations and the disappearance of wilderness. 

2.    Divided Disquiet describes a different world in which devastating impacts from climate change, resource scarcity and social unrest have rendered the planet as unstable and hostile; protectionism is rife, yet where the most popular form of  tourism is “doomsday tourism” with a few tourists wealthy or brave enough flock to see places before they disappear. 

3.    In the Price and Privilege scenario, high oil prices have also caused the cost of travel to soar. Many companies couldn’t cope with the efficiency gains needed and went out of business. Capacity shrank and long-haul travel reverted to the aspirational luxury status associated with the turn of the century. 

4.    Carbon Clampdown describes a possible future in which the high cost of carbon , combined with growing environmental awareness and concern, make travel both uneconomic and anti-social.  Tradeable  carbon quotas restrict demand and economies are more localized. 

I simply cannot do justice to this useful piece of work  in a short blog post, so will likely revisit the topic – often. I am also loath to be critical as I would hate to discourage others from showing such thought leadership. But there are some serious limitations – most likely reflecting the fact that a consortium commissioned the work and each company would probably like to think and respond to its findings privately.  

While no one can argue with the six motherhood principles for creating a sustainable future, the three areas where they say urgent action is needed sound lame and self serving: 

1. The industry needs to demonstrate and monitor the economic benefit tourism delivers to destination communities to help protect them for the future and increase their appeal and value to customers. (The insertion of the word NET before benefit would have made this objective so much more credible as it’s the destinations that generally bear the external costs and not the tour operators)      

2. Low carbon innovation – the industry needs to focus on trialling new technologies and taking them to scale; increase energy efficiency, reduce waste and use more renewables. (Of course, but why not set a big hairy audacious goal and say that enterprises based on the grownd will go carbon neutral while we strive to find less harmful ways of getting airplanes to stay airborne?)
                     
3. Driving Customer demand – develop further insight into what will motivate people to take sustainable holidays. (At no point is a “sustainable holiday”  defined nor is the problem addressed. Vacationers could all stay at low impact facilities and drive around in hybrid or electric cars but if the industry as a whole continues to grow at 5% per annum and increases its demand for concrete and kerosene at the same rate, it wouldn't qualify as sustainable)

Tourism 2023 does conclude with a proposed strategic approach that outlines the areas above in slightly more detail and provides one important target – that the outbound industry will sign up to the WTTC target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2035. It also references the Global Sustainable Criteria but doesn’t go as far as Walmart, for example, in setting a Sustainability Index for the members of the supply chain. 

In addition to the good content and imaginative scenarios, the report does, however, throw down the gauntlet to the managers and policy makers in tourism destinations everywhere.  These are the agencies that should be doing this kind of work – aren’t destinations supposed to determine the kind of tourism they wish to attract and help their businesses operate in a sustainable and beneficial fashion and ensure that their communities benefit not suffer from the influx of tourists? It’s sad and ironic that such public agencies have been upstaged by a handful of tour operators but not necessarily a bad thing….over to you DMOs...... The stage is now set for some action from you…..How are you thinking about the future?