DestiCorp 2.0

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!!!

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!

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?

My iphone is useless

Hopefully that got your attention. 

The truth is, I love my iphone.

It was love at first sight – a multi-purpose device that kept me connected, soothed my spirits with its music, entertained, educated me during long flights with its videos, brought me up to date with the activities and musings of my Facebook friends while standing in front of the baggage carousel, prevented me from getting lost, told me how much to tip and did the currency conversion, even taught me some useful Mandarin phrases. But the real appeal was and is its design. It’s so pleasing on the eye and functional….wistful sigh….

So why my headline – well it works fine at home but when I need it – i.e. when I am roaming around the world – it’s too expensive to use. I look longingly at the 20 downloaded applications but can’t use them

After one week in Vancouver, I received a text from my friendly but monopolistic UK service provider informing me that because of over use, they were restricting my service.  They gave me a number to call but when I tried it, I was informed that the number was inaccessible from outside the UK!  So much for being in touch while mobile….Then, when I got home, I discovered a bill of £799.00. So much for falling in love….. 

So I can’t fault Apple for that – or can I? In the UK they initially  did an exclusive deal with O2 who have made a mint out of people like me….Let’s hope Vodaphone  - who will now compete with O2 - can give them a run for their money but,  as I am tied into a contract, I am not yet free to move. 

Now I have just spent three weeks on the road (three countries – Finland, Australia and New Zealand) and, as you can expect, turned data roaming OFF!  So much for the benefits of 3G. But that makes one utterly dependent on wifi availability and nothing prepared me for the challenges of traveling down under where wifi seems to be considered an alien from outer space. Broadband is not a commodity down here – it’s treated as a scarce jewel.  Few hotels offer it and the Ethernet connection in the room, which ties you to a desk and computer, is expensive, IF you can get it.  Even if there is a wifi connection in the lobby, you have to sign on in your room first so that renders access by iphone impossible. 

Here in sunny Auckland the sky may be blue but I can't access the cloud while I'm out enjoying this delightful city. So much for software as a service and the rise of cloud computing - if you want to be part of that revolution that is supposed to be the death of distance, you'll have to huddle together in cities with high speed broadband. 

Now it’s not my nature to blame. The problem is that none of the providers in this connecting ecosystem seem to acknowledge that they are in the connecting business nor realize their inter-dependence, nor the impact on customers. Apple sells its phones, mobile providers get their monthly pound of flesh, and hotels source an income to replace their dwindling mini bar sales. 

Douglas Wright has written an interesting piece called Destinations and Online Marketing Disconnect.  A good article, but IMHO the problem goes deeper. Tourism destinations are in the connecting business big time but many haven’t realized that to be really supportive of their customers they are the ones who should be putting pressure on the telecoms industry and their own members to ensure blanket free coverage of wifi in all major connecting places; airports, hotel rooms and lobbies, cafes, public spaces and meeting rooms etc etc.**** Or be really imaginative and offer a local SIM card that provides really useful visitor information, acts as a privilege pass and accesses special offers. I’d happily pay for that on arrival as the time saved from endlessly logging in and out of multiple systems, remembering arcane passwords, or paying for wifi in one hourly increments might make it a good investment…..

If, as Charlene Li suggests in Groundswell, as many as 84% of customers rely on the opinions of people they know before making a major purchase, then surely the objective must be a). ensure existing visitors want to rave about their experience and b). make it easy for them to do so while their positive feelings are fresh?   In short, if visitors are our partners on whom we depend upon to rave and refer and share their experiences, isn’t it time we made it easy for them to do so?

**** Postscript - the good news is that New Zealand's new government is rectifying this situation as quickly as it can with a mammoth investment in broadband to match the stellar attractions and hospitality that Kiwis are famous for! 

National Parks in Peril from Climate Change

Climate Change is the greatest threat our national parks have ever faced. That's the conclusion of a new report we're releasing today, along with the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. National Parks in Peril highlights the 25 national parks most at risk.

via switchboard.nrdc.org

The "we" referred to above is the NRDC - that has issued a comprehensive report on current and future impact of climate change on the national parks in the US. Given that National Parks in Canada are likely to experience greater warming levels, such a study for Canada's parks would be timely. Please let me know what might exist. Go to the NRDC site for the report and check out the interactivity supporting this map showing the impact on western US. 

The livelihood of thousands of people involved in tourism around such parks in North America will be negatively affected over the next 20 years and,  given that during that short period, we know that global energy demand will rise by 50%; global demand for food will rise by 50% and water availability will decrease by 30%, the impacts on scenic values, ecosystems and biodiversity both in the Parks and out of them will sadly worsen.  Whether the tourism industry acts to avoid such changes depends on whether it really does care for future generations.

Any state, provincial, or national DMO that fails to include a strategy for carbon reduction in its future strategies is failing both the industry it serves and the future generations that might be their clients.

Twitter's new home page should send DMOs all a twittering

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Convention Visitor Bureaus (CVBs) are embracing “social media” (notably Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts ) at a noticeably faster pace than their adoption of the internet in the 1990s. That’s the good news. 

The bad news – for those that haven’t entered the brave new world of microblogging – is that “time waits for no one”. The twitter, social media tide continues to flow fast. Twitter’s new home page, announced yesterday and illustrated below, is designed to make Twitter less confusing to newbies. More importantly, it contains a search engine that can be accessed by any browser (having a twitter account is no longer a pre-requisite of search). 

As ably addressed by Colin Schaal in his blog post today, this “changes everything” yet again. If search is the primary source of traffic to travel sites and browsers can now get real time information and offers directly from the source, we can expect Google’s domination of search to feel some pressure and the stakes to be raised for DMOs

As I write this, the Destination Marketing Association International (#DMAI) is having its annual conference in Atlanta and a handful of delegates are tweeting – there’d be more than a handful but the poor wifi reception is apparently hindering some efforts?!? Twittering is bound to be a subject of conversation...

• Nathan Kam (@nathankam) has kindly assembled and updated a list of over 350 DMOs and CVBs that operate Twitter accounts – his  current list here appears to cover mostly North American destinations..
• GoSeeTell  here has compiled a list and applied a ranking that's published in their June blog
• DCI, a place consulting firm, has recently published a report, The Twitter Elite. Congratulations Baltimore, Greater Fort Lauderdale. New Orleans, San Francisco, and Tampa Bay. 

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way of tracking, comparing and evaluating the success of these efforts or, indeed, of ensuring that the lists are complete. So we must express our gratitude to these tracking pioneers and their willingness to share. 

Destinations like Denver (@iknowdenver) that have invested significantly in a twitter strategy are not included in Nathan’s list; Greater Philidelphia (@uwishnu) was excluded even though this DMO has pioneered social media in the USA; and Travel Portland (@indpx), while listed in Nathan Kam’s inventory, does not rank in the top 5 of DCI’s  elite despite pioneering the innovative Twisitor Centre that both GoSeeTell and Travel Portland developed. 

But it’s early days, the pace of change is breathtakingly fast, and twitter account names are sometimes ambiguous. Have you secured yours?

It’s an English summer, pouring with rain and cold (!), so I thought I’d add a little research of my own. I took a quick look at four national destinations – all of whom have positive marketing reputations to maintain. They just happen to be Britain and three of “her” former colonies!

VisitBritain is active on Twitter having safeguarded the brand name (@visitbritain) and has attracted 3,866 followers. The national DMO has emulated an earlier New Zealand initiative and encouraged browsers to follow an individual travelling around the "Edge of Britain". But their twitter page laments - twice in one day, no less, that no one is following "Scott". 

It took a while to find out who Scott was (@scottyramsay) - his twitter address is buried deep within the Visit Britain site as part of a campaign called the Edge of Britain. Please follow him asap - the weather's lousy and he must wish he were in New Zealand, Australia or even Western Canada where the temperatures are soaring. 

Australia has lead the way with Facebook – its fan page attracts some 246,000 fans and its Twitter account (@seeaustralia) has posted over 398 tweets that have attracted 3,436 followers. Impressive considering that the main Australia site does not announce either its Twitter or Facebook presence on its customer facing site.

New Zealand appears to be playing catch up as far as Facebook is concerned with the 100%PureNew Zealand Facebook presence attracting only 4000 fans but their Twitter account is older, richer in content (632 tweets) and its name has greater brand integrity (@purenewzealand), attracting over 5000 followers. The Kiwis also seem reluctant to promote the twitter account on their home page. 

Canada is lagging slightly compared to its southern competitors with no Facebook presence. The national marketing organization does have a Tweet account but its name, @ctccct, is unlikely to grab popular attention.  Despite the official and mysterious name, some 1623 followers have signed on. What is also surprising given the hold that policy has on decision-making is the fact that a French only version wasn't deemed mandatory (significant if you work for the federal government, that is). There’s no reference to any interactive social media on the CTC home page but there is a direct link from the separate media centre site  to the twitter account which appears to be both a responsibility and initiative of the media centre.

So given the rapid rise in the number of Twitter accounts - as well as the number of dormant accounts (some 20% have no tweets at all), we can also expect growing confusion in the marketplace as to which Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages are being run by “official” DMOs – or does this matter?  If, on the other hand, if place brand integrity and quality assurance are important, then DMO’s will need not just to be tracking mentions and tweets but keeping an eye on responses too. All point to more labour intensive work at a time when most DMO and CVB budgets are under real financial pressure.

It's an exciting time in tourism marketing history to be involved and I defy anyone to predict with certainty how this explosion in twitter chatter will evolve. But like any good party, best not to be a wallflower...isn't it time to dance with the customer or, in my case, go "singing in the rain"?!

In subsequent posts I hope we can start a rigorous discussion about the more complex and strategic issues associated with the implications of social media. In the meantime, I'd welcome your comments. 

If you have, as I hope you you do, detailed, practical questions of practitioners, as to what works, what doesn't or why when it comes to implementation, then I suggest you contact the bloggers in my blogroll or the authors of the sites listed in this post. If you want help convincing your boss or Board that this is an area you can't ignore or starve of resources, then I'd be pleased to help!