DestiCorp 2.0

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?

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.

Reflections on Reboot Britain

Thanks to SwitchNewMedia I was able to avoid 8 hours of train travel yesterday and participate in Reboot Britain from the heart of rural Britain.

Faced with economic meltdown,  dismally low levels of public trust in political leadership, growing concerns about the ability of big government to succeed let alone sustain itself, there's an urgent need to "re-imagine, re-invest, and re-invigorate our economy and society." These words of Diane Coyle, editor and facilitator, apply beyond the shores of the little island that formed the focus of yesterday's event...

To provoke debate, the organizers (NESTA) commissioned a series of essays that are well worth reading. I also recommend you  bookmark the site as all the presentations will be available shortly and check out #rebootbritain to sense the Twitter pulse.

While the focus was on the public economy, there was plenty of interest to the private sector and associations in all facets of life and business in the UK and elsewhere.

Kudos to Stephen Moore(@stevemoore4good), NESTA and the organizing team for initiating the conversation - even though the format (mostly in the main lecture hall) was surprisingly conventional with limited opportunities for audience participation. Next time, a split screen would enable online participants to see what the speaker was referring to and it would be great if moderators could accept questions from tweeters/bloggers regardless of their location......

It was a rich experience - even from a distance and without the benefit of F2F buzz. Howard Rheingold provided an insightful conclusion suggesting that we needed to develop five literacies to thrive in a connected world of instant information: Attention, Participation, Collaboration, Awareness, and Critical Evaluation. Plenty of food for thought even thought the title made me feel uneasy.

While eye and ear catching in its modernity, the concept of  ReBoot, is on reflection merely a 2.0 version of "kickstart." It implies an assumption that a traditional economy, which has gone into nosedive, can be brought back to life with a reset button and all will be well. Remember, it comes after the messages: "Abort", "Retry", and "Fail"! But the intent of the conference suggested that it isn't a reboot that's needed but an entirely new operating system, based on a fundamentally different set of operating assumptions and guiding principles - far greater even than a switch from PC to Mac! I notice that some other bloggers came to similar conclusions separately.

The term ReBoot also implies that a new economy (networked, open, lightweight, environmentally responsible, socially just, creative, agile and resilient...) will come about as a result of external intervention when, in fact, it's already emerging because the conditions are right.

Truth is, we're being carried forward by a host of change forces that have generated sufficient pent up energy to cause a tectonic shift in perception regarding who we are as human beings on a finite planet and how we should behave...

Talking about 2.0 versions of government, marketing, journalism, healthcare, leadership, HR and manufacturing is really healthy but will only move beyond talk to action when we can sustain our attention spans long enough to understand these deeper forces and harness their dynamics. It's ironic that here we are a pivotal point in human history when we could become conscious of our own evolution and the technology that binds also shatters our attention into tiny fragments such that we seem to be viewing reality through a kaleidescope rather than a microscope.

One agent of change never shy to use the term Paradigm appropriately and forcefully is Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) who, like David Weinerger and crew (Cluetrain authors), and Tim O' Reilly cut his intellectual teeth on IT problems but has just gets wiser and more insightful with age.  For those of us whose time is limited between meetings, tweets, emails, the following 2 minute video clip reminds  us that it'll take more than a reBoot to move Britain forward.

Another agent of change, Paul Hawken, recently author of Blessed Unrest also affirms that the ground is already shaking beneath the feet of traditional institutions. Every time I watch the following clip from the Bioneers conference a few years ago, I am reminded why we're living in such an exciting time, so full of opportunity, so filled with consequence.

Birdsong in England, Hot Air from Washington and Bubbles in the Arctic - what's the connection?

I write this sitting quietly in a log cabin located in the midst of a lush and quintessentially English cottage garden. It's misty outside but the song birds are celebrating the close of another magnificent and a seemingly normal Spring day. So far this year, we've experienced a normal set of seasons - a cold winter, windy and showery spring and prospects of a hot summer ahead. Even Wimbledon is prepared with its new roof and there'll be strawberries and cream as usual with the chance to forget the financial meltdown - even while another meltdown continues to take place with disproportionately less fanfare and sense of gloom. It's in this context that a growing sense of complacency within the business community, and especially the tourism community, regarding the climate change threat, should come as no surprise. The financial crisis, the ensuing recession and the dramatic declines in visitors, revenues and yields have diverted our attention to less scary, more familiar issues.

Next week, the American travel industry will launch yet another campaign extolling the virtues of travel with the headline "Travel Matters!" suggesting that travel can be the primary engine of economic recovery and is good for our health.  The Q & A sheet in support of the campaign complains that business travel has been "mischaracterized" and makes the following arguments in defence of leisure travel:

Leisure travel is important because it’s essential to good health. Travelers rate their overall health one full point higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) while on vacation. And they receive three times more sleep after vacations and sleep almost 20 minutes longer. An annual vacation can cut a person’s risk of heart attack by 50 percent.

Of course "travel matters" but so does health care, the production of quality yet affordable food, the care of our elderly, the education and safety of our young etc. If the slogan was "Travel Cares" and was backed with the actions that tourism is taking to address the real issues facing humanity right now, I could back it.

In the meantime, "nature" knows nothing of our human issues.Nature simply obeys implacable laws with no regard to their impacts on our human psyches and what we consider to be our well being. Nature simply and relentlessly adapts. And adaptation is what is happening in the Arctic. As temperatures rise and more ice melts so the gazillions of microbes embedded in the permafrost start to feed on the decaying vegetable matter trapped beneath the surface. Their process of consumption - like ours - emits waste but their waste (methane gas)  is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than Co2.

If you harboured any lngering doubts that climate change would seriously and intensively affect your life or that of your children, then think again and read this article or watch the video from the LA Times last week . Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice - Los Angeles Times.

Methane is one of the wild cards that the IPCC scientists recognized as potentially aggravating the problem but did not,  dare not, include in their forecasts.

Moral of this tale? If we want to enjoy the birdsong and avoid the bubbles. we'll need more than rhetoric and hot air......