Transcript: Adam Stoker: [00:00:00] As far as New Year's resolutions for tourism destinations, my number one resolution that I'm recommending for every tourism destination, take a step back and I want you to really think about what is your overarching strategy. Why do we do what we do? [00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the destination marketing podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. Most of you know that I own an advertising agency and we have been helping destinations get the right message to the right visitors at the right time since 2012. It's been a really fun road. And as we start a new year, one of the traditions on this show on the podcast is we do a new year's resolutions for tourism destinations episode every year. It's been one of our most listened-to traditional episodes that we've done. And I wanted to make sure to bring it back as we go into 2022. [00:00:59] There's so much happening in the tourism industry, so many things that we've had to navigate through Coronavirus starting two years ago and then thinking that we're through it and having the Delta variant come around and now we have the wonderful new Omicron variant that's kind of spreading through the world. And I want to make sure that as we're going through all of these challenges each of us is keeping the big picture in mind. And I think that's one of the things that's at least in my observation with several of the destinations that we've worked with and spoken with and consulted with that there's a lot of tactical changes going on. Everyone has had to be nimble, everyone has had to pivot and everyone has had to make adjustments whether it's with a smaller team, a smaller budget, and it's been a really kind of tumultuous atmosphere over the last couple of years, especially in the tourism industry. [00:01:59] So what I wanted to do with today's episode is go back, take a step back as far as New Year's resolutions for tourism destinations. My number one resolution that I'm recommending for every tourism destination, take a step back and I want you to really think about what is your overarching strategy. Why do we do what we do? Right? And I think Destinations International has done a great job of leading the charge with part of this conversation and that's the conversation about the importance of every destination becoming a community shared value. [00:02:38] Now, that's something that's been talked about like I said by Destinations International for a long time. One of the things that is really important to me when I see major initiatives in the industry is I want to understand from a marketing standpoint, how do we execute on some of these initiatives that are being launched? And when I heard the community shared value initiative that was launched by Destinations International, I really felt like I was excited about it, but I wasn't sure what that meant from a marketing perspective. [00:03:11] First let's just talk about what is becoming a community shared value? The community shared values are the non-negotiable core principles or standards that a community's residents wish to maintain. There's a couple that are really easy, right? Affordable health care is a great example of community shared value that in most cases we can all agree on now. There's a lot of disagreement over the administration’s right to affordable healthcare, how should it be done? But I think we all can agree on the fact that when we get hurt or when we get sick we should be able to receive health care in such a way that doesn't ruin our lives, right? So affordable health care I think is a really easy community shared value and you're not going to get a politician coming in and saying, “I don't believe that anyone should have affordable health care, so we got to get rid of this thing.” It's a community shared value that nobody would dare violate, right? [00:04:05] Then if you look at another one, another example and Destinations International's talked about this, education. Education is a community shared value. How do we want our kids to be educated in schools? I think that from a budget standpoint, as we're looking at budget being allocated in each community, everybody's going to want budget allocated to education because we want our kids to be educated in the community, to be educated and be prepared to approach the rest of their lives. So those are community shared values. [00:04:37] Tourism, if you look at the impact that tourism has on almost every community, tourism absolutely has to become a community shared value. But why hasn't it been a community shared value? I think so much of the answer to that question lies in what's happened since 2008. Since 2008, maybe probably 2009 would be a more accurate start to this. But every year from 2009 until 2019, tourism experienced an all-time high. And I think what that resulted in there was less need for stakeholder engagement, resident engagement because the value was just coming from tourism. [00:05:27] I think what happened over time as every year continues to get better and better from a tourism perspective, the connection between the community and tourism as a value to the community, I think that connection was lost or at least weakened, right? And so now what we have is especially since COVID hit for the first time, the tourism community needs so much support from the residents, the stakeholders and oh PS, the residents and stakeholders need the support from the tourism industry as well. So that need is there but because of the weakening of that bond between the two, it's been very difficult for a lot of destinations to kind of rekindle that connection. [00:06:20] So as I go into at least what my opinion is on this is my philosophy and our agency’s philosophy on from a marketing standpoint, how can tourism destinations get back to being a community shared value? And as we go through this, we've developed this list of four responsibilities that every destination has from a marketing standpoint to ensure that tourism is a community shared value in whatever destination. With those four responsibilities, I'll just start with these are in no particular order, it's not in order of importance but it's the order that I want to share them in. [00:07:09] One of the things that has become the most important for a tourism destination has been the need for business stakeholder support. Business stakeholders are generating the tax revenues that in most cases are funding the DMO. Some DMOs get funding from, obviously hotel tax is the most common, right? The lodging tax. But then you've got some are funded by restaurant tax, some are funded by gas station tax. It goes on and on, right, like the various revenue generation methods for tourism. They go towards funding the DMO. And so the thing that has now needed to happen because of the last two years is business owners that have been paying those tax revenues and expect it to go towards the improvement of generating tourism revenue are saying, wait a second, where's that money going? What tangible support is the DMO giving me? [00:08:12] Well in the last 10 years because tourism was at an all-time high every year until the pandemic, that question didn't really need to be asked because every year it was getting better and better. Since the pandemic hit I've been seeing a variety of methods of stakeholder engagement where destinations are working directly with the business owners to make sure that they understand the value that tourism is bringing for them. So I think stakeholder support especially as it pertains to businesses within a DMO, I think it's really critical. As far as what that entails, I think destinations need to provide measurable support to stakeholders and communicate the value they're bringing to those stakeholders on a consistent basis. [00:08:55] They need to educate stakeholders on their position in the three destination marketing funnels. Now, I'm going to get to those funnels and I'm really excited about that. It's another thing that we've developed here that I think is really going to become part of what everyone does in their destination and we'll get to that. [00:09:12] Destinations also need to eliminate cannibalizing marketing channels with stakeholders. What I mean by that very specifically is in a lot of cases destinations are running marketing efforts, especially from a digital perspective going after the same keywords especially through Google and other digital platforms. They're going after the same keywords as the stakeholders are marketing on at an individual level. And because both are targeting those keywords were driving the cost of marketing to those keywords up unintentionally, so that's one place. We need to make sure that we're working closely enough with our stakeholders to make sure that we're not cannibalizing their marketing efforts. [00:09:56] We want to remove any barriers to purchase. So for example, if we are getting people to our site and then they're getting lost on our site and they intended to find a stakeholder but end up maybe losing their focus in trying to get to that stakeholder, are we complicating the purchasing process? We need to examine what we're doing and make sure that's not the case. We need to create content that really highlights and engages our stakeholders. And one great example that I've seen of this and obviously this is a little bit of a self-serving comment here, podcasts have been such a great way for destinations to provide tangible value to their stakeholders and you can listen to one of the few episodes that we've done with Rob Wells from Beaufort South Carolina as he's talked about how the Intercoastal podcast has helped him to really level up his engagement with his business stakeholders. [00:10:50] Then I think visitor distribution is becoming a more and more important component of destination marketing and I've talked about this before on the show. Just because we're getting tons and tons of tourists to certain parts of our destination doesn't mean we have too many visitors. In a lot of cases, it means we're not doing a good enough job of dispersing those visitors throughout the destination. And I think that's a really important role that the DMO needs to take on. For stakeholders that might not be that 10% of the destination that receives 90% of the traffic, what I want as a stakeholder, in that case, is for the DMO to do a better job of educating visitors on the value that I bring. [00:11:35] I think visitor distribution is something that's going to become more and more and more important as time goes on, especially when we get to whatever normal is going to be on the other side. Travel is going to be an important part of the American experience. We can look back at the last 12 months and we can see that even though there's been the Delta variant and even though there have been surges in COVID, travel in some destinations is back at an all-time high. The distribution issues aren't going away. And I think destinations need to be more intentional about how through marketing they can help with visitor distribution. [00:12:14] So the next responsibility that I feel like DMOs have in order to make tourism a community shared value is I think they need to do a better job of educating residents and engaging residents on the value that the DMO brings to the destination. I'm going to give you a great example. This year, when I was at the Destinations International annual conference in Baltimore, I met with a friend of mine from the Pocono Mountains, from the DMO there in the Pocono Mountains and he talked about a couple of the things that they're doing in the destination to do a better job of engaging residents. They have two major issues in the destination. One of those issues is litter. They have a lot of unfortunate litter that happens in the destination and hurts the visually appealing nature of the roads that lead to their attractions. [00:13:10] So that's one issue that they had. The other issue was they had a lot of homelessness. And so as a DMO they brainstormed, what can they do to help solve this problem and to educate the residents that, hey, we need to stop littering and instead work to clean up our destination. So what they did is they organized a couple of community cleanup days every year where the destination promotes this event and advertises for this event and gets the residents to come help clean up the destination and they get thousands of people to go all over the destination and clean up the trash in the destination. They do that a couple of times a year. [00:13:49] Then on top of that, another thing that they're doing is they're finding these homeless people within the destination and they're hiring these homeless people on an ongoing basis to clean up the litter in the destination. They're killing two birds with one stone. They're taking these two issues and they're engaging their residents to help solve the problem and they've seen incredible results. So I think from a resident education and engagement standpoint that is a great example of a way to educate on the value of tourism for residents and make sure that residents understand the value of the DMO is bringing to the community. [00:14:26] I think residents need to be as aware of opportunities and experiences within the destination as visitors are. We do a ton of work to educate visitors, hey, there's going to be this concert in the park this weekend or there’s a movie in the park or, all the different events that are going on or 5K, whatever. But sometimes in that we're not educating the residents that this event is actually happening. So we want to make sure that residents are aware of what's going on in the destination. [00:14:56] We want to make sure that when tourism is working and working for the residents, we make sure to demonstrate that to the residents of the community. Then I think there needs to be a significant public relations effort in the community in which every DMO is located to make sure that residents are hearing on a consistent and ongoing basis about the value that tourism is bringing to that individual. I always use the example of Utah. Here in Utah, every resident saves about $1,300 a year on taxes because of tourism and the only people that know that are in the industry. So we want to make sure that we're taking data points like that where there's real tangible value for residents and that we're making sure that residents understand that. [00:15:44] Okay, another responsibility that DMOs have and this is the one that most people traditionally have done fairly well and that's destinations have a responsibility to build brand awareness for the community that they're advertising for. Right? So we need to make sure that both residents, and we talked about that in the previous responsibility, and visitors understand the brand of the destination. Now, for those of you that are new to the podcast, I wrote a book about this. The book is called Touchpoints. Touchpoints argues that an organization's brand is the sum of all the touchpoints that that organization has with the outside world. [00:16:26] Well as a destination, you've got hundreds of touchpoints, right? You've got the advertising that you do, you've got the visitor experience whether it's in a hotel or in a restaurant or in an attraction. There are so many different touchpoints that unless you are intentionally examining, evaluating and improving those touchpoints, you are not going to successfully build a positive brand and improve the customer experience. And so the way that destinations should be building their brand is through understanding and managing their touchpoints, through storytelling, advertising and to have a unified visual identity so that you know you're seeing the same components of the same brand wherever you go throughout the destination. [00:17:13] That's really, really important for destinations to communicate the brand to both residents and visitors. I think it's also really important that destinations clearly understand both their resident personas and visitor personas. How many of you that are listening have built out actual resident personas? Do you know what your residents look like and do you know how to talk to them? Because if you don't, just having visitor personas is not enough. We need to make sure that we are understanding both personas and communicating effectively with both and all of that comes in the form of brand awareness. So make sure that you've got your brand touchpoints buttoned up and that you're communicating effectively to all of the personas that you've identified. [00:18:02] Okay, the last responsibility that I want to go through here is in-destination programming, how many of you are doing in-destination programming? What I define in-destination programming is things within your destination that are designed to enhance the visitor experience. So there are a few things that are included there. I talked about visitor distribution earlier. In-destination programming is a great way to do that. One example that I'll use is Bryce Canyon country has been a client of ours since 2014. One thing that they struggle with is that Bryce Canyon is obviously the most well-known and well-visited attraction within their destination. [00:18:48] Well, Garfield County Utah, which is Bryce Canyon Country, is one of the largest geographical destinations that you'll find. So while Bryce Canyon is a huge and amazing attraction, it's only in a small part of this major, large destination and so what they've done is they've created this event every year that's a scavenger hunt where visitors are coming in from all over the country and there are prizes all over the destination and they are using this scavenger hunt to disperse visitors throughout the destination and have them get to multiple parts of the destination. I think that is an incredible example of in-destination programming designed to distribute visitors throughout the destination. [00:19:32] Another great example of in-destination programming, I've had Mo from Bandwango on my show several times and Mo does something really unique, he creates passes for destinations to help visitors distribute throughout the destination. Brewpub passes, golf passes, a variety of passes that allow people to experience multiple locations when without those passes, they probably wouldn't have done so. I also think as part of in-destination programming, destinations need to create destination improvement initiatives. I've talked about wayfinding signs before on the show, but I would put wayfinding signs in this category, making sure that you're looking holistically and this is where it goes back to how I started the show, take a step back, look at the entire visitor experience, look at your brand touchpoints and examine those and see how you're doing. But I think there needs to be in-destination improvement initiatives constantly to improve that visitor experience. [00:20:37] Then in a lot of cases this is in the form of an app, but we need some sort of mechanism or vehicle to help visitors navigate the destination. I also would classify an app, a destination app under in-destination programming. So those are the four major responsibilities that I feel like if a destination is doing a great job of managing those four responsibilities, they will be well on their way to becoming a community shared value. [00:21:06] Now that we've gone through those responsibilities, I want to get to something that I teased earlier because I think this is critical for every destination as they examine their marketing and that's there is not one marketing funnel. Now when I talk about the marketing funnel, I've done that on the show before, but the marketing funnel in traditional organizations is usually awareness, consideration. and purchase and that is a funnel where you take visitors and once they're aware of you, you then get them to consider multiple in your case destinations. And then finally, you want to incentivize them to make a purchase. [00:21:42] If nobody enters your funnel at the awareness phase, you'll never get them to the purchase phase. So it's, it's essentially the buyer journey prior to making a purchase. So as I talk about that for destinations, I think one of the misconceptions that there's been historically about the marketing funnel is that there's only one. But as you think about the visitor journey, that doesn't make sense, right? I'll talk about why my opinion is that there are three destination marketing funnels. The first funnel we call the pre-booking funnel and yes, that goes through awareness, consideration and purchase, but all prior to booking your trip. [00:22:25] So as you think about that, first you decide that you want to go on a trip and then at once you make that decision. The next question is, well, what type of trip do I want to go on? Then you start looking at specific destinations that meet that type of trip, right? And this is where you start to get from the awareness phase into the consideration phase. Now, I'm looking at different destinations, websites, I might be consuming content, who knows, maybe I'm listening to a variety of destination podcasts to try to figure out what's going to be the best fit for my trip. So that's the awareness and then starting into the consideration phase. [00:23:03] So once I'm there, how do I get people to actually book that trip? And that's making sure that as they get to my website that I'm funneling them towards the content that seems most important to them. So obviously if they searched a hiking keyword, that ad should be taking them to the hiking landing page on my website, right, and then all the way through until they booked their hotel. So if I'm managing that funnel effectively, I'm going to be organizing my information about getting them from the awareness phase to actually booking their hotel, that's where most destinations and their efforts. [00:23:41] What I would like to contest is that as soon as they booked that hotel, they are now in a completely different funnel because they've booked their hotel, but there are sometimes hundreds of purchases that are going to happen after that hotel booking. Now, this is what I call the post-booking funnel and we're back in the awareness phase because first, it was awareness of the destination. In the post-booking funnel, its awareness of all the ways we need them to spend money when they're in the destination, so this could be driving towards where are they going to eat, it could also be what attractions are they going to visit while they're in the destination, it could be where they're going to stop for gas. There are so many different purchases that happen in the destination. Are we intentionally making the post-booking funnel part of our marketing efforts? [00:24:36] I would really encourage you that if you're not looking at it that way, if your efforts are stopping at the hotel booking, I would say that you really need to re-examine your plan and we go a lot deeper into that. But for the sake of this podcast, I would say treat everything beyond the hotel booking to when they leave the destination as another opportunity for marketing and revenue generation. Once they've left the destination, once they've ended their trip and gone back home, there's another funnel. Awareness, consideration and purchase and I call that the retention funnel and this is where instead of them just coming and booking their trip and leaving and never coming back and maybe coming back, we don't know. Instead, let's make it intentional and let's organize our marketing efforts around getting people that have visited our destination to return and book another trip and go right back into the pre-booking funnel. [00:25:33] So those are the three marketing funnels and I think those are so critical to make sure that were effectively generating visitation in an intentional way. So as I wrap up our conversation today, I want to just restate where I started, if you are not going through these four responsibilities and making your marketing intentional to engage your stakeholders, to educate residents, and engage them, to build brand awareness and then to create in-destination programming. And by the way in destination programming, another one that I forgot to talk about is community-owned events. I think Tulsa, Oklahoma does a great job of that. If you want to go back and listen to my episode with Ray Hoyt from Tulsa Oklahoma, you'll definitely see that. [00:26:25] But if you haven't looked at these four responsibilities and plotted them out and said, how am I intentionally executing on these four responsibilities to become a community shared value? If you haven't done that, for 2022 take a step back and do that. If you haven't built out your three marketing funnels, the pre-booking funnel, the post-booking funnel and the retention funnel, if you haven't gone through that exercise, get your team together; go through that exercise right now. [00:26:53] My New Year's resolution for every tourism destination that's out there is, I want you to take a step back and look at your strategy holistically and make sure that you are not just performing tactics that don't roll up to your overall goal, your overall strategy. And I promise you if you're doing those things, if you're taking care of those responsibilities, if you're approaching the three marketing funnels intentionally, you are well on your way to becoming a community shared value which will ultimately result in stability for the DMO, stability for the people within the DMO, and then of course success from a tourism perspective and perceived correctly from every angle within a community, whether that's from the business stakeholders, residents or even the visitors. [00:27:43] I'm excited to watch you go through this. If you have questions, I'd be happy to guide any of you through this. But I think it's a critical, critical exercise as you go into 2022, we're going to have a great year. Here's to having success for everyone in the industry and hopefully, I get to see in person whether it's at a conference, a trade show or maybe I'll come do a podcast episode from your destination because we're going on the road again. [00:28:08] Thanks everybody for listening. It's been another amazing year of doing this podcast and I couldn't do it unless I had all of you continuing to follow along and listen to our content. And I really really really appreciate this, this virtual relationship that we've created here. And if you are enjoying the show, please don't forget to leave us a rating or review. And if you haven't checked out the other shows in the network, make sure you go to thedmpn.com that stands for The Destination Marketing Podcast Network. So go to thedmpn.com and there are shows for a variety of audiences within the industry and also visitor facing. So thanks for all you do. Thanks for the, like I said, virtual relationship that we have, and I hope you have a wonderful 2022. [End of transcript]
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