Standing on the 'stand on the shoulders of giants'. Over the years, I've been privileged to work with or learn from some of the great minds in tourism marketing. In particular, I've learned a great deal from my former business partner Bronwyn White over the years. She's introduced me to some great gurus including Neil Patel, thus making our business more resilient as I take on this element. Thanks to this I read this fabulous piece where he outlines his 34 principles of marketing. If you've read my blog on strategy earlier, you'll know I'm … [Read more...]
The Whys and How of Regional Branding
In this guest posting, our intern from the US Angelina Colone reflects on what she’s learnt about regional branding during her time with us If you don't already have a brand - it's time to get one Currently, encouraging growth in regional travel is a hot topic around the world – especially as many iconic destinations face the risk of over-tourism. In Australia, it is high on the political agenda, but Visit Britain has launched a campaign to drive regional dispersal. At MyTravelResearch.com we have focused on this idea for a while (for … [Read more...]
How tourism businesses can profit in our ‘post truth’ world
In 2016, a new word entered the English language: post-truth. In fact, it was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year. It reflected the idea ‘objective’ facts no longer matter as much as what we believe is true based on what ‘ought’ to be true. Actually, this is the culmination of many years of psychological research in which we understood that consumers fit things into a narrative they already have. One common cognitive bias is what’s called confirmation bias: that we are more likely to believe things that confirm what we already thought than … [Read more...]
The science of why you need consistency in tourism branding
One of the coaching calls for our Tourism Marketing Plan Blueprint™ addresses the topic of how to talk about your brand. On the call, our geek-in-chief Bronwyn talked about how consistency enables search engines like Google recognise your brand. That builds Trust, Reputation, and Authority (TRA) which come together in search to put you in front of customers at the right point to make their decision. In this article, we will discuss the vital role that consistency plays in tourism branding. Google famously does this through its algorithms. … [Read more...]
Perception is Reality Marketing Both in Diplomacy and Tourism
Perceptive readers of this blog will notice that I tend to draw on a lot of history - and especially military history - analogies. (So as you can imagine I am loving doing all the work on our culture and heritage blogs right now – and watching with great interest all the coverage for the Anzac Day Centenary) In my piece on tourism strategy and the lessons from World War I, I drew on Margaret Macmillan’s great book ‘The war that ended peace” to see the lessons for strategy in tourism businesses. As I noted then, there have been no shortages of … [Read more...]
Like plaiting fog? Defining cultural and heritage tourism
In our previous blog on the benefits of culture and heritage tourism, we noted the value of cultural tourism to the visitor economy. But just like tourism (the visitor economy anyone?), cultural tourism is an often confusing and complex industry that is quite difficult to describe. There is little agreement as to what constitutes cultural tourism. Moreover, because culture and heritage are inherently linked, it’s hard to separate “culture” and “heritage” in the mind of the consumer. So we thought it might be useful to summarise some of the … [Read more...]
Applying The Lessons of Penalty Shoot-outs In Your Tourism Business
On my personal Twitter feed, I have noticed that those relating to the World Cup have really resonated – especially one on Costa Rica’s performance. As I started writing, Costa Rica are locked in a penalty shoot-out with the Netherlands to see who will go into the semi-finals. Plucky Chile faced a similar situation - going out to Brazil in the previous round. … [Read more...]
What The Tourism Industry Can Learn From World Cup Super Brands
At 4.30am on Saturday, all three household members here got up to watch defending World Cup holders Spain play the Netherlands (who they defeated in the final in 2010), ahead of seeing the Socceroos play Chile. We were among probably 200 million people around the world who did so. … [Read more...]