Economic power is not where marketers think it is A few days ago, Mumbrella Asia published an article summarising a keynote by Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman’. In it, Hoffman questioned why marketers are fixated on a youth demographic when women over 50 control 95% of household expenditure. The statistics on this generation should be a marketer’s dream. Not only is the Baby Boomer cohort large, it’s disproportionately wealthy. The US Boomer generation on its own constitutes the third largest economy in the world (if it were a country only US and … [Read more...]
7 principles to stick to in your tourism marketing
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 learnt 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 a … [Read more...]
Paris Syndrome vs. Nashville Syndrome in tourism
Paris Syndrome: Sometimes we need to be careful what we wish for When I conducted a long-term brand tracking studies in both the airline industry and for destinations and destination marketing, I noticed that the Japanese consistently rated everything to do with France very positively. For many Japanese people France, and particularly Paris, form an ideal of a destination – representing civilisation, beauty and culture. But when Japanese people visit Paris, some suffer a severe disappointment. Real life Paris is grittier and … [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...]
The Evolution of Tourism Marketing: Artificial Intelligence
The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is as amazing and technologically advanced as it sounds. We have been hearing it for years in movies and documentaries, but now artificial intelligence is present in the real world and is affecting our everyday lives. This extends through to the tourism marketing and the travel and tourism industry in general. I tackled this topic recently on our successful Tourism Marketing Convention, together with my co-director Carolyn Childs and our clients. We discussed the development of artificial intelligence in the … [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...]
Is your tourism business ready for a seismic shift in demographics?
Pick your metaphor: Demographic tsunami or seismic shift . Whatever you choose, the largest shifts in demographics we may ever have seen are coming to your key markets. The overlap between demographics and generations that govern most marketing assumptions (e.g. that Millennials are Youth travellers) are changing. Whatever demographics you target, be it Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z or Chinas 90s kids, you need to understand what is about to happen. To help you understand the implications, MyTravelResearch.com has worked with PATA to … [Read more...]
Why should businesses conduct tourism research?
One of the great founding narratives of business is that of the millionaire or billionaire who didn’t do any research because they had a great vision. The story is often supported by the Henry Ford quote that if he had asked the customer what they wanted they would have said faster horses. If anything in our ‘post truth’ world that story has got even stronger: for some people evidence no longer matters. And it is true, that there are occasionally businesses that did grow strong and powerful without research. Probably everyone can think of … [Read more...]
5 Step Tourism Marketing System
When it comes to tourism marketing, many of us are suffering from information and technology overwhelm. And some of us just cannot afford in the immediate term to commission a SEO company to help out. But believe it or not, it IS possible to achieve a robust online presence yourself and within your own team without spending a cent. As a travel researcher and marketer, I have been experimenting with various methodologies over the last few years since Google switched its algorithm over to semantic search. As a result, we have enjoyed great … [Read more...]
Mastering Tourism Marketing in 2017
We are as an industry in truly exciting times where we have online marketing opportunities, that will NEVER arise again. Pretty serious stuff. This is all due to the infancy of semantic search - the search engine algorithms that determine what is presented to a traveller why they are searching for holiday ideas. It is a time where you have the opportunity to really strengthen your business or destination brand in a way that you will never be able to do again. How strong and tight your brand is will determine your success. And because … [Read more...]