What does a travel and tourism conference have to do with sustainability? When Carolyn wanted me to attend the annual Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Conference, at first, I was a little skeptical. “What does travel and tourism have to do with sustainability?”, I thought. Still, I tried my best to keep an open mind. Initially not much - as an industry tourism is too traumatized Most of the webinars, of course, reflected on the travel and tourism industry’s experience through 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic peaked. Most … [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...]
Connecting WA with the Malaysia, Indonesia & Singapore markets
I think some people see our Premium Trends Hub as being in competition with other sources. However, we believe the more people use insight the better that is for us. Your STO can be a great source of insight If you have ever heard our presentation on Champagne Insights for the Cost of Fresh Air, you'll know we are keen for destinations and tourism businesses to work with their State Tourism Organisation. There is so much great information they can provide to support your business planning. So we were delighted when we were invited 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. In this article, we will discuss why and how should businesses conduct tourism research. 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 … [Read more...]
Mastering Tourism Marketing
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 we are … [Read more...]
Let Young People’s Ideas in Tourism Research and Marketing Grow
Bronwyn White of MyTravelResearch.com reflects on the Travel and Tourism Research Association Annual Conference that concluded in Colorado last week. What three insights were your key takeaways from the conference? The digital landscape means there is no excuse for DMOs marketing blindly without an evidence base Many problems and opportunities we face as an industry are similar in each country. I found this, particularly with the Visitor / Welcome Centers stream. I am going to listen more to some of our younger tourism professionals. I … [Read more...]
Mobile Travel Research Statistics
I have just completed a round road-trip if from Sydney to Melbourne and back to Sydney over the Christmas Holiday period. It made me realise that many travel and tourism operators are still NOT mobile-optimised. I also noticed this in the USA a few months ago. It drives me crazy. Imagine what it is doing to your customers. Google will now penalise your website if it is not mobile-friendly. So this means, if your competitor is mobile-friendly and you are not, your competitor will be presented before you, no matter how fancy your site is on … [Read more...]
FREE Luxury Travel Trends White Paper
It's exciting times for MyTravelResearch.com in the Luxury Travel trends space. We recently announced our partnership with Luxperience to create a new and exciting Insights to Action report into the minds of luxury buyers and consumers. You can find more information here In the meantime, we have just published a free report on Luxury travel for you to download. Free Luxury Travel Trends and Insights White Paper In this report, we define what luxury travel is and we explore who is the luxe consumer. We show you how to connect with them in … [Read more...]
Learn the Benefits of Marketing Persona
As a tourism professional, you’re stretched for time, budgets are tight and you have competing stakeholder needs so marketing persona will be out of your ideas yet. You may not have the time to trawl through hours and hours of research to create and trends to create a best practice and innovative marketing plan. Here is the secret: All successful marketing strategies begin and end with the CUSTOMER. As busy tourism marketing professionals, it is easy to forget. Your customer is absolutely central to your marketing NOT your product or … [Read more...]
Travel Marketers Losing Millions By Ignoring Data
Each year tourism departments in governments, companies, and associations spend millions of taxpayer dollars on market research and insights relating to the travel and tourism industry. Unfortunately, much of this effort is wasted. Why? Well, there are several reasons. First, National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) often do not have the resource to take the market research process one step further and distribute the findings to regional tourism organisations and the local travel industry. Full reports and findings are often lengthy and in … [Read more...]