“Recently, I had the opportunity to host a webinar for destination training with marketing purposes. As the presenter, my goal was to be as effective as possible. I did everything right, from planning to post-presentation marketing. But when I got back to work, I noticed that there was no B2B development.” said a friend who is an ambitious DMO marketer.
Turns out, in this age of digital everything, virtual events and webinars are more accessible than ever before. But if you want to get actual results, you just need to take the time to consolidate what was learned after the event.
I’ve been a part of the destination management field for thirty years. Now I put my effort into developing the travel trade through learning. Why? One thing is for sure: the future of the tourism industry is digital and learning is going to be a huge part of it.
The goal of destination marketing is to create a seamless experience for travellers. To me, it seems like the need for destination management has been replaced by the need for destination learning management. And I wonder if it is a transition period from DMO to DLMO?
Destination learning means more than just meeting people, planning the marketing and having things done as before. To strengthen this experience and make it meaningful, we found these five tips after having series of events in the last whole year.
5 Tips to Make Your Destination Training Session Stronger and More Meaningful!
- Your final destination training session may seem like the end of a long day, but it’s actually the beginning. Surveys show that you might end your destination training sessions by reminding tour operators and travel agents to use the resources at their disposal (as well as the market intelligence you provide) to devise a plan of action. We suggest you ask the audiences; tour operators and travel agents, what they will do differently when back at work?
- The more you rehearse, the better you remember.” Keep the momentum going! We noticed that following-up training is a great way to reinforce what was learned at the original workshop or webinar. There are many ways you can follow up – synchronous or asynchronous, meeting live or online, and in-person or through self-paced modules. It’ll help the audiences remember what they learned about your destination, your news and updates. In a recent study, it was found that spaced out training sessions are more effective than one long session. If you haven’t created self-paced learning modules on LVG yet, then schedule live meetings where everyone logs on together, with your stakeholders, and conduct a discussion.
- You know the feeling when you’re trying to remember something really important, but you can’t recall it? Well, that’s what reinforcement emails are for. As a destination marketeer expert, you know what it takes to be successful without having a doubt. However, we wanted to share again how polls we ran with our membership taught us the importance of reinforcement emails. Email may be outdated, but it’s still one of the top three marketing tools. In order to keep the audiences’ memories fresh, send regular reinforcement emails. The email should complement the webinar and could include things like: Repeating key concepts or summaries. Suggestions for ways to use the information in their program, and itinerary. Motivational quotes or jokes – everyone needs a smile on their face at work. Sending these emails over a period of time spreads out the audiences’ interactions with your destination brand.
- It might be time to rethink your approach to networking. In the age of information overload, it’s important to create a culture that values new attention. Creating a culture of inbound attention in B2B networking is crucial to a business’s success. New knowledge, if not supported by a travel agency, tour operator or a buyer company, will be useless information. The only valuable knowledge for traders is if it relates back to their business. We are delighted to share our experimental results with these suggestions for you: You might try these steps to make the transition easier: create a forum where suppliers and stakeholders can ask questions and audiences receive coaching from inbound experts; set up goals for training so you can track progress in quarterly or annual reviews.
- When it comes to your ROI, the last and simplest way to hit the target is to take a coffee break with the LVG team to learn what we do and how LVG improves your benefits. How can we help you? We have a long list of benefits! The educational technology field is evolving very quickly, and surely more quickly than the tourism industry. There are many great solutions on the market today, and even more on the horizon. And the question is whether you know enough to make the right decision and not be left behind.
Tourism marketing and destination branding is the transfer of information to potential buyers. As an expert, we know that your main goal is to help B2B audiences who are already experts in the tourism industry glean new information. Business development and sales professionals want to understand how to apply your destination’s new and exciting details in their own programs and sales. Your hard task is to make it easier for them to transfer the right information for the right sales and business development—to understand how and when to apply their new knowledge and put it into action when the tourism movements start.
This article was written to show that in this day and age, online education in the tourism industry will prevail. We are here to share the benefits of an online learning destination with you, and what pros and cons you can expect to find when shopping for one. It’s a small price to pay for an enlightening conversation; a 30-mins catch-up for a coffee online.
Here is a nice article if you are interested in learning more about the general impact of the learning industry on our lives: https://elearningindustry.com/impact-of-the-elearning-industry-on-our-lives