The visitor economy is threaded throughout a destination’s economy; accommodation, restaurants, retail, attractions, heritage, cultural centres, the list of damaged businesses goes on. This impact is then felt by the communities hosting visitors; jobs disappear, incomes shrink, upkeep of buildings and landscapes hampered, and tax income shrinks.

So what does all this mean for a destination’s promotion agency?

In a word- leadership!

We are witnessing the transformation of a DMO’s focus from marketing, through management to leadership. No longer is it good enough to say a DMO job is to build a destination brand and promote it. Tourism officers who focus on market segmentation, brand execution, PR and travel trade engagement are doing a disservice to the destination they represent. Sure, marketing can get you on the map but much more is needed today to sustain a destination’s success.

Tourist boards over recent years have developed their offering to embrace management. The M in DMO switched from marketing to management – as written well by Patrick Richards in his blog.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines management as “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people”. DMO’s have been trying to manage their destinations. For example, by engaging with suppliers to get a better product-market fit to ensure visitors are served products and services they want. The river trip company that has tied up with local restaurants to provide picnic baskets or the B&B that sells all the bits and pieces in the house as well as arranging shipping of the goods to the guests’ homes.

The DMO is trying to manage the offer by influencing the shape of the tourism experience. And of course, marketing the destination continues alongside this.

Over the last few years there has been rising awareness about the “problems” of tourism centred around over tourism where tourism impacts have harmed local communities, the landscapes as well as leaving visitors unhappy with their experiences. This calls for leadership. The DMO is ideally placed to provide this.

DLO: Destination “Leadership” is the future of DMO

There are three dimensions the DMO needs to consider; community needs, place needs, and visitor needs. A DMO needs its local population accepting and welcoming of visitors, destination experiences that respect the natural and built environment, and tourism offers that excite visitors leading to lasting memories of the destination. This is a tall order but necessary if a destination is to prosper economically and societally. The aim is to ensure tourism has a net positive effect on the destination. How to do this is perhaps the subject of another blog.

One group of stakeholders that can help the DMO in this leadership role is the travel intermediaries (B2B) that represent, package, and sell the destination. Tour operators, travel agents and other firms still play a big role, and will for many years, in getting a destination in front of potential visitors’ eyes.

A core element of the DMO’s leadership opportunity is to build a supportive B2B community. Building destination awareness and preference sits at the core of this.

LVG Learning www.lvglearning.com has some great B2B training and development solutions and a global B2B network that can help. We’d like to help you, so please get in touch keith.beecham@lvglearning.com

For many in the developed world, over the last few years, it feels like we’ve been couped up and now we want to get out and have an adventure. As the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic many more people are looking for immersive experiences looking for discovery and cultural immersion.

Making connections sits at the heart of experiential tourism. Having a chef-led tour of a hotel’s walled herb garden in England, visiting a family and joining them for an evening meal in Spain, or having a local citizen take you inside a Shinto temple in Japan for a vegetarian lunch- these are all attempts to “get to know” the destination and connect more deeply. People, especially repeat visitors, want this more personal experience; they want to be challenged, changed, affected, and even somehow improved.

One of the hidden benefits of experiential tourism is the way it can challenge a person’s stereotypes of other people and communities (consciously or subconsciously).

Meaningful interactions prompt us to question our own preconceptions and learn more about other places and people.

But is this experiential tourism trend universal and inevitable? What about those holidaying on a limited budget? What about the first-time Asian visitor looking to win as many European sightseeing trophies as possible? There are still big segments of travellers for whom experiential tourism is not yet on their agenda.

So what are the chief characteristics of experiential tourism:

1. Destinations and experiential travel companies state it’s about giving customers deep emotional connections with the places they visit.
2. People are looking to ‘do’ things on holiday, rather than spending time just switching off and relaxing. They want to be active and immerse themselves in the destination and gain new experiences. Films, TV and social media can prompt this behaviour.
3. Personalisation- getting away far from the maddening crowd and having an intimate experience sit at the core of experiential tourism. It’s about having a “conversation” with the destination that speaks to the values of the traveller.
4. It helps to be shareable- is the experience Instagrammable? Many DMOs seem to be prioritising their destination as great for posting stories and images to stand out from competitors.
5. It’s claimed this kind of travel supports a more sustainable and lower impact tourism. Smaller number of visitors spreading out across the seasons and across the destination have a lighter footprint than large numbers of people concentrating in a few peak months is a few honeypot locations.

In conclusion Covid-19 and the lockdowns and limitations of our freedoms of movement means many are thinking about how they travel and the impact they are having on the people and places visited. The opportunity for DMOs, travel and tourism businesses is to interpret these consumer inclinations and package and offer holidays as “experiential.”

Done well this generates a marketing advantage and differentiates one holiday offer from another. And we all might appreciate our world even more and not take so much for granted.

If you would like to know how LVG Learning can help you strengthen your experiential tourism efforts do contact us. We have training courses to help suppliers, employees or buyers.

Investing in people in today’s tough trading environment is a sure fire way to get ahead of the competition. We’re here to help, do give us a call.

• Keith Beecham