Frank Belzer is a sales and marketing expert focused on tourism. His leadership experience includes executive roles with Margaritaville, Icon Park in Orlando and Universal Parks and Resorts. He has also served on the board for the Grand Canyon Resort Corp. and Visit Florida and continues to be a featured speaker and panelist at industry conferences and trade shows.
A quick scan of any news feed tells me that tourism bureaus, ministries, departments, CVBs, DMOs and other similar entities are facing more challenges and scrutiny, and this is the case in almost all markets around the world.
I have a lot of experience in this space, and I have been asking questions for a long time about the practicality and effectiveness of these organizations. However, I am also a huge fan and believe these entities are essential and should be able to accomplish great things for their respective markets.
But the world has changed, and my defense of these organizations comes with some strong recommendations regarding what must change if they intend to continue existing as a relevant component of the tourism economy. Here are my eight must-do's.
1) These groups must find a way to fulfill their vision of supporting their respective regions economically. That means a more direct role in generating and sharing the revenue streams that tourism creates. There must be a revenue share model with the groups selling tourism into their market. These organizations cannot sit back and allow the big OTAs or tour operators to collect all the profits from visitation. At the same time, the tourism groups often pay the bills to market the destination and create awareness that benefits these other entities. These bureaus must either use revenue sharing or embrace a direct-booking option.
2) Marketing needs to align from the top to the bottom of the funnel, including conversion and transactions. Currently, tourism organizations do an immense amount of research and invest money into a brand campaign that best represents their destination. However, due to legacy practices, they must hand off the last few stages of the process to various third parties -- such as OTAs and tour operators -- for calls to action, conversion and fulfillment. This habit has been a problem for decades. Third parties do not represent the brand properly; they focus on single segments, misrepresent the message and often ignore the high-value brand message altogether and sell based on the best price. Not cool and not practical.
3) Step away from overdependence on third parties. Third parties will focus on what is best for them, not what is best for the destination. Suppose the destination wants to focus on sustainability and support small entrepreneurial local businesses. Great mission. However, the third parties would make less effort to execute this, so what do you think they will do? The answer is obvious, and history indicates that it is precisely what has happened repeatedly. This problem has fueled increased scrutiny of these organizations as officials ask for evidence of their programs supporting local businesses or helping to facilitate sustainable solutions.
4) They must overcome the negative connotations of commercial endeavors (or of competing with third parties). There is nothing wrong with having a commercial aspect to the business; there are far more positives than negatives (that feels like an entire other article). Ironically, it is often the same government officials who criticize the existence of these organizations because they cost taxpayers money and want to restrict them from opportunities to generate revenue.
5) Establish an accurate measurement of value through attribution. As digital accountability for marketing has increased over the past 20 years, organizations such as these have been left in the dust when measuring attribution. First, they can only focus on clicks and visitors, not actual dollars generated, because they have no conversion options. Second, the third parties that convert and have the data will, at best, share limited information; why? If they attribute too much of their success to the awareness work done by the bureau, they will be pressured to share revenue and, of course, as noted in bullet No. 1, that would not be a desirable outcome. Instead, they often attribute it to their skills, activations and techniques, all of which are nonverifiable.
6) Get the global brand message aligned first. The restriction of working with third parties has also led to other issues. For example, there's often a misalignment between marketing messages created by the brand -- in this case, the destination, the visitor's bureau or the tourism bureau -- and the message shared or executed in the real market by the third party selected. Furthermore, this problem is exacerbated because most visitor bureaus use multiple third parties depending on the countries they're trying to market to. They often have one representation in Germany, maybe three different entities in the U.K., maybe two entities in the U.S., three in Canada, and so on, so imagine how mixed up your marketing message becomes when you have all of these different players sharing different messages in other markets.
7) Do more to safeguard the marketing and sales funnel. Most third parties have conflicting loyalties and are inclined to sell what the customer wants or is interested in or, worst of all, what is easy. The sad thing about this is it might be the awareness work or the promotions -- advertising done by the origin market, which causes the person to express interest and reach out to the third party, but there's no guarantee that what started with your destination stays with your destination; not only does the money leave your market, often so does the visitor.
8) Maintain proper separation between government, political and tourism marketing interests. Often, politicians have their views that step outside their expertise. It is not unusual for a politician with no marketing, sales, business development or tourism experience to get very vocal about the messages and means used by these organizations. Listening to them and appeasing them is a huge mistake. The boards and leaders of these organizations must maintain confidence in their skill sets and push back on this unhealthy type of interference.
So, there is an urgent need for these organizations to catch up. However, the strategic foundation needs to be repaired or rebuilt to support other advancements. The threats these groups face from homegrown skeptical elements will only be diminished if these organizations can establish themselves as more progressive and commercial, perhaps one day requiring no government support whatsoever.
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