Think for a moment about your last real vacation. How did you discover where you went? How did you plan for and dream about it? And how did you share how great of a time you had afterwards?
Did any of your answers involve some form of digital technology? Did all of your answers involve digital technology?
Digital technology is key to tourism.
The way visitors make decisions has changed and we can no longer rely on meeting the visitor where they are simply accessing information. Truly progressive destinations will meet their visitor where they discover, share and dream.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while many aspects of tourism have been forced to slow down, the importance and need for progressive digital is paramount. Tourism operators have been fine-tuning their e-commerce presence, demand generators are offering digital experiences and DMOs have gone online to change their distributed messaging to “dreaming of [insert destination here].”
So how can the tourism industry reimagine and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic? We need to be really excellent at digital.
Leveraging digital excellence has never been more important. There are places to be discovered, experiences to be shared and destinations to dream about, and this is already happening online whether you are aware of it or not. How can tourism operators and destinations drive this narrative in their COVID-19 recovery efforts? It all begins with digital hygiene. Digital hygiene refers to the foundation of a digital presence – the basic building blocks of creating the most impact with your digital assets. The tourism industry has specific needs when it comes to digital hygiene and this is led by the visitor’s online behavior.
Speaking of visitor behavior, we’ll use myself as an example:
I’m a 33-year-old millennial, brought up in the digital age. I’ve never picked up a visitor guide as a tourist and I don’t use custom apps on my phone. I like to go where the locals go because I like authentic experiences