Chris Brogan: How Bloggers Can Work With Tourism Boards
Ken Lauher
· 1 year ago
Great posting. I've been thinking not only on a city level but on a national or country level. With Obama using all types of technology to promote his story, I wonder how he may embrace technology if he were President to share his voice or the USA brand? And could he share that with other countries so that they could promote their culture, brand and country?
Ryan McLean
· 1 year ago
I don't agree. I think it sounds a little bit silly to give a city a voice. What is the point behind it all? To increase tourism? Or just for fun?
Brent Norris
· 1 year ago
aloha Chris, this question resonates well with me. I originally started the Big Island Blog Network as a way to get our voices heard. We're a sleepy little town of about 50k. We're have a tourism/agriculture based economy with only recent activity on the web -really sleepy.
This is a difficult situation. We quickly found ourselves the subjects of many many blogposts from everywhere but here. Folks were writing about us from so-called experts that spent a total of one or two weeks on our island thus becoming cultural experts. The worst part was when many of them started getting paid to write about our island.
Then it got deep as the "experts" misnamed popular places in an effort to sneak in a link to one of the local airlines. I'm pretty sure Aloha Airlines spent all their marketing budget on bloggers causing them to go out of business. Okay, I'm exaggerating. That's obviously just my perspective.
We've been teaching folks the how's and why's of blogging for the last couple of years and the tide is changing. We have several dozen popular blogs and hundreds of bloggers. One of my friends recently switched from editor of the local-popular weekly to a blogger. kubehead.com and her equally well-read daughter, theecoboss.com will be making big waves soon. So how does this relate to tourism boards? It doesn't. I have yet to be contacted by a tourism board, chamber of commerce or any local organization responsible for bringing tourism to our island.
Ideally, local bloggers should be supported by tourism boards. The boards should cater local blog coworking days/nights to discuss and perform hands on work. This could help smaller towns get into the blogosphere instead of just reading about their towns from visitor's perspectives. We hold monthly WordPress classes to help companies bootstrap themselves into the digital economy but tourism boards really should consider themselves stakeholders in these efforts. But like I mentioned, it's getting better and hopefully the tourism boards have missed their opportunity to contribute. By that I mean, I hope we've reached a tipping point where enough folks are getting involved in writing about their own manao / vision / mission.
Any locals out there? Contact me and I'll give you the url to our sustainable web community.
Todd lucier
· 1 year ago
chris. You are right. The only new meaningful content is stories, and those stories need to be told from the visitor perspective. We're having great results offering training for economic development in tourism by involving operators, bloggers, photographers, videographers and audio podcasters and teaching them how to tell powerful stories. Also setting the stage for new b to b business relationships. In short, it's working.
Travis Arnold
· 1 year ago
I agree that the more "real experiences" potential visitors can read about will lower anxiety and actually promote new tourism. I used to work with a state tourism agency and they're always looking for ways to increase traffic from other states (increased traffic=increased tax revenues). I haven't looked lately, but I feel they all could benefit from visitors blogging about their experiences, hopes, dreams, fears, etc...about their states, communities, cities.
Gaz4695
· 1 year ago
I think the great value of blogging about a city is the different perspective various folks can bring. I live near London and used to live in the centre. My perspective as a resident is different to, say, my US friends who come across and want to do the "London in a day" tourist thing. I'm happy to do that because I get to do things that maybe, as a London resident, I never did.
Now I no longer live in London my perspective as a blogger re: tourism would be different to when I was a resident.
They key thing is that all these perspectives can bring a voice (and some 'colour') to a city.
Resident Visitor Ex-resident Commuter Foreigner Local politician Unemployed person etc.
Good post, Chris! Gaz
Don Lafferty
· 1 year ago
Tourism boards have the same PR concerns as any publically held corporation, that is, the wrong message could really make an unfavorable impression, even if it’s accurate from the writer’s point of view.
If a tourism board wants to work through blogging to enhance their city’s image they have two choices:
1. Manage their own blog. 2. Schmooze some travel bloggers, just like they schmooze travel agents, and hope like hell none of the bloggers get’s mugged during the visit.
Marketing collateral has only one purpose and it’s not to tell the good, the bad and the ugly, which all seem to find their way into a blogging environment.
That said, I travel all over the world and have grown dependant on a few travel web sites for their everyman reviews to get scoop and consensus on hotels and neighborhoods. I can almost always find somebody out there who has blogged about their visit to every city I’ve ever visited where I usually find out where NOT to go and what to avoid.
People, including bloggers, are much more motivated to report a poor experience than a positive one, unless their getting schmoozed.
Jeb Dickerson
· 1 year ago
Hey Chris (and the rest), Micro-blogging (ie Twitter and the like) is the way to go. Have a Twitter rep for each city that has the flexibility to interact at any given moment with tourists/visitors. Not face to face, but through 140 character bites...offering insider/local perspectives and ideas about what to see and where to go. Perhaps even in the 'treasure hunt' format, or some other interesting way to engage people and get them excited about their visit in a way they haven't done before.
Anyone can see the 'tourist' sites, take pictures, and then promptly forget their trip the moment they step back into their routine. But think of the stories they would tell - and the resulting great PR that city would get - if visiting new places became much less about 'seeing the traditional sights' and much more about discovering what that new place offers 'off the radar' of the typical visitor.
Thanks for the post...Jeb at Wikidstory
Meredith Gould
· 1 year ago
In addition to the sites/sights: the spiritual and religious (sometimes those categories come together!) dimensions of a city.
Where can the voice of spirit be heard? Where can faith be practiced? Which houses of worship have the best architecture, music, liturgy, libraries, gardens? Some cities have a labyrinth walk tucked away, in others it's widely known (e.g., Grace Cathedral in SF). Interfaith. Ecumenical. How does this heart beat in the city?
pam
· 1 year ago
I was at a tourism event a few weeks back and during the Middle East panel, an audience member asked how to encourage travelers to see that part of the world, how to allay their fears. The response? "Read blogs." I was totally psyched to hear that. Apparently, Jordan tourism maintains a list of recommended blogs for people that ask this question.
Visitors who express well what it's like to be somewhere can do great things for tourism, though it's rarely their goal. Good storytelling makes places real and often (but not always) appealing - it certainly helps manage expectations because tourism produced material rarely states that (for example) while London is a fantastic place to go, it's shockingly expensive.
I don't quite get your question - "How should bloggers interact with explaining travel and tourism?"- because the mere act of being a travelblogger is that interaction. I do have a lot of opinions about how to do travelblogging well (one of my blogging gigs involves looking at a LOT of travelblogs and I do not always like what I see).
There's a lively and diverse community of travelbloggers and I think we'd (I'd? I can't presume to speak for everyone) like to be heard as much as destinations would like us to tell stories about those places. It would be cool to draw a dotted line between the groups to help both of them reach their goals.
I agree that the sticky intersection of PR and bloggers can be messy, but it doesn't have to be. And if PR isn't willing to take the risk on hosting bloggers, they can do what Jordan seems to have done - seek out the blogs they like about their places and recommend those via their CVB/Tourism sites to potential visitors.
Just some thoughts.
Barb Chamberlain
· 1 year ago
I'm surprised almost everyone focused on blogs by people from out of town visitors or travel writers.
Yes, they'll hit the highlights--the ones flagged as such for them by the local convention and visitors bureau. But they'll miss the quiet treasures known to locals, the cool little spots that don't have a big marketing budget or funky signage, and the mostly free attractions (because those aren't as easily measured for tourism outputs).
Seems to me the tourism boards should become familiar with well-written local blogs that capture the spirit of the city or region and maintain a blog list on their site. Take the chance on the occasional post not fitting the image you're selling--reality doesn't anyway.
One great example from my area: Any cyclist considering traveling to Spokane should read cyclingspokane.blogspot.com. John posts pretty much daily and gives the real essence of bike riding around Spokane, both on-street and now more single-track and cyclocross. The most recent post would work just fine if linked from www.visitspokane.com (our CVB): http://cyclingspokane.blogspot.com/2008/10/pali....
It's Spokane cycling warts and all, but a potential visitor would know that there are people here with a real passion for cycling and a lot of places to ride, with or without a fancy map.
@BarbChamberlain
mark_hayward
· 1 year ago
Hey Chris - I would just add, similar to what Barb says above, the absolute beauty of blogging is that you can, in a sense, become your own tourist board.
For example, the Puerto Rico Toursim company wanted to charge us like $1500 to place a very small advert in their informational booklet. Because we are a very small operation (my wife and I) I have found it works better just to put my energy into promoting Culebra and my INN on my own.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to work with PR Tourism but sometimes I think many tourism offices are out of reach for the little guys...
PodChicks
· 1 year ago
My husband and I were exploring the possibility of having a residence outside of the U.S. and came across a bunch of ex-pat blogs that give the inside scoop to people who are going to visit and/or contemplating a move. These blogs give a true sense of what to expect and can point people to the gems that visitors might miss if they just relied on a tourism guide. It might be good if tourism boards considered linking to a few of these "living like a native" blogs
Shannon
· 1 year ago
Chris - Yet more words of wisdom comes from your greatness. I would like to echo the thoughts of a few of the commenters regarding tourism boards focusing on local bloggers. This isn't just on a city level, it is also on a state level.
I live in Louisiana and I am just going to throw myself out there and call them out for not being supportive of locals like myself (excluding the SW Louisiana area which is golden in my book). I've written NUMEROUS travel guides about this state and her various regions and many feature stories. I can't tell you how many times I want to bang my head against the wall when just trying to speak with these people. I even met with a local tourism board for a major city near me. I had to go to NC to get a 15 minute meeting with these people who work 10 minutes from my home. They were all nice and positive, yet when following up with them, NO RETURN CALLS. Oh wait, I did get an email, about 6 months later asking me to recommend them for a professional society.
It is very frustrating. I want to be able to tell people new things going on my area, but when the local tourist boards won't even help me with PRINT stories, I find it very hard to believe they would embrace a blog.
The great thing about blogging is that there is no one to dictate the subject of the post. If I want to write just about the chef that cooked me a fantastic meal, I can do that and I am not limited to the two sentences or so I'm allowed in a print pub to highlight a great experience. I've found wonderful treasures in blog when I research before I travel anywhere, whether for business or pleasure. Many times I will return on my own to a destination after attending a media fam, just to talk to other visitors and get their impression of an area.
Tourims boards need to do their research and coming to this blog is a great start for them to dip their toes into social media. Thanks for this post, Chris.
P0_P0
· 1 year ago
Great post. I live in an city where there is no tourism board or CVB (Fremont, CA). The place is really ethnically diverse and great restaurants and little stores can be found, if you know where to look. There are several different chambers of commerce, and some neighborhood and business associations. It would be a great idea if we could get together and have a workshop or meetup regarding getting local bloggers to blog about your city. The first thing to do, I think, is to educate the local associations about the advantages of being blogged about. Then we can find our local bloggers.
Right now, I get Google Search alerts about my city. Currently, there have been hardly any blog posts - just press releases, and the occasional flickr geomapped post. We can try to do a blogger outreach (maybe) and then see if there are any changes in my Google Search Alert. Maybe I should set up a tweetbeep thing too.
Matt McGee
· 1 year ago
Good stuff, Chris. My wife and I jointly write four hyperlocal blogs, one for each of the main cities in our area. We sometimes write about popular local events, stuff that the tourism board people also promote.
We'd welcome an informal relationship with the tourism board, but I wouldn't be interested in any kind of partnership with them where I'm obligated to always write sunshine about our town and local events. That doesn't seem honest to me.
BTW, for folks interested in local blogging, I write a blog called Hyperlocal Blogger which is dedicated to the topic. URL is in my name above.
compassioninpolitics
· 1 year ago
1) Leverage tagging to aggregate blogged reviews 2) Utilizing the Yelp API for other reviews
I think an incredibly important issue is that the tourism bureaus should incentivize more reviews with: 1) cash 2) revenue sharing 3) iTunes or Amazon gift certificates 4) free stuff from the restaurants + events + businesses + locals reviewed 5) contests
Doing so is a bare minimum to demonstrate respect, to help create an equal relationship, and to insure further reviews.
My response stems largely from "HorsePigCows" criticism in "Stop Crowdsourcing Me" Simply expecting reviews for free just because you gave someone a platform is bunk. I won't say this is a rule in all cases, but a general principal which I hope will guide social media campaigns in the future.
Cheers! Great post.... Lots of insight!
Barb Chamberlain
· 1 year ago
Wow, Nathan, I don't know about a couple of your suggestions. If you're blogging in return for goodies from the places and services you review, why would I trust your review? It's hardly objective at that point. In fact, I would think you should disclose any payment received, or other financial/reciprocal relationship.
Heather Rankin
· 1 year ago
I started out trying to do a pure Real Estate blog, but in the Lake Powell area there is not enough RE to fill up a blog. So, with a little push from a couple of online friends, (cough Teri L - cough) I've started down the voice of the community road. We are a complete and total tourist area. The main city, Page, AZ, has about 9000 year round residents and then smaller outlying communities. This year estimates are about 3 million tourists came through here.
I worked 16 years, in some form or another in tourism, and I know this place like the back of my hand. For now, the blog is coming together and better yet, I am having fun :-) I love this place and sharing the magic that lives here not only in the views and water, but in the human and natural history. Gonna sprinkle real estate in there as well. Cheers!
todd lucier
· 1 year ago
Web 2.0 is a new medium for marketing tourism regions and like the recording industry which saw tremendous changes in economics due to technological innovation - the relationship between tourism boards & tourism operators needs to undergo such a sea change.
Bloggers need to play a central role.
1. Bloggers deserve to earn money from their services. 2. The money needs to come from those who benefit from their work. 3. Tourism Boards aren't in the business of spending money, they are in the business of taking money from operators and distributing that money to their staff, overhead, and traditional media exposure and marketing for tourism businesses. 4. Fees from operators support the tourism boards. The financial relationships between tourism boards and operators is generally based on long term relationships, not tracking of sales leads and results. 5. Bloggers have something of quality to offer - not the tourism boards, but to the operators, and thus bloggers are often seen as competition for the tourism boards. 6. Bloggers can offer great value to operators that is trackable.
I see four ways bloggers can be engaged to earn dollars from sharing stories: 1. Tourism Boards can hire them as staff to take over the sales work of traditional paid placement advertising, replacing the tourism boards value offer to operators with something measurable, and effective - stories about their establishment(from a traveller perspective) and exposure in other Web 2.0 services. 2. Compete with local tourism boards and provide a value proposition and services directly to local operators. 3. Bloggers can offer training services to operators - How to Blog and enhance your Web 2.0 presence! 4. My proposition is that the best scenario is to bring these groups together for a day of training to understand the value of working together, to inspire trust and gain confidence in each other. B to B relationships are seeded through these relationships.
We have had a great deal of success bringing these groups together in Canada at Experiential Tourism workshops, cluster workshops, internet marketing workshops for tourism businesses and regional tourism training days inspiring attendees to work together to create the content needed to sell tourism online today.
pam
· 1 year ago
There's so much food for thought in here that I don't know what to pile on my plate first. I'm going to respond to two items:
1. (Barb)If you’re blogging in return for goodies from the places and services you review, why would I trust your review?
I think this is a faulty assumption who's time has come. I'm a little weary of the preconceived notion that comps automatically equal positive reviews. It ain't necessarily so.Building relationships with bloggers you trust (if you're a reader or a provider) should prove this.
2. (Todd)Enthusiastic local and travel bloggers may or may not have the skills for sales/competitive marketing. Being a skilled place blogger doesn't automatically translate to being skilled in marketing a place. Are you suggesting replacing ad sales bucks AND work with place blogging? I agree that getting those two groups together would be valuable and they do indeed have a lot to learn from each other.
Kelly Shibari
· 1 year ago
Interesting topic! Being from a filmmaking background, I know that more than a few states are trying to bring in outside money in the way of tax rebates if a production company decides to shoot a film in their state rather than in California.
How cool would it be to start a national blogsite of different states and different cities, where locals can post their homes' pictures for consideration for filming locations? Restaurants can offer catering services, and hotels can offer discounts for entire film crews staying in their town. State film commissions can get involved too.
One of the hardest things a production company faces (in addition to finding local crew, which is a large component of becoming approved for the tax rebates) is finding the satellite support needed in regards to filming - truck rentals, furniture rentals, filming locations, housing for the crew, catering...a national blog site like this might be really helpful!
James
· 1 year ago
Being a person that blogs, chats, writes and discuss issues on travel related destinations it does surprise me that more tourism regions don't reach out to connect with bloggers. The opportunity for tourism destinations to share and discuss the wonderful highlights of the destination is very easy, but why aren't there more doing it?
I have had some great dialouge with many global destinations and they have been open to share what they have to offer, which I have been more than happy to share through my blogs. While others I guess are still sitting on edge of the pool wondering which toe to dip in!
Hi Chris! Thanks so much for this post and your previous one on this topic. Like you and so many here, I think it is essential conversation.
I think the combination of local bloggers and travel bloggers adds a greater dimension to any place. That, will bring more people!
There was a mention of London in a few comments, including one from a native and my friend Pam mentioning how expensive it is.
We have started our third year of traveling the world as a family and two areas that we focus on in our blog is finding family educational opportunities while traveling and living large on little with lots of keys on how to do that, even in expensive cities.
We spent months in the UK this summer, including London on very little money, had a great time and found endless educational opportunities for families! London has been smart by making all their museums free, so that worked well for our goals and I would love to see more cities follow that example.
We have visited 4 continents, traveled over 50,000 miles, visited 27 countries... and spend 25K a year in total expenses for a family of 3! We find we can travel the world for much less than living at home ( and we have been mostly in "expensive" Europe).
Like many travel bloggers, we blog about what we learn and experience while we travel. We have introduced our readers to new places to add to their list of "must-see"'s, given them new ideas on how to explore places that they know ( like how to live large on little even in expensive places), and challenge them on how to find fun educational enrichment through family travel.
Each blogger will bring their own voice which can not help but add to a sense of place, if it is a high quality blog.
Alina Popescu
· 1 year ago
I believe the stories that are not related to the traditional tours are the ones that need to be told and promoted. And locals would know them best. They know that the best restaurant in town is pretty hidden and no tourist will ever find it, that one of the most authentic place to see isn't on any tour, etc. Tourists might also discover them when deciding to just forget all recommendation and just wander around a city/region driven by their gut feeling.
For example, the best day I had in Amsterdam was when we just wandered around the city and stopped and visited whatever happened to be on our way. Also, in NYC, the best place to eat was a small diner hidden by construction works, close to our hotel. We went in because it was raining and it was the closest place possible. No one was recommending it.
jonnygoldstein
· 1 year ago
I was part of this press tour with Chris, and here are a few thoughts.
This tour was done very well. Here are a few key things that made it work:
1)Because it was arranged in cooperation with the new media/blogging community of Pittsburgh who helped figure out our itinerary.
2) We were also lucky to have an extremely sophisticated thinker about Pittsburgh, blogger Jim Russell, on the tour with us. He gave us a multi-layered take on the history and cultural geography of Pittsburgh.
3) Along with taking us to some really fascinating places, they gave us time to chill, blog, and wander around unchaperoned which led to cool serendipitous discoveries and interactions.
rick byerly
· 1 year ago
tourism boards need to promote people and blogs from their own areas to be the go to people to find out what's going on in an area. with pittsburgh, for example, there are a lot of people who live in the area who don't know the depth of the art scene and local govt and tourism related efforts may not even know as well.
If you want to work with tourist boards, you have to offer them something that helps them achieve their goals. Their goal is not to tell the unvarnished truth it's to motivate people to visit and spend lots of money in their area. It's not to show people the small off the beaten track establishments, unless those establishments have joined the tourist board. It's not to show people how to spend as little as possible while visiting, it's to motivate them to spend as much as possible.
As readers we're looking for the off beat, the quirky, the truth. But it's silly to think that the raison d’être for tourist and convention boards will change.
Tim Russell
· 1 year ago
Interesting posting Chris. I live and work in a city (Saigon) that doesn't have a tourist board, just a local tourism 'authority' staffed by clueless government types who know practically zero about tourism. Thus, there is no destination marketing whatsoever. For those of us working in tourism & hospitality, this is bad news. Means we have to do it all ourselves.
The pieces below, designed for visitors to the city and the sort of thing you'd expect a tourist board to put out, have been very popular:
Tourism boards will work independent bloggers, flickerers, twitterers if we give them an incentive to do so. Perhaps the best way to encourage national, state and local government websites is to work with them to create a buzz. How to work with them? Perhaps we could offer incentive in the form of awards.
It makes sense to encourage government leaders to provide the basic information for visitors. Yes, we would like to see more current information on government portals about local services, upcoming events and things visitors should know before they arrive. We would also like to see more details about ecotourism, responsible travel and indigenous tourism services. A plus would be an understanding of the Web2 channels, including Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
As an incentive for government websites, Planeta.com hosts the Ecotourism Spotlight Award for portals that are innovative, engaging and informative. Nominations for the 2009 Award open in May.
We are also updating an Index of Tourism Portals and adding a link to this essay as recommended reading.
Stephen Chapman
· 8 months ago
Interesting topic and thread of comments. I think local blogs are a real asset to areas keen to encourage tourism and they should definitely be recognised more by tourist boards, but is this idealistic? Probably, but should tourist boards change their attitude?
Like Juliemarg mentions above - Tourist boards need to see something in blogs that will help them to achieve their goals, and their goal is to motivate people to visit and spend lots of money in their area.
The type of places I like to read about in blogs are off the beaten track, the small local secrets, not the places I can go to spend all my money. I think that unless tourist boards can see the obvious value in promoting destinations as a whole, rather than focusing only on what brings in the big money they will be reluctant to support this type of blogging.
jessie voigts
· 8 months ago
this is a great topic for conversation. we've got two trips scheduled in the next few months and have contacted the major tourist boards so that we can share events, attractions, and restaurants with our readers on our site, http://www.WanderingEducators.com.
here's what happened:
chicago - contacted both tourist boards (and the chinatown organization) several times - NO response.
minneapolis (actually, explore minnesota) - lots of help and really getting us into both major attractions and off-the-beaten-path events.
you can bet that minneapolis (a cool city in and of itself) will get a lot more face time on our site, and many more recommendations, than will chicago. explore minnesota gets a lot of credit from me.
why don't more tourist boards pay attention to these sorts of things? we have a large readership and a highly educated audience.
Mauritius WHL.travel
· 8 months ago
It would be a great concept but I believe that it will NOT work in countries where special interest groups are not able to hijack the Tourist Board/Blog. Even worse scenario is where Tourist Board have become a Political tool or a few persons private playground to favor some take holders. Take Mauritius, Why does the Tourist Board and the Tourist Authorities not list all Accommodation providers from the B&B to the 5 star Resort to the little tour operator on their website? This way they would support the every stakeholder equally and if there should be a tip to one of the sites; should it not be in the favor of "The Other Side of ....." promoting the country hidden asset such at the little Eco & Adventure operator, the off the beaten track lodge/guest house rater the big hotel group or the Resort part of an International hotel chain. I mean it not be course of Hilton or Taj that I travel to a country without saying that these hotel have not right to be part of a Tourist Board/Blog.
All Comments
To increase tourism? Or just for fun?
This is a difficult situation. We quickly found ourselves the subjects of many many blogposts from everywhere but here. Folks were writing about us from so-called experts that spent a total of one or two weeks on our island thus becoming cultural experts. The worst part was when many of them started getting paid to write about our island.
Then it got deep as the "experts" misnamed popular places in an effort to sneak in a link to one of the local airlines. I'm pretty sure Aloha Airlines spent all their marketing budget on bloggers causing them to go out of business. Okay, I'm exaggerating. That's obviously just my perspective.
We've been teaching folks the how's and why's of blogging for the last couple of years and the tide is changing. We have several dozen popular blogs and hundreds of bloggers. One of my friends recently switched from editor of the local-popular weekly to a blogger. kubehead.com and her equally well-read daughter, theecoboss.com will be making big waves soon. So how does this relate to tourism boards? It doesn't. I have yet to be contacted by a tourism board, chamber of commerce or any local organization responsible for bringing tourism to our island.
Ideally, local bloggers should be supported by tourism boards. The boards should cater local blog coworking days/nights to discuss and perform hands on work. This could help smaller towns get into the blogosphere instead of just reading about their towns from visitor's perspectives. We hold monthly WordPress classes to help companies bootstrap themselves into the digital economy but tourism boards really should consider themselves stakeholders in these efforts. But like I mentioned, it's getting better and hopefully the tourism boards have missed their opportunity to contribute. By that I mean, I hope we've reached a tipping point where enough folks are getting involved in writing about their own manao / vision / mission.
Any locals out there? Contact me and I'll give you the url to our sustainable web community.
Now I no longer live in London my perspective as a blogger re: tourism would be different to when I was a resident.
They key thing is that all these perspectives can bring a voice (and some 'colour') to a city.
Resident
Visitor
Ex-resident
Commuter
Foreigner
Local politician
Unemployed person
etc.
Good post, Chris!
Gaz
If a tourism board wants to work through blogging to enhance their city’s image they have two choices:
1. Manage their own blog.
2. Schmooze some travel bloggers, just like they schmooze travel agents, and hope like hell none of the bloggers get’s mugged during the visit.
Marketing collateral has only one purpose and it’s not to tell the good, the bad and the ugly, which all seem to find their way into a blogging environment.
That said, I travel all over the world and have grown dependant on a few travel web sites for their everyman reviews to get scoop and consensus on hotels and neighborhoods. I can almost always find somebody out there who has blogged about their visit to every city I’ve ever visited where I usually find out where NOT to go and what to avoid.
People, including bloggers, are much more motivated to report a poor experience than a positive one, unless their getting schmoozed.
Micro-blogging (ie Twitter and the like) is the way to go. Have a Twitter rep for each city that has the flexibility to interact at any given moment with tourists/visitors. Not face to face, but through 140 character bites...offering insider/local perspectives and ideas about what to see and where to go. Perhaps even in the 'treasure hunt' format, or some other interesting way to engage people and get them excited about their visit in a way they haven't done before.
Anyone can see the 'tourist' sites, take pictures, and then promptly forget their trip the moment they step back into their routine. But think of the stories they would tell - and the resulting great PR that city would get - if visiting new places became much less about 'seeing the traditional sights' and much more about discovering what that new place offers 'off the radar' of the typical visitor.
Thanks for the post...Jeb at Wikidstory
Where can the voice of spirit be heard? Where can faith be practiced? Which houses of worship have the best architecture, music, liturgy, libraries, gardens? Some cities have a labyrinth walk tucked away, in others it's widely known (e.g., Grace Cathedral in SF). Interfaith. Ecumenical. How does this heart beat in the city?
Visitors who express well what it's like to be somewhere can do great things for tourism, though it's rarely their goal. Good storytelling makes places real and often (but not always) appealing - it certainly helps manage expectations because tourism produced material rarely states that (for example) while London is a fantastic place to go, it's shockingly expensive.
I don't quite get your question - "How should bloggers interact with explaining travel and tourism?"- because the mere act of being a travelblogger is that interaction. I do have a lot of opinions about how to do travelblogging well (one of my blogging gigs involves looking at a LOT of travelblogs and I do not always like what I see).
There's a lively and diverse community of travelbloggers and I think we'd (I'd? I can't presume to speak for everyone) like to be heard as much as destinations would like us to tell stories about those places. It would be cool to draw a dotted line between the groups to help both of them reach their goals.
I agree that the sticky intersection of PR and bloggers can be messy, but it doesn't have to be. And if PR isn't willing to take the risk on hosting bloggers, they can do what Jordan seems to have done - seek out the blogs they like about their places and recommend those via their CVB/Tourism sites to potential visitors.
Just some thoughts.
Yes, they'll hit the highlights--the ones flagged as such for them by the local convention and visitors bureau. But they'll miss the quiet treasures known to locals, the cool little spots that don't have a big marketing budget or funky signage, and the mostly free attractions (because those aren't as easily measured for tourism outputs).
Seems to me the tourism boards should become familiar with well-written local blogs that capture the spirit of the city or region and maintain a blog list on their site. Take the chance on the occasional post not fitting the image you're selling--reality doesn't anyway.
One great example from my area: Any cyclist considering traveling to Spokane should read cyclingspokane.blogspot.com. John posts pretty much daily and gives the real essence of bike riding around Spokane, both on-street and now more single-track and cyclocross. The most recent post would work just fine if linked from www.visitspokane.com (our CVB): http://cyclingspokane.blogspot.com/2008/10/pali....
It's Spokane cycling warts and all, but a potential visitor would know that there are people here with a real passion for cycling and a lot of places to ride, with or without a fancy map.
@BarbChamberlain
For example, the Puerto Rico Toursim company wanted to charge us like $1500 to place a very small advert in their informational booklet. Because we are a very small operation (my wife and I) I have found it works better just to put my energy into promoting Culebra and my INN on my own.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to work with PR Tourism but sometimes I think many tourism offices are out of reach for the little guys...
I live in Louisiana and I am just going to throw myself out there and call them out for not being supportive of locals like myself (excluding the SW Louisiana area which is golden in my book). I've written NUMEROUS travel guides about this state and her various regions and many feature stories. I can't tell you how many times I want to bang my head against the wall when just trying to speak with these people. I even met with a local tourism board for a major city near me. I had to go to NC to get a 15 minute meeting with these people who work 10 minutes from my home. They were all nice and positive, yet when following up with them, NO RETURN CALLS. Oh wait, I did get an email, about 6 months later asking me to recommend them for a professional society.
It is very frustrating. I want to be able to tell people new things going on my area, but when the local tourist boards won't even help me with PRINT stories, I find it very hard to believe they would embrace a blog.
The great thing about blogging is that there is no one to dictate the subject of the post. If I want to write just about the chef that cooked me a fantastic meal, I can do that and I am not limited to the two sentences or so I'm allowed in a print pub to highlight a great experience. I've found wonderful treasures in blog when I research before I travel anywhere, whether for business or pleasure. Many times I will return on my own to a destination after attending a media fam, just to talk to other visitors and get their impression of an area.
Tourims boards need to do their research and coming to this blog is a great start for them to dip their toes into social media. Thanks for this post, Chris.
Right now, I get Google Search alerts about my city. Currently, there have been hardly any blog posts - just press releases, and the occasional flickr geomapped post. We can try to do a blogger outreach (maybe) and then see if there are any changes in my Google Search Alert. Maybe I should set up a tweetbeep thing too.
We'd welcome an informal relationship with the tourism board, but I wouldn't be interested in any kind of partnership with them where I'm obligated to always write sunshine about our town and local events. That doesn't seem honest to me.
BTW, for folks interested in local blogging, I write a blog called Hyperlocal Blogger which is dedicated to the topic. URL is in my name above.
2) Utilizing the Yelp API for other reviews
I think an incredibly important issue is that the tourism bureaus should incentivize more reviews with:
1) cash
2) revenue sharing
3) iTunes or Amazon gift certificates
4) free stuff from the restaurants + events + businesses + locals reviewed
5) contests
Doing so is a bare minimum to demonstrate respect, to help create an equal relationship, and to insure further reviews.
My response stems largely from "HorsePigCows" criticism in "Stop Crowdsourcing Me" Simply expecting reviews for free just because you gave someone a platform is bunk. I won't say this is a rule in all cases, but a general principal which I hope will guide social media campaigns in the future.
Cheers! Great post.... Lots of insight!
I worked 16 years, in some form or another in tourism, and I know this place like the back of my hand. For now, the blog is coming together and better yet, I am having fun :-) I love this place and sharing the magic that lives here not only in the views and water, but in the human and natural history. Gonna sprinkle real estate in there as well. Cheers!
Bloggers need to play a central role.
1. Bloggers deserve to earn money from their services.
2. The money needs to come from those who benefit from their work.
3. Tourism Boards aren't in the business of spending money, they are in the business of taking money from operators and distributing that money to their staff, overhead, and traditional media exposure and marketing for tourism businesses.
4. Fees from operators support the tourism boards. The financial relationships between tourism boards and operators is generally based on long term relationships, not tracking of sales leads and results.
5. Bloggers have something of quality to offer - not the tourism boards, but to the operators, and thus bloggers are often seen as competition for the tourism boards.
6. Bloggers can offer great value to operators that is trackable.
I see four ways bloggers can be engaged to earn dollars from sharing stories:
1. Tourism Boards can hire them as staff to take over the sales work of traditional paid placement advertising, replacing the tourism boards value offer to operators with something measurable, and effective - stories about their establishment(from a traveller perspective) and exposure in other Web 2.0 services.
2. Compete with local tourism boards and provide a value proposition and services directly to local operators.
3. Bloggers can offer training services to operators - How to Blog and enhance your Web 2.0 presence!
4. My proposition is that the best scenario is to bring these groups together for a day of training to understand the value of working together, to inspire trust and gain confidence in each other. B to B relationships are seeded through these relationships.
We have had a great deal of success bringing these groups together in Canada at Experiential Tourism workshops, cluster workshops, internet marketing workshops for tourism businesses and regional tourism training days inspiring attendees to work together to create the content needed to sell tourism online today.
1. (Barb)If you’re blogging in return for goodies from the places and services you review, why would I trust your review?
I think this is a faulty assumption who's time has come. I'm a little weary of the preconceived notion that comps automatically equal positive reviews. It ain't necessarily so.Building relationships with bloggers you trust (if you're a reader or a provider) should prove this.
2. (Todd)Enthusiastic local and travel bloggers may or may not have the skills for sales/competitive marketing. Being a skilled place blogger doesn't automatically translate to being skilled in marketing a place. Are you suggesting replacing ad sales bucks AND work with place blogging? I agree that getting those two groups together would be valuable and they do indeed have a lot to learn from each other.
How cool would it be to start a national blogsite of different states and different cities, where locals can post their homes' pictures for consideration for filming locations? Restaurants can offer catering services, and hotels can offer discounts for entire film crews staying in their town. State film commissions can get involved too.
One of the hardest things a production company faces (in addition to finding local crew, which is a large component of becoming approved for the tax rebates) is finding the satellite support needed in regards to filming - truck rentals, furniture rentals, filming locations, housing for the crew, catering...a national blog site like this might be really helpful!
I have had some great dialouge with many global destinations and they have been open to share what they have to offer, which I have been more than happy to share through my blogs. While others I guess are still sitting on edge of the pool wondering which toe to dip in!
Great post Chris..
Cheers James
www.littlenomads.com for parents that love to travel.
http://planeta.wikispaces.com/web2
I think the combination of local bloggers and travel bloggers adds a greater dimension to any place. That, will bring more people!
There was a mention of London in a few comments, including one from a native and my friend Pam mentioning how expensive it is.
We have started our third year of traveling the world as a family and two areas that we focus on in our blog is finding family educational opportunities while traveling and living large on little with lots of keys on how to do that, even in expensive cities.
We spent months in the UK this summer, including London on very little money, had a great time and found endless educational opportunities for families! London has been smart by making all their museums free, so that worked well for our goals and I would love to see more cities follow that example.
We have visited 4 continents, traveled over 50,000 miles, visited 27 countries... and spend 25K a year in total expenses for a family of 3! We find we can travel the world for much less than living at home ( and we have been mostly in "expensive" Europe).
Like many travel bloggers, we blog about what we learn and experience while we travel. We have introduced our readers to new places to add to their list of "must-see"'s, given them new ideas on how to explore places that they know ( like how to live large on little even in expensive places), and challenge them on how to find fun educational enrichment through family travel.
Each blogger will bring their own voice which can not help but add to a sense of place, if it is a high quality blog.
For example, the best day I had in Amsterdam was when we just wandered around the city and stopped and visited whatever happened to be on our way. Also, in NYC, the best place to eat was a small diner hidden by construction works, close to our hotel. We went in because it was raining and it was the closest place possible. No one was recommending it.
This tour was done very well. Here are a few key things that made it work:
1)Because it was arranged in cooperation with the new media/blogging community of Pittsburgh who helped figure out our itinerary.
2) We were also lucky to have an extremely sophisticated thinker about Pittsburgh, blogger Jim Russell, on the tour with us. He gave us a multi-layered take on the history and cultural geography of Pittsburgh.
3) Along with taking us to some really fascinating places, they gave us time to chill, blog, and wander around unchaperoned which led to cool serendipitous discoveries and interactions.
rick byerly
fine art photographer, pittsburgh pa
pittsburgh art events
www.PittsburghGalleries.blogspot.com
uniquetake photography
www.uniquetake.com
As readers we're looking for the off beat, the quirky, the truth. But it's silly to think that the raison d’être for tourist and convention boards will change.
The pieces below, designed for visitors to the city and the sort of thing you'd expect a tourist board to put out, have been very popular:
http://heartofsaigon.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/a...
http://heartofsaigon.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/1...
It makes sense to encourage government leaders to provide the basic information for visitors. Yes, we would like to see more current information on government portals about local services, upcoming events and things visitors should know before they arrive. We would also like to see more details about ecotourism, responsible travel and indigenous tourism services. A plus would be an understanding of the Web2 channels, including Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
As an incentive for government websites, Planeta.com hosts the Ecotourism Spotlight Award for portals that are innovative, engaging and informative. Nominations for the 2009 Award open in May.
We are also updating an Index of Tourism Portals and adding a link to this essay as recommended reading.
Like Juliemarg mentions above - Tourist boards need to see something in blogs that will help them to achieve their goals, and their goal is to motivate people to visit and spend lots of money in their area.
The type of places I like to read about in blogs are off the beaten track, the small local secrets, not the places I can go to spend all my money. I think that unless tourist boards can see the obvious value in promoting destinations as a whole, rather than focusing only on what brings in the big money they will be reluctant to support this type of blogging.
here's what happened:
chicago - contacted both tourist boards (and the chinatown organization) several times - NO response.
minneapolis (actually, explore minnesota) - lots of help and really getting us into both major attractions and off-the-beaten-path events.
you can bet that minneapolis (a cool city in and of itself) will get a lot more face time on our site, and many more recommendations, than will chicago. explore minnesota gets a lot of credit from me.
why don't more tourist boards pay attention to these sorts of things? we have a large readership and a highly educated audience.
Even worse scenario is where Tourist Board have become a Political tool or a few persons private playground to favor some take holders.
Take Mauritius, Why does the Tourist Board and the Tourist Authorities not list all Accommodation providers from the B&B to the 5 star Resort to the little tour operator on their website?
This way they would support the every stakeholder equally and if there should be a tip to one of the sites; should it not be in the favor of "The Other Side of ....." promoting the country hidden asset such at the little Eco & Adventure operator, the off the beaten track lodge/guest house rater the big hotel group or the Resort part of an International hotel chain. I mean it not be course of Hilton or Taj that I travel to a country without saying that these hotel have not right to be part of a Tourist Board/Blog.