E-business in tourism: Destination marketing and management

Destination marketing and management in digital tourism E-business in Tourism -course

Finnish university network for tourism studies

Juho Pesonen, Ph.D., UEF, CTS

[email protected]

What is a destination?

•Network

•Place

•Combination of travel products (Buhalis, 2000):

– Attractions

– Accessibility

– Amenities

– Available packages

– Activities

– Ancillary services

THE TOURISM SYSTEM (Leiper, 1990)

Kysynnän ja tarjonnan kohtaaminen

Destination ICT systems

•DMO = Destination Management Organisation

•DMS = Destination Management System

•DMS connects internal and external resources.

•DMOs mission is to create a image for a destination, coordinate businesses and public actors within the destination and provide information to tourists before and during the trip. (Gretzel et al., 2006; Choi et al., 2007; Wang 2008; Inversini and Cantoni, 2009).

•Leadership, management and marketing

What is a DMS?

• Information system, distribution channel, strategic management system and intranet.

•Combines and distributes information about a regional supply of tourism products.

•Marketing and selling.

•Complicated system

HMS (Hotel management system)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hlW2ZULWSw

DMS

•Nine success factors (Park & Gretzel, 2007).

– Quality of information

– Ease of use

– Reacting

– Security and privacy

– Usability

– Trust

– Interactivity

– Personification

– Satisfaction

•DMO website.

Customers have to be tracked online

•Travel search (http://www.tnooz.com/article/travel-research-google-online-acitvity):

– 17 times

– 129 minutes

– 32,5 sites

– During 73 days in 13,8 different days.

Tools for management and marketing of a destination / business

•http://chiefmartec.com/2016/03/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2016/

Destination management

•Putting it all together.

•Big picture.

•Network management.

•Strategy planning and management.

•Combining resources:

– http://remotecontroltourist.com/

– http://www.tnooz.com/article/explore-melbourne-live-remote-controlling-real-people-ground/

Innovations

•http://www.visitnorway.com/uk/the-scream/

•http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/Swiss_invest_in_innovation_to_boost_tourism_.html?cid=34575122

•http://wintersleep.myswitzerland.com/

Destination and e-commerce

What kind of roles does DMOs play in the era of online marketing?

Introduction

•Destination Management (or Marketing) Organizations are central players in tourism domain.

– NTOs, NTAs, RTOs, DMOs, CVBs

•Ongoing discussion in the tourism literature on the role of DMO.

– What is the role of DMO in competitiveness of the destination? (Pike & Page, 2014)

– How can we quantify promotional activities of DMOs in long term? (Pike & Page, 2014)

•DMOs are non-profit entities which aim at the generation of the tourists’ visits in a given area (Gretzel et al., 2006).

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Introduction

• Information and communication technologies are changing travel, tourism and hospitality.

•DMOs have had to adapt to digital world.

•DMOs in traditional information flow was only to collect tourism information such as attractions, hotels and other facilities, and provide them to potential tourists through print media or website (Lee & Wicks, 2010)

– New information flow and power of consumers.

•Not only to adapt but to lead the change (Borzyszkowski, 2014).

•What is a good DMO and what it should do?

– Background in Saimaa destination.

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Roles of DMOs (http://www.dcvb-nc.com/comm/charts/roles_of_a_dmo.pdf)

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Roles of DMOs (http://www2.unwto.org/en/category/technical-product-

target/destination-management-organizations)

• Statistical Strengthening and Development of a Tourism Satellite Account (TSA)

• Product Development and Diversification

• Marketing and Promotion Plan

• Value Chain Analysis and Local Economic Development

• Institutional Strengthening and Public-Private Partnership

• Tourism Legislation and Regulation

• Tourism Physical Planning and Resort Development

• Tourism Development Master Plans and Strategic Development Plans

• Tourism Policy

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Roles of DMOs https://destinationthink.com

•Organizational models

•Destination leadership

•DMO Value Proposition

•Strategy & Performance Measurement

•Destination Development

•Consumer Engagement

• Innovation & Trends

•Destination Marketing Tactics

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Research aims

•Understand what DMO’s should do in the age of ICTs

– What are the roles and actions of DMO’s?

•Literature review: what tourism academics have been studying regarding DMO’s and digital technologies?

•Helps us to understand what are the responsibilities of DMOs.

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Methodology •Scopus database

•TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "destination management organi?ation " ) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "destination marketing organi?ation" ) AND PUBYEAR > 2005 AND ( digital OR online OR ict OR technology OR role OR website OR strategy OR social media OR smart OR intelligent OR internet )

•Resulted in 204 document results in Scopus. Abstracts of all these papers were read and evaluated if they are somehow connected to the topic of DMOs in digital world. Altogether 117 papers were included to be further examined based on their abstracts. Besides these there were also 17 papers that were connected to the topic but could not be accessed because of pay walls.

•12 roles were identified.

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4.1 Leadership

•DMOs should be the leaders in the area in tourism function development (Borzyszkowski, 2014)

•Leading branding process (Dickinger & Lalicic 2015)

•Contributing to customer satisfaction (Bulchand-Gidumal et al., 2013) by creating possibilities for businesses to thrive.

•https://destinationthink.com/change-management-dmo-destinations-proactive/

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4.2 Infrastructure development

•Therefore, DMOs and destination stakeholders should critically evaluate traffic flows, airline needs, what routes to fund, how to cooperate throughout value chain (Hvass, 2013).

•DMOs should know what kind of infrastructure development in the region would benefit the tourism the most.

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4.3 Collaborating with external stakeholders

•E-learning for travel agents (Kalbaska et al. 2012)

•Working with airlines (Hvass, 2013)

•Collaborating with other destinations (Wang, 2008)

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4.4 Collaborating with internal stakeholders

•Collaboration within the destination to increase competitiveness (Fyall et al., 2012)

•New technological tools that enable collaboration and measuring it (Baggio et al., 2010).

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4.5 Website & Destination Management System

•Website evaluation (Li & Wang, 2010)

•Different DMO websites (Luna-Nevarez & Hyman, 2011)

•Tourist decision making process (Nelson, 2015)

•Website quality and performance (Fernandez-Cavia et al. 2014;Vasto-Terrientes, 2015; Stepchenkova et al., 2010)

•https://destinationthink.com/content-marketing-dmos-visit-philadelphia-engagement/

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4.6 Collecting customer information and communicating it to relevant stakeholders

•Web 2.0 as a new opportunity to learn about tourists (Dickinger & Lalicic, 2015)

•https://destinationthink.com/data-driven-destination/

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4.7 Marketing and communication

•4.7.1 Attracting new customers

•Lange-Faria & Elliot 2012, Tham et al., 2013, Milwood, 2013; Marine-Roig, 2014: user generated content and social media presence

•Pan & Li, 2011: Search Engine Optimization

•Xiang et al. 2010: Search Engine Marketing

•Advertising (Choe et al., 2013

•https://destinationthink.com/destination-needs-find-unique-selling-proposition/

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4.7.2 Keeping existing customers

• Li & Wang, 2010

• Murdy & Pike, 2012 & Pike et al., 2011: Customer relationship marketing

4.8 Disaster recovery and crisis management

•How to get tourists back (Walters & Mair, 2012)

•Communication during crisis (Volo, 2008)

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4.9 Destination image and brand communication

•Nelson, 2015

• Jabreel et al. 2016

•Destination image through social media pictures: Stepchenkova & Zhan 2013.

• Image gap (Chen et al., 2012)

•https://destinationthink.com/destinations-brand-advertising/

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4.10 Keeping up with the developing technology

•Lee & Wicks, 2010: DMOs learning to use new technologies

•Komesli et al., 2011: Implementing latest technology such as website ontologies

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4.11 Sales

•DMOs are also selling tourism product online (Masiero & Law, 2015)

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4.12 Sustainability

• Information management with ICT tools for sustainable destination management (Ali & Frew, 2014)

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Results • Leadership

• Infrastructure development

• Collaborating with external stakeholders

• Collaborating with internal stakeholders

• Website

• Collecting customer information

• Marketing

– Getting new customers

– Keeping existing customers

• Disaster recovery and crisis management

• Destination image and brand communication

• Keeping up with developing technology

• Sales

• Sustainability

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Conclusions

•The goal of this paper was to identify what kind of roles DMOs have to take in the age of ICTs

– According to this literature review, DMOs have huge responsibility

• ICTs in destinations

• Marketing, telling the story

• Stakeholders relationships

• Leadership

•First study to present academic analysis on the roles of DMOs

•Provides an overview and references on the topic

•Provides a big picture by combining various research streams

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Conclusions

•What really is a destination and how destination resources should be used?

•Can destinations work together for different markets?

– NTOs, regional DMOs and cities

– Collaborative marketing and management

– Who should take what roles?

•Academics have been careful with their advices

– A lot of descriptive research, how things are

– Less recommendations for every day choices destinations have to make (e.g. which markets to choose Dwyer et al., 2014)

– What can be measured, not what should be measured (Morgan et al., 2012)

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Thank you Contact

[email protected] @eppuJ

https://fi.linkedin.com/in/juhopesonen https://uef.academia.edu/JuhoPesonen

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Juho_Pesonen

www.uef.fi/mot www.uef.fi/tmm

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