A 5-Part Framework To Attract Tourism
Attracting the desired kind of tourism is hard. It's a big challenge for a destination or company.
Yet, developing such capacity is crucial for any tourism stakeholder. Regardless of whether you are a destination manager, a tour operator, a service provider, or an independent professional.
But getting the visitors you want, either domestic or international, is not easy. Still, such a skill is crucial. It ensures tourism is positive and businesses succeed.
Otherwise, destinations may suffer from undesired effects. Some destinations receive visitors that harm host communities' cultural and natural resources. Other destinations suffer from a lack of visitors. While others are slowly "dying of success" due to over-visitation.
What Destinations Usually Do?
Usually, to attract visitors, entrepreneurs and governments focus on two things, too quickly.
The first is to build something. Usually an attraction or a service facility.
The second thing is marketing. In this case, the destination's stakeholders run generic campaigns with a "spray and pray" approach.
With such methods, results are disappointing. Visitors, if any, arrive in "spontaneous" and disorganized ways.
In this typical scenario, destinations’ stakeholders have little influence on the type of visitors they receive.
Or even worse, destinations end up attracting undesired types of visitors.
My Framework To Attract Tourism
To tackle this problem, here is a 5-part framework to build your own market access program to attract the tourism you want.
No matter if you work in the public sector, at a private company, or as an independent professional.
With this action framework, you can add great value to your destination or company, by acting as a key facilitator.
1. Determine Your Type Of Tourism
Determining the desired type of tourism (e.g., cultural, adventure, nature, or a mix) comes before anything else. Even before considering the profile of the desired visitor.
Only after you have decided on the type of tourism you want, you can take other decisions about the offer structure, infrastructure, marketing, and so on.
In other words, everything else must support the key decision of the type of tourism you want.
Yet, this contrasts with what destinations' stakeholders usually do. They randomly take part in trade fairs, create content, or develop offers without a clear direction.
This leads tourism stakeholders to constantly run after the “opportunity” of the moment.
As a result, destination stakeholders do not take strategic steps to use their often limited budgets and resources.
On addition the impact of their efforts is difficult to measure in terms of attracting the type of tourism that the destination wants.
To avoid this, start by defining the type of tourism you want to develop. Again, this could be related to adventure, family activities, events, cultural heritage, etc., or a mix of them.
But make sure that the type of tourism you choose resonates with the qualities, capabilities and development needs of your destination and the host community(ies).
And only then should you think about the type of visitor that matches the type of tourism you want:
Describe your ideal visitors' profile.
Identify where in the world they live.
Are they from your country or do they live abroad?
Think about where they move around (online or offline).
And ONLY then build everything else: offer, content, marketing, partnerships, etc.
2. Build Your Pilot / Core Network
For the second part, identify a core group of partners and service providers to put in place the type of experience you want to offer.
To identify these partners, keep in mind the type of tourism you want to develop.
If you are a private entrepreneur, consider what attractions, accommodations, transportation, marketing services, etc. you will need.
That is, identify all the providers or allies that fit what you have in mind.
Also, think of the public institutions or authorities you need to deal with.
Think whether they can support your initiative. Or, at least, think of how to comply with required regulations (e.g., operation licenses, local rules, etc.).
On the contrary, if you are in the public sector, think about how you can facilitate cooperation between key private and public stakeholders.
To start, build only one pilot group of stakeholders. Identify at least those that can put in place one initial experience for the type of tourism you want to support.
Then, offer the space for cooperation. These could be one-on-one or workshop sessions to present your vision, get interest and commitments.
Then have follow-up meetings to check progress, obstacles, and next steps.
In any case, label this initiative as a "pilot project". In that way, other stakeholders know they can participate in the future based on the success of the pilot group.
3. Configure Your Offer
Now, it is time to build or readjust things.
Brainstorm with your pilot network about the experiences that fit the type of tourism you want to promote.
Choose one experience to start with. This could be anything from a couple of hours to a multi-day experience.
Next, consider what you need to adjust to make the experience appealing enough for your ideal visitor, while staying true to the type of tourism you want to develop.
At this point, do not overcomplicate things by thinking about huge investments to implement the ideal experience. This is usually the case with infrastructure requirements.
At this point, think about what you can implement / adjust with your network's available resources.
Only after testing the success of your initial offer with the market should you think of further investments.
But be aware of not adjusting the offer so much that you lose focus on the type of tourism you want to develop.
Aim for a balance between what you want and what would your ideal visitor want. But make sure that the type of tourism you want is your center of gravity.
Remember that tourism should not be an excuse to attract tourism at any cost, threatening the sustainability of your cultural and natural resources.
Tourism must be a tool for your long-term development and well-being.
So, while building your offer, you will identify several key aspects:
Who is responsible for each part?
What capabilities / resources are lacking?
How can your network tackle those challenges?
Which challenges are easier or harder to tackle?
An easy challenge might be, for example, connecting partners that need to work together.
On the contrary, a harder challenge could be the real necessity for better infrastructure.
In such cases, remember, try to start with and adapt to the resources your network currently has.
The point here is to realize three things:
What you currently have,
What you currently lack, and
What are realistic next steps / alternatives.
In any case, the key at this point is that you start working with your core network on a concrete offer to test as fast as possible.
4. Create And Distribute Your Content
Now that you have an offer in place, communicate it.
If you do not communicate it, it does not exist!
Pay attention! Often, tourism practitioners fall for the temptation of doing marketing without a real offer in place.
In such cases, once destinations get attention from potential visitors or distribution channels, they cannot provide concrete details on conditions and pricing. And thus, no business is closed.
This is key to consider even if you are in the public sector and not dealing with final sales.
That is because, if you follow this framework, once you get the attention of your ideal visitors, you will know where to drive them to talk about prices and bookings.
But you first have to start the conversation with your ideal visitors somewhere.
For that, you have to describe your offer, for example, in the form of stories or itineraries.
Then you have to make this content publicly available online.
Nowadays, there are a lot of free tools to build powerful websites with simple drag-and-drop tools. One I can recommend is Wix.com.
In any case, having an online content source for your offer is key for many reasons:
Potential visitors can access your content directly.
Stakeholders have easy access to reuse that content.
Easily push your content to distribution or promotional channels (e.g., booking platforms, blogs, printed catalogues, etc.)
Notice that it is only at this point, after you know: 1. what tourism you want, 2. there is a network to work with, and 3. you have the content to talk about your offer, that you can start with marketing initiatives.
Remember not to put the coach in front of the horses!
5. Manage And Monitor
The final part of the framework refers to keep facilitating your partners actions, tracking results, and providing feedback.
It is at this point that promotional and marketing actions must take place.
As you can realize now, this action framework is a cycle rather than a start-to-end process.
This means that, based on the results of your promotional efforts, you must revisit and keep working on parts 1 to 4 of this framework.
In this way, your destination will be able to build, test, and adjust its offer based on feedback from the market.
And it all can be done by taking strategic and budget-wise steps.
Starting with the resources your network currently has, and growing based on results confirmed by your target markets.
A Special Note For Tourism Practitioners
The implementation of this framework requires leadership, vision, and constant multi-stakeholder facilitation.
These are skills and areas where no technology, including artificial intelligence, will be able to replace savvy tourism practitioners. At least, not in the long term.
So, there is a great opportunity and need for tourism practitioners who have such abilities.
Most tourism stakeholders, especially in the public sector, still do not know how, or are not able to implement a coherent market access program to attract the tourism they want.
This is a chance for you to become a critical and priceless factor for any tourism initiative to thrive. Either if it comes from the public or the private sector.
If you have the vision to facilitate stakeholders’ actions, you are the one who can make a difference.
Want to Dive Deeper?
If you want to discover a complete tool to analyze and take action to improve your capacity to reach your desired type of visitors, consider checking out the course Attract The Tourism You Want.
This 60-minute course shows you how to understand tourism from a refreshed perspective, providing you with the tools to plan and act in a practical way. And empowers you to develop the most beneficial type of tourism for you and your destination, in a sustainable and profitable way.
But if you’re not ready to dive in to a course yet, just get started with today’s advice.
Summary
Determine your type of tourism.
Build your pilot network.
Configure your offer.
Create and distribute your content.
Manage and monitor.
And remember that success in tourism is not just to bring more visitors, at whatever cost.
Success is about using tourism as an effective means for well-being and the development of host communities, while providing enriching experiences to visitors.
This is it for this newsletter.
I hope these ideas helped you to move forward.
Whenever you're ready, here are more ways I can help you.
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Self-paced, hands-on online course teaching you the process of attracting the tourism you want, providing you the tools to take and track action.
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