TTG ASIA MARCH 2019
Analysis 6
D
Making
most of social
media
In the age of social media, many destinations have yet
to fully engage with today’s travellers in meaningful
and potentially lucrative ways. Rachel AJ Lee
looks at how travel players can
catch up in their game
Quarter Page
114mm x 180mm [H]
4 column
estinations could do more to
exercise greater creativity and
innovation in leveraging social
media for destination market-
ing, with a tremendous amount of content
now available online as an increasingly
digital-savvy generation seeks out share-
able experiences during their travels.
Damian Cook, CEO and founder of
Kenya-based E-Tourism Frontiers, said:
“Travel has become a shared experience.
When people travel, they have an intense
desire to share that experience constantly.
Put smartphones and Wi-Fi into the mix,
and you will have constantly shared con-
tent. That content is by-and-large publicly
posted, accessible and visible to us.”
Cook shared that Kenya is tagged in
some 26,000 photos a week on various so-
cial media platforms, of which about 4,000
are usable. This translates into “thousands
of copyright-free, quality, authentic im-
ages” that can be turned into daily social
media updates or campaigns for DMOs,
he pointed out.
“(Travellers) feel it’s an honour for a
destination to take their image and use it
to market the destination, especially when
(they are) given credit,” said Cook.
Tapping user-generated content is ex-
actly the path the Philippine Department
of Tourism (DoT) has taken, having just
rolled out the refreshed It’s More Fun in
the Philippines campaign, which is entirely
built on crowd-sourced photos and vid-
eos shared by tourists through the hashtag
#itsmorefuninthePhilippines.
A creative example is also seen in Visit
Scotland’s launch of a pop-up travel agen-
cy in London to sell holidays in Scotland
– via Instagram photos, no less. The DMO
created touchscreens with aggregated Ins-
tagram photos, allowing walk-in custom-
ers to simply tap five photos they like and
place them into an itinerary that could be
booked on the spot.
Visit Scotland is using “visual inspira-
tion” to drive the decision-making process
for travellers, explained the DMO’s senior
market manager, Christina Bruns. “What
is key especially for consumers today is
participation and authenticity. What we
have is authentic online content from
consumers, their memories and experi-
ences of Scotland, and we’re sharing that
to create new memories and experiences
for people coming through our door.”
The Mekong Tourism Coordinating
Office (MTCO) has also created a collabo-
rative storytelling platform, Mekong Mo-
ments, that draws destinations articles and
reports from various sources. This initia-
tive was driven in part by marketing budg-
et constraints, as well as a way to build its
digital marketing capacity through social
media sharing, revealed MTCO’s execu-
tive director, Jen Thraenhart.
He also envisions Mekong Moments
becoming a visual content sharing plat-
form that could drive “social commerce”.
For instance, visitors to the platform
could click on a picture and use the #Me-
kongMoments tag find out more about
the destination and service provider.
“The more (travel operators) encour-
age their guests to share their experiences,
the more content created, the more the
Mekong region is promoted. This in turn
also drives exposure for the business, and
the region as a whole,” Thraenhart noted.
Cook agreed: “Once these (active links)
start working and people receive booking
enquiries, that really incentivises the in-
dustry to get their customers to take more
photos and tag them – because they know
the photo may end up being used by the
DMO, which in turn drives business to
them. This is a win-win relationship.”
Travel stakeholders think there is also
value in using social media as a tool for
visitor dispersal and overtourism, driving
travellers to Instagram-worthy locations
that are lesser-known and promoted.
Willem Niemeijer, CEO of Thailand-
based Yaana Ventures implores destination
marketeers to move away from promoting
“perceived highlights” in South-east Asia.
Bagan, which is now overrun with visi-
tors, continues to receive heavy promo-
tion in Myanmar, while other unique but
lesser visited places in the country such as
Mrauk U deserves greater marketing and
visitor attention, said Niemeijer.
It’s a similar story in Cambodia, where
an icon like Angkor Wat continues to re-
ceive millions of tourists each year, while
a short distance away lie other untouched
temple complexes such as Banteay Srei.
Even in Phuket, whose beaches see daily
throngs of crowds, Niemeijer contends
that there remains unseen aspects on the
popular island, varying from a gibbon res-
cue centre to turtle release programmes.
Moreover, destination marketeers can
also turn to social media as a means to
manage visitor traffic flow and volume, as
every publicly shared image comes with
location data.
For instance, Cook shared the example
of tourism authorities using a heat map
created from Instagram to ascertain the
most popular timings and sections among
hikers on the Appalachian Trail, which
extends between Springer Mountain in
Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine in
the US.
Through the map, authorities could
easily see where all the hikers were at a
given point in time, and built a strategy to
thin out the traffic by offering alternative
hiking routes and trip start dates.
The heat map is held up as a great visi-
tor dispersal tool by Cook, who sees its
application for any landmark or attraction
where tourists tend to accumulate.
Despite the common association of so-
cial media with the millennials and hence
the greater online efforts targeted at this
segment, Richard Cutting-Miller, execu-
tive vice president of US-based Resonance
consultancy, sees a prospective gold mine
in digital travel marketing lying on the
other end of the age spectrum.
“Everyone is crazy about the millenni-
als,” he said. “But the reality is there’s a lot
of old people, and the difference between
millennials and seniors is that (the latter)
have already paid off their house and put
their kids through college.
“These seniors have time, money,
means and health to travel. We’re talking
about 20 to 30 more years of leisure travel
consumption, but (instead of just focus-
ing on millennials) destinations have to be
ready for seniors as well, who aren’t going
to be bungy jumping for instance.”
Urging travel marketers to understand
the social media preferences and online
behaviour between the different gen-
erations, Cook added: “Social media is a
powerful tool when it comes to targeting
audiences. People don’t use social media
in the same way. You have to push the cor-
rect content to the correct audience.”
One way to target these seniors could
be through the use of Twitter, suggested
Cook. He advised: “What social media is
replacing for these seniors is the newspa-
per. It is a good way for them to stay up to
date, with numerous links to click through
for articles. This generation still likes to
read and consume text, and Twitter is a
great way or propagating links to text-
based content for their consumption.”