Love Croatia: More Mallorcan marketing failure

ABTA's decision to not stage its annual convention in Mallorca next year is surprising insofar as the intention to return two years after the emergency relocation to Mallorca in 2011 had been signalled at last year's convention. But, and lest anyone forgets this, there are plenty of other destinations that ABTA can choose from, just as there are plenty of other destinations that tourists can choose from.

From a personal point of view, the decision is disappointing. While there are plenty who look upon an ABTA gathering as one big photo opportunity, it is - for those who can be bothered - an occasion to learn about what is happening in the world of travel and specifically about what is at the cutting edge.

Tourism and travel are nothing without good marketing. While most within the travel industry would understand this, a perception persists that marketing equals something specific - the glossy approach, the magazine, the expensive advert, the hyperbole of a clichéd article or brochure description. This is the glamour part of a supposedly glamour industry. There is a place for glamour, unquestionably there is, but there is also marketing which is as important if not more so - it is the geeky, nerdish part: the systems, the operations, the technology.

Last year's convention was dominated by technology: by the use of social media, apps, voice recognition, search facilities, you name it. For the technology savvy or the gadget freak, it was convention heaven. For the technology indifferent or technology sceptic, it was hell on Mallorcan earth.

When it comes to technology, there are those who get it and those who don't. As a consequence, prejudices and assumptions are created depending upon which of the technology poles one is connected to: the positive or the negative. The result is that tourism marketing is either technology-driven and little else or it is technology passive, if that. The truth, of course, lies somewhere between the two poles.

One example of this is the use of mobile apps. At one extreme, there is a view which suggests that apps are the only game in tourism marketing town; at the other, there is no view - apps may as well be invisible. Neither view is correct. All the technologies that have sprung up in recent years have created a sub-category of one of the 4Ps of marketing; promotion has its own marketing mix of a multitude of media, none of which can be neglected.

But many of these media, if not neglected, are nevertheless treated less than well. Moreover, a lack of appreciation as to what these different media can do creates a marketing disadvantage, and it is not as if this appreciation needs to be marketing rocket science.

Take Facebook. ABTA is going to stage its convention in Croatia next year. It is one of the destinations that is a key competitor for Mallorca (some would say its biggest). As a simple experiment, I typed "Croatia Facebook" into Google and then typed in "Mallorca Facebook" and "Majorca Facebook". Try it yourselves if you want, but if not let me tell you that the first Google entry for Croatia led to a "Love Croatia" Facebook page; 788,634 likes for the "official" Facebook page of Croatia. The Mallorca ones? The results offer absolutely nothing similar; they are fragmented and inconsequential, and fragmented is unfortunately a synonym for Mallorcan tourism marketing.

Four Pillars, the UK hotel group, has just issued the results of a survey into the use of social media. This found, among other things, that 52% of Facebook users said that friends' photos had inspired their holiday choice. It also found, and so confirming previous research which has pointed to the diminishing importance of established media, that 92% "trusted" recommendations above all other forms of advertising (only 47% "trust" TV, magazine or newspaper ads). 

This survey emphasises the importance of Facebook and of review sites such as Trip Advisor. These social media have supplanted conventional websites and established print and broadcast media as the main means of travel and tourism communication. It's the reality. There can be no scepticism any longer. Yet in Mallorca, there is a lousy and outmoded web presence provided by tourism authorities (and others) who should know better by now. There is an absence of an official and coherent use of social media and an apparent absence of anyone directing tourism marketing who appears to appreciate them.

ABTA knows all about technology and all about the importance of media technologies for today's tourism. It has decided to give Mallorca a miss next year. But in preferring Croatia, there may be more to the decision than it simply being a case of Buggins's turn. 788,634 people can't be wrong.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Are You Experienced?

Another day, another tourist website. I suppose I shouldn't complain given that I have vague connections with such a thing myself, but does one reach a point at which destinations get websited out? The latest is yet another from the Balearic Government - all to do with culture, hence its name http://www.balearsculturaltour.es - and designed to make all-year-round tourists come to the islands. If only. To be fair, it is quite a decent site, quite informative, but it makes the mistake - again - of missing the Mallorcan (or Menorcan or Ibizan) target. People do not go to the Balearics, they go to Mallorca, or to Menorca or to Ibiza or even Formentera. Yet, here once more we have something in the name of the Balearics, and something that has cost close to 100,000 euros. Apparently, "a good part" of the moolah has been spent on getting the site into its different languages. Sounds like a fair amount to me for a site that hops around the islands giving some cultural recommendations. The trouble is that no-one would actually do a tour of that sort; it's one island or not at all.

Nevertheless, culture, if we are to believe another survey, ranks number three on the list of things of importance to the Brit holidaymaker. This is a survey by ABTA and was reported on in "The Bulletin" a couple of days ago. Culture appears to be defined here as local food and customs: it seems you can include pretty much anything under the culture banner these days, including local sausage. Whatever. Culture, however one wishes to categorise it, ranks higher - at 18% - than either sunshine in the form of sunbathing or having sex (with one's partner). Did it occur to ask if having sex with someone other than one's partner might have ranked higher? Chances are it might have done, and one should not forget that sex tourism in Mallorca is worth a significant amount of money - apparently. But be that as it may. The trouble, as always with surveys, is what the question is and who is asked. There is also the fact that people lie. Were one to try and draw a conclusion from this survey and to link it to this new "cultural tour" website and suggest that the survey proves the value of the site, I'm afraid one would be taking the wrong tour.

I was curious enough to find out some more about this survey. So I went to ABTA's website. The results, as presented in The Bulletin, were as they were stated in the press release on the site, but if you go to the actual survey - which you can - you will find that this "culture" aspect is made up of different components. In answer to the question "what do you value most about going on holiday", five per cent said "the culture", so it is not 18% after all, although it is 18% when one adds on "gaining life experience", "new people" and "the food". Food, though, was rated by only 1.63%. What "gaining life experience" is I'm not sure, but it has been assumed - by ABTA - to mean culture. I don't know that this follows; indeed I'm sure it doesn't follow. ABTA have made much of "culture-vulture Brits ... ditching their 'sex on the beach' image", but I stress - only 5% actually responded to the specific culture prompt. The survey, as such, doesn't say anything about a sex on beach image, only through this totally tenuous connection with rating sex with a partner lower than traipsing round a museum.

You do, I'm afraid, have to be very, very careful when it comes to surveys and especially when it comes to press releases offering a biased interpretation, because bias is exactly what there is. Oh, and you do also have to be careful when it comes to surveys which are reported on in the press that were actually published over a month before - http://www.abta.com/resources/news/view/85.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - A-Ha (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24eif_aha-the-sun-always-shines-on-tv_music). Today's title - who did this? Pretty damn easy I'd reckon.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)