There are times when I come across some article or other and my eyes light up. Oh please, let it be. Unfortunately, it wasn't. The article was about research undertaken at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra into the quality of websites run by tourist destinations. The headline promised me everything I needed to confirm my suspicions: "Tourist destinations' official portals lacking in interactivity". Going to a
PDF of a resumé of a further article published in Spanish by the journal "Tourism Management Perspectives", I was disappointed to not find the Balearics to be one of the destinations that had been researched. Never mind, though. The good professors at the university are planning to do some further research into the webs of all the seventeen autonomous communities. Can't wait. So much so that I had to go and remind myself of the official portal for the Balearics is. More on that in a bit.
To sum up the research, it found that the websites were ok (though the professors are not effusive) when it came to basic usability but they weren't ok when it came to allowing interactivity with users or with offering persuasion, which can include reservation systems but also lots of nice photos, text and what have you. The destinations, and there were ten of them, included websites for Andalusia and Catalonia and for cities in Spain - Barcelona, Madrid and Santiago de Compostela - as well as overseas, e.g. Wales.
A quick look on the Spanish sites was all that was needed for me to know just how poor the website for the Balearics is. The researchers were moderately impressed with some of what they found but when they come to doing their study into the websites of all the autonomous communities, they are going to be very unimpressed by illesbalears.es. The Andalusia portal, for example, is not too bad. Its home page is fairly engaging (helped by Andalusia having a funky, multi-coloured logo) but that's about as far as it goes. A facility to "Book your trip"? Sorry, but you can't.
But illesbalears.es doesn't even have the saving grace of having an engaging home page, unless you count the rolling images for "much more than meetings", "much more than sailing", "much more than cycle tourism" etc. (I hadn't thought they were still banging on with this slogan, but clearly they are). It's when you get into the nitty-gritty of what's on this website that you really understand just how embarrassing it is. On the right-hand menu, for instance, is a banner to click for World Tourism Day. Which is when? Not is, was. 27 September. A further banner for "Estaciones Náuticas" gets you to ... "your request cannot be processed". I know the Estaciones Náuticas concept is useless but I do also know it's not so useless that there isn't a website.
What about "Activities November"? This looks rather more promising. Up comes a calendar for the month full of different things to do. Except when you look closely, it isn't full of different things to do. For example, the Pollensa fair was mentioned but the Muro fair (same weekend) wasn't. Sa Pobla's fair (this weekend) is also not mentioned. And indeed several other fairs on the island are not mentioned. Hey ho. But at least somebody has been going on and updating the site. Or have they?
Under "Don't Miss It ..." with the current date on the same line, there's a little picture for the Oktoberfest in Santa Ponsa. October, November; I think you can figure out the problem. But had you not missed it back in October, what sort of "further information" would you have got? Where was it being held? Well, not in Santa Ponsa apparently. It was in Peguera, which is where it used to be held.
Then there is the main menu on the left-hand side. "Accommodations" (sic)? There's no direct booking, just links to other websites. "Activities"? What have we got here? It asks what you are looking for. I opt for "sports" in the whole of Mallorca between 30 November and 13 December. Result? There are none. Things do improve, it must be said. Information such as that for "tourism and culture" isn't so bad. But the overall impact of the website is anything but good. It's outdated, which might partly be explained by the fact that it is still down as being copyright of IBATUR, the tourism agency which was done away with three years ago.
There certainly is no interactivity, but then you wouldn't expect this from a Balearics Tourism Agency that can't even get its act together to create a Facebook page. And accordingly, there are no icons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other social media. I can only believe and hope that the website is being re-done: completely and totally overhauled.
Showing posts with label Interactivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interactivity. Show all posts
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Conversations With Tourists: Social media
At the end of January last year in an article entitled "The Importance Of Being Erstwhile", I wrote about the resignation of Mar Guerrero, the then director of the Balearics Tourism Agency. Guerrero was greatly respected and her stock rose on account of her having done something most odd - resigning because, in her words (or at least an approximate translation thereof), she didn't wish to pull the wool over people's eyes. A point of principle. You don't get much of that in Mallorcan public life.
When suggestions are made that tourism ministers should be tourism professionals, they overlook the fact that those charged with truly implementing tourism strategies are professionals. Some of them are even quite good or very good. Guerrero was one of the latter. Her departure came as no great surprise, as the job wasn't quite as it said on the tin, but it was a departure that the former government and former tourism minister Joana Barceló could have ill-afforded.
There is no point in now dwelling on the past, but the present and immediate future are far less rosy in tourism promotion terms than they were when Guerrero felt it necessary to resign over how funds were being allocated. At least there were funds then. Now they have all but dried up.
It is against this background of promotional parsimony that what Guerrero had to say in a recent interview** should be considered carefully. Talking of the need for a reinvention of Mallorcan tourism, she was very clear as to one aspect of such a reinvention - the mode of marketing.
If one takes a quote from this interview, you will begin to appreciate where she is coming from. "Every day you could find ways of interacting with your target (market). A website is not now sufficient for being competitive." She was talking about the role of evolving technologies in tourism promotion. It was music to the ears. Mine at any rate. I have made similar points many times.
Social media have created the possibility to maintain a regular conversation with customers - tourists in this instance. This is a conversation in which the customer (and indeed others) are participants in the marketing process. Tourists are not marketed to so much as they are marketing with those who provide the social media. The thinking is totally different, but the thinking, promotionally and technologically in Mallorca, is largely stuck in the dark ages. Stuck in the past with websites stuck up that are essentially uninteresting, not interactive, passive and passé.
Sure, there is information to be derived, but that's not the point. Conversations through social media go way beyond the merely informative. They engage with tourists, they involve them, they show respect to them by making them a part of the promotional process. These conversations break down the "them-and-us" barriers of traditional marketing.
Not everyone is of course a Facebook, Twitter or other social media user. But neither is everyone surfing the internet or watching a telly ad. The reach may be lower, but it is a reach that is arguably far more valuable because of the bonding that occurs through social media. There is an inherently greater trust to the relationship, and it is one that can have a hard-edged commercial element to it; ways of up-selling and cross-selling, in addition to initial selling, are very much flavour of the moment among various actors in the tourism industry. And social media can be one of these ways.
The potential power of social media makes it even more inexplicable to understand why somewhere like Llucmajor, abandoning its tourism board, has also seemingly allowed its Facebook page to fall into abeyance. The point needs to be reiterated. It is not expensive to operate social media, even if it is necessary to engage those with a whole range of linguistic skills.
But an apparent inability to appreciate the role of new technologies in tourism promotion stems, one suspects, from the contrariness of social media's sexiness. They are sexy in that they are of the now, but they are not sexy in the same way as a telly ad with a celeb is. The dark-ages marketing mindset in Mallorca has been one founded on the egos of those in positions of authority who can sense some stardust being rubbed off by rubbing shoulders with a Nadal or a Schiffer and spending a fortune on advertising of questionable effectiveness.
The reinvention of Mallorca is not just a case of what is offered, it is how it is offered. To this end, all levels of the tourism industry should have social media strategies. And if they haven't, they should get them pretty damn quick.
** The full interview: Diario de Mallorca
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
When suggestions are made that tourism ministers should be tourism professionals, they overlook the fact that those charged with truly implementing tourism strategies are professionals. Some of them are even quite good or very good. Guerrero was one of the latter. Her departure came as no great surprise, as the job wasn't quite as it said on the tin, but it was a departure that the former government and former tourism minister Joana Barceló could have ill-afforded.
There is no point in now dwelling on the past, but the present and immediate future are far less rosy in tourism promotion terms than they were when Guerrero felt it necessary to resign over how funds were being allocated. At least there were funds then. Now they have all but dried up.
It is against this background of promotional parsimony that what Guerrero had to say in a recent interview** should be considered carefully. Talking of the need for a reinvention of Mallorcan tourism, she was very clear as to one aspect of such a reinvention - the mode of marketing.
If one takes a quote from this interview, you will begin to appreciate where she is coming from. "Every day you could find ways of interacting with your target (market). A website is not now sufficient for being competitive." She was talking about the role of evolving technologies in tourism promotion. It was music to the ears. Mine at any rate. I have made similar points many times.
Social media have created the possibility to maintain a regular conversation with customers - tourists in this instance. This is a conversation in which the customer (and indeed others) are participants in the marketing process. Tourists are not marketed to so much as they are marketing with those who provide the social media. The thinking is totally different, but the thinking, promotionally and technologically in Mallorca, is largely stuck in the dark ages. Stuck in the past with websites stuck up that are essentially uninteresting, not interactive, passive and passé.
Sure, there is information to be derived, but that's not the point. Conversations through social media go way beyond the merely informative. They engage with tourists, they involve them, they show respect to them by making them a part of the promotional process. These conversations break down the "them-and-us" barriers of traditional marketing.
Not everyone is of course a Facebook, Twitter or other social media user. But neither is everyone surfing the internet or watching a telly ad. The reach may be lower, but it is a reach that is arguably far more valuable because of the bonding that occurs through social media. There is an inherently greater trust to the relationship, and it is one that can have a hard-edged commercial element to it; ways of up-selling and cross-selling, in addition to initial selling, are very much flavour of the moment among various actors in the tourism industry. And social media can be one of these ways.
The potential power of social media makes it even more inexplicable to understand why somewhere like Llucmajor, abandoning its tourism board, has also seemingly allowed its Facebook page to fall into abeyance. The point needs to be reiterated. It is not expensive to operate social media, even if it is necessary to engage those with a whole range of linguistic skills.
But an apparent inability to appreciate the role of new technologies in tourism promotion stems, one suspects, from the contrariness of social media's sexiness. They are sexy in that they are of the now, but they are not sexy in the same way as a telly ad with a celeb is. The dark-ages marketing mindset in Mallorca has been one founded on the egos of those in positions of authority who can sense some stardust being rubbed off by rubbing shoulders with a Nadal or a Schiffer and spending a fortune on advertising of questionable effectiveness.
The reinvention of Mallorca is not just a case of what is offered, it is how it is offered. To this end, all levels of the tourism industry should have social media strategies. And if they haven't, they should get them pretty damn quick.
** The full interview: Diario de Mallorca
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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