Posts tagged as:

dmo

TripWow could use a little more “Trip”
and a little less “Wow”

by Todd Lucier on May 7, 2010

TripAdvisor’s TripWow is a little over the top, but the idea of helping travelers create embeddable multimedia is a great one for the travelers.
The promise: Create a Slide Show that will make your friends go “Wow”.

The benefits for TripAdvisor – click throughs to TripAdvisor destination pages via keyword-laden hyperlinks to kickstart the travel planning process for TripWow slideshow viewers. Interestingly, the terms of use for the TripWow widget prohibit users from disassembling the widget and removing the keyword hyperlinks. The secondary benefit for TripAdvisor is some serious keyword SEO for TripAdvisor destination pages.

This travel slideshow of Luc Levesque’s trip to 7 cities including New York City, Sao Paulo, Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Cusco and Machu Picchu was created by TripAdvisor on Monday, May 3, 2010 at 6:45pm UTC. Luc traveled 18,979 kilometers (11,793 miles) on this trip.

If growing traffic is your aim, make it easy for visitors to create and share media
If I was in the travel information archiving business (travel review sites, destination marketing organizations and travel associations), I’d forgo the development of my own platform and work with a company like Animoto to help folks create travel videos that more effectively focus on the photos of the traveler, with embedded music tracks.

A custom branded version of Animoto would create greater interest in your travel information site while adding a small revenue stream for Animoto, perhaps leading to the DMO, travel association or travel information site to pay for the higher resolution services of Animoto’s great travel promotion tool – making it free for travelers to create and share media promoting your website.

I’d also make sure that it was easy to geotag the photo sets and create a similar mapping graphic as shown in TripAdvisor’s TripWow tool part of the show. TripAdvisor’s map owes it’s inspiration to the likes of Indiana Jones, and the maps work well but frankly speaking, most of the other graphic elements of the video take attention away from the trip photos.

I am a fan of the social media tools that pop out from the right side of the videos. They make it easy to share the media by Twitter, Facebook and making the media easy to embed. The Video branding and destination keyword links are sure to drive serious page views for TripAdvisor.

TripWow’s bow is perhaps the inspiration you need to get into providing media production tools like this with a partner who has demonstrated expertise in creating Wow video that focuses on user generated photos and video. Page views are sure to follow.

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How important is media to tourism DMO?
We’re thinking VERY!

by Todd Lucier on March 16, 2010

As the summer tourism season gets nearer, and marketing campaigns move into high gear, we’re investing in online multimedia to carry our message to our ideal guests.  Maybe your DMO should be too!

This month, we’ve been purchasing studio equipment to put polish on our video and audio and produce our own in-house video. Not only that, but because we know how important it is to tourism industry, we’re helping tourism businesses in our region get the media they need to sell tourism on the Social, Mobile, Media Rich, Here and Now Internet before another Internet buying season moves into full swing.

Getting Great Media

Great Video, audio and photography doesn’t just happen, it takes planning and execution with the tools (hardware and software) and investment (time and money) to get it right.

Sadly, most tourism operators don’t have the money, knowledge or time to create top notch audio and video to promote their business. For those in the CVB, DMO or Meetings and Convention partnership business, now is the time to invest in media production capacity to help your members make the most of the Web.

Don’t have the knowledge to be able to pull it off yourselves, grow relationships with professional production organizations and help make it cost effective for operators to get the photography, videography and audio they need to make the most of the media opportunities they have on the Web.

A Membership Boost

Small businesses are counting on their membership organizations to help them make an impact with their marketing.  By investing in a social media studio and associated services you could help your regional members get a leg up and in the process make your organization more relevant and boost membership.

Note to DMO’s. CVB’s, and other associations. Keep an eye out for new media projects to be streaming forth from South River, Ontario, Canada real soon.  We’ll explain our whole crazy idea and the components necessary to make such a project come to life!

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Creating a Killer app for your DMO (podcast)

January 17, 2010

My conversation with David Janes @dpjanes (Discover Anywhere Mobile) asks the question: Are a you Destination Marketing Organization or a Destination Make-them-spend-more-money-in-your-region Organization? Download Podcast In this 40 minute conversation, David and I cover a number of interesting content ideas for destination apps including: underestimating the growth of mobile understanding the needs of digital traveler [...]

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What Makes a Successful DMO?

October 8, 2009

Successful Destination Marketing Organizations Tourism businesses can succeed with the help of a strong destination marketing organization. At the core, a shared community vision about the values in a community are at the heart of any shared marketing project. By bringing together traditional and non-traditional partners in tourism and getting the word out with a [...]

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What is the Value of Video Like This to a DMO?

July 30, 2009

The Quest In Newfoundland and Labrador, two of the things that travelers like to experience are icebergs and whales. Getting a photo of both together . . . well that could be a lifelong photographer’s quest and a Destination Marketing Organization’s dream. This past weekend, my daughter Natalie got this photo of a Humpback Whale [...]

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Alberta Marketing Faux-Pas Demonstrates Lack of Credibility

April 29, 2009

Hint for Tourism DMO and regional marketing organizations: use images from your region . . . or you run the risk of significantly damaging your credibility. When the province of Alberta spent over 20 Million dollars on their advertising campaign, they didn’t ensure that the media company chosen for the project would use images from [...]

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Is your Twisitor Center open for business?

February 12, 2009

Report from Pew Internet & American Life Project says 11% of American Web users are using status updates like Twitter in December ’08. That’s up 2% from November 08′. If Twitter use continues to rise at just 1%/month, 33% of Internet users will be using Twitter within two years. My guess is that handheld twitter [...]

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How can your DMO or travel association make the most of Twitter?

February 8, 2009

Some of the best ways your community can boost tourism interest from Twitter, can only be achieved by the regional marketing association leading the way. As a direct benefit, you will enhance your reputation among members when the services you provide make a difference to member businesses. 15 ways your travel association or DMO can [...]

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