Tourism professionals see a future role in providing inspirational content in the trip planning stages.
Some believe this is something that companies such as Google will find hard to do given the local flavor required.
Barrie Kelly, CEO of Visit Greenwich in the United Kingdom, says the organization's role is about growth and estimates that without it the destination would be £40 million worse off.
Kelly adds that the destination still talks face-to-face with about 500,000 of the 19 million that visit the destination annually.
“In spite of all the information out there on Google, etc. … the number-one question we get is, ‘What can we do in Greenwich?’”
He says that destination information on the search giant is really poor, whereas DMOs such as Visit Greenwich provide “rich inspirational content.”
Like many destinations and travel companies, Visit Greenwich is trying to tap into the experiential trend and move away from phrases such as "tourism economy" and "visitor economy."
Kelly, who was speaking at the Travel Technology Initiative’s recent conference in London, adds:
“The job of the DMO is to hover above the chaos and look for the gaps, the opportunities to join things up to make a difference. That’s where digital can add a huge amount.”
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Projecting forward, Kelly sees a future for destination marketing where social channels are increasingly used in the inspiration stages and user-generated content is presented in new ways.
Visit Greenwich sees Twitter and Instagram as the most effective social channels, with the first primarily for events and the latter for inspiration.
He points to Amazon's Alexa and an initiative from Simpleview to bring destination content into people’s homes via the device next year.
“Our team is working on rich listings into what’s on, and they will be better answers from local people with better knowledge. I don’t think Google or Amazon are ever going to get there.”
Fellow presenter at the conference Joss Croft, chief executive of UKinbound, adds that it’s about “fishing where the fish are.
“Realistically, how much traffic is a DMO going to get? It’s about taking your content and putting it where people are.”
Kelly also sees improved distribution of product going forward with a B2B project underway, called TXGB, led by Visit England, to create a platform to bring together suppliers and distributors more efficiently.
Kelly also sees further opportunity for augmented and virtual reality or “experiential overlays” for destinations going forward.
One area Visit Greenwich wants to test, he says, is enabling people to “digitize themselves” and experience the destination as a character such as a pirate or a princess.
“It can be done, but can it be sustainable? It could represent the destination in lots of different ways to different markets.”
He also highlights existing initiatives such as VisitEngland’s England Originals, an augmented reality travel guide app that uses the technology to tell stories.
Kelly says it taps into the stories trend, which is particularly popular for the United States, as well as adds some “scandal” elements to attract the millennial market.