All you need to know about the level of interest in DMAI’s globally-developed DestinationNEXT project is this: the Phase I report was downloaded over 10,000 times.

At its core, the project focuses on defining the role and future opportunities for destination marketing organizations in the increasingly competitive and disruptive world of tourism.

(Full disclosure here: I was part of the DestinationNEXT development Team that included InterVISTSAS Consulting,Gaining Edge and Global Meetings and Tourism Specialists.)

PROJECT OVERVIEW:

By way of review the key takeaways from Phase I are:

• The two key drivers ofDMO (and hence tourism’s community contribution) success are:
  • Destination Strength
  • Community Support and Engagement

• DMOs find themselves in one of four performance quadrant-scenarios based on the two key drivers

In order to be more relevant and drive enhanced performance in the future, DMOs need to pursue three “transformational opportunities”:

• Shift from Broadcast to Engagement in dealing with the new realities of the marketplace
• Pursue Destination Management by building and protecting the destination brand strategy
• Evolve the DMO Business Model through new collaboration and partnerships

DestinationNEXT Phase I draws the map for the DMO future.

DestinationNEXT Phase II gives DMOs a tool to find themselves on that map and then discover their own pathway to sustainable future success.

DIAGNOSTIC TOOL:

The key Phase II deliverable is a diagnostic self-assessment tool that plots a destination’s perceived performance relative to the identified success drivers of destination strength and community support engagement in the Phase I performance quadrant-scenarios. The plot is developed through on-line response-assessments to 20 critical destination variables from single or multiple DMO leaders/stakeholder-users . The variables themselves are weighted based on relative importance and perceived importance from input by destination stakeholders. This helps customize the response for each unique destination.

The resulting Diagnostic Report is a strategic conversation-starter for DMO leaders and their stakeholders to seek answers to the question: “where do we go from here and how do we get there?”.

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICES:

To offer DMO leaders food for thought on their journey, Phase II envisions the creation and ongoing development of a Community of Practices (“COP”) to which DMOs can contribute and share practices that can help guide a DMO along their prospective future strategic pathway.

To kick-start its activation, the Phase II report includes a “Practice Handbook” of 20 BEST (current state) and 10 NEXT (future state) practice case studies that were harvested from extensive research as well as through globally crowd-sourced DMO submissions. Recognizing the diversity of the DMO universe, all the practices provided probably will not appeal to everyone. But by parsing the practices by budget, by geography, by business focus — with each practice providing an indication of its impact on destination strength, community support/engagement or both – there’s something for everyone. The report also “packages” the practices according to the identified Phase I Transformational Opportunities to further assist with strategic focus.

It’s by no-means an exhaustive list, but it is definitely directional…if not inspirational in many cases. The COP has the potential to be an extremely valuable enduring legacy from the DestinationNEXT project and DMAI would do well to nurture its ongoing development as THE body of knowledge for the destination marketing profession.

WHAT’s NEXT?:

Reading the report is a good start. But if you are truly committed to considering the insights from DestinationNEXT, you need to take the diagnostic and see where you stand. DMAI is promising to organize workshops for members to understand how to use the diagnostic tool and the COP. From there it’s up to DMO leaders to discover their own pathway to the future.

There’s no secret DestinationNEXT formula for assured DMO success in here. It was never intended that way. It is a tool to inspire destination marketers to stop and take a look around at what others are doing today and see what they might be missing for tomorrow. Its an opportunity to discover a new pathway to the future for the destination and for the DMO. And as with every great leadership journey, it starts with the courage to act.

As destinations and venues all over the world try to convince people that theirs’ is THE place to gather, I reflected back on where many of my most important meetings have taken place.

Simple. Starbucks.

Let’s face it, who HASN’T had an important meeting at Starbucks? I’ve seen everything from job interviews, to theatre auditions, to creative reviews happen at Starbucks. And they happen on college campuses, in airports…even at the Great Wall of China.

So what makes Starbucks the world’s “go-to” meeting place? Obviously they are a globally known and accessible brand…but so is KFC and no one is saying “let’s brainstorm over a bucket of finger lickin’ good chicken”.

Make no mistake about it, meetings are part of Starbucks’ business. But they look at their meeting story much differently than a DMO does.

Their story is about what happens when people gather at Starbucks. Its not about the square footage of their stores, the comfort of their chairs or how many parking spots they have. (But they do have free WIFI!). Their story is perfectly articulated in this commercial:

“Every day, good things happen when we get together.” Simple. Authentic. Human. They don’t even show their coffee. 

There are some interesting learnings from Starbucks in here for destination marketers and meeting industry advocates:

(1) Starbucks has figured out that meetings are first and foremost about people and the magic that happens when they get together. Its not about the room they meet in, the technology they use or what they eat when they get there. I know there’s a lot of pressure on DMOs to showcase their stakeholders’ businesses. Starbucks doesn’t even show their coffee. I am willing to bet that showcasing the legacies that have been created as a result of meeting in the destination would resonate more than presenting another staged meeting room set-up.

(2) Nobody cares about the number of cups of coffee Starbucks serves or the number of people they employ. Big numbers don’t resonate with anyone these days…because everyone has them…or can create them. Starbucks story is always the human perspective of their guest. Telling the destination story through the eyes of the visitor or the meeting attendee is more relevant and authentic than anything or anyone else. As the amazing Bruce Turkel says: “Its all about THEM.”

I had a professor in university who once challenged us to figure out what would happen if Microsoft (this was in the last century) got into the travel business. We thought they would fail because they “didn’t know the business”. Well they did and Expedia changed (for the better) the world of consumer travel purchasing forever. 

Starbucks is in the business of bringing people together and monetizing those connections around the coffee house culture. I wonder what would happen if Starbucks was to add a free, easily reservable (on a smartphone) private meeting room to some of its locations? No contracts. No F&B minimums. Free wifi. A compelling powerful global story about how the magic of human connections can change peoples’ worlds.

No one thought Microsoft would do it either.

Part Five and the final posting in a series on what the new fundamentals of marketing mean to DMOs and destination marketing professionals as inspired by the recent McKinsey article: “The Dawn of Marketing’s New Golden Age”.

McKinsey-Speak:  Complexity is the enemy of speed and leading marketers are seeking greater simplicity.

DMSpeak: Bring order to chaos. Focus on where/how you can make the biggest difference for your customers and stakeholders. And then stick to it. Align your organization accordingly.

The Reality Check: As illustrated in a recent SKIFT article, the tourism and meetings/events ecosystem is not only economically enormous, it’s also complex. So it’s no surprise that when destination marketers of any size develop their business plans they are complex, often extending into 30-40+ page tomes in an effort to address all opportunities and constituencies. The inevitable impact of that complexity is fragmentation of limited resources resulting in the creation of a legion operating structures and relationships (often with disparate partners) that consume the two most important strategic leadership resources: time and focus. With the ongoing eruption of new tourism trends, brands, travel personae, partners, technologies etc, bringing order and simplicity to the destination marketing mission and process should be a quest for every DMO. Easy, right?

What Does That Look Like: Easier said than done. To get there requires tough choices to be made by DMOs two areas:

(1) Figure Out What Business You Are In: The travel ecosystem has completely transformed as its economic and social significance has grown. Marketplace roles and relationships have changed with the transformation as new technology and players have replaced legacy institutions and elements (for more on this please read “What Business Are We In?”). For the sake of destination marketing simplicity and focus, DMOs today need to discover their unique and compelling place in this new ecosystem. One that works for their destination. where they can deliver the most value. Then create a transformational roadmap to get there, and OWN it.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins proposes a brutally simple exercise for leaders to undertake to help focus their business. This may mean pursuing a completely new business and value proposition, one that could not have been imagined even five years ago.  Consider the Grapevine (Texas) CVB who made product development and experience management the cornerstone of their business. This includes managing a railroad, owning a heritage building and the creation of a foundation to preserve historical structures in the community. The result, the small North Texas community of 48,000 now receives 15 million visitors per year with an economic impact of $2.2 billion.

It could also mean the status quo. But it starts with an engaging conversation around: “what business should we be in for the next X years?”. If it cannot be answered in one sentence, you’re not quite there yet.

(2) Get Out of Initiatives That Are Not Part of (1): Perhaps the single most difficult thing for any DMO to create and act upon is a “Stop Doing” list. Every idea and initiative has an expiry date…particularly with the rush of new disruptors in the travel and tourism space. The annual printed visitor publication and meeting planners guide used to be the pinnacle of a DMO’s value proposition. Now…why would a visitor need one when they have TripAdvisor and a plethora of other virtual travel communities? DMOs need to face the brutal facts that there are going to be businesses that can do certain things more effectively for the destination with less risk than the DMO. Identifying those underperforming legacy marketing programs and relationships that are easier to keep than to ditch requires a lot of courage, but the inevitable result is simplicity that will allow DMO marketing investment to perform better in the high-value initiatives that really matter.

Here’s a simple yet provocative exercise to try the next time you’re stranded in an airport and your phone is getting recharged: figure out how many of today’s Fortune 50 companies still have the same core profit center business that they had ten years ago. Here’s a hint: The list does not include Apple, General Electric or IBM. What can be learned from this?

Its ironic that of the five identified DNA strands (Science–Substance–Story–Speed-Simple) of the new destination marketing reality, Simple might be the most obvious yet its the one typically requiring the most courage to actually implement – which is often the X-factor in the difference between harnessing the benefits of disruption and being a victim of it.

Part Four in a series on what the new fundamentals of marketing mean to DMOs and destination marketing professionals as inspired by the recent McKinsey article: “The Dawn of Marketing’s New Golden Age”.

McKinsey-Speak:  Develop the management skills and organizational clout to bring cross-functional teams together swiftly. Achieve a shared vision with product developers to facilitate a speedy response to market changes.

DMSpeak: Partner fast and partner often to co-create solutions that get stuff done at the speed of the marketplace.

The Reality Check: Let’s borrow from Jim Collins here and “confront the brutal facts”: The notion of speed and DMO strategic action don’t often coexist. We don’t have a reputation for moving quickly when it comes to strategic undertakings. (This is not to be confused with tactical operations where most DMOs outperform when it comes to client service and guest response.) For strategic development we like to form committees and/or task forces to engage and give transparency to the opportunity and thought process. Then we vet the group’s recommended course of action with another leadership body. Engagement by process (often prescribed in a DMO’s bylaws or policies) rather than for advantage often rules the day for DMOs.  A consultative approach? Absolutely. Transparent governance? For sure. The problem is that today’s global marketplace is built upon “always-on” engagement instead of process, further accelerated by the speed of technology. And more often than not, the enterprise that engages fastest to identify and respond to a marketplace opportunity or trend, prevails…again and again.

What Does That Look Like: Engagement is not a codified policy process you can turn on and off when you want to get something done. Its a permanent enterprise practice. Its a brand value. The McKinsey article cites the example of how Nestle deploys “digital acceleration teams” to train existing business units on how to use today’s engagement technology (e.g social media) to stay engaged with their customers and also with their product development teams. For DMOs this means training and equipping sales and service teams with tools to help them discover marketplace trends and opportunities through the customer data and visitor conversations they deal with everyday. This is DMO gold. DMOs can go even further by extending that engagement connectivity to their myriad of diverse community partners and draw upon their marketplace perspectives to amass significant business intelligence that accelerates a destination’s response to opportunities. As Nestle discovered, an “always on” engagement platform accelerates product development. For DMOs it can also enhance the likelihood of marketplace success for campaigns and new destination services. It should even help a DMO support public and private sector product development investment in the destination.

Of course, even with a commitment to an “always on” engagement platform, DMOs should also be taking steps to streamline their governance culture in order to be supportive rather than constraining to the required speed to succeed in today’s marketplace realities.

Next Up: Simple

Recently McKinsey published an amazing article that really nails the driving forces behind today’s marketing (r)evolution and what I have referred to in this blog as Destination Marketing 3.0. They summarized five defining elements that marketers need to come to grips with in order to be relevant and successful:

• Science: Advances in data, modeling, and analysis allow precise measurement and management of customer decisions and more targeted spending.
• Substance: Marketers can directly shape the business by evolving the customer experience and the development of products and services.
• Story: The ways to tell a story are morphing continually, drawing on richer digital interactions and more powerful communications tools.
• Speed: Consumer preferences, market dynamics, and product life cycles change with stunning velocity in a digital economy.
• Simplicity: Complexity is the enemy of speed and leading marketers are seeking greater simplicity.

Brilliant. Clear. And please don’t even think about saying “Yeah…but they don’t understand our business.” If you’re part of a business on this planet in 2015, they apply.

So…over the next five weeks I’ll cover each of these five elements translating McKinsey-speak into DMSpeak. Today, we’ll start with the impact of science, as defined by McKinsey, is changing the way destinations market.

McKinsey-speak: “Marshal big data and analytics for insights into choices along decision journeys.”

DMSpeak: Customer data analytics are as powerful as a site inspection. Spend as much time (and money) collecting and analyzing data from your their worlds as wining and dining them in your’s.

The Reality Check: As much as destination marketing long-timers like me say that the convention and tourism business is all about relationships, increasingly success is being built on data. Big data. Tourism is big business. And just like every other big business, knowing how and when customers act in the planning and even during the purchase and enjoyment itself is where the gold is. Focus groups are old world. Its now about engaging with your customers throughout the entire decision journey, and beyond, and identifying those points/places in the decision journey where a high-impact, well-placed message/action can activate the desired move in the decision process. This means destination marketers are going to have to make the collection and analysis of customer data an ongoing quest to compete with other destinations and even other non-tourism brands for consumer attention and cash. And tourism’s data-generation capability is boundless. So there is plenty of work to go around.

What does that look like?: Google (and yes…they are increasingly becoming part of the travel ecosystem) published this amazing compendium — The 2014 Traveler’s Road to Decision. This is a mandatory reference guide for all destination marketers. Sleep with it. Ignore its data-driven insights at your peril. Then go and create your own.

The Hack: Developing data analytics is not a natural part of the destination marketing culture. So before DMOs start a stampede to hire in-house data scientists, finding a competent partner is a good strategy. Because collecting tourism data is a community-wide undertaking, you’ll also likely have to develop some kind of community data-sharing protocol with your partners (e.g. hotels, attractions) to develop one set of destination analytics that the community can draw from to inform tourism strategies and tactics at the destination and individual enterprise level. And then imagine what kind of marketplace/customer advantage and loyalty you could create if you could develop a special set of analytics specifically for your tour operator and meeting planner clients to learn from. Now were talking. That’s a powerful destination marketing value proposition indeed.

This Just In: The National Hockey League (hardly an enterprise ever mentioned at the cutting edge of innovation in the world of professional sport) recently published a new rich analytics website in partnership with SAP, presumably for fans that play fantasy sports who are looking for a big data edge. It seems big data is the newest fan magnet.

Next Up: Substance