Douro on my mind: Measuring & marketing value during the ‘value crisis’
Destination marketers can exploit a general perceived lack of value and trust to build affinity with prospective visitors, according to K Michael Haywood.
In this “Good Tourism” Insight, Professor Haywood describes the opportunity for destination marketers and the attendant challenge for destination managers.
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It has been 20 years since we visited southern Portugal. Now it’s the Douro Valley in the north of the country that beckons.
Thanks to accolades from friends, anticipated cultural and culinary delights, love for fine wines, perceived value for money, and even Portugal’s sustainability plan, I feel an affinity with the region. I am curious to see if it is as wonderful for Canadian snowbirds as I have been led to believe.
There is another reason for wanting to visit. I served as peer reviewer for the 2008 Douro Valley North Portugal Executive Report of the System for Measuring Excellence in Destinations (SMED).
I have just reread my critique of the report’s methodology wherein I noted the need for a gap analysis between visitor expectations and host community (destination management) perceptions. Interesting.
It’s interesting because here I languish in pre-visit mode. With reservations made and deposits paid — and having had no further contact with those organisations — I feel like I’m occupying a liminal space between ‘what was’, ‘what is’, and ‘what will be’; nursing high expectations and beguiled by a Fado lament.
As I reflect on the nature of affinity with and expectation of destinations, I ponder the implications for destination marketers.
AIDA and beyond: Evaluating the whole journey
I’m not usually baffled, but I’ve always wondered why so many destination marketers define their customer journeys as their interactions with a brand rather than as what they are; actual physical and emotional journeys in search of happiness and meaning.
Why do they consider their primary job complete after they have persuaded their target markets to book their travel, accommodation, and tours?
Why do marketers neglect to learn from the experiences visitors have throughout their pre- to post-trip journeys?
Is it because they contort the AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action) model to describe the whole journey, when it merely represents the steps toward a transaction?
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No wonder then that visitors, having arrived at AIDA’s ultimate destination, the sale, find themselves abandoned; then searching in a fog of blogs and social media influencers for sincere, credible, and timely information about their actual destination.
If destinations … continue reading this “Good Tourism” Insight in full at The “Good Tourism” Blog.
