Localize everything: How to leverage your cultural DNA to attract the international traveler
A couple of weeks ago, I had the good (or mis) fortune (depending on how you look at it) of traveling halfway across the world and being in five major international airports in less than three days. During my travel, I noticed something interesting. It appears as though all of the world’s major airports have built retail experiences that look the same. In fact, I could pluck you from one duty-free shopping space in one airport and drop you into another one anywhere in the world, and it would take some time before you noticed the difference.
Destination Marketing Organizations love to highlight their museums, Michelin starred restaurants, bars and nightlife, international music, parks, but shopping is the core revenue generator of tourism everywhere. Who can blame them? International tourism is seeing stable growth levels; destinations around the world welcomed 956 million international visitors between January and September 2016. A large majority of international travelers are big money spenders when it comes to shopping. If you look at the international traveler, almost 15% of all travel expenses going towards shopping at the destination. Destinations specifically love the Chinese traveler, whose spending, according to a recent report by Nielsen, reached USD 261.1 billion in 2016, an increase of 4.5% year-on-year, and ranked first worldwide. Unlike others, Chinese travelers spend 25% of their in-location spend on shopping, while only 19% on accommodation, and 16% on cultural experiences such as dining. The average Chinese traveler is likely to spend a staggering $3,064 per person on location. This number is higher when the traveler is in western locations, such as the United States where they spend $4,462 per person! Surely the investment in creating familiar shopping experiences is likely to pay off.
There is only one issue — the international traveler is changing — it is difficult to group them into one demographic. Even Chinese travelers are closing in with their western counterparts regarding behaviors and trends. As travelers build economic stability at home, and get exposure around the world they become less interested in homogeneous experiences. A 2017 Oliver Wyman report states that Chinese traveler’s continue to shift their spending towards more meaningful experiences such as exquisite dining, extraordinary cultural journeys, and even adventurous sports. At the same time, cross-border e-commerce has grown rapidly, overseas travel has democratized, and there is greater availability of products at home, meaning there is less need for buying overseas for resale. An ITB report states as [Chinese] tourists become more mature and the shopping environment improves at home, the ‘crazy shopping’ pattern will change too, and maybe sooner than expected.
Shopping is not the only behavior that is changing. In many of my previous articles, I talk about the changing attitude of the international traveler who is no longer interested in packaged global experiences but rather local, personalized experiences. TripAdvisor 2018 Travel Trends Report shows cultural categories like food tours, cooking classes, and historical and heritage experiences are seeing bookings skyrocket. In fact, historic and heritage experiences (such as a Tour of Historic Fenway Park) saw the most growth (almost +125% in bookings) while culinary experiences saw a +57% growth. We’re seeing more travelers balancing their itineraries with a mix of classic sightseeing and more unique local experiences…[they want to] explore the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, but they’re also booking experiences like food tours to enhance their trip and see the city like a local.
Surprisingly, it’s not just younger travelers who are interested in local experiences, but also older travelers. AARP’s 2018 survey shows that authentic, local experiences garner the interest of approximately half of the international Boomer traveler — 53% said they would eat meals with a local and 49% want to tour with locals.
What does all this mean for destinations? As shopping interest decreases, local experiences will be the only way to curry more favor with international travelers. Destinations need to figure out which experiences, offerings and narratives make them special. They need to identify and ramp up their cultural DNA. Importing experiences that everyone else is doing won’t cut it anymore.
Identify your Place DNA™ and ramp it up
The history of your place, the food, the life and eating habits of the locals, art, and culture is what makes your destination a place to visit. This is your cultural DNA, it is what makes you unique. By recreating globally familiar and homogeneous experiences, you are diverting essential resources away from ramping up your cultural DNA. You are designing experiences that travelers can get anywhere — why then should they come to you?
Frank Cuypers at DestinationThink! offers a smart and interesting way to think about your place’s cultural DNA. His framework, Place DNA™ , claims that every place has three layers that make it interesting for travelers:
- At the heart of it, is Place DNA™, your core identity. To understand your Place DNA™, you need to ask the question Why? — why would someone live in this place? Place DNA™ consists of a remarkable set of variables: biography, history and geography, a particular attitude of the people, a unique invention, thoughts or traditions and so on.
- The next layer is the Place Product, your offering. Here you ask the question How? — how would someone who comes from outside engage with the unique attributes of your place? Are there tours? Are you engaging information platforms like Vamonde that gives you the tools to easily curate and create place narratives? Do you have local guides? Are there enough experiences that can give visitors a local flavor of the place?
- The final layer is Place Brand, your reputation. Here you ask the question What? — what is in it for me if I visit? How does someone learn about the uniqueness of your place? Are you using platforms like Vamonde where tourism and city organizations are able to build a cohesive brand around cultural identity and empower tourists to pick their preferred experiences?
Think beyond promotion, think personal growth
A few weeks ago, Airbnb released data their travelers top global experiences in 2018. “Lisbon’s Best Flavors” in Lisbon, “Secret Concert in a Treehouse” in London, “Raise a Glass to Prohibition” in New York City rank as the top three experiences on this list. This is telling of the changing mindset of the international traveler. Experiences that echo local culture, flavors and history stand out from traditional standard experiences. Travelers want the ability to grow with the place — learn from it, build their relationship with it and most importantly, broadcast their experience to their network.
Many times organizations think about marketing from the perspective of promotion. However, the new model of place branding is not about convincing or persuading; it’s about being recommended by individuals. Every place is different, and good experience design is one that can recognize, highlight, and engage users in what makes that place unique.
In a recent interview, Kershing Goh, Regional Director of the Americas for the Singapore Tourism Board, said they want to use the new Singapore brand — “Passion Made Possible” to tell travelers to come and be part of the Singapore community in creating and experiencing new possibilities around their passions. Their new campaign is all about celebrating the local heroes and local stories — describing what makes Singapore click as a city and then inviting visitors to partake in this experience.
As you build your Place Brand, you need to think of how you can bring your users along with you. Here are a few questions to ask about the stories that set your place apart from everywhere else:
- How can you take your visitors’ passion and combine them with your cultural DNA to create unique experiences?
- How can your users grow as individuals through engagement with your place?
- What tools and resources are you providing residents and visitors to tell and share stories of your place?
The last question is particularly important. It is not enough to provide them with experiences; you must also provide them with tools and resources that they can use to share these narratives with others. This allows you to build a stronger fan base for your experiences by effectively distributing the load of marketing to your users that come in to live, visit, and engage with your destination.
Highlight local flavors to counter overexposed globalization
Your cultural DNA comes from the experiences that are unique to your destination. It cannot be invented or borrowed. The more you try to borrow and copy experiences, the fewer tourists will engage in the long run. When you amplify your local flavors, you can counter even the most entrenched global experiences.
Take, for example, the story of Carbondale, a small town just 30 miles northwest of Aspen. By focusing on their cultural DNA — village life, small farms, farm-to-table concepts, Carbondale reinvented itself as a destination as desirable as Aspen. Carbondale shares many attributes with Aspen, but it stands out because it focused on what makes it unique.
Bloomberg says the town has more family-owned cattle ranches than Michelin stars, and there are still more farm stands than white tablecloth spots. A small ranching town with a population of 6,000, Carbondale has been for many years Aspen’s folksy, less-sophisticated little sister. But as Aspen’s image has shifted from glamorous to oversaturated and even out of touch, insiders have been turning to Carbondale as a refreshingly intimate alternative. To describe this alternative, Bloomberg highlights the story of former French Laundry chef Seth O’Donovan who now serves her experimental farm dinners outdoors, usually next to a horse paddock or in a roomy tree house that surveys 1,200 acres of pristine Colorado pastures.
For a long time, Carbondale was literally in the shadows of Aspen. With such a popular tourist destination just 30 miles away, why would anyone visit this small village? Carbondale works because it is unpretentious, genuine, and completely tapped into its cultural DNA. It gives travelers an excuse to step into something special that they can only get here and nowhere else.
I started this article describing my experiences in duty-free shops around the world. Even though I love browsing these shops, I seldom buy anything (except for that few times I forget birthdays and anniversaries and the only way to make up is with expensive perfumes or accessories). My favorite shopping experience, is on the street markets and souks of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Dubai, and Mumbai. There is something intrinsically exciting about walking down streets in a dense urban environment, being among stores that open into the streets, the cacophony of the hawkers, and the mix of tourists and locals who make their way through the streets. There is no air conditioning, no credit card machines, no receipts, or returns. However, you are in sync with the local culture while walking with the locals, haggling with vendors, and sampling piping hot local street food. Here, you breathe in the cultural context of the place. No other place can replicate it and it cannot be transferred anywhere else. It is an experience that you will never forget. Every visit gives you a new story to tell your friends and family for years.
This is the future of travel. If you can tap into this sort of cultural DNA in your destination, you will have created experiences that are both memorable and intensely pleasurable for the international traveler.
