Building Destination Through Collaboration
2. Collaborate to Raise Awareness of Your Tourism Business and Destination
The island of Ireland has many beautiful and compelling places to visit. So, why does one destination become more known than another? The answer to that question is collaboration. Collaboration is key for ensuring your destination stands out and attracts the attention of customers.
Destinations that are well known for tourism in Ireland and around the world are founded on driven communities that work hard collaboratively to place their businesses and destinations on the tourism map.
Customers rarely travel to destinations to do one thing. Therefore, by working within this collaborative framework tourism businesses create a rising tide of awareness that their destination is
- Open
- Available to welcome customers
- With many places to stay and
- With many things to do and see
In this way, the customer sees the destination as a compelling choice with lots of options for matching their unique interests, needs and budgets. Customers look for places to stay and things to see and do that are a match for their interest, needs and budgets. Collaboration is key for customers to identify that your destination has an offering that matches the customer's unique needs.
In this regard, it is useful to think of the destination in terms of a chocolate box. Your destination may have plenty to offer customers. But what if customers cannot see it? In this case, the destination exists like an empty chocolate box within the customer’s mind. If they cannot see your service/s, they cannot make a purchase. An opportunity is thereby lost a) for the destination as a whole and b) for the tourism businesses within it.
By contrast, when destinations collaborate, the opposite happens. Each place to stay, each activity, event and visitor attraction appears like a chocolate in a box. In this way, the destination offering becomes more compelling as the customer is presented with a range of choices that encourages first time bookings and repeat bookings.
For example, a customer who has had a positive experience in County Tyrone leaves with happy memories. If that customer is made aware of multiple other things to see and do in the area, the customer will be encouraged to visit again and create new memories.
The spirit of collaboration encourages first time bookings and repeat bookings that benefit tourism businesses and the destination as a whole.
While it is important for each tourism business to take commercial responsibility for maximising its revenue generation opportunities, it is clear that tourism businesses must collaborate to place their destination firmly on the tourism map.
It is this spirit of collaboration that
- encourages customers to book and repeat book year-round
- for the benefit of individual tourism businesses, the tourism industry collective and the destination as a whole
Ultimately, the magic formula for winning customers happens when tourism businesses within destinations:
- Present their destination offering clearly
- Present their individual tourism business offerings and products clearly and
- Collaborate
The Clarity = Conversion formula can therefore be expanded to Clarity + Collaboration = Conversion. This is the formula that successful tourism destinations in Ireland and around the world have achieved.
