I was in Toronto last week, having been asked to participate in a think tank on sustainable tourism that was being put on by the good folks of the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism. I’ve been doing a fair bit more work in the tourism sector of late, most often with Nova Scotia’s Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage who have been a long time client of Colour. Overall, I find the work I do in this space quite enjoyable... with many interesting people and fascinating stories to be found along the way.
A couple of thoughts coming out of last week’s session…
• Passion trumps business acumen: The tourism sector is filled with people who are unbelievably passionate about what they do, but in many cases haven’t been able to see their way clear to put the business rigour in place such that it all makes sense economically. This has been noted in many cases as a challenge for the industry. My point of view is that I’d rather have this problem than the inverse. A lot of business can be taught… kinda hard to teach passion.
• An age of transparency: Be yourself, everyone else is taken. A mate of mind is fond of saying that… and in large measure I think a lot of tourism destinations would be well served to heed the advice. Places are a funny think to market… you can’t just put some lipstick on the proverbial pig and move it out the door. Web 2.0 means that every single citizen is a potential publisher of information into a global medium, not to mention the traditional media outlets that have an online presence. Simply put, this all makes it pretty tough to say one thing, and actually be another.
• Getting better: There are those in the industry who feel that to get better we must in some way know more about our visitors. That by knowing more, and segmenting based upon that knowledge, we will systematically be able to market to different people in different ways and, moreover, deliver somewhat customized experiences based upon these segmentations. That all sounds wonderfully linear. However, I find it hard to see how the industry could ever really work like that, to be honest. I guess it all feels far too mechanistic to me.
I think there’s another way. I think that to get better, to do better as an industry, we must simply get better at telling our stories. We live in a world where lots of people have plenty of money. Get better at telling the true stories about who we are and places we call home, and trust that those who choose to spend their time with us will make their own meaning out of it… they’ll discover their own experiences. Find ways to let visitors tell their own stories… to add to the narrative… and they’ll do a large part of the marketing for us.
• Social media, social values and sustainable tourism: There was a lot of discussion during the think tank of how social values will motivate visitors and the industry overall. Specifically, the discussion seemed to centre upon how evolving social values will fuel increased interest in visiting tourism destinations that are sustainable (environmentally, culturally, historically, etc.). If nothing else, it seems that this all calls for a level of authenticity that doesn’t exist in a manufactured, theme park anchored tourism destination. It is in this craving for authenticity that I see the intersection between social media and sustainable tourism.
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