1. Digitize your destination
Avoid doing anything else until you have completely digitized your destination to include your product, website, marketing material and campaigns, social media channels, and everything else that is not yet generating data in your destination database. If you continue to see things that are not yet included in your database when you look out the window, the process remains incomplete.
2. Regain sovereignty over your communication
As long as tourists are continuing to plan, book and navigate their trips using major platforms, destinations will have no influence on visitors and can only find their voices with mundane things like restrictions and closures. It is only when destinations switch to the driver's seat and take the wheel themselves that they can play a true role in managing visitors themselves.
3. Form an official alliance
Rather than seeing social media, route portals, and tourism associations as annoyances or obstacles, service providers have the opportunity to actively participate in the digitization process with Outdooractive and in doing so they regain sovereignty over their communication.
4. Digitize your guests
Get to know your guests digitally and turn anonymous visitors into a vibrant community. They already are, just not yet digitally. Use Outdooractive to generate guest profiles and enrich them within your CRM (Zoho) with additional data from the bookings you receive.
5. Digitize the local population
Get those living in your destination involved and use the possibilities of the digital community to give them a voice. Make good use of the recommendations and knowledge of local service providers as well as those not directly linked to tourism such as farmers, hunters, foresters, and landowners - and then add these to your destination's database.
6. Manage your current conditions
There are few more annoying experiences for a visitor who has planned a trip than when they arrive to find that the bus, boat or cable car is not running, or that the restaurant is closed, the event cancelled, the trail blocked off, or there is too much snow - or too little. These things also do not lead to the best ratings and reviews! Digitally managing current conditions within your destination should be considered a top priority and a basic part of your outreach. Your website and social media channels can only achieve so much, but with Outdooractive, this information is available to users from the moment they start planning their trip.
7. Digitize the rules governing the use of nature
Pressure on the environment is increasing and knowledge about how to sustainably interact with the outdoors remains lacking. This issue can be tackled by digitally 'activating' all the protected areas in your destination and in doing so opening up access to the rules that have been put in place to protect them from tourism. After submitting this information on Digitize the Planet, it automatically becomes open data across all associated applications. Ths means that the users can access the information from the moment they start researching their trips.
8. Measure your visitor flows
Area-wide measurements of an app's GPS locations, recorded tracks as well as the user's click behavior, comments, ratings, reviews, and content sharing build a digital picture of what your visitors are planning, doing and sharing before, during and after their trip. General predictions as well as personalized recommendations can be generated based on this data.
9. Incentivize alternatives
In the age of influencers, continually advertising a region's top sights and spots can lead to the problems of overcrowding and less enjoyment for your guests. We help you communicate and recommend the right content depending on the season and visitor flows and to highlight alternative places and things to discover and do.
10. Extend your season and work with an annual calendar
Spread your guests out more evenly over a longer period. What sounds like an impossible feat at first glance is more than achievable with the right product design, properly targeted audiences, effective seasonal pricing, and the right communication.
A well-known summer destination doesn't need to be marketed during the summer, but what about the other months. This applies equally to popular winter destinations. Create seasonal content as part of your communications such, for example, what there is to see and do in April, and make this part of your guide to provide reliable vacation planning and a positive guest experience that gets good reviews and ratings throughout the entire year.
A well-known summer destination doesn't need to be marketed during the summer, but what about the other months. This applies equally to popular winter destinations. Create seasonal content as part of your communications such, for example, what there is to see and do in April, and make this part of your guide to provide reliable vacation planning and a positive guest experience that gets good reviews and ratings throughout the entire year.
Please contact us for more information and advice.
