The post TNZ drives US for year-round visitation appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

After a recent city break to Paris, one of our colleagues told us about how much she’d enjoyed some excellent coffee during her trip. But it hadn’t been served in a restaurant or a cafe – she had made it herself at the apartment she was staying in using one of those capsule coffee machines.

When she returned home, she genuinely missed the quality of the drink she had been able to make so effortlessly. So she ended up buying the machine for her own home – same brand, same model, same colour as the one she had been using on holiday.

Her experience illustrates the effectiveness of a concept known as “tryvertising”. Over the course of her weekend away, she had become familiar with – and extremely fond of – a new product by having the freedom to try it out repeatedly in her temporary holiday apartment.

As a marketing strategy, tryvertising is quite familiar in hotels, where extra comfy pillows or a particular fragrance or shampoo may be available for guests to use during their stay – and then offered for sale to take home.

Overall, it’s an easy win for manufacturers and hotel owners – as well as the customers who get the chance to take a piece of their holiday home with them.

Feelings of ownership

But our research suggests that tryvertising is actually more effective in self-catering accommodation than it is in hotels. This is partly because renting an apartment or cottage for a break provides a more natural environment for customers than the more unusual setting of a hotel.

They are able to feel more at home and in control – what we refer to as a heightened sense of “territoriality” – and are more likely to fully immerse themselves in their surroundings and the products at their disposal. Overall, self-catered accommodation elicits stronger feelings of ownership towards the accommodation space, and potential ownership of the the amenities it contains.

This means tryvertising through self-catered holiday accommodation could provide an excellent opportunity for companies.

Those companies – which could be everything from electronic manufacturers to local artisan businesses – could select suitable hosts with whom to place their products, either for free or with a discount. A QR code could then be attached to the tryvertised goods, directing customers to extra information and purchasing details.

Those businesses could even issue discount codes to those guests. The accommodation platforms themselves wouldn’t need to be involved (they may wish to be at some level, but their input would not be necessary). It would mainly be a beneficial arrangement directly between manufacturers and hosts.

For consumers too, tryvertising makes perfect sense. Rather than looking at images on online, or observing an item in person at a store, they get a real-life user experience before they commit to a purchase.

Mutual benefits

Of course, it can work the other way too. One person told us that he had decided against buying a gadget after having the opportunity to use one on holiday.

He recalled: The presence of the AI assistant in my last Airbnb getaway really made the entire stay overwhelming. I didn’t understand how to use it effectively. It kept misinterpreting our commands, and falsely activating due to background noise. This really made us [feel] stressful and uncomfortable. We had considered buying a similar AI assisted smart speaker at home before, but now we would definitely postpone the decision.

But again, that was beneficial. That particular client was given a chance to try something, and decided it wasn’t for him. He saved money.

Meanwhile, our colleague decided to spend her money on a machine she had enjoyed using, and which now provides her with delicious coffee on a daily basis.

But it’s not only about buying things for your home. Tryvertising can also enhance a traveller’s experience by allowing them to get an authentic taste of the culture through products sponsored by local businesses. And it could contribute to sustainable tourism by encouraging both hosts and visitors to engage with their community and the produce on offer.

Overall, our research suggests that everyone stands to benefit. Hosts, local businesses and travellers should all give it a try.

Jialin (Snow) Wu is a reader in sustainable and digitalised service economy at the University of Huddersfield, Chen Zheng is a senior lecturer in the School of Event, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Beckett University, and Hongbo (Daisy) Liu is a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Perspectives: Why holiday homes are the next battleground for product marketing appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Tomahawk talks tourism tech in new webinar series appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Plan, book, share: One-stop destination shop for Auckland launches appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Spots up for grabs on Wānaka Monopoly game appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The ‘I NY’ logo was launched in the 1970s when New York City was at its grittiest and most dangerous. Since then graphic designer Milton Glaser’s creation has been emblazoned on every kind of souvenir imaginable, not to mention inspiring movies, clothing, graffiti and even food.

More than 50 years later, New York has just updated its iconic branding – not for the first time – to say ‘We NYC’ as part of an attempt to revitalise the city after Covid lockdowns.

And while lots of people hate the rebrand, it still reflects the intent behind the much-loved original logo. These days it’s hard to argue that the brand hasn’t done the job of communicating exactly how New Yorkers – and many tourists – feel about the city.

Indeed, unlike the kind of brand advertising created for a product, this campaign was never designed to sell anything, but to communicate a feeling about the city by its people. And if people feel more positive about a city or an area, they will be more ready to help improve it.

Such campaigns are developed as part of a branding process used to whip up feelings about a place. These so-called “place branding” efforts can gather communities around whichever ideas matter most to these people, whether they are social, economic, or even environmental.

Developing a place brand can be complex and challenging, but also immensely rewarding. It can involve government, companies and society in general. It can include events, ideas and investments focused on winning over visitors, residents and investors – all to help social community and local businesses thrive and grow.

‘People Make Glasgow’ is an example of a flexible place brand that can be associated with a wide range of assets and activities. But this kind of brand doesn’t have to convey a straight, positive message about an area, town or city, it can also be connected to specific challenges.

More recent attempts at branding a location have aimed to galvanise communities to work together to create and communicate a shared identity – not just right now, but also in the future. In many cases, this includes highlighting challenges such as the impact of climate change.

Using branding to inspire support

As climate change increasingly affects areas in different ways, communities are starting to use place branding to help address specific environmental challenges. This makes sense since people tend to be attached to where they live, and communities often seek ways to act locally to work against or mitigate the effects of climate change.

‘Inspired by Iceland’ is a good example of this. The country launched a “premium tap water” brand in 2019 to encourage residents and visitors to go plastic-free while in Iceland by drinking its tap water.

Integrating climate-related issues into the branding process communicates to everyone – including tourists, investors, residents and public and private sector bodies – that climate action is a priority. It shows that it’s integral to local identity and discourse, as residents seek to protect their home’s environmental features.

Place branding may also affect local or even national government policy making. This is what happened in Palau, a Micronesian island in the western Pacific. In 2017 its government started to require all visitors to sign a pledge to be “ecologically and culturally responsible” before they could set foot in the country.

The Faroe Islands in the north Atlantic, took a slightly different approach in 2019 by declaring itself “closed for maintenance, open for voluntourism”. This initiative was used by islanders and local businesses to promote community cohesion. It also offers tourists a unique chance to connect with the core values of the country.

Adapting to new challenges

Most places are limited in their ability to adapt to challenges such as climate change. Unlike residents, local businesses and tourists, a city or country can’t relocate itself. Instead, an area must adapt, which can become a multifaceted and politically challenging process simply due to the range of people and organisations involved. Diverse community needs and imbalances of power held by public and private sector organisations only add to the challenge.

In reality, even though place branding is very much about community cohesion, diverse communities are not necessarily equally involved in the decision-making process. It’s important to recognise that initiatives – whether national, regional, or local – can only go so far, and policy-led change is also required, especially when dealing with challenges such as environmental degradation.

Place branding has become a useful tool to accompany such policies. People can also become quite attached to these brands. Indeed, rather than any reluctance to help the city face new challenges, the opposition to the ‘We NYC’ update shows the strength of feeling for the city and perhaps even for its brand.

Sonya Hanna is a lecturer in marketing at Bangor University, UK, and Thora Tenbrink is a professor of linguistics, also at Bangor University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The post Perspectives: New York’s change to ‘I ♥ NY’ a cautionary tale for place branding appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Why tourism can expect a different kind of Chinese visitor appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

Tourism operators are becoming increasingly digital-led in their marketing, a trend that started well before Covid and accelerated by the pandemic, an industry audience has heard.

Speaking on a panel at the inaugural Destination Digital event in Auckland on Tuesday, RealNZ chief executive Stephen England-Hall said bringing the diverse group’s brands under a single banner 14 months ago also spurred change.

“The biggest transition the company has made in digital transformation from a technology point of view is we now have an integrated technology and marketing capability that works across all of our experiences,” England-Hall told an audience of industry professionals at Wētā Unleashed Auckland.

“So, there’s been a huge transformation, we’ve changed all of our platforms, we’ve changed all of our systems, we’ve moved to data… and it’s going pretty well.”

The change helped drive direct-to-consumer acquisitions, an important growth opportunity for the Queenstown-based operator.

“We need to drive first-party relationships direct to consumer acquisitions, but in partnership with trade because there are audiences we will never reach directly and there’s a huge role for trade to play,” England-Hall said.

“The key for us is how do we use technology to make better more intelligent use of our incredibly valuable trade sales resources. It’s been a pretty exciting 12 months and a huge amount of work has gone into leading that transformation and we’re just getting started.”

For Northland’s Waitangi Treaty Grounds, the pandemic forced a dramatic rethink of its marketing, with 60% of its customers being international pre-Covid and unable to visit.

“With [Covid-19] lockdown happening in 2020 was a huge shock,” WTG’s head of sales and market, Nineke Metz, said.

“A lot of our marketing was targeted at internationals, not the domestic market.

“The main thing we did was repositioning our product line with children up to 18 free. We never really marketed that because internationals don’t bring children very often. So, suddenly it was like, we had to find a domestic market, a family market.”

Hobbiton Movie Set general manager Shayne Forrest said the Waikato operator’s digital transformation had started before the pandemic and it was now a digitally-led business.

“That’s quite a big change for us considering five years ago a majority of our business came through the trade channels,” Forrest said.

“Now, all our decisions are digitally-led and our strategy is to be sitting at about 70% of direct bookings as a business. We’re sitting at about that now but as you know that’s challenging to keep as internationals open up.

“Trade is always going to be a hugely important part of our business. We had a strategy of trying to work with every trade partner that we could. Now we are being very focused on who we are working with from the trade channels, which is mainly through the [Tourism Export Council of New Zealand] partners that we have. So, making sure we are going for quality over quantity.”

Destination Digital, organised by Maverick Digital, concluded on Monday evening.

The post Destination Digital: How digital is transforming tourism marketing appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post NZ’s brand value tops $442bn – report appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Tourism campaigns shortlisted in NZ Marketing Awards appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Wellington promo, culture spend nears $60m appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post West Coast wanderer eyes Wikipedia to boost tourism appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The Marketing Well, created by Maverick Digital, will bring together a curated panel of industry experts and the agency’s in-house specialists to offer bespoke advice to tourism businesses, destination marketers and managers, and other organisations in the sector.

Maverick said the initiative aimed to plug the gap between tourism’s current digital marketing proficiency and where the industry’s high-value potential lies. 

“A recipient will be drawn every two months to receive a complimentary one-off service package, full of tangible solutions and ideas to tackle their problem along with some hands-on training,” Maverick said.

“Each project will involve a hand-picked selection of experts best suited to the particular task – including RTO leaders, general managers of large-scale operators, and those well-known in the research and media landscapes.”

Maverick’s general manager, Nicole Botting, said that the pandemic had accelerated tourism digital transformation by a decade but there was a need to help businesses and organisations improve their capabilities to take advantage of the recovery.

“By combining internal and industry-wide expertise, the launch of The Marketing Well brings a renewed excitement in strengthening tourism’s marketing capability, as we make a real, tangible difference in supporting those who would otherwise be stuck and unsure of how best to embrace digital best-practice,” Botting said.

Tourism operators, organisations, and destination agencies can find out more about the initiative here.

Declaration: Tourism Ticker has been invited to participate in the industry panel.

The post Industry panel to boost tourism’s marketing appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Try Local goes free for operators to post deals appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post TNZ seeks supplier for email, direct marketing activities appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hildebrandt ramps up New Zealand Card platform appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hobbiton goes Maverick in digital first transition appeared first on Tourism Ticker.