How Safe is Your Destination?
Much has changed since 9/11. Once security was the stepchild of the travel and tourism world; today it is an essential part of the industry. Tourism security specialist, Dr. Peter Tarlow, warns that the world's largest industry depends on how well DMO managers meet the security challenge.
Food Tourism: Food today plays a significant part in a destination's product offering. We take a look at how Scotland plans to harness the role of food tourism in its drive to grow tourism revenue by 50% over the next ten years.
Welcome
 In this issue, we take a close look at how the travel industry has changed in the five years since 9/11 and invite tourism security specialist, Dr Peter Tarlow, to offer his views on the new challenges facing today's destination professional.
In addition to all the regular news, views, events and updates, we also investigate the drivers that are shaping the role of food and drink in society, and identify ways in which destinations can benefit from this growing trend.
Kind regards,
Roger Carter
Managing Editor
Research and Reports - What's New?
With a population of more than 1 billion and an expanding middle class, it's probably not surprising that India is producing a rapidly increasing number of international travellers. According to PATA, they made 2.5 million international trips across the Pacific Asia region in 2005.
 'Whichever way we look at India and the changes taking place in that market, we can only see opportunity for our members and our industry,' said PATA Director Strategic Intelligence Centre, John Koldowski. 'The timing is right for a comprehensive report on the Indian travel and tourism industry.'
PATA's Total Tourism India report is an in-depth analysis of one of the world's fastest growing travel and tourism markets. The report explores all the major issues and trends impacting Indian inbound, outbound and domestic travel flows.
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Concerns about possible shortages of fresh water in the future, and the implications of this on the travel and tourism industry, are raised in an article by Strategic Forecasting which is published in the December edition of the PATA newsletter, Issues and Trends.
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The Travel Industry Association of America ( TIA) and the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Foundation have collaborated on a research project that compares methodologies for measuring online marketing initiatives within the travel industry.
The Online Metrics Handbook for Travel Marketers defines performance from both a business and a data model perspective, and reviews the metrics used by different travel sectors. The report, published earlier this month, is available at a cost of US$250 (TIA or HSMAI members) and $350 (non-members). * * *
 A new study released by UNWTO shows how the economic importance of tourism extends to the meetings industry. The report - Measuring the Economic Importance of the Meetings Industry: Developing a Tourism Satellite Account Extension - is the result of two years of work by UNWTO, the International Congress and Convention Association ( ICCA), Reed Travel Exhibitions ( RTE) and Meeting Professionals International ( MPI).
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In 2005, the US represented just one third of the total travel gross bookings in the three key economic regions of the world - North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. But, according to a report by PhoCusWright - US Online Travel Overview (6th edition) - the US registered over 60% of these markets' total online travel bookings.
The report provides a snapshot of the US travel industry with a focus on the purchase, distribution and marketing of travel booked by the leisure or unmanaged business traveller. It can be bought online from the PhoCusWright website.
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Three new white papers by BrandChannel.com have been released:
- Being Found in Web Searches Via Natural Language SEO. This report investigates the power of the internet as a channel for influencing people's perceptions and behaviours, and identifies ways in which brands should optimise their sites to ensure high search engine visibility.
- Relationship Marketing in the 21st Century: The Importance of Data and One-to-One Messaging. A study into the ways in which data can be used to create effective, personalised messaging based on purchasing patterns and interests. It also touches on the difference between evaluating overall campaign effectiveness by return on investment versus the concept of relationship marketing's return on customer.
- Strategies for Building Sustainable Indian brands. This white paper suggests that, in order to compete with global brands that have penetrated the Indian market, Indian brands must develop better strategies and deliver their brands' promise to the customer, using non-traditional means if necessary.
Key Articles
Technology:
Destinations and the benefits of blogging
Blogs, UGC, organic search... it's getting harder for the destination professional to keep up-to-date with the latest terminology, and harder still to ensure that their online marketing activities fully embrace these new approaches. But experts are warning that destinations which fail to adapt could face disaster.
 User-generated content, or UGC, is widely considered to be more persuasive than advertising, yet many destinations have been slow to recognise the benefits, preferring instead to maintain a tight control over their marketing message. But with the growing number of C2C sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Tagzania, Gusto, Wikia, and RealTravel, it is fast becoming impossible to ignore UGC.
Analysts cite blogs, social networking sites and natural search engine optimisation as massive opportunities for the travel industry, with some going as far to suggest that they should form part of every organisation's online marketing strategy.
A spokesman for the Internet Advertising Bureau, the UK trade association for the internet marketing industry, commented: 'With such a choice of media at their finger-tips, marketers and brand managers have never had it better, but neither has it been more of a challenge to keep up with consumers.
'As consumers are increasingly empowered to take control of brands online through a variety of social media such as user-generated content and blogs, brand managers must 'unthink' much of the traditional approach to brand management and learn how to use these forms of social media to liberate their brand communications.'
Traffic to blogs (web logs) has grown by more than 50% over the last year to nearly 60 million visitors, representing 34% of all internet users, according to the comScore Media Metrix. In addition, the research reveals that blogs are more likely to attract younger visitors from higher incomes homes, who will visit nearly twice as many web pages as the internet average and are much more likely to shop online.
Yeoh Siew Hoon, co-organiser of the Wired Travel Asia annual conference, commented recently on the growing power of social networking sites and the suggestion that travel writers and agents face an imminent demise: 'Their argument is that, because of the power of social networking sites where everyone is now a journalist, writer, commentator, opinion-maker i.e. blogger, who needs travel writers to tell us where to go and what to see and travel agents to recommend places to stay?'
 One recent blog success story is comes from Canada's Bay of Fundy Tourism Partnership. Within just a few weeks of its launch, the blog was receiving several hundreds of visitors per week. Members of the Bay of Fundy Tourism Partnership throughout New Brunswick and Nova Scotia contribute regularly to the blog.
Partnership manager and committed blogger, Terri McCulloch, commented: 'Our blog provides us with an emerging opportunity to share real time news, recipes, photos, videos, poetry and stories about the place that we enjoy inviting visitors to explore with us.'
But it's not just the tourists that can benefit from blogging. A new tourism marketing blog, designed to support the industy by providing marketing tips, book reviews, market research and information on industry trends, has been developed by AudioConexus, an audio tour and marketing services company.
Internet:
Predictions soar for online travel
It's onward and upward for online travel bookings in the near future. According to a new report from PhoCusWright, online travel bookings will surpass offline bookings for the first time in 2007.
For years, suppliers have enjoyed an advantage over online travel agencies, due to their control over their own inventory and the relatively inexpensive task of acquiring online customers from their own offline channels. However, the suppliers' online advantage is disappearing as the majority of travel transactions move to online.
 Diane Clarkson, lead analyst at JupiterResearch and author of the US Travel Forecast: 2006 to 2011, predicts that: 'Online travel revenue will continue to grow strongly from $85 billion in 2006 to $128 billion in 2011. Factors that will spur online spending are greater consumer wallet share, increasingly sophisticated products available online, and improved online compliance in business travel.'
In addition, new research conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings suggests that more than half (55%) of internet users book their holidays online. Less than one third of people use their high street travel agent as a source of information - far higher than the number of people who book in store - and 60% of those who use a search engine book four or more major holidays per year along with 38% of magazine-readers, which contrasts with just 13% of those who visit their local travel agent.
It's a similar story in the business world, too, with recent research undertaken by the HSMAI Foundation and web analytics specialist, iPerceptions, revealing that an impressive 44% of business travellers visiting hotel brand websites actually book when they go online.
Destination Brand Watch
Australia ranks as the top overall country brand, with the United States and Italy ranked second and third, according to the second annual Country Brand Index ( CBI). The CBI 2006 identifies countries as brands and emerging global travel trends in the world's fastest-growing economic sector - travel and tourism.
 The CBI also identified China, Croatia and the United Arab Emirates as the top three 'rising star' countries - those likely to be major tourism destinations in the next five years.
Developed by FutureBrand, the index includes the opinions of more than 1,500 international travellers, travel industry experts and hospitality professionals. The study examines how countries can be branded and ranked according to key criteria and, this year, includes customisable country data as well as rankings, emerging trends, travel motivations, challenges and opportunities.
Rina Plapler of FutureBrand commented: 'Countries can no longer continue to see themselves as commodities. We believe that branding is a tremendous opportunity for both developed and developing countries to build preference, consideration, loyalty and advocacy.'
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An innovative advertising campaign, developed by a Paris tourism agency, aims to show foreign tourists 'how to cop the Parisian attitude'.
'C'est so Paris' (It's so Paris) has been designed to show the British in particular that Paris is worth visiting regularly, despite the rudeness of its residents. The campaign's English-language website shows tourists how to understand and copy some of the best known Parisian gestures, encouraging them to act French, even if they can't speak the language.
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The Canadian Tourism Commission's ( CTC) 2007 marketing campaign plans, incorporating a revised Brand Canada visual identity, were revealed earlier this month.
The key departure from previous campaigns is a shift from focussing on the physical attributes of Canada to presenting a more emotional idea of the consumer's travel experience in the country. Refining the Brand Canada identity was carried out over a period of 18 months and involved close consultation with industry partners and consumers.
 The new identity comprises a simpler, less formal image of the maple leaf, along with the words 'Keep Exploring'. Another key component of the visual identity is the use of journal graphics - a series of cross Canada adventures recorded as real journal entries with individual handwriting and sketches which serve to emphasise the personal experience.
Dates for Your Diary
Some key dates for travel and tourism professionals taking place over the coming months:
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The UNWTO Education and Knowledge Management Department and its THEMIS Foundation will be holding an International Conference on Excellence in Tourism Governance: Strategic and Operational Issues on the 1st February 2007, as part of the FITUR International Tourism Trade Fair. The conference will be held in Madrid.
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 One of Africa's leading business tourism exhibitions, Meetings Africa, will be held in the Sandton Convention Centre, South Africa, from the 28th February to the 1st March.
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Creating Competitive Advantage for your Destination is the title of the World Tourism Organization's ( UNWTO) International Conference on Destination Management which will be held in Budapest, Hungary, from the 7th - 9th February 2007.
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To coincide with the launch of the Pacific Asia Travel Association ( PATA) Strategic Intelligence Centre's Total Tourism India report, PATA is organising a Total Tourism India seminar, focussing on India's inbound, outbound and domestic tourism flows. The seminar will be held on the 22nd February in New Delhi.
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AIME 2007 is a two day event showcasing destinations, products and services for the meetings and incentives industry in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. This year it will be held in Melbourne, Australia on the 13th and 14th February.
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Search Engine Strategies 2007 is an in-depth, multi-track conference which addresses all aspects of search engine-related promotion. The conference will be held in London between the 13th and 15th February.
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The Travel Distribution Summit Asia is a key event for pricing, marketing and technology professionals. This year's exhibition will be held in Singapore, Malaysia, from 13th to 14th March, followed by the Travel Distribution France 2007 in Paris (14th - 15th March).
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 Don't miss the International Tourism Exchange ITB Berlin which will be held between the 7th and 11th March 2007. Last year's anniversary event attracted nearly 11,000 exhibitors from more than 180 countries.
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International News
World Tourism:
Another record year
With 842 million arrivals and a 4.5% growth rate, 2006 exceeded expectations as the tourism sector continued to enjoy above average results, making it a new record year for the industry. The latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer figures suggest that 2007 will consolidate this performance and turn into the fourth year of sustained growth.
'Despite downside risks facing global tourism twelve months ago – terrorism, health scares and rising oil prices – 2006 was another year of good growth above the long-term forecast rate of 4.1%, backed up by one of the longest periods of sustained economic expansion,' said UNWTO Secretary General Francesco Frangialli.
Health Tourism:
Massive growth predicted
Health and tourism will be the world's largest industry by 2022, according to analysts at the World Health Organisation ( WHO). Contributing factors include a steady growth in disposable income and an ageing population that has resulted in a growing demand for health-related consumer products and services.
The WHO research forms the basis of VisitScotland's latest research briefing paper, in which the scenario planning team presents an analysis of the trends and drivers which are shaping health and beauty in society and highlight the implications and opportunities for health and beauty tourism.
Caribbean:
New development organisation
The Caribbean Tourism Organization ( CTO) and the Caribbean Hotel Association ( CHA) have joined forces to create a new mechanism for promoting the region.
The Caribbean Tourism Development Company (CTDC) was launched earlier this month with the aim of reviewing and expanding existing advertising and marketing strategies. The review will include the development of a new website, attendance at consumer travel shows and a series of promotional events.
Tourism:
Growth is highest in poorer countries
Tourism's potential for contributing to poverty reduction in developing countries has been highlighted in an UNWTO report.
The research reveals that, although international arrivals in 'least developed countries' (LDCs) accounted for only 1.2% and 0.8% of receipts in 2005, the growth rate in these countries has been outpacing the world average since the turn of the century. Arrivals between 2000 and 2005 were up 48% in comparison to 17%, and receipts have grown 76% against 40%.
Tourism:
Public private partnerships
The opportunities presented by the creation of public-private partnerships in tourism were the focus of a one day conference held as part of the World Tourism Forum for Peace and Sustainable Development.
The event was organised by UNWTO in partnership with Brazil's ministry of tourism and covered practical issues such as accessing funds, implementing policies to reinforce natural and cultural assets, as well as knowledge management through education, training and information.
Australia:
Most popular destination
Independent travellers from across the globe have rated Australia as the destination they would most like to visit next, according to the latest Lonely Planet Travellers' Pulse Survey.
The annual survey, now in its second year, sets out to analyse the travel behaviour of more than 20,000 global travellers from around 170 countries.
After Australia, the most desired destinations to visit next were Chile and Brazil with New Zealand and India rounding out the top five. Australia also topped the list of favourite destinations that travellers had previously visited, followed by the ever popular Italy, Thailand, New Zealand and France.
e-Business News
Media Monitoring:
Software solution for tourism suppliers
A new software tool that simultaneously monitors thousands of key online information sources and alerts tourism suppliers when their business or destination is mentioned in the news media has been launched.
The Ferret was designed originally to help counteract the negative effects of misinformation upon destinations and now also provides a way for DMOs to monitor what is being said about their destination in blogs and other forms of UGC, such as IgoUgo.
Canada:
Convention centre breaks the mould
Plans are underway to create the world's most technologically advanced meeting facility. Bell Canada is to deliver a fully outsourced ICT solution to support the Vancouver Convention Centre's 2008 expansion programme and the winter games in 2010.
Charles Brown, President, Bell Western Region, said: 'We understand the evolving needs of the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project ( VCCEP) and we will design and build supporting technologies into the very fabric of the building.'
This is believed to be the largest customer project ever booked in advance of a convention centre build, with broadcast and press centres at the heart of the video, audio and media transmission to an audience of as many as three billion people worldwide.
.travel:
Place name registrations
The Tralliance Corporation reported an end-of-year rush of applications to register .travel domain names. The process allowed the registration of cities and towns, heritage and sacred sites, plus national parks and other landmarks.
Tralliance had previously reported a steady growth in applications following the official launch last year of the .travel vertical search engine.
Among the countries leading the way in establishing the .travel concept as the norm for tourism destinations and businesses is Canada. The Canadian Tourism Commission ( CTC) has registered hundreds of domain names with .travel extensions and has consolidated its 48 global websites under a single internet portal.
Another .travel leader is China whose newly unveiled portal will serve as an integrated DMS and e-commerce platform.
Mobile Phones:
New travel info service
A new facility that provides travel information via mobile phone was launched at last month's ABTA Travel Convention.
Mobiholiday, allows travellers to download information relating to their destination before they leave home, thereby avoiding costly roaming charges. The concept, which has been developed by Media Delivery Technologies, also offers travel and tourism suppliers advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
Google Earth:
New partnership with US state
Pennsylvania is to become the first state in the US to harness the Google Earth platform as part of a specific tourism promotion campaign.
The project, which will allow virtual tourists to the chance to view Pennsylvania's Civil War trails online, is the result of a partnership between Google Earth, Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office and the National Civil War Museum.
Google Earth uses satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to display geographic information online.
Mobile:
Global market set to rise
A new report by eMarketer predicts that the global market for mobile marketing and advertising will grow from about $1.5 billion in 2006 to $13.9 billion in 2011.
The Mobile Marketing and Advertising report analyses the rapidly changing dynamics of the worldwide mobile market and suggests that enhanced cross-media integration will be the trend of 2007.
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