National tourist boards need new practices to promote their destination abroad. Travelers are looking more to one another for advice on travel destinations and experience products. The credibility of governmental promotion is plummeting due to advertorials and other governmentally funded promotion is being rejected as plain advertisement. Furthermore, national tourist boards generally works with a scarcity of ample monetary and human resources.
We do, however, have an abundance of extremely travel savvy customers, willing to share their knowledge and recommendations. And we do have a stronger political focus on the tourism industry than ever before. What we need is a new practice for destination promotion that makes full use of traveler recommendations and knowledge and a new definition of the role of the national tourist boards.
In order to understand the challenge it is purposeful to outline the business of a national tourist board. I will do so with examples of Scandinavian Tourist Board Asia/Pacific (STB).
National tourist boards and in particular their offices abroad have continuously strived to supply potential travelers with a so called “reason to go” along with market adapted travel products in the supply chain. The strategies applied include always a mix of media promotion and branding, website encyclopedias, online marketing and training, printed collateral, trade promotion and familiarization trips as well as facilitation of structural barriers such as visa regulations when relevant. Some national tourist boards engage in market analyses and product development, and some rely on the private sector to fund parts of the operation in order to sustain a high promotional presence and/or to legitimate the operation itself. Refer to the attached Word document for more details.