BUCKET LIST THINKING

Most of us simply have to see London, Barcelona, Paris, New York, Venice, Hong Kong, or Bali at least once and consider it a rite of passage in starting to understand the world. The question though, is why we head for the same bucket-list cities and destinations over and over again…..and then bemoan the fact that they are overcrowded, impersonal, degraded and at times inhospitable? 'The BIG 7', 'The Top Ten', 'The Ultimate 10 Hot Spots' ….... this is marketing that is clearly designed to appeal to our tribal tendencies.  But are we simply acting like lemmings and in so doing, limiting the genuine transformative potential of travel and entrenching yet further, the problems that have stalked our industry and damaged those beleaguered tourism hot spots?

WHY DO WE DO IT?

Much has been written on our ‘bucket-list’ behaviour and our sense of feeling that we have ‘missed out’ if boxes on the list are left unticked – particularly when those around us have ‘done’ the full list.  FOMO behaviour is underpinned  by the commoditisation of travel, the idea that with the ‘Top Ten’ or the Big 7’ ‘you know what to expect’,  that ‘it’s cheaper, easier, more secure, more available, more predictable, more guaranteed to be  instagrammable’. The ‘bucket list’ is often little more than formulaic marketing by DMOs, local government tourism and tourism media. ‘World Spots for Best Bragging Rights' probably says it all.  For tourists this ‘commoditisation’ can create a disconnect, by seeing a place as a sort of theme park, designed entirely for them to ‘enjoy’ and with this ‘disconnection’, anti-social behaviour becomes increasingly possible and at best, the tourism experience offers very little positive value for the host community. For travel wholesalers and resellers, commoditised travel perpetuates industrial-style thinking– volume, through-put,  margin, R.O.I. and  coach numbers. Rewarded for ‘growth,  we simply keep ‘producing’ etc. How did we of all industries,  arrive here?

THE EFFECT

Screeds of articles were written last year and early this year regarding the growing problem in major cities – often seen as ‘tourist traps’. Of course, recently the issue has been pushed into the background by Covid, an even bigger problem. The problem however, hasn’t gone away and post-Covid tourism seems a unique moment to ensure we take this opportunity to re-think how we market. 

Tourists returning to the same places over and over create ‘tourism fatigue’ both for the tourist and the host community. Tourists complain about the queues, the stress of shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, rocking up to find their ‘perfect instagrammable shot’ swarming with others…well as it turns out………just like them. They start talking about the shallow experience they realise they have had;  feeling ’short-changed’ after only seeing other tourists like themselves rather than local people and being taken to cafés that served up especially crafted homogenous ‘tourist menus’. The sheer exhaustion of it all. And what of the host communities? They simply want to close a shutter on it all, as the much lauded 'tourism promise' in fact gravely reduces liveability in their own town or village.

No matter the level of openness by communities to tourism,  social, cultural and environmental risks are ever-present. Local businesses risk being overrun by tourism-focused businesses,  such as bars, fast food restaurants, kitschy tourism and souvenir shops, that replace the small businesses and artisans' craft shops.  The loss of local culture, of Place DNA?  starts to fracture community cohesion. Traffic congestion, waste management pressures and degradation of fragile natural environments, merely adds to community woes. 

THE OPPORTUNITY

Is this the lot of tourists and host communities in tourism’s future-perfect? Let’s hope not. Tourism forecasts have bitten the dust with the fallout from Covid.  It is an unreasonably confident person who would predict the size of future markets and timeframes. At best we toy with ‘scenario plans',  to tease out possibilities in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. Nonetheless,  at a point in time, by virtue of a growing middle class and the nearly ‘hard-wired’ want to travel, tourism will rebound. This Covid-pause is a unique opportunity for us to design differently, to reframe tourism marketing and destination management to a ‘place-level’ and to a ‘people-level’. One essential ingredient is leadership, but here’s the rub.  How many DMOs and government agencies in the post-Covid world will buckle under the pressure to ‘make up for lost-business’ by continuing to drive visitation indiscriminately, to the exclusion of any chance of this once-in-an-era redesign opportunity?

THE APPROACH – DEEP PLACE THINKING

The critical start point in redesigning is seeking to attract those who are the ‘right visitor’ for a place – i.e. those who are attracted to a community’s values and distinctive qualities. Based on this idea, a place must be prepared to forgo some business that does not match what the host community is offering .

Who is your 'right' visitor? Is the destination looking to welcome volume coach or cruise visitors who will deliver the stellar visitation numbers, but visitors who will simply pass through the destination, use its local amenities, create traffic congestion, spend little time engaging with local businesses and have little to no interaction with the community? If so, simple press the ‘repeat button’, you’re off and running to ‘transactional tourism circa year 2000’.

The opportunity of discovery 

Travellers today are craving authenticity and connection. That is far more than a cliché statement. They are looking for real people with whom they can engage. Young people in particular are anxious to seek out locals. For these travelers, much of today’s marketing and many ‘product experiences’ fall short in nearly being dehumanising and certainly are delivering ‘sameness’ – same places, same messages, same experiences…the practiced art of the superficial. What the traveler really wants is deeper, personal discovery and human connection. Can we help deliver this?

Putting the work into discovering a community at a people-level for a DMO and visitor, requires effort,  yet this knowledge will prove to be a seam of great riches for skilled place marketers. Ask who are your artists, entrepreneurs, ecologists, shopkeepers, designers, musicians, innovators, producers, historians etc? What are their stories, what experiences are they willing to share? How does the community value them? Matching visitors with experiences built around these people and their activities will set your place apart from other destinations. And, don’t forget the power of pictures to tell those stories. DMOs and local government tourism organisations that understand, value and engage with the talent in their local people,  will be able to drag themselves out of tourism’s ‘murky pool of sameness’ that will likely be a hallmark of the post-Covid rush to ‘rebound’.  

The opportunity of secondary cities

Once we catch on to this ‘deeper place thinking’,  a destination presents many possibilities, not least of all it will open up secondary cities, regional towns and hubs, city fringe villages and help build their small businesses. The point is not simply to move people from one place to another,  but have the tourists seek out ‘their people, their tribe’, by finding them in those places. People will be prepared to walk more in order to ‘discover’, take public transport, eat in local cafes, drink in local taverns, listen to lectures, visit concert halls,  if this is where their ‘tribe’ is also. They want to feel part of the community, even if momentarily. 

So, understanding what a destination is known for is key. If for example it is music, you and your community will want to craft the visitor experiences around this. Can your place ‘own’ that in some way and as such attract visitors who are passionate about that music? But, don't stop there. How can your local restaurants, local artists, young musicians, local cultural and historical groups come together to build experiences around this? If yours is an agricultural community,  can it develop experiences around its regenerative farming practices, agri-tourism, find local regenerative experts who might share their actual experiences, celebrate its local produce in town, perhaps even stage an evening opera performance in the wool shed etc?……ok my mind is going a little wild here, but you get the idea! Collaboration and interconnectedness within the community is another key. It is what people and place marketing is about.

The opportunity of the low-season

Deeper place thinking also means that in truly understanding a place,  its people, and its expertise,  other opportunities will present themselves for visitation in the low-season [Gerard (Ged) Brown]. You will be able to offer experiences without the crowds and with a more receptive host community, it may make it worthwhile for people to leave their traditional winter hibernation. Some local villages do autumn and winter well....a fire, traditions, music, wine, locals and laughter. Has your destination explored how its place DNA can be translated into low-season?                

This ‘deep place thinking’ approach is a long way from bucket-list marketing. It moves travel from being a commodity, to potentially offering a transformational experience, from emphasis being placed on the transactional, to being on human discovery. The idea is to not simply move people on from one overtourism area to another,  but rather ‘match up’ a host community and its offerings, with visitors who are actively seeking out those sorts of experiences. 

THE CHALLENGE

One of the limitations that secondary cities and regional locations face in attracting visitors,  is the gap between the potentially rich human experiences on offer and the service-experience on the ground. In some secondary cities and regional centres - hotels, motels, holiday cottages and farmhouse stays service the visitor accommodation needs, but these sometimes ‘look tired’, are of inadequate standard and lack imagination. This is a missed opportunity. Some are a long way from reinforcing the ‘discovery’ journey that the visitor is on. Part of the issue is that the ‘demand’ side of tourism marketing,  is more in line with the traditional skills of DMOs and local tourism operators and the challenges presented by local supply are often overlooked or put in the ‘too hard basket’. Too often the place DNA is communicated in the ‘marketing promise’ - but let down by the small businesses and built structures of the place itself. Local businesses can, with a little creativity, help strongly reinforce the journey of discovery for a visitor and in so doing, set their businesses apart from others.

WHO ARE YOUR ‘DEEP PLACE THINKERS?'

If we want to see change, to move tourists off the well-worn tourism track, to see them do more than tick-off landmarks and to ‘travel for the gram’,  then there needs to be better and deeper destination place understanding that drives visitor and community connection. This will help visitors deliver more direct positive economic, cultural and social impact to communities and help local communities provide a rich and connected tourism experience for which today’s travellers yearn.  When the Covid pall lifts, where will your business be heading?  'Transactional tourism circa year 2000' or tourism as a truly transformative experience for both visitor and community?

Thank you for reading this post

You can follow me here and my other posts here at LinkedIn where I write about issues impacting the tourism industry's future, sustainability, demographic change, social and tourism trends, travel tech and a host of issues shaping our real and virtual worlds. 

Suzanne Cavanagh is the Director of Creative Planet Media and is a Melbourne based freelance tourism writer and strategist.