April Trends Chat 2021
This month's Trends Chat revolved around Urban Tourism, how to sustain it and how to transform to overcome the challenges city DMOs are facing.
This month's Trends Chat revolved around Urban Tourism, how to sustain it and how to transform to overcome the challenges city DMOs are facing.
This month's Trends Chat revolved around Urban Tourism, how to sustain it and how to transform to overcome the challenges city DMOs are facing. It was also our first collaborative chat with European Cities Marketing (ECM) and with that came the insights of our guests for this month.
These are the few points discussed ⤵️
Meet the guests:
Manager, Convention Bureaux of Dublin and Ireland and Vice President of ECM
Head of Marketing & E-commerce, Convention & Visitors Bureau of Paris
With them, we have been discussing the directions of these city DMOs in the coming months and their immediate priorities, what cities can do to be sustainable and driving back tourism as global restrictions lessen, keep looking towards the future and at what opportunities open.
You can rewatch the whole chat here, but I'm going to summarise some key discussions below.
Sam explains that Dublin is looking particularly optimistic with the tourism and hospitality sector opening up at the start of June ahead of expectations. They've been focussing on keeping the industry alive by working on getting financial support schemes to various suppliers to keep them going. The bureaux understand the support necessary in keeping a smooth business operation alive during such a hard time for the industry.
Alice continues by explaining that Paris will be reopening on May 17th, they're relatively grounded in expecting a gradual slope to recovery in the coming year. Unfortunately, this year, Paris isn't the national hotspot it used to be, so there is the need for a push to target national markets in order to create anticipation for the reopening.
Reassuring and boosting the confidence of potential visitors is a key focus in order to restart, ensuring that they feel welcome and safe whenever they can go back to travel and throughout the visitor journey.
In Paris, Alice has been working on a campaign that's focused on the offering of the city. It's an incentive to fight the cliches that Paris's image has in order to project a richer, varied perception.
This initiative aims to distribute visitors across Paris rather than large hubs at popular attractions such as the Eiffel Tower or Louvre, introducing a city card system in order to spread the appeal of Paris for locals as a start.
Fàilte Ireland is currently standing on an 8-pillar programme, which includes a focus on reducing the carbon footprint and inviting people to experience the outdoors. Businesses are seeing sustainability as a key point in advertising and as such, they're contributing to making the shift towards a greener Ireland.
Dublin, like many other DMOs, has dealt with the anxiety of the unknown – not knowing how people will react until things are in place. Along with this, they have also got the expectations of locals and visitors alike to provide a level of emotional support in order to ease people into the social environment again.
There's been debate on altering business hours in order to accommodate for the newfound market demand, making changes in business culture and adapting to the new outdoor dining experience - where there wasn't much of culture before.
A challenge of the past was people thinking that visiting Dublin was a single one-time experience; an initiative that's turned this on its head is keeping returning visitors enticed in a post-pandemic lifestyle.
With a smaller population, there is only so much support available, so the community dependency has been much more prevalent in understanding what the domestic visitor wants.
Alice believes that city breaks will remain out of the question for a while, however, this has given rise to focus on alternatives, diverting attention to other destinations in France. It's allowed for new offers in collaboration with hotels in order to smoothen the transition from dense tourist attractions to a diverse range of opportunities.
With the 2024 Olympics taking place in Paris, it will set an example on the world stage and they aim to optimise sustainability - with the support of the mayor and locals.
Nick sums up their talk best:
This expansion of what the city's limits look like is really key for us to consider, partnerships exist when bringing people out. Whether it's mobility partnerships, whether it's partnerships with other DMOs. This partnership focus is the name of the game.
This month's Trends Chat revolved around Urban Tourism, how to sustain it and how to transform to overcome the challenges city DMOs are facing. It was also our first collaborative chat with European Cities Marketing (ECM) and with that came the insights of our guests for this month.
These are the few points discussed ⤵️
Meet the guests:
Manager, Convention Bureaux of Dublin and Ireland and Vice President of ECM
Head of Marketing & E-commerce, Convention & Visitors Bureau of Paris
With them, we have been discussing the directions of these city DMOs in the coming months and their immediate priorities, what cities can do to be sustainable and driving back tourism as global restrictions lessen, keep looking towards the future and at what opportunities open.
You can rewatch the whole chat here, but I'm going to summarise some key discussions below.
Sam explains that Dublin is looking particularly optimistic with the tourism and hospitality sector opening up at the start of June ahead of expectations. They've been focussing on keeping the industry alive by working on getting financial support schemes to various suppliers to keep them going. The bureaux understand the support necessary in keeping a smooth business operation alive during such a hard time for the industry.
Alice continues by explaining that Paris will be reopening on May 17th, they're relatively grounded in expecting a gradual slope to recovery in the coming year. Unfortunately, this year, Paris isn't the national hotspot it used to be, so there is the need for a push to target national markets in order to create anticipation for the reopening.
Reassuring and boosting the confidence of potential visitors is a key focus in order to restart, ensuring that they feel welcome and safe whenever they can go back to travel and throughout the visitor journey.
In Paris, Alice has been working on a campaign that's focused on the offering of the city. It's an incentive to fight the cliches that Paris's image has in order to project a richer, varied perception.
This initiative aims to distribute visitors across Paris rather than large hubs at popular attractions such as the Eiffel Tower or Louvre, introducing a city card system in order to spread the appeal of Paris for locals as a start.
Fàilte Ireland is currently standing on an 8-pillar programme, which includes a focus on reducing the carbon footprint and inviting people to experience the outdoors. Businesses are seeing sustainability as a key point in advertising and as such, they're contributing to making the shift towards a greener Ireland.
Dublin, like many other DMOs, has dealt with the anxiety of the unknown – not knowing how people will react until things are in place. Along with this, they have also got the expectations of locals and visitors alike to provide a level of emotional support in order to ease people into the social environment again.
There's been debate on altering business hours in order to accommodate for the newfound market demand, making changes in business culture and adapting to the new outdoor dining experience - where there wasn't much of culture before.
A challenge of the past was people thinking that visiting Dublin was a single one-time experience; an initiative that's turned this on its head is keeping returning visitors enticed in a post-pandemic lifestyle.
With a smaller population, there is only so much support available, so the community dependency has been much more prevalent in understanding what the domestic visitor wants.
Alice believes that city breaks will remain out of the question for a while, however, this has given rise to focus on alternatives, diverting attention to other destinations in France. It's allowed for new offers in collaboration with hotels in order to smoothen the transition from dense tourist attractions to a diverse range of opportunities.
With the 2024 Olympics taking place in Paris, it will set an example on the world stage and they aim to optimise sustainability - with the support of the mayor and locals.
Nick sums up their talk best:
This expansion of what the city's limits look like is really key for us to consider, partnerships exist when bringing people out. Whether it's mobility partnerships, whether it's partnerships with other DMOs. This partnership focus is the name of the game.
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