Case Studies and Templates

Introducing Markets & Audiences

Every destination needs to have a clear picture of their key markets and audiences and how to play up to their needs. Every DMO should make an assessment of the current market strategy in view of shifting demographics and the rise of emerging markets, to understand where changes and opportunities lie in the future.

Knowing your audience is fundamental in any strategy and research is key to understand the travellers of today and their evolving needs and travel behaviour. But sometimes we might get lost in the Web with so many resources available to study the trends.

In this chapter of the Transformation Series we will cover the topic of markets and audiences with a focus on the shifting trends in demographics and new generations as well as explaining how to conduct market and consumer research and analysis with the scope of identifying key interests and influences of target markets that are useful for the promotion of the destination. We will point out a series of free and priced tools and resources you can use to make your own research.

We will then cover the key aspects of an audience strategy, guiding you through the creation of personas and identifying your local ambassadors and influencers who can speak adequately to your target audience and craft appealing campaigns to promote the destination. You can download the templates to start creating your strategies.

With many case studies and talks from the best DMOs worldwide, we will provide examples of destinations who mastered their research of markets and audiences and who created campaigns tailored to specific segments.

You will also find an Asana template board that you can import into your Asana workspace, with a list of useful tasks to guide you in the assessment and strategy about your markets and audiences.

Finally, you will be able to access chapter 5 of the 12 Part DMO Transformation Course “Markets & Audiences” and learn about the topic through video lessons, case studies, templates and quizzes.

Understanding a Destinations Audience

One of the fundamental roles of a DMO is to attract visitors to the destination, which means speaking to a specific audience with a desire to visit the destination with relevant content aimed at guiding the visitor along the cycle from the desire to the booking phase. Understanding your audience is the starting point of any promotional strategy and the role of the DMO is to identify the existing and potential visitors before crafting any message or content to reach them. This chapter aims to provide the concepts and tools to understand your destination’s audience suggesting practical solutions that could define your target audience.

First of all, it is important to use the correct terms to identify your public. In general, anybody you are talking to as a DMO is a visitor or a potential visitor, but in marketing it is defined as market. Your market is the public you are speaking to, but markets are usually categorising specific groups of public coming from a same country, region or sub-continents. Markets in tourism marketing are characterised by geographic boundaries and describe the patterns of groups of audience mainly based on a geographical approach, like the travellers from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries or travellers from China.

A specific section of your market, then, is the so called target audience. As the word ‘target’ suggests, it refers to the audience you want to ‘hit’ with specific messages, or simply reach through well-defined marketing campaigns.

The target audience can be further split into specific target segments, which are sets or groups of consumers joined by the same age range, provenience, interest or behaviour. The criterion used to define these groups of consumers is called segmentation and nowadays it has almost completely shifted from a demographic principle taking into account age, gender and location towards a psychographic principle, which is a method used to describe consumers on psychological attributes and affinity to things and concepts.

The best way to understand your target audience is through the description of Personas, as we will explain more in depth in chapter 2, who are fictional characters with a specified name, age, location, job title and complete description of the family composition, interests, hobbies, preferences in brands, etc. These personas are based on the analysis of real customers who interact with the brand and companies often make use of social listening tools to draw information about them.

To understand your audience is also important to stay informed about the trends in markets and audiences, the rising of emerging markets in travel and the changes in travel consumption happening every day. In this chapter we will describe the most relevant sources of information and research about market and audience insights.

From demographic to psychographic/interest-based marketing

Clearly identifying your target audience is key to selling a product or service, and it is important to do so in the most accurate and cost-effective manner. If you know how your customers tick, then you know how best to sell to them. Demographic marketing is a great start, helping you to uncover who your customers are. Defining your audience by gender, age, ethnicity, social class etc. has been used by marketers for years to define audience profiles, but campaigns have proven that more than often, people who fall within the same demographic profile can behave in very different ways. In order to delve much deeper, marketing organisations must discover why their customers are buying the product or service.

This can be achieved through psychographic marketing. This method of understanding your target market focuses on consumer likes, interests, opinions, habits, values, activities, beliefs and more, while helping to forecast consumer behaviour. It is a study of personality, values, attitudes and lifestyles, and is a much more emotive method to convince your audience that they need what you’re offering, helping brands engage better with their customers by improving their marketing efforts in a more focused manner. With this detailed information, marketers can make an informed guess on what product or service a customer might buy, and also the reasons behind the purchase.

Psychographic marketing, or psychographic segmentation, comes in many forms, the most common type of which is Lifestyle Based Segmentation. Widely used by the retail sector, it separates consumers into categories based on their personal lifestyles, for example, in the retail sector, each person dresses differently, therefore there is a need to create different campaigns for different personas. These personas would reflect the variety of lifestyles, which would depend on the stage of life the consumer is in, such as retired or college student. Another way to separate different lifestyles, is by assessing whether the consumer lives in an urban or rural community. This type of segmentation will create opportunities for companies to appeal to their audience more efficiently.

Another psychographic method of market segmentation is through personalities. This type is highly dependant on two factors; the societal class of the consumer and also their lifestyle. For example, a person who possesses expensive taste and enjoys fine jewellery and high-spec cars, is likely to also buy premium clothing brands. This lifestyle would support their personality. Brands tend to use this strategy, as different brands target different types of consumer.

Consumers have a tendency to fall across different social classes, therefore it is optimal that this segmentation method be used as a form of psychographic marketing. Social class is determined by the consumer’s buying power, which generally reflects their background. Their pay bracket and spending habits also affects a person’s social class, therefore suggesting which types of products or services they are most likely to purchase. Companies and brands that use social class based segmentation to structure their strategies around should take into account the lifestyle of the consumer alongside their social class for a truly strategic marketing plan.

Markets & Audiences

Attitude based segmentation focuses on the values of the consumer, which are shaped around aspects such as culture, politics, environment and by their upbringing. These aspects all help shape a person’s attitude, that would influence them to make a purchase, or else prevent one which challenges their beliefs. Alternative types of psychographic marketing could include segmenting consumers by marital status or by level of education.

By understanding the complexities of your customer base, and what makes them unique, companies and brands can create truly bespoke marketing campaigns in order to encapsulate the attention of their desired audience. The great news, is that these two methods of marketing are not mutually exclusive, far from it in fact. They can work perfectly hand in hand, and compliment each other nicely. They play an important role within market research, and are key aspects to any marketing strategy.

Over the years, demographic marketing has become a less effective method to understand people’s behaviours and attitudes, as society ever-evolves at a rapid pace, clear boundaries from before are now blurred lines. Psychographic marketing may be less straightforward than demographic, but the customer insights one can obtain from adopting this method are unequivocal. By creating these highly detailed customer profiles, companies are able to create a brand message that is relatable to their target audience. Demographic marketing can provide a great starting point for your market segmentation strategies, but for a deeper understanding into your consumers, psychographic segmentation should be your next step in order to increase your chances of receiving profitable results from marketing efforts.

Affinity Marketing

Sometimes referred to as partnership marketing, affinity marketing is a type of direct marketing, focusing on developing strategic partnerships. Affinity marketing occurs when a company forms a partnership with a compatible organisation or brand, or affinity group, where members of this group share common interests or goals. These affinity groups could be not-for-profit organisations, sports teams, enterprises, companies etc. For example, a well-known sports brand might partner with a well-known sporting event, in order to increase awareness of both the brand and the event while opening themselves up to a larger market audience and increase exposure. Companies and brands may also choose to offer special deals for members of the affinity group, to encourage brand loyalty.

The aim is for each company/brand to provide products and/or services in exchange for access to a new market. The linking of these two brands is seen as mutually beneficial, as it increases brand loyalty for both companies while increasing their brand awareness. Moreover, affinity marketing also allows for the sharing of each other’s marketing expertise, research and the exchange of skills between the two partners. It is the opposite of competitive marketing, as it aims to boost brand loyalty and awareness for all parties’ products and services.

Affinity marketing carries with it some misconceptions that may prevent brands from commencing potentially beneficial partnerships with one another. It can sometimes be confused with affiliate marketing, where a company may get rewarded for selling the products or services of the other. In this instance, the depth of the relationship is usually quite shallow and weak, where each brand looks after its own. Affinity marketing is a long-lasting relationship where both parties benefit and work as a team, with similar brand values. Another misconception is that if a company shares its database, they will lose control over it. This is not the case. Each company will maintain control over how their data is used, and care is taken to protect both sets of customers, as both sides are working towards the same goal.

One key limitation of affinity marketing, is that it is not always a guarantee that the venture will become a great success. Affinity marketing failures can occur if one of the brands involved refuses to endorse or promote the other, if the joining of the brands to target new markets occurs at the wrong time, or if the price of the products being advertised does not reflect the income bracket of the target audience, just to name a few examples. Occasionally, these affinity marketing attempts fail to acknowledge the needs of the affinity group’s members when marketing their products and services to their client base.

Affinity marketing can be incredibly beneficial to the companies, brands or organisations involved in the partnership, providing the correct research has been conducted and strategy implemented. If the products and services provided to the new market are tailored to meet the specific needs of the desired customer, the timing is right and the partnership is transparent and mutually supportive, there is no reason why this type of marketing cannot succeed. Steps need to be taken to prevent any negative outcomes which can easily be avoided if this market research is carried out correctly and to sufficient depth in order to fully maximise the mutual benefits to each company or brand.

Without a doubt, influencers have become firmly embedded within marketing strategies for the majority of brands, as an aspect of an affinity marketing campaign, an ambassador programme or as a separate entity altogether. Love or hate the concept, influencer marketing is now a powerful marketing technique, allowing your brand to gain direct access to a larger target audience, and should be a part of your marketing efforts, if it’s not already. Essentially, it’s utilising big names in industries and on social media to promote your products or services through paid advertisements. Influencer marketing brings with it various pros and cons, and we’ll discuss the topic further in the next chapter, to really get a feel for how it can benefit your DMO and how best to use it to boost your brand.

Niche Marketing and Communities

If affinity marketing is used to reach people with an interest in a particular field through a business partnership, niche marketing is the type of marketing companies put in place to target people belonging to specific communities, called niche communities.

A niche is by definition:

• A position or activity that particularly suits somebody's talents and personality or that somebody can make his or her own.
• An area of the market specialising in one type of product or service.” - Urban dictionary

Niche communities, also referred to as micro-communities, are groups of people with a specific shared experience or interest. With so many communities existing for different hobbies and interest with a great potential to consider for marketing strategies, DMOs should understand where the potential of niche marketing lies in order to attract new target segments and exploit these niches to attract new visitors.

The task as marketers revolves around finding the right conversations because communities establish themselves online and communicate via forums and chats, sometimes via the Dark Web3. These communities share their passions for example on Facebook groups where personal referral about products and services has 9 times a higher possibility to convert to a sale. The organic growth and genuine recommendations from members of the community make it possible to have meaningful conversations about products and services upheld by trust.

For this reason as a DMO you should consider sneaking into these communities to understand if they can become visitors of your destination or if you could develop products and experiences specifically suited for these niche communities, on the example of many other DMOs who focused on particular niches, like the ones that follow.

Many marketers’ intuitions urge them to go bigger, reach more people and get larger exposure. However, that it not necessarily the right choice. Niche tourism, which is a type of specialty tourism that focuses on a specific concept or topic, actually helps destinations to differentiate their tourism products and compete in an increasingly competitive and cluttered tourism environment. In short, niche marketing allows destinations to become big fish in a relatively small pond.

With the evolution and integration of the internet, niche travel markets have become mainstream, from food tourism, solo female travel, adventure tourism, surf tourism and many more – niche marketing should be a destination’s priority.A niche marketing strategy can connect your destination and its community to passionate, loyal visitors who appreciate the experiences that only your destination can provide.

Increasingly, we at the DTTT and our DMO partners find high value in focusing on interest-based travel, as opposed to the typical one-size-fits-all marketing of the past. We gathered some examples of different and interesting types of niche tourism campaigns created by DMOs that might help you to understand how to.

Emerging audiences in travel

When talking about markets and audiences we should consider the emerging audiences in travel, the travellers who started to travel only in the last two decades or so. These audiences, or market segments, are exponentially rising in global travel and tourism and have a high spending power and a thirst for meaningful experiences and places with an Internet connection. Among these segments we will briefly explain about the Chinese and the GCC travellers, both exponentially rising and interested in international travel.

But first let’s take a look at the trends in travel consumption by two of the most ‘travelholic’ generations ever: Millennials and the Generation Z.

Millennials and Generation Z

These two generations are the youngest spending generations today and also the ones to consume travel more than the previous ones. Millennials and Gen Z were born with and after the Internet boom and are now always connected. This factor provided them with a mind open to new cultures and ready to explore. Take this and add a higher availability of transport means and easier ways to book your travel and you have the perfect recipe for these two generations.

Travellers of these two generations are those who are more incline to plan their travels independently - called FIT or fully independent travellers -. FIT travellers are usually opposed to those looking for a package holiday or tour as they have the tendency to look for information, plan and book their holiday independently and taking advantage of the great choice of booking platforms, online communities and social media to find all the information they need.

According to a report from UNTWO4 (Global Report on The Power of Youth Travel - 2016) youth tourism has a positive social and economic impact because of its characteristics. Youth travellers in fact are resilient to changes and economic/political instability, they spend more time and money in the local communities and are more incline to make their journey a purposeful one, complementing leisure with educational activities and volunteerism, being more incline to experience meaningful encounters with local people and to learn from different cultures. Let’s take a closer look at the characteristics of these two generations.

Millennials

Everyone is talking about Millennials today and nearly every tourism marketer is making them a priority – or at least trying to understand what characterises this generational group. Millennials are those people born between the early 1980’s and late 1990’s, which are now between 25 and 40 years old. But it’s not age that distinguishes this generation. Millennials strongly differ from any generation before them because they consider travelling as a birthright and they are expected to spend incrementally more on travel services than any other age cohort and by 2020 this generation will represent half of all travel spend worldwide. Millennials don’t look for fancy brands or expensive cars, they look for experiences, for something intangible that can enrich their life. Statistics show that 6 in 10 of them would rather spend their money on experiences rather than material things.

So, now the question comes naturally, how should we market to Millennials? In our opinion, 4 things characterise this generation:

• Authenticity: Millennials no longer want to feel like tourists, they are travellers looking for authentic andlocal experiences.
• Experience: They want to touch, smell, feel and appreciate the uniqueness of every experience. Theyvalue new challenges, new environments and are always looking for something different, for theexperience of a lifetime.
• Personalisation: Old school travel packages do not appeal to millennials. They prefer self-serviceoptions when planning a trip to create a highly customised experience that aligns with their individualidentity
• Online Engagement: Millennials are connected 24/7 and they document everything on social media,especially their travels. They want to share their stories online in real-time.

As a DMO you should keep in mind these three rules suggested by Google:

• Millennials trust influencers: they reach the buying decision more and more through peerrecommendation and influencers play a very big role in this. Work with influencers to reach them andconvince them.
• Reach them online: 10% of Millennials get to know products through advertising and online media.
• Use video to connect: the most consumed content format nowadays is video. Millennials engage withbrands through relevant video content. Produce interesting video to engage with this generation.

Generation Z

The tourism environment is constantly evolving. Just when we started understanding Millennial generation, the Gen Z is about to enter our market. We don’t know yet much about them but what the industry need to know is that they are ready to travel and they share many commonalities with their Millennial cousins.

Gen Z is the generation formed by 10 to 20-year-olds born between the late 1990’s and 2008. Today they represent 1/4 of the population and they are rapidly growing. By 2020 Generation Z will account for 40% of all consumers and will have the full disposable income to travel. Therefore, they will represent a big share of the market. However, tourism marketers need to understand that Get Z are really different from Millennials. The digital generation growing up on mobile is truly different to the generation who grew up discovering mobile. Gen Z is a multi-tasking and a multiple screen generation (TV, iPhone, laptop, desktop, iPad etc.) with a really short attention span of 8 seconds. That is something that marketers should carefully consider when creating content for that generation.

Gen Z also approach social media in a different way compared with the previous generation. They give high value to privacy and prefer apps like Snapchat and Whisper. Even more interesting is the fact that 25% of this generation abandoned Facebook in 2014. This is because Gen Z spend most of their time looking for content on social media instead of social networking. Also, apps like Youtube and Instagram are the most preferred ones.

We are in front of a generation that doesn't only share things, but creates things. Gen Z can be defined as “curators”, they want to contribute to the conversation and be part of it. Connectivity is also fundamental for this generation, it is a given, not a variable. Be connected at every stage of their trip is a must for Gen Z.

How can you market to Gen Z?

• Team up with Gen Z to build your destination brand together and amplify the story around it.
• Tap into creative expression, entrepreneurialism, the search for a greater sense of purpose.
• Think about how your destination can engage Gen Z in a participatory way involving them in crafting your brand.

The rise of the Chinese travellers

In 2018, the Chinese demand in travel to Europe strengthened more so than its demand in global travel, and looks to remain strong for the foreseeable future, according to the European Travel Commission. Despite this, these European destinations have imposed upon China some of the strictest travel restrictions. Likewise, China also enforces incredibly strict travel restrictions and visa requirements, and is actually the largest of these visa constrained markets itself. Visa restrictions are still highly present amongst global travel, but there has recently been movements for visa facilitation and the changing of visa policies towards many countries, including China, which is one of the long-haul markets for which visa-free access to the EU is not yet available.

Visas can be incredibly costly, and time consuming to not only complete, but to wait in line for, and many destinations are reducing their fees or lengthening their visas to encourage higher numbers of visitors to their destinations. New visa types, such as electronic visas and visas on arrival are certainly making it easier for international travel. European destinations host less than half of Chinese travel, in spite of rapid growth in the country’s travel demand over recent years. At present, there is a clear opportunity for faster growth in the upcoming years, as the increase of the Chinese market mirrors the increase in facilitative visa policies. This should, in turn, generate even more visitor numbers and visitor spend from the Chinese market, providing a more relaxed approach to visa policy is adopted.

DMOs have started to encourage Chinese tourists as a way of boosting their economy. Many countries have started to relax their visa policies for the Chinese, by increasing their length or by wavering them altogether, in the hope that more will visit.

With regards to the changing of travel trends among the Chinese community, technology and societal changes have dramatically altered the Chinese travel industry and cultural norm. The UNWTO has stated that Chinese travellers as a single unit are the most powerful source of change in the travel and tourism industry today. In China, 4.4 billion trips are made each year, with 2016 seeing over 135 million international departures. Remarkably, only 6 per cent of the Chinese population own a passport, making the potential for the Chinese market an absolute goldmine. On top of this, Chinese tourists spend around double of an average tourist, and conveniently address issues of seasonality as they tend to travel outside of typical European holidays, making them a very desirable consumer for destinations everywhere.

Many Chinese tourists are considered as independent travellers, 60 to 70 percent in fact. Their trips are booked online, with hotels and air travel booked first, and after which they will generally use their smartphones to decide on excursions and entertainment upon arrival at the destination. According to a recent UNWTO report, there is a need for DMOs to target the younger Chinese generation by keeping up- to-date with technology trends as these generations bring technological revolutions to the travel and tourism industry through various apps and payment methods, altering the tourism industry as we know it.

Without a doubt, Chinese tourists are a tremendous driving force for growth for whole nations. They contribute considerably to any economy they are part of throughout the duration of their trip, and many places around the world are actually adapting to the Chinese tourist. We would strongly encourage any DMOs to also research Chinese tourism trends, and to adapt their marketing strategies to take these rapidly growing trends into account. With visa policies becoming more flexible, and an increase of Chinese travellers possessing passports, the time is now to encourage this nationality to visit your destination in order to truly drive consumer spend.

The rise of the GCC travellers

GCC stands for Gulf Cooperation Council and it is formed by six countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The residents of these countries form part of the so called GCC traveller segment which is nowadays one of the emerging target markets in tourism. The Gulf Cooperation Council countries are lucrative and attractive markets for many destinations and businesses to turn to.

As suggested by a UNWTO and ETC study6 (GCC Outbound Travel Market Report), the profile of the GCC traveller is in the 18-54 age range, family oriented, with a tendency to travel in large groups, but the Millennials segment is rapidly growing with a tendency to travel in small groups. The travelling behaviour suggests GCC traveller are keen on international leisure trips and they tend to travel during the main holiday peak period coinciding with the summer months. This type of traveller is keen on exploring new destinations and try different holiday types and activities. They use internet for research and planning and the trend suggests the lead times are changing towards an earlier booking.

So what do DMOs need to understand from this data about GCC travellers?

A recent Amadeus report focused on examining the big travel effects and different travel segments of which the tourism industry needs to be aware, and how to actively tap into in order to succeed. Three of the travel segments mentioned in the report were particularly interesting, indicating some of the opportunities for businesses, but also challenges for the industry as a whole to connect with, in order to work more efficiently with travellers.

The Coming of Age Traveller

The GCC market is a surprisingly young one, making it an attractive consumer market for European destinations and businesses to target. Already, the young and rapidly growing population is a key driver in GCC countries with regard to travel and other sectors. As these consumers are maturing and are 'coming of age', they become travellers themselves, seeking new, unique and memorable experiences worldwide. Technology and social media also play a key role when travelling.

Destinations and businesses that are considered highly attractive and developed need to ensure that they have an attractive online presence, and should be highly active on social media too. This can often be the defining aspect of success, as connecting with the key millennial demographic is particularly focused on mobile and social media platforms.

This segment of travellers will make a quick move from first time travellers to becoming decision-makers of the future, combining business trips with leisure activities, so called 'bleisure' trips.

The Family Traveller

Family is considered important within the GCC countries, and it is notable that family sizes are large, with on average four children in comparison to 2.5 in other high income countries. It is also interesting that most families from the GCC region like to travel with other family members and friends, looking to arrange a trip including a range of entertainment and activities. Often families from the GCC region opt for a package holiday, ensuring that the necessities of a larger group travelling are met. Visiting friends and relatives has also been a big driver of this traveller segment, making it an interesting segment for the tourism industry, and one within which clear preferences can be identified.

The Independent Traveller

Mobile readiness is a particularly important requirement for the independent traveller, creating the need for tourism providers to ensure that their desires are anticipated, and that they are effectively connecting with them through mobile. Research has indicated that contemporary travellers increasingly expect to be able to access goods, services and information at every stage of travel, and mobile plays an absolutely critical role in this process.

The independent traveller is a truly exciting demographic in the GCC, with massive potential, comprising primarily of travellers between the ages of 26 and 45. When this group plan and book travel, a mixture of phone and Internet are used. There is always a view toward planning every aspect of travel independently, rather than selecting services that have been pre-combined at provider sites or through online travel agencies. Report findings indicate that this traveller segment expects tourism companies to be 'responsive, fast, accessible, and personable’.

From an opportunity perspective, it is clear that the above traveller demographics are interesting and valuable ones to focus on, and that the GCC as a market overall can be lucrative and attractive for destinations. However, due to the specific needs and expectations of GCC travellers, targeting them will also require thinking about a strategy that works for the market, and crafting an approach that can attract the traveller segments which seem most fitting with the flavour of tourism that a destination or service provider is able to offer.

We believe that getting to grips with this market now is more important than ever. As competition in this region rises, it will simply become harder and harder to stand out significantly from other destinations. Gaining a headstart in this market, and occupying a commercial presence in this market ahead of competitors, is absolutely crucial in the process of achieving success.

Consumer behavioural data

As consumers we interact every day with multiple brands providing us products and services. These companies gather every day big amounts of data related to the user behaviour that they use to create insights about consumers’ actions and preferences. Examples for this category of research companies are Skyscanner and Expedia Media Group, two companies in tourism that collect every day heaps of information on consumers’ travel patterns and draw interesting conclusions on the trends in tourism. These companies provide access to both free and priced reports with very up-to-date insights about consumer trends.

Skyscanner - Travel Insight and Trends and Analysis services

The world travel search engine, Skyscanner, can be a super useful platform to not only find the best deals on flights and hotels, but to uncover travel trends, analysis and read up on travel insights. Your organisation can use Skyscanner’s valuable insights to create marketing campaigns based on real time, thorough research and data analysis in the travel sector.

Drawing data from over 200m global searches every month, their Travel Insight service provides relevant customer insights into purchasing habits using their click-through data, where you can uncover which prices and itineraries etc. are driving the most sales and receiving higher levels of interest. Additionally, Skyscanner’s travel search data gives you an overview as to what exactly your customers want, including an understanding into the most popular destinations, allowing DMOs to identify new opportunities within the market. Their data is geo-tagged, meaning that Skyscanner knows the location of your customers when they’re searching, and what’s more, you can find out at which stages you lose customers to your competitors, helping you to plan your marketing campaign more effectively.

Skyscanner is the world’s leading travel distribution platform, so it’s no surprise that the travel search engine has key access to all revolutionary travel industry trends. They aim to provide valuable insights to make your organisation and campaigns as effective as possible. Your DMO can utilise Skyscanner’s Trends and Analysis service to browse industry insights, which focus on travel trends, technology and general analysis of the sector’s market.

The DTTT opinion: They provide regular super interesting and relevant articles on analysis and thought leadership in the industry, alongside great white papers, and is definitely a valuable research tool for your DMO.

Expedia Group

As the world’s ultimate travel platform, Expedia Group boasts an extensive array of brands and partners including some of the world’s most reputable travel brands. Through their travel advertising solutions, clients are able to access billions of travel and booking data insights, which help to inform clients how best to reach Expedia travel shoppers through marketing strategies.

Possessing sophisticated targeting capabilities, Expedia Group can help your organisation reach your target audience through specific demographic, travel and psychographic profiles using travel behavior, consumer profiles and custom audiences as types of targeting. Their travel behavior targeting uses first party and booking data to produce accurate, travel-focused targeting and includes the audience’s travel geography, trip details, device(s) used for searching or booking and more. Expedia Group are partnered with world- class data partners which enable them to create effective psychographic and demographic audience targeting using consumer profile targeting.

This targeting includes categories such as avid travellers, age, gender, interests, education and more. Their custom target audience allows you to work with Expedia Media Solutions to construct unique custom targeting based on first-party travel and booking data. It combines historic travel search data, seasonality and historic booking and itinerary data to create highly customised audience targeting for your DMO. Through working with Expedia Group to understand behaviour data, your organisation is able to connect with a global travel audience. This would allow you access to over 200 branded sites, located in 75 countries and in 35 languages.

The DTTT opinion: Expedia Group have already worked with numerous DMOs, such as Singapore, Visit Finland and Travel Alberta, and design their own marketing objectives with the aim of increasing tourism for various destination marketers. This makes the travel platform an optimum tool for not only uncovering and using valuable data, but for creating relevant and accurate marketing objectives and strategies for your DMO.

Netnography and Social Listening

Netnography is an online research method and set of techniques used for the digital tracking of social interaction within current digital communications contexts. It is a set of research practises gathering, analysing and extracting big data, alongside analysing trends and producing reports, all stemming from participant observation. Netnography can also be referred to as social listening, and is essentially the study of human interaction and experiences using digital methods and communications.

The insights from this social listening technique, enable companies and brands to receive real time analysis on how and why consumers participate in conversations online, and what truly matters to them. Companies such as Coca Cola, Adidas, BMW and American Express are already utilising netnography to their advantage, helping their brands to uncover a deeper, cultural message to aid in their marketing strategies. Moreover, this research method can allow insights as to how companies can improve their product or service to meet and exceed their consumers’ expectations.There are a vast amount of social listening platforms available for companies online, both free and via a paid subscription. More often than not, the software is free to use, but for a more detailed and thorough analysis, these platforms will require an update in membership type and will charge a fee. The more expensive the tool, the deep the analysis will go.

Reaching the Right Audience

Now that you have an understanding of the trends in markets and audiences and you have a list of tools you can choose from when making a research about your audience, as a DMO you can start rethinking about your current audience strategy or start creating a new one from scratch. But the tricky part is always ‘How do I start?’. First of all, if you have a complete and thorough understanding of your audience, you might want to revise the messages and channels used to reach your target segments and the way you communicate with them to promote your destination. In this chapter we will explore how you can create the right messages for the right audience but also how to use the right channels, which will briefly anticipate the next chapter of the 12 Stages of Transformation Series, Targeting and Distributing, that will cover the topic of data and how to distribute messages in the digital world through a defined targeting strategy.

Crafting the right messages for the right audience

If your knowledge of markets and audiences is consolidated and well defined, it is easier to create campaigns and define the messages and the right tone of voice for your target segments. To make your communication effective, it should target each segment in a different way, following the segment’s characteristics, traits and needs. Nowadays personalisation is a key part of the customer experience and the great availability of data about consumers make it possible to create a personalised marketing that is able to keep the attention of consumers for longer and generating loyalty in the long run. But personalising messages for specific target audiences can be expensive if you have to create different campaigns for different customers.

That said, the concepts of interest-based marketing, affinity marketing and niche marketing should have helped you understand that communication cannot be the same for everybody and that, especially in tourism, there are groups of audience with specific interests that represent an opportunity for DMOs who want to promote their destinations in different ways, gaining a competitive advantage, innovating and creating new tourism products and experiences to attract visitors. Crafting the right messages for the right audience requires a great work on identifying the real characteristics of your existing and potential visitors, so that you as a DMO can adapt your strategies to them and even create new experiences from scratch. One of the methods used to define the real characteristics of your audience is through the creation of customer personas.

Customer Personas

One of the most innovative ways to segment a target audience is having customer personas, which are fictional representations of people with specific traits and characteristics common to your audience segments and based on data collected from real user research and analysis. It is important to make a distinction between customer segments and personas. Econsultancy explains that segmentation is used to identify different sets or groups of customers that join people living in a same area, in a same age range or with a similar buying behaviour. Personas instead are fictional representations of real life customers belonging to these segments, with a fictional name, age, job title and multiple personal and behavioural traits and characteristics that, even if fictional, perfectly describe an hypothetical customer.

“A marketing persona is a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience. For content marketing purposes, you need personas to help you deliver content that will be most relevant and useful to your audience.” - Ardath Albee, Content Marketing Institute

Usually for each organisation there is not one single persona but a set of personas (between 3 and 6) that covers the target audience in different contexts and scenarios. Organisations usually create visual cards of these personas to really sketch them and portray them in all important aspects. A persona card is usually depicted like this:

Having personas is important. First, it helps to achieve clarity in all forms of communication. Second, it gives a better understanding of customer needs and priorities. Third, it helps to achieve organisational-wide awareness of different priority segments and helps to gain a higher customer-centric attitude.

Marketing personas help you identify with your audience in a much preciser way, which leads to the creation of more efficient campaigns and to better conversion or even loyalty in the long run.

As a DMO, with a specific role of managing and promoting the destination, increasing awareness and attracting tourism, having customer personas will help you to understand the motivations behind your customers’ visits and improve the tourism offer at the destination. In the next chapter we will guide you in the process of creation of your personas.

Ambassadors and Influencers

Crafting the right message for your audience means also using any necessary means to reach the specific audience, and as we saw earlier in the report, interest-based marketing and the increase in personalisation made it possible to have target segments with very special interests. Consumers today have the tendency to find inspiration for their travels online, especially on social media, where they follow profiles and channels of people who have stories to tell and content to show.

With the rising importance of the concept of short-length stories, whether on Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat, consumers are always more incline to see destinations through the eyes of testimonials who can tell them the story of the place and the experiences they live there.

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