Stage 3. Product & Experience

In order to prioritise the importance of strong product as a living part of the brand, we'll look at it from multiple angles.

Product development is a key pillar of any destination strategy and it is important to know how to create new product opportunities and ensure the product and experience on offer in the destination supports the brand and its development.

Product development is a key pillar of any destination strategy and it is important to know how to create new product opportunities and ensure the product and experience on offer in the destination supports the brand and its development.

Product development is a key pillar of any destination strategy and it is important to know how to create new product opportunities and ensure the product and experience on offer in the destination supports the brand and its development.

The growing trend in how destinations see their role in the visitor cycle has shifted heavily towards ensuring the experience in the destination matches and supports the brand, and the DMOs today have to acknowledge this and prioritise it.

In this chapter of the transformation series, you will learn how to move in the product and experience realm, from a discovery process to the storytelling and distribution of experiences and learn about the best DMOs who are mastering tourism products and experiences, such as:

  • Visit Dallas
  • Dolomiti Paganella and Val di Sole
  • Visit Stockholm
  • Laax
  • Visit Ljubljana
  • Visit Jersey
  • Banff and Lake Louise
  • Ticino Tourism
  • Paris Tourism
  • Travel Nevada

With this pack, you will be able to;

- Understand the role of DMOs in creating tourism products and experiences
- Discover the DTTT Product and Experience Framework and understand the pillars of product and experience
- Use 5 Templates to start creating meaningful products, experiences and itineraries for your visitors
- Learn how the best DMOs worldwide are developing and distributing experiences


Brand-Product Harmony: Brand, product & audience alignment

Brand-Product Harmony: Visit Jersey on matching the product to the promise

Brand-Product Harmony: Val di Sole and Dolomiti Paganella on the tourism experience as a focus of the DMO strategy

Brand-Product Harmony: Dolomiti Paganella on destination management and product development

Brand-Product Harmony: Needs & Experiences Matching

With this template, you will be able to match your visitor's needs with your experiences. You will start by creating a customer profile to identify who your visitors are and what their needs might be and then move on to creating the offer by looking at the type of experience, the theme of the experience, the activities offered in the experience and the price point/positioning of the experience.

We will then walk you through crafting experiences by looking at what visitor needs you are fulfilling, what type of experiences align with your business, and what do you want your visitors to feel when they leave.


Brand-Product Harmony: The DTTT Product & Experience Framework

1. Brand Match

It all starts with the brand

A clearly defined brand should be the starting point to create appealing experiences for visitors. Experiences could reflect the destination brand's pillars and support them by looking back to awareness building.

Taylor experiences to audiences

Today's travellers seek more and more unique, personalised and "off the shelf" engaging experiences. It is important to have a clear definition of personas and markets to adapt experiences, but also a strategy to reach these audiences.

A natural extension of the brand

Products should be seen as the natural extension of the brand, offering the opportunity to provide authentic fulfilment to visitors. This is where experience ambassadors and rich storytelling come into play, linking message with fulfilment.

2. Organising and curating

Signature experiences should be the unification of local people and key places at the destination:

Local partners

Local industry is at the core of experience providers needed to craft the signature experiences. They are fundamental to establish strong local partnerships and to offer a service.

Key places, local people

Key places are the best spots of the destination for your right target audience, they could be touristic or off the beaten path. Local people are able to offer a service but also talk about the destination from a unique and authentic perspective which is deeply rooted in the sense of place they convey.

Pairing experiences

By curating the offer, DMOs can pair the right experiences which really help lift the brand and offer a unique stand-out experience. Product pairing represents a key opportunity for DMOs who should select the highlights of a destination and pair them by similar theme or following a rationale for which is possible to create visual references anchoring stories, and content to places and attracting specific target audiences to live unique and memorable signature experiences.

  • Trails allow curating a range of individual itineraries based on different audience needs and different thematic clusters.
  • A map clustering experience by theme or by geographical area is useful to guide visitors in space while experiencing the destination.
  • Pairing tourism products is the secret to craft a signature experience where the essence of the brand is
  • Experiences can be grouped under specific themes coherent with the destination image and appealing to specific audiences.

3. Communicating

Hero, Hub, Hygiene content strategy

Stories shaped around the brand experience represent a powerful and compelling message for potential visitors. A Hero, Hub, Hygiene content strategy helps lift the brand experience, seeking to build an image for the destination together with true ambassadors, taking their stories further as they become not only brand but experience ambassadors too.

Signature Experience Ambassadors

Designing product experiences together with destination ambassadors helps build links between the most authentic voices representing the destination, unique and incredible visitor experiences and curated product pairings.

The combination of different places and products into signature experiences is perfect to build meaningful stories around the strong connections between people, businesses and the land. This leverages a variety of stories to promote the destination and provides new perspectives for the eyes of consumers.

New products and experiences often differentiate the destination from its competitors. For this reason, it is important to have Ambassadors to promote them. Identify the great ambassadors of your destination, by integrating them into the product and experience offer, this ensures the destination's visitor experience delivers on the brand. The stories shaped around the brand, seek to build on the already powerful content shot with ambassadors, taking their stories further as they become not only brand but experience ambassadors too.

4. Packaging and Distributing

Aggregation & Experience Platform

Aggregating destination experiences, packaging them and distributing them is a key strategic question for destinations today. How far you should go, depends on where you see yourself playing in the visitor cycle and where the DMO can create real value.

For some DMOs, packaging and distributing stops accuracy, where product pairings are developed into signature experiences and distributed through a content strategy. For others, the potential value of creating and supporting a product experience platform is a logical next step and helps industry see commercial value in addition to brand value.

The Discovery Process: Understanding different product packaging approaches

The Discovery Process: Examples of Signature Experiences

Jordan Bike Trail

The Discovery Process: Up Norway

UpNorway Website

The Discovery Process: Developing Experiences

In this mural, you will learn how to develop your own experiences within your destination. We will start by looking at possible themes for your experiences, and destination values you would like to be reflected in the experiences, such as respecting the environment.  We will then move on to look at your destinations unique selling points, and how they can be translated into different experiences, and the stories that you can create around the experiences you're making.

This template allows you to identify empathy drivers to help visitors connect to your experiences, as well as the assets you have in your destination, such as ambassadors, storytellers and hidden gems. This template will also help you plan out your experience from the location in which your experience will take place to the souvenir your visitors get to take away.

Finally, this mural will help you to start identifying partnerships and also allow you to start thinking about how your experience is positioned.


The Discovery Process: Paris Tourism on telling stories of Paris to tackle overcrowding

The Discovery Process: Planning Itineraries & Trails

In this template, we will explore how to pair together products and experiences within your destination to create unique trails and itineraries. We will start by thinking of possible themes for your trails and itineraries, and then move onto identifying different experiences that currently exist or that you would like to exist within your destination and experiment with pairing them together to create trails.

After this, we will take a look at which ambassadors could help promote or even lead your new trails, and finally we will walk you through planning your trail or itinerary from start to finish.

The Discovery Process: Best Practice: Gamification

Gamification as a marketing tool and trend has come up for many years in travel but never managed to gain traction with the majority of tourism businesses and destinations. There are some examples of destinations having used gamification to add value to the visitor or in-destination experience but other technologies such as VR and 360 videos have been much more popular among consumers.

Gamification in travel is taking traditionally non-game applications and integrates game play mechanics and rewards to motivate users and enhance consumer engagement.

In 2013, gamification in travel was mainly used by a variety of frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs to incorporate gamified elements as part of specific promotions to unlock rewards for customers. Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Air Canada are only two examples of businesses that have used gamification as part of their marketing strategy.

To date, gamification can be used for gamified travel tours for urban and rural environments, in theme parks, cultural heritage, in hospitality or through trans-media storytelling. For destinations, gamification can provide an experience-based service to meet visitor needs by enhancing the in-destination experience.

gamification-mural

Here at the #DTTT, we see many different examples of gamification in travel. Often these examples are standalone projects that use gamified elements to add value but often fail to gain traction among users. Although gaming is a major mainstream trend, gamification in tourism is often not part of a destination’s digital strategy, as it is not the main focus in marketing the destination. For tourism businesses, it makes much more sense to make an investment in enhancing the visitor experience through gamification as part of apps. The following gamification examples are interesting to look at due to the variety of approaches and use cases.

The Discovery Process: Laax and gamification

LAAX Brand Strategy

Case Study 👉🏼 Refining the Digital Customer Experience with LAAX

LAAX is a very famous winter destination featuring 224 kilometres of slopes, 4 snow parks, 5 snow-covered downhill runs, the world’s largest half pipe and an indoor freestyle academy catering to all levels of experience. Last year, the newly redeveloped GALAAXY was unveiled - an innovative social hub of activity in the form of a station on top of the Crap de Sogn peak, made with 80's style iconic elements and neon colours and signs. This is the last thing you would expect from a mountain station and again clearly shows how LAAX’s intention was to focus on a young target segment.

With the addition of this infrastructure, key events and activities, LAAX have successfully created a large freestyle and snowboarding community, becoming one of the leading snowboarding and freestyle resorts. Over the years, LAAX has extensively developed its offer to this niche community, creating a really strong overall package that is communicated through highly focused targeting and relevant messaging to the core audience.

The mission is, ‘to redefine your experience in nature through technology’, effectively promoting LAAX as a lifestyle, not just another winter holiday in Switzerland.

As such, all promotional content and product are highly targeted to a younger audience segment, which includes the promotion of the largest half-pipe of the world, events and all the connected activities for snowboarders and ski free-riders. It is clear to see the use of music, language, tone of voice is targeted to this specific segment, and by generating new customer-centric products and services, LAAX successfully positions itself as a strong lifestyle brand within its sector.

Digitalising Visitor Services - Inside LAAX App

Initially, LAAX’s main promotional activities were through the website, social media and newsletter marketing, however, one of its key communication tools is now the highly targeted Inside LAAX app. The Inside LAAX App is a highly functional and sophisticated app that offers users a whole host of extra benefits, adding so many extra layers to the overall customer experience. A great example of digitalisation of services combined with usability according to the specific target market, and developing products with user behaviour and experience front and centre.

The app was launched in 2016/17 and since then has continued to evolve and expand with over 140,000 users today. The app has a significant list of functions to make the customer experience as seamless, convenient and enjoyable as possible adding value throughout the journey, and it is still being added to. You can order food, track what you've done that day, track your friends, meet new people, and it also includes access to other activities and experiences outside the mountain, for example buying a cinema ticket.

As well as an added convenience, another key element to the app and the destination’s digital strategy is gamification and the sociability aspect, which allows users to connect with and challenge other users. For destinations, gamification provides an experience-based service and e-loyalty programme to meet visitor needs by enhancing the in-destination experience.

Integrating gameplay with rewards enhances the visitor experience with fun and engaging features, particularly with this target audience and within this sector. Almost 18,000,000 INSIDE points have been collected so far. Here at the #DTTT, we think this is a really innovative way to demonstrate how DMOs can use technology to shape and enhance the visitor experience.

How gamification can work for DMOs

For destinations, gamification has many benefits, particularly in a destination such as LAAX. Combining a gamified visitor experience and utility and function make for a great mobile visitor experience. Digital here serves a great purpose of enhancing interaction and engagement, creating memorable experiences for your visitors while softly fostering loyalty around the brand.

These memorable experiences encourage word-of-mouth, particularly with this younger segment who are mobile pioneers and enjoy sharing their experiences. Gamification is also a new way of communicating and getting to know your customer with the view to improve the digital customer experience, key in today’s climate.

The Discovery Process: Laax on refining the digital customer experience

The Discovery Process: Ötztal – MaptoHike

Ötztal, a small alpine valley in Tyrol, Austria, is working with the app MaptoHike to create a gamified experience for hikers in the destination. MaptoHike combines outdoor adventure with virtual gaming, tracking a user’s hiking tours and entering them into competitions to win prizes. Visitors to Ötztal and the surrounding valleys can collect Pins and discover special attractions. Among all users, people can monitor and track a live ranking of their performance and see who else is hiking and what they have achieved.

otztal-hike

The app is not just delivering a gamified and fun experience to users but also tracks their hiking performance, capturing all hiking information from the day such as the hiking distance, altitude meters and time required. The app works without an Internet connection, using GPS data and tracking. Users can take part in contests, focusing on their sporty performance and efforts are rewarded with Pins.

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Partnering with local business and brand ambassadors

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Banff and Lake Louise on enhancing the visitor experience at Canada's first National Park

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Ticino Tourism on creating a dynamic brand platform

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Designing Neighbourhood Experiences

In this Template, we are going to walk through how to build products and experiences around neighbourhoods in your destination.

We will start by getting you to insert your own map of the destination on the board, and mapping out what experiences already exist and in what neighbourhoods they take place.

Next, we will look at designing experiences for specific areas identifying what different types of areas and terrain exist in your destination and what experiences you can design based on them.

After that, we will identify different districts/neighbourhoods and identify core experiences, secondary experiences and related experiences within them.

Finally, we walk you through how to plan an experience itinerary for your neighbourhoods from start to finish.


Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Stockholm Sounds App

Stockholm Sounds are one of the digital projects by the Stockholm Visitors Board. It is a unique and innovative travel guide for mobile phones and combines the brand theme of music with strong elements of digital gaming.

Stockholm Sounds is a mobile app that serves as a niche visitor guide. The app is centred around the theme of music and is aimed at introducing both famous and rather unknown insider spots within the city. All points of interest that are featured within the app, have in common that they are connected to sound in general and music in Sweden in particular.

Gamified elements are central to the app, as it does not only offer traditional travel guide functionalities, but the app is set out to create a technology-enhanced immersive destination experience for visitors to the city. This includes challenges, quizzes and riddles, which are connected to the city and historic events that have taken place in specific places of the city. To make the application available to international tourists, the app is fully functional in offline mode.

stockholm-sounds

There are over 40 locations around the city connected to the sound and music experiences. In each of them, users have the possibility to earn “points” by completing challenges, history quizzes or gaming sessions, all connected to music or sound experiences. If the user succeeds in carrying out the assignment, they gain access to unique experiences, events, and rewards.

The “Stockholm Sounds” app was created in collaboration with Spotify providing relevant music for visitors in Stockholm. It works without Wi-Fi and is free of charge. Once travellers land in Stockholm Arlanda Airport, they receive their first assignment. Challenges can start anywhere in the world and are targeting leisure and business travellers with a particular interest in music and/or playing games.

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Crafting Niche Experiences

In this template, we will help you to start developing unique ideas for niche experiences. We will start by brainstorming a list of possible ideas that could be turned into unique experiences, before moving on to identifying niche themes- such as a foodie theme, and the niche experiences that can translate into to, for example, a food theme could be a great starting point to develop a tasting trail experience.

We will then walk you through how to start planning, how you will communicate and market your niche offering, and also help you start thinking about what partners are best to work with to make your niche experience a reality.

In this mural we will also look at:

  • What theme concept resonates with visitors
  • What are the core pillars of your theme strategy?
  • Who are your ambassadors and influencers for this niche product offering, who are the key people who should get involved
  • How you should work with your influencers and ambassadors to develop and market your niche product/experience going forward.

Sales & Distribution: Who's selling experiences? The Strategic conundrum for DMOs

Sales & Distribution: Visit Ljubljana on selling unique experiences

Amazing!

You have finished this lesson.

For some extra inspiration, you can watch Montreux Riviera - Local Guides at the Core of Brand Strategy.

Product development is a key pillar of any destination strategy and it is important to know how to create new product opportunities and ensure the product and experience on offer in the destination supports the brand and its development.

Product development is a key pillar of any destination strategy and it is important to know how to create new product opportunities and ensure the product and experience on offer in the destination supports the brand and its development.

The growing trend in how destinations see their role in the visitor cycle has shifted heavily towards ensuring the experience in the destination matches and supports the brand, and the DMOs today have to acknowledge this and prioritise it.

In this chapter of the transformation series, you will learn how to move in the product and experience realm, from a discovery process to the storytelling and distribution of experiences and learn about the best DMOs who are mastering tourism products and experiences, such as:

  • Visit Dallas
  • Dolomiti Paganella and Val di Sole
  • Visit Stockholm
  • Laax
  • Visit Ljubljana
  • Visit Jersey
  • Banff and Lake Louise
  • Ticino Tourism
  • Paris Tourism
  • Travel Nevada

With this pack, you will be able to;

- Understand the role of DMOs in creating tourism products and experiences
- Discover the DTTT Product and Experience Framework and understand the pillars of product and experience
- Use 5 Templates to start creating meaningful products, experiences and itineraries for your visitors
- Learn how the best DMOs worldwide are developing and distributing experiences


Brand-Product Harmony: Brand, product & audience alignment

Brand-Product Harmony: Visit Jersey on matching the product to the promise

Brand-Product Harmony: Val di Sole and Dolomiti Paganella on the tourism experience as a focus of the DMO strategy

Brand-Product Harmony: Dolomiti Paganella on destination management and product development

Brand-Product Harmony: Needs & Experiences Matching

With this template, you will be able to match your visitor's needs with your experiences. You will start by creating a customer profile to identify who your visitors are and what their needs might be and then move on to creating the offer by looking at the type of experience, the theme of the experience, the activities offered in the experience and the price point/positioning of the experience.

We will then walk you through crafting experiences by looking at what visitor needs you are fulfilling, what type of experiences align with your business, and what do you want your visitors to feel when they leave.


Brand-Product Harmony: The DTTT Product & Experience Framework

1. Brand Match

It all starts with the brand

A clearly defined brand should be the starting point to create appealing experiences for visitors. Experiences could reflect the destination brand's pillars and support them by looking back to awareness building.

Taylor experiences to audiences

Today's travellers seek more and more unique, personalised and "off the shelf" engaging experiences. It is important to have a clear definition of personas and markets to adapt experiences, but also a strategy to reach these audiences.

A natural extension of the brand

Products should be seen as the natural extension of the brand, offering the opportunity to provide authentic fulfilment to visitors. This is where experience ambassadors and rich storytelling come into play, linking message with fulfilment.

2. Organising and curating

Signature experiences should be the unification of local people and key places at the destination:

Local partners

Local industry is at the core of experience providers needed to craft the signature experiences. They are fundamental to establish strong local partnerships and to offer a service.

Key places, local people

Key places are the best spots of the destination for your right target audience, they could be touristic or off the beaten path. Local people are able to offer a service but also talk about the destination from a unique and authentic perspective which is deeply rooted in the sense of place they convey.

Pairing experiences

By curating the offer, DMOs can pair the right experiences which really help lift the brand and offer a unique stand-out experience. Product pairing represents a key opportunity for DMOs who should select the highlights of a destination and pair them by similar theme or following a rationale for which is possible to create visual references anchoring stories, and content to places and attracting specific target audiences to live unique and memorable signature experiences.

  • Trails allow curating a range of individual itineraries based on different audience needs and different thematic clusters.
  • A map clustering experience by theme or by geographical area is useful to guide visitors in space while experiencing the destination.
  • Pairing tourism products is the secret to craft a signature experience where the essence of the brand is
  • Experiences can be grouped under specific themes coherent with the destination image and appealing to specific audiences.

3. Communicating

Hero, Hub, Hygiene content strategy

Stories shaped around the brand experience represent a powerful and compelling message for potential visitors. A Hero, Hub, Hygiene content strategy helps lift the brand experience, seeking to build an image for the destination together with true ambassadors, taking their stories further as they become not only brand but experience ambassadors too.

Signature Experience Ambassadors

Designing product experiences together with destination ambassadors helps build links between the most authentic voices representing the destination, unique and incredible visitor experiences and curated product pairings.

The combination of different places and products into signature experiences is perfect to build meaningful stories around the strong connections between people, businesses and the land. This leverages a variety of stories to promote the destination and provides new perspectives for the eyes of consumers.

New products and experiences often differentiate the destination from its competitors. For this reason, it is important to have Ambassadors to promote them. Identify the great ambassadors of your destination, by integrating them into the product and experience offer, this ensures the destination's visitor experience delivers on the brand. The stories shaped around the brand, seek to build on the already powerful content shot with ambassadors, taking their stories further as they become not only brand but experience ambassadors too.

4. Packaging and Distributing

Aggregation & Experience Platform

Aggregating destination experiences, packaging them and distributing them is a key strategic question for destinations today. How far you should go, depends on where you see yourself playing in the visitor cycle and where the DMO can create real value.

For some DMOs, packaging and distributing stops accuracy, where product pairings are developed into signature experiences and distributed through a content strategy. For others, the potential value of creating and supporting a product experience platform is a logical next step and helps industry see commercial value in addition to brand value.

The Discovery Process: Understanding different product packaging approaches

The Discovery Process: Examples of Signature Experiences

Jordan Bike Trail

The Discovery Process: Up Norway

UpNorway Website

The Discovery Process: Developing Experiences

In this mural, you will learn how to develop your own experiences within your destination. We will start by looking at possible themes for your experiences, and destination values you would like to be reflected in the experiences, such as respecting the environment.  We will then move on to look at your destinations unique selling points, and how they can be translated into different experiences, and the stories that you can create around the experiences you're making.

This template allows you to identify empathy drivers to help visitors connect to your experiences, as well as the assets you have in your destination, such as ambassadors, storytellers and hidden gems. This template will also help you plan out your experience from the location in which your experience will take place to the souvenir your visitors get to take away.

Finally, this mural will help you to start identifying partnerships and also allow you to start thinking about how your experience is positioned.


The Discovery Process: Paris Tourism on telling stories of Paris to tackle overcrowding

The Discovery Process: Planning Itineraries & Trails

In this template, we will explore how to pair together products and experiences within your destination to create unique trails and itineraries. We will start by thinking of possible themes for your trails and itineraries, and then move onto identifying different experiences that currently exist or that you would like to exist within your destination and experiment with pairing them together to create trails.

After this, we will take a look at which ambassadors could help promote or even lead your new trails, and finally we will walk you through planning your trail or itinerary from start to finish.

The Discovery Process: Best Practice: Gamification

Gamification as a marketing tool and trend has come up for many years in travel but never managed to gain traction with the majority of tourism businesses and destinations. There are some examples of destinations having used gamification to add value to the visitor or in-destination experience but other technologies such as VR and 360 videos have been much more popular among consumers.

Gamification in travel is taking traditionally non-game applications and integrates game play mechanics and rewards to motivate users and enhance consumer engagement.

In 2013, gamification in travel was mainly used by a variety of frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs to incorporate gamified elements as part of specific promotions to unlock rewards for customers. Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Air Canada are only two examples of businesses that have used gamification as part of their marketing strategy.

To date, gamification can be used for gamified travel tours for urban and rural environments, in theme parks, cultural heritage, in hospitality or through trans-media storytelling. For destinations, gamification can provide an experience-based service to meet visitor needs by enhancing the in-destination experience.

gamification-mural

Here at the #DTTT, we see many different examples of gamification in travel. Often these examples are standalone projects that use gamified elements to add value but often fail to gain traction among users. Although gaming is a major mainstream trend, gamification in tourism is often not part of a destination’s digital strategy, as it is not the main focus in marketing the destination. For tourism businesses, it makes much more sense to make an investment in enhancing the visitor experience through gamification as part of apps. The following gamification examples are interesting to look at due to the variety of approaches and use cases.

The Discovery Process: Laax and gamification

LAAX Brand Strategy

Case Study 👉🏼 Refining the Digital Customer Experience with LAAX

LAAX is a very famous winter destination featuring 224 kilometres of slopes, 4 snow parks, 5 snow-covered downhill runs, the world’s largest half pipe and an indoor freestyle academy catering to all levels of experience. Last year, the newly redeveloped GALAAXY was unveiled - an innovative social hub of activity in the form of a station on top of the Crap de Sogn peak, made with 80's style iconic elements and neon colours and signs. This is the last thing you would expect from a mountain station and again clearly shows how LAAX’s intention was to focus on a young target segment.

With the addition of this infrastructure, key events and activities, LAAX have successfully created a large freestyle and snowboarding community, becoming one of the leading snowboarding and freestyle resorts. Over the years, LAAX has extensively developed its offer to this niche community, creating a really strong overall package that is communicated through highly focused targeting and relevant messaging to the core audience.

The mission is, ‘to redefine your experience in nature through technology’, effectively promoting LAAX as a lifestyle, not just another winter holiday in Switzerland.

As such, all promotional content and product are highly targeted to a younger audience segment, which includes the promotion of the largest half-pipe of the world, events and all the connected activities for snowboarders and ski free-riders. It is clear to see the use of music, language, tone of voice is targeted to this specific segment, and by generating new customer-centric products and services, LAAX successfully positions itself as a strong lifestyle brand within its sector.

Digitalising Visitor Services - Inside LAAX App

Initially, LAAX’s main promotional activities were through the website, social media and newsletter marketing, however, one of its key communication tools is now the highly targeted Inside LAAX app. The Inside LAAX App is a highly functional and sophisticated app that offers users a whole host of extra benefits, adding so many extra layers to the overall customer experience. A great example of digitalisation of services combined with usability according to the specific target market, and developing products with user behaviour and experience front and centre.

The app was launched in 2016/17 and since then has continued to evolve and expand with over 140,000 users today. The app has a significant list of functions to make the customer experience as seamless, convenient and enjoyable as possible adding value throughout the journey, and it is still being added to. You can order food, track what you've done that day, track your friends, meet new people, and it also includes access to other activities and experiences outside the mountain, for example buying a cinema ticket.

As well as an added convenience, another key element to the app and the destination’s digital strategy is gamification and the sociability aspect, which allows users to connect with and challenge other users. For destinations, gamification provides an experience-based service and e-loyalty programme to meet visitor needs by enhancing the in-destination experience.

Integrating gameplay with rewards enhances the visitor experience with fun and engaging features, particularly with this target audience and within this sector. Almost 18,000,000 INSIDE points have been collected so far. Here at the #DTTT, we think this is a really innovative way to demonstrate how DMOs can use technology to shape and enhance the visitor experience.

How gamification can work for DMOs

For destinations, gamification has many benefits, particularly in a destination such as LAAX. Combining a gamified visitor experience and utility and function make for a great mobile visitor experience. Digital here serves a great purpose of enhancing interaction and engagement, creating memorable experiences for your visitors while softly fostering loyalty around the brand.

These memorable experiences encourage word-of-mouth, particularly with this younger segment who are mobile pioneers and enjoy sharing their experiences. Gamification is also a new way of communicating and getting to know your customer with the view to improve the digital customer experience, key in today’s climate.

The Discovery Process: Laax on refining the digital customer experience

The Discovery Process: Ötztal – MaptoHike

Ötztal, a small alpine valley in Tyrol, Austria, is working with the app MaptoHike to create a gamified experience for hikers in the destination. MaptoHike combines outdoor adventure with virtual gaming, tracking a user’s hiking tours and entering them into competitions to win prizes. Visitors to Ötztal and the surrounding valleys can collect Pins and discover special attractions. Among all users, people can monitor and track a live ranking of their performance and see who else is hiking and what they have achieved.

otztal-hike

The app is not just delivering a gamified and fun experience to users but also tracks their hiking performance, capturing all hiking information from the day such as the hiking distance, altitude meters and time required. The app works without an Internet connection, using GPS data and tracking. Users can take part in contests, focusing on their sporty performance and efforts are rewarded with Pins.

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Partnering with local business and brand ambassadors

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Banff and Lake Louise on enhancing the visitor experience at Canada's first National Park

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Ticino Tourism on creating a dynamic brand platform

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Designing Neighbourhood Experiences

In this Template, we are going to walk through how to build products and experiences around neighbourhoods in your destination.

We will start by getting you to insert your own map of the destination on the board, and mapping out what experiences already exist and in what neighbourhoods they take place.

Next, we will look at designing experiences for specific areas identifying what different types of areas and terrain exist in your destination and what experiences you can design based on them.

After that, we will identify different districts/neighbourhoods and identify core experiences, secondary experiences and related experiences within them.

Finally, we walk you through how to plan an experience itinerary for your neighbourhoods from start to finish.


Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Stockholm Sounds App

Stockholm Sounds are one of the digital projects by the Stockholm Visitors Board. It is a unique and innovative travel guide for mobile phones and combines the brand theme of music with strong elements of digital gaming.

Stockholm Sounds is a mobile app that serves as a niche visitor guide. The app is centred around the theme of music and is aimed at introducing both famous and rather unknown insider spots within the city. All points of interest that are featured within the app, have in common that they are connected to sound in general and music in Sweden in particular.

Gamified elements are central to the app, as it does not only offer traditional travel guide functionalities, but the app is set out to create a technology-enhanced immersive destination experience for visitors to the city. This includes challenges, quizzes and riddles, which are connected to the city and historic events that have taken place in specific places of the city. To make the application available to international tourists, the app is fully functional in offline mode.

stockholm-sounds

There are over 40 locations around the city connected to the sound and music experiences. In each of them, users have the possibility to earn “points” by completing challenges, history quizzes or gaming sessions, all connected to music or sound experiences. If the user succeeds in carrying out the assignment, they gain access to unique experiences, events, and rewards.

The “Stockholm Sounds” app was created in collaboration with Spotify providing relevant music for visitors in Stockholm. It works without Wi-Fi and is free of charge. Once travellers land in Stockholm Arlanda Airport, they receive their first assignment. Challenges can start anywhere in the world and are targeting leisure and business travellers with a particular interest in music and/or playing games.

Storytelling & Signature Experiences: Crafting Niche Experiences

In this template, we will help you to start developing unique ideas for niche experiences. We will start by brainstorming a list of possible ideas that could be turned into unique experiences, before moving on to identifying niche themes- such as a foodie theme, and the niche experiences that can translate into to, for example, a food theme could be a great starting point to develop a tasting trail experience.

We will then walk you through how to start planning, how you will communicate and market your niche offering, and also help you start thinking about what partners are best to work with to make your niche experience a reality.

In this mural we will also look at:

  • What theme concept resonates with visitors
  • What are the core pillars of your theme strategy?
  • Who are your ambassadors and influencers for this niche product offering, who are the key people who should get involved
  • How you should work with your influencers and ambassadors to develop and market your niche product/experience going forward.

Sales & Distribution: Who's selling experiences? The Strategic conundrum for DMOs

Sales & Distribution: Visit Ljubljana on selling unique experiences

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You have finished this lesson.

For some extra inspiration, you can watch Montreux Riviera - Local Guides at the Core of Brand Strategy.