National destination marketing organisations and Web 2.0.

Abstract

The majority of national Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO’s) are already at an advanced stage in their use of the Internet for global marketing, sales and customer relationship management. The ‘Visit Us’ DMO Web portal, providing high value content, interactivity, functionality and online booking, has become a ubiquitous element of destination branding and destination marketing. While very good progress has been made, the central theme of this article is that DMOs (and tourism businesses in general) should undertake a major strategic review and evaluation of their current online marketing activities. The main reason for this is the emergence and rapid growth of Web 2.0. While authors differ on the precise definition of 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2006; Högg et al, 2006) with some disputing the use of the term itself (Berners Lee, 2006), there can be little doubt that we are witnessing a fundamental and revolutionary change in the way that travellers use the Internet, their online expectations and experiences (Ellion, 2007; Schegg et al, 2008; Sigala, 2007). Rather than being passive recipients of ‘brand messages’, the new Web is characterised by information ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’, user generated content, openness, sharing, collaboration, interaction, communities, and social networking (Tapscott and Williams, 2006). The revolutionary nature of these changes is already having a profound impact on consumer decision-making and behaviour in global tourism (Continental Research, 2007). DMOs and tourism businesses in general will need to respond by developing and implementing innovative Tourism 2.0 strategies for building sustained customer and competitive advantage. The response of leading European DMOs to the global marketing opportunities and threats presented by Web 2.0 is reported in this paper. A three stage research approach was followed covering the development of a Tourism 2.0 Model and measurement criteria based on the emerging literature in this area; use of these criteria to evaluate National DMO Web 2.0

adoption levels covering the 25 leading tourist destinations in Europe; and in-depth, semi- structured personal interviews with a representative sample of 12 out of the 25 DMOs.