Happy Plan for Vacation Day!

To celebrate Plan for Vacation Day 2023, we wanted to share with you tips and insights on how different destinations support the planning stage of the visitor cycle. For this, we have put together some examples of tools you can find on destination websites. We also had Visit Greenland put together a video of their travel tips.
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Visit Greenland have great content, full of everything you may need; from where to stay, to how to get around while you're there. Check out their site here. They are an example of how DMOs should lead the way in helping visitors plan their trips, and demonstrates the importance of creating and sharing amazing content on the destination's website. This destination is also proof of the fact that central to a good SEO strategy is excellent content, which specifically responds to the needs and questions visitors have about travelling to the destination.

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Alongside this, they also gave us some great tips. Take a look at what they have to say:

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Our Top 5 Tourism Planning Tools

At the DTTT, we recently finished a project with VisitDenmark where we assessed and evaluated, among other things, the role of DMO websites. Something that became clear quite early in the process was that digital planning tools are highly relevant to the user experience.

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Below you can find 5 examples of the website planning tools that caught our attention during that research process:

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• Newfoundland & Labrador's Itinerary Planner - This digital tool allows prospective visitors to find inspiration about the activities and landscapes they can expect to experience in the destination. It also allows users to customise their own itinerary in the destination based on chosen preferences or to find an existing itinerary developed by the DMO depending on the desired trip length. Additionally, if people are planning a trip, they offer users the option to either start a live chat, call or send an email to get recommendations for their holiday plans.

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• Visit Oslo's Event Calendar - Visit Oslo is a good best practice - fast, relevant, well categorised and with a mix of integrations, such as TripAdvisor - make this a truly outstanding events tool. Having simple features - such as filtering and favouriting - transforms the experience without creating a cumbersome UX. This tool also makes planning easier for travellers, as they can select the period of time when they will be visiting and get a clearer overview of the events that can be enjoyed at that time of year.

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• Switzerland's Grand Tour - The Grand Tour of Switzerland combines the highlights of Switzerland with a beautifully scenic route. Looking at trip builders, this is a uniquely original example, offering travellers a pre-configured series of touring routes in an ultra-immersive experience, including the possibility to favourite locations and download PDFs. Another reason we consider this trip builder to be great is that users can get information about travelling to the country as well as booking offers and guided tours, making it easier for the user to decide to visit and organise their trip.

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• Vienna ivie App - ivie is Vienna's personal city guide, including over 200 sights and more than 1,000 locations. It has many functionalities, including Vienna City Cards, tips on geolocation, walks and guides, UX-UI and individualisation and personalisation features. This app is driven by incredible content experiences, such as walking tours, audio guides and many personalised recommendations built by establishing a content experience based on user behaviour and interests. Such a destination app, which eases the discovery of the city, can be an incentive to choose Vienna for an upcoming vacation.

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• British Columbia's Interactive Map - The design-led map serves to ‘simplify’ the region's main locations into a set of brand propositions, helping to orientate visitors unfamiliar with the destination. At the same time, the features and filtering options invite deep discovery where rich map layers offer brand design elements and products are seamlessly featured alongside categorisation features and suggestions. You can also have a look at Estonia Tourist Board's Interactive Map, which is another great example.