Shifting Tactics
Nick & I present a few of our favourite best practices from City DMOs responding to current trends.
Nick & I present a few of our favourite best practices from City DMOs responding to current trends.
Nick & I present a few of our favourite best practices from City DMOs responding to current trends. We've touched on themes such as:
All the examples we presented are on this digital mural board you can access whenever you'd like and scroll around and zoom in and out to dive deep into the content.
One of the consequences of the pandemic is a greater sense of community, equally existing on a hyper-local, local, regional and national level. Here we present three different best practices that vary a lot but aim at the same common goal: creating a place that is good for people, visitors and businesses alike.
Aluma Farm at Adair Park is the Atlanta BeltLine’s first agriculture site around a 22-mile corridor. The farm is privately operated, and produce is sold locally. The site serves as the Atlanta BeltLine’s pilot for an urban agriculture programme that could serve as a model for other potential sites around the destination.
The 3.8-acre site on which the farm sits was once home to two industrial manufacturing facilities. Using compost, cover crops and community engagement, Andy and Andrea have converted the site from an empty, barren lot into a lush, green farm. The drainage system at the farm addresses stormwater runoff. In 2017, the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA) financed solar panels for a Aluma Farm’s shed, which will be used in farm operations. The panels will generate 2.8 kilowatts of solar energy using photovoltaic technology, allowing Aluma Farm to operate “off-grid.”
Auckland Unlimited has worked hard to provide businesses in the city with 360 support from marketing, digital, innovation, safety and sustainability.
The DMO has developed a whole resource hub for businesses, providing assessment tools, advice and toolkits to help businesses improve operations, finances, business strategy, HR management and safety.
Among the initiatives, Auckland has developed a digital assessment tool for businesses, to create a customised digital action plan.
Whole sections of the website have been devoted to providing customised support for businesses including funded expert advice and business support.
Discover Los Angeles has been focusing on creating comeback incentives since early on in the pandemic. When things initially opened up, they quickly got their industry to come together with a pool of offers, which they listed on their site in a table of deals. As things have evolved they've successfully built on this further into an L.A. Comeback section with more than 100 deals, curated in a more inspirational format.
This recovery effort is strengthened by a brand that is strong, consistent and comprises rich episodic storytelling with authentic local discoveries reflecting the diversity of what the city has to offer its visitors.
It's incredible to see how much things have changed in terms of content consumption. In particular, it's crazy to consider how we used to differentiate different types of content according to the way they were broadcasted and streamed: TV, Live Streaming, YouTube video. Now we just talk about videos. In this section, we focus on long-form video, the most elaborated form of video content, which is taking over our screens.
Visit Seattle are the undisputed leader of on-demand programming out of any destination out there. In fact, video on demand dominates their brand strategy through a huge range of serialised content series on visitseattle.tv.
The shows touch on a huge range of themes and topics from programmes with notable filmmakers to fun and playful series to discover the city. This approach is truly innovative: it represents the destination taking on the likes of Prime and Netflix to create alternative programming and tap into a wide range of interests. This long-form content trend is going further still, with a new series of audio playlists on SoundCloud.
Aside from this Visit Seattle have done a good job getting local businesses to take a COVID-19 pledge, with a searchable tool by neighbourhood and business type. In a pivot to focus more on the local market they've also developed a series of itineraries by locals, "I know a place".
Life's Rewards is an eight-episode series set in St Petersburg Clearwater, Florida and is the first scripted series by a destination, representing a new frontier in destination marketing. It shows once again the shift back towards long-form content and on-demand programming as people spend more time at home streaming media online
Airbnb Experiences and Singapore Tourism Board (STB) launched a storytelling campaign featuring three generations of women in one of Hollywood's most well-known families – Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter Willow Smith and mother Adrienne 'Gammy' Banfield-Norris.
The campaign, filmed in January 2020, features the family learning about the country through one of the Airbnb Singapore Experiences. They meet one of Singapore's top Experiences Hosts and inter-generational family, One Kind House, led by 76-year-old matriarch Mummy Soh. The campaign is part of an ongoing Memorandum of Understanding between the Singapore Tourism Board and Airbnb Experiences to inspire future travel to Singapore. This is the first major international destination marketing campaign launched by Singapore Tourism Board and Airbnb Experiences.
There's much more than guided discovery. Do you remember when everybody in the tourism spectrum was creating an app and it took ages to put it on the market and then it wasn't successful and then they were deleted? Well, we've got an app we like a lot and would like to try as well because it has the user at the centre and it represents the perfect companion for any solo or independent traveller.
Vienna Tourist Board launched their 2025 strategy just before the global pandemic struck. It sets out a bold new vision, which we might consider as a 'maturing' of the traditional notion of what a tourism board should be. It seeks to focus on certifying operators to become more sustainable, improving overall satisfaction alongside revenue and importantly it also looks to demonstrate economic impact alongside resident satisfaction.
A strong digital repositioning of the brand, a more curation-led and editorially driven website to support a deeper discovery of the destination a best-in-class mobile companion 'ivie' all support this tilt towards a more value-driven tourism offering. In parallel, Vienna Tourist Board has learnt to share, involve, pilot and pivot during the pandemic with their industry and in 'showing by doing'.
Go Tokyo has centred most of its recent strategy on local culture and heritage. The DMO has launched several campaigns promoting the Tokyo way of life, highlighting the habits of locals. With "Places the Locals Go", Tokyo has created storytelling and guides to discover Tokyo from different angles by locals.
The guides give visitors tips and insights on local food, shops, neighbourhoods and cultural scene. "Another Tokyo" is an unconventional guide to the different faces of the city, from traditional to new, from big scale to small-scale. The campaign highlights how wide and diverse the cultural offer of the city is.
The website stands as an all-around best practice, supporting a great user experience, with strong brand consistency and excellently curated content picks and highlights. Unlike many destinations, this experience does not drop off after the first click. This thorough approach to content means that the core target audiences, where the focus is on lifestyle rather than tourism, are encouraged to keep discovering, wider, deeper and through more perspectives. Local perspectives play an important role, providing an overall honest, authentic and genuinely interesting take on the city.
There are other hidden gems too, such as excursions, which give a little different take on spreading tourism beyond those key hotspots and the focus on events and what's happening in Stockholm, giving a sense of vibrancy and life to the overall brand impression.
How can you reimagine the space across the city and reinvent the meaning of "office" or "workplace"? We have a couple of examples. We particularly like the idea of creating a pop-up concept that can boost the livelihood of the city off-season.
Montréal has launched the Îlots d’été (Summer Islands), outdoor working spaces that aim to ease people out of their homes, providing an accessible and comfortable space for people to work. Currently, 23 locations throughout Montréal provide free Wi-Fi from 7 am-10 pm, electricity outlets, and hand sanitiser dispensers.
We love this because it's a temporary solution but instead of seeing it as something limited in time, it's packaged as one unique event, with its own branding - making the experience premium, engaging, unique and fun.
This is a unique recruitment initiative aimed at attracting talented individuals to Tulsa. The program brings remote workers and digital nomads to the community by providing $10,000 grants and numerous community-building opportunities.
Each grant is distributed over the course of a year to eligible remote workers or entrepreneurs living outside of Oklahoma. Funding is currently provided by George Kaiser Family Foundation. The City of Tulsa and other community organizations lend their support to ensure programme participants are fully immersed and engaged in the community.
Let us know how you're planning to shift tactics in your destination or how we can help you target new audiences.
Nick & I present a few of our favourite best practices from City DMOs responding to current trends. We've touched on themes such as:
All the examples we presented are on this digital mural board you can access whenever you'd like and scroll around and zoom in and out to dive deep into the content.
One of the consequences of the pandemic is a greater sense of community, equally existing on a hyper-local, local, regional and national level. Here we present three different best practices that vary a lot but aim at the same common goal: creating a place that is good for people, visitors and businesses alike.
Aluma Farm at Adair Park is the Atlanta BeltLine’s first agriculture site around a 22-mile corridor. The farm is privately operated, and produce is sold locally. The site serves as the Atlanta BeltLine’s pilot for an urban agriculture programme that could serve as a model for other potential sites around the destination.
The 3.8-acre site on which the farm sits was once home to two industrial manufacturing facilities. Using compost, cover crops and community engagement, Andy and Andrea have converted the site from an empty, barren lot into a lush, green farm. The drainage system at the farm addresses stormwater runoff. In 2017, the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA) financed solar panels for a Aluma Farm’s shed, which will be used in farm operations. The panels will generate 2.8 kilowatts of solar energy using photovoltaic technology, allowing Aluma Farm to operate “off-grid.”
Auckland Unlimited has worked hard to provide businesses in the city with 360 support from marketing, digital, innovation, safety and sustainability.
The DMO has developed a whole resource hub for businesses, providing assessment tools, advice and toolkits to help businesses improve operations, finances, business strategy, HR management and safety.
Among the initiatives, Auckland has developed a digital assessment tool for businesses, to create a customised digital action plan.
Whole sections of the website have been devoted to providing customised support for businesses including funded expert advice and business support.
Discover Los Angeles has been focusing on creating comeback incentives since early on in the pandemic. When things initially opened up, they quickly got their industry to come together with a pool of offers, which they listed on their site in a table of deals. As things have evolved they've successfully built on this further into an L.A. Comeback section with more than 100 deals, curated in a more inspirational format.
This recovery effort is strengthened by a brand that is strong, consistent and comprises rich episodic storytelling with authentic local discoveries reflecting the diversity of what the city has to offer its visitors.
It's incredible to see how much things have changed in terms of content consumption. In particular, it's crazy to consider how we used to differentiate different types of content according to the way they were broadcasted and streamed: TV, Live Streaming, YouTube video. Now we just talk about videos. In this section, we focus on long-form video, the most elaborated form of video content, which is taking over our screens.
Visit Seattle are the undisputed leader of on-demand programming out of any destination out there. In fact, video on demand dominates their brand strategy through a huge range of serialised content series on visitseattle.tv.
The shows touch on a huge range of themes and topics from programmes with notable filmmakers to fun and playful series to discover the city. This approach is truly innovative: it represents the destination taking on the likes of Prime and Netflix to create alternative programming and tap into a wide range of interests. This long-form content trend is going further still, with a new series of audio playlists on SoundCloud.
Aside from this Visit Seattle have done a good job getting local businesses to take a COVID-19 pledge, with a searchable tool by neighbourhood and business type. In a pivot to focus more on the local market they've also developed a series of itineraries by locals, "I know a place".
Life's Rewards is an eight-episode series set in St Petersburg Clearwater, Florida and is the first scripted series by a destination, representing a new frontier in destination marketing. It shows once again the shift back towards long-form content and on-demand programming as people spend more time at home streaming media online
Airbnb Experiences and Singapore Tourism Board (STB) launched a storytelling campaign featuring three generations of women in one of Hollywood's most well-known families – Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter Willow Smith and mother Adrienne 'Gammy' Banfield-Norris.
The campaign, filmed in January 2020, features the family learning about the country through one of the Airbnb Singapore Experiences. They meet one of Singapore's top Experiences Hosts and inter-generational family, One Kind House, led by 76-year-old matriarch Mummy Soh. The campaign is part of an ongoing Memorandum of Understanding between the Singapore Tourism Board and Airbnb Experiences to inspire future travel to Singapore. This is the first major international destination marketing campaign launched by Singapore Tourism Board and Airbnb Experiences.
There's much more than guided discovery. Do you remember when everybody in the tourism spectrum was creating an app and it took ages to put it on the market and then it wasn't successful and then they were deleted? Well, we've got an app we like a lot and would like to try as well because it has the user at the centre and it represents the perfect companion for any solo or independent traveller.
Vienna Tourist Board launched their 2025 strategy just before the global pandemic struck. It sets out a bold new vision, which we might consider as a 'maturing' of the traditional notion of what a tourism board should be. It seeks to focus on certifying operators to become more sustainable, improving overall satisfaction alongside revenue and importantly it also looks to demonstrate economic impact alongside resident satisfaction.
A strong digital repositioning of the brand, a more curation-led and editorially driven website to support a deeper discovery of the destination a best-in-class mobile companion 'ivie' all support this tilt towards a more value-driven tourism offering. In parallel, Vienna Tourist Board has learnt to share, involve, pilot and pivot during the pandemic with their industry and in 'showing by doing'.
Go Tokyo has centred most of its recent strategy on local culture and heritage. The DMO has launched several campaigns promoting the Tokyo way of life, highlighting the habits of locals. With "Places the Locals Go", Tokyo has created storytelling and guides to discover Tokyo from different angles by locals.
The guides give visitors tips and insights on local food, shops, neighbourhoods and cultural scene. "Another Tokyo" is an unconventional guide to the different faces of the city, from traditional to new, from big scale to small-scale. The campaign highlights how wide and diverse the cultural offer of the city is.
The website stands as an all-around best practice, supporting a great user experience, with strong brand consistency and excellently curated content picks and highlights. Unlike many destinations, this experience does not drop off after the first click. This thorough approach to content means that the core target audiences, where the focus is on lifestyle rather than tourism, are encouraged to keep discovering, wider, deeper and through more perspectives. Local perspectives play an important role, providing an overall honest, authentic and genuinely interesting take on the city.
There are other hidden gems too, such as excursions, which give a little different take on spreading tourism beyond those key hotspots and the focus on events and what's happening in Stockholm, giving a sense of vibrancy and life to the overall brand impression.
How can you reimagine the space across the city and reinvent the meaning of "office" or "workplace"? We have a couple of examples. We particularly like the idea of creating a pop-up concept that can boost the livelihood of the city off-season.
Montréal has launched the Îlots d’été (Summer Islands), outdoor working spaces that aim to ease people out of their homes, providing an accessible and comfortable space for people to work. Currently, 23 locations throughout Montréal provide free Wi-Fi from 7 am-10 pm, electricity outlets, and hand sanitiser dispensers.
We love this because it's a temporary solution but instead of seeing it as something limited in time, it's packaged as one unique event, with its own branding - making the experience premium, engaging, unique and fun.
This is a unique recruitment initiative aimed at attracting talented individuals to Tulsa. The program brings remote workers and digital nomads to the community by providing $10,000 grants and numerous community-building opportunities.
Each grant is distributed over the course of a year to eligible remote workers or entrepreneurs living outside of Oklahoma. Funding is currently provided by George Kaiser Family Foundation. The City of Tulsa and other community organizations lend their support to ensure programme participants are fully immersed and engaged in the community.
Let us know how you're planning to shift tactics in your destination or how we can help you target new audiences.
We've touched on themes such as:
We've touched on themes such as:
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