Some New Year's Resolutions for Tourism Partners

It is a week or so into the new year but certainly not too late to still make New Year's resolutions. I've made a few professional and personal ones over the holidays to start out the new year with some new fire in my soul. On the personal side, I've been watching my diet, watching the number of lattes I buy each week and hitting the gym with a little more regularity. Professionally, I've been absorbing a lot of new information on reinventing myself, managing in changing times, learning new efficiencies to tackle my growing portfolio and vowing to make more time to reach out to my partners.

There's a number of resolutions everyone in the tourism industry should be considering too. They're all pretty universal and I suggest them as a way to create a road map for the coming year. I like "road map" rather than "blueprint" because along they way, you may find a scenic detour worth or needing consideration that gets you to where you still ultimately want to be.

You should start the year with a fresh mind. Take a look at 2011 and think about what went really well and what didn't. Don't dwell on the business decisions that came up short on expectations but reflect on them and the changes you'll make. Was it a campaign that fizzled, a sudden demographic change in your clientele that caught you off guard or a pesky HR issue you struggled to address constructively? Failures and shortcomings are a part of business everyday. Learning from them makes the successes sweeter.

Get to know your Customer a Little better. Whether its the loyal customer coming back every year or understanding the new consumer needs, get to know what they want, their values, their budgets, their vacation habits, where they live and what they do, how they seek a new experience and what keeps them loyal to you. Spend time with your existing clients to build relationships that translate into improved loyalty. Chat with them, get to understand what they love about your business, what suggestions or comments they have for you and their back grounds. It could be as simple as sending your client a birthday card but they'll be more likely to remember you when booking their future trip.

Get to know your ROI. Return on Investment. Whether its capital improvements to your attraction or property to improve yield or your marketing strategy, it's critical to understand how its driving new business and new revenue to you. A big mistake that a lot of businesses make is not knowing how to invest their marketing budget to reach their client most effectively. The old "spray and pray" tactic of hitting as broad a generic audience as possible doesn't work anymore. Its a crowded advertising marketplace and there are a lot of other competing for your client. This is the next extension of getting to know your client base and selecting the media channels that to speak to them more directly.

The critical element of understanding the return on this investment can come in many forms and is pretty easy to do. Track web referrals to your site. (and if you say you don't have a website, put the "for sale" sign up now.) Ask your leads and eventual clients where they discovered you and analyse the financial foot print they leave with you. From there, you'll have a better idea of what media to ditch and what media to expand.

Start Building Partnerships. Your competition isn't the lodge or attraction across the street. Its one of the thousands of jurisdictions around the globe on line competing for your guest. Its critical to present the community and region in a unified plan to maximize reach and its critical for individual tourism partners to cross promote one another. Creating partnerships, creating mutual understanding of one another's contribution to the city and regional tourism economy provides more opportunities for visitors to explore and stay longer. Its an opportunity for hotel properties to work together to bid on larger conferences or sport tourism events, restaurants grouping together to market with critical mass or events partnering together to promote the city as THE festival destination, it just makes good business sense.

Make this the year to expand networks. It could be an extension of building partnerships but its a simple as creating an environment of mutual learning. No one in the industry is a guru. Everyone has their strengths, everyone has learned from mistakes and everyone has found successes. Learn and share from one another. It doesn't mean giving up the competitive secrets but it doesn't have to be. The more tourism partners that are doing well within a particular destination, the higher the reputation of the entire destination. Everybody wins when everybody is working at their best.

Make this the year to understand engage social media like never before. I might be beating a dead horse here but probably not. This is the new platform to reach new consumers, build relationships with existing ones and understand consumer demographics like never before. Take the time to understand and engage in social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (not nearly enough businesses use this one), Youtube, Sprouter, LinkedIn. Bear in mind that these platforms are not static and are always changing. you have to continuously monitor and reinvent them. I will readily admit that I know that one all too well and this year, even we're re engineering the ones we once lead with but need some reinvestment in time and energy.

Invest more in your people. Tourism is still an industry of personal contact. Having well trained, knowledgeable, valued and happy employees is good for the bottom line. Perhaps its investing in training for them, acknowledging their contribution to your operation through positive reinforcement and ensuring they have the tools to meet your client's expectations. Make this they year to communicate more with your staff so they understand their role in the organization, the vision, expectation and values. Staff that feel connected are going to be happier, take more ownerships and likely stay around longer. When everyone in the organization is rowing together, good things happen.

Learn something new every day. Wake up every morning and view your business with fresh eyes. Tackle a problem that's been hindering your confidence level, learn a new business practice, learn how to fix things yourself around your business, understand how tourism policy works in your jurisdiction or understand emerging consumer trends. It can be anything but go home at the end of the day just a little smarter than when you started.

I could keep going but these are a few of the big things tourism industry partners can grab onto and apply to their own organizations. They're easy, they're achievable and they're often result in tangible benefits.

Reflecting on the Successes of 2011.

I'm Back!

I've taken a six month hiatus from my tourism industry blog while I stepped back from my tourism role to undertake a development assignment with the City's Waterfront Development Office. Its great to be back at my tourism desk and getting caught up on my blogging has been something I've looked forward too. It was an amazing opportunity to be part of tourism's capital development side of things and provided me with a greater appreciation of the work that goes into building something world class.

With the year ending, its always a good time to reflect on the past year in the local tourism industry and celebrate milestones and successes. Where to start?

Tourism Thunder Bay unveiled its new Meeting, Convention and Incentive Travel (MC & IT) program branding Thunder Bay as the "Unconventional Convention" destination by focusing on our connection to our natural environment as a more inspiring meeting location with unique meeting alternatives, focus on culinary and interesting corporate retreat and "off site" visitor experiences to stretch the corporate visit. The new look, punctuated by spectacular imagery, struck chords with meeting and conference planners immediately. Given our air connectivity to Canada's major centres, we're becoming a meeting location of choice in the health care, mining, government and NGO sectors.

Industry performance was driven by growth in a number of segments, most notably the sport tourism, conference and group travel markets. The Ontario Winter Special Olympics gave our winter hotel occupancy and attraction attendance a boost. The Harley Owner's Group Rally in July brought some 600 out of town riders to the community for a extended weekend event and we welcomed the M V C.Columbus and a total of over eight hundred European visitors to the new Pool 6 Cruise Terminal for two visits. We also played host to thousands of Northern Ontario residents this past summer as forest fires threatened their remote communities. All combined, we enjoyed Ontario's highest hotel occupancy rates right into the fall.

On the travel media side of things, we had unprecedented volume of media familiarization tours. We welcomed National Geographic's Andrew Evans, who spent a few days exploring everything from Fort William Historical Park and Hoito to a fly in Fishing trip with Tip Top Lodge and a visit to the proposed National Marine Conservation Area. We hosted Power Boat Television in August for the taping of a segment to air later this January and welcomed travel journalists from the Minneapolis area, Germany, France, South America, Southern Ontario, and western Canada. We were also featured on ESPN Sports Radio in the US midwest and in numerous on line blogs.

In June we hosted representatives from five international cruise shipping operators, seeking information on the region to aid them in developing new itineraries and markets. It was also the year we won the rights to host the 12016 Can Am Police and Fire Games that will see thousands of participants and their families from across North America enjoy our "Superior by Nature" hospitality.

This was also the year we launched, in collaboration with other strategic Provincial partners, two development initiatives that will change the way visitor discover, plan and experience their trip. The first was the creation of "Ride Lake Superior" in collaboration with Algoma Kinnewabi Travel Association from Sault St Marie. Starting with a series of motorcycle tourism readiness workshops that gave local attraction and accommodation providers tips on welcoming motorcycle visitors. The plan has quickly drawn interest from the U.S. side and promises to morph into a truly - and frankly long overdue - bi national product development and marketing initiative to position the Lake Superior basin as North America's most epic ride destination.

Secondly, our team participated with OTMPC in the unveiling of the online trip planning tool designed to enhance destination development for the motor sport and RV touring segments and help consumers navigate the region more effectively using their hand held devices.

This was also the year that the RTO began to find its legs as we developed new regional collaborative partnerships that will grow the tourism economy by working smarter and leveraging our human and financial resources. There's a long way to go but we've come a long way in only a shiort time and have made the tough decisions necessary to move the industry forward beyond our geopolitical silos.

A lot of great things happened this year in what is still overall, a tender global tourism economy and our city's tourism industry partners have every reason to be proud of their role in achieving those successes. We have great local partners who have invested in their visitor experiences and supported our strategy. We're not, by any means, at the top of the stairs yet. We'll keep climbing as an industry, into 2012 and beyond.

A Time to Reflect on Tourism Resolutions for 2011.

Its New years Day and I'm sitting in my den, looking out over the "Big Lake" with a coffee relaxing. And by relaxing, I mean putting my thoughts and resolutions into this digital space.

First off, Happy New Year to all of our tourism partners locally, provincially, nationally and internationally. 2010 was a whirlwind year with lots of challenges and thankfully many more rewards and as we take this long weekend breather before diving into a new regional tourism management world in 2011, its good to reflect on our accomplishments and plan for the future.

My main professional new years resolution is, after much thought, pretty simple. To build new partnerships that help us deliver the visitor experiences consumers want.

For me, the past week has not been entirely spend eating and socializing. With RTO work continuing through the holidays, seeing our 2011 Thunder Bay Visitor Experience Magazine and e-zine off to production, responding to media requests and coordinating upcoming outdoors tactical strategies with OTMPC, our year end and the coinciding deadlines for the year's tactical plans make for a busy time. But it never really feels like work, however.

Its also a time to reflect on my last four years in my current role and how enjoyable it has been to be part of a dedicated corporate team always moving forward to make this community great. Given my passion over the past decade for bringing entrepreneurial values into the public service economic development environment, I can honestly say that its been very rewarding to see that bureaucratic and entrepreneurial values can coexist in the public sector. As a department, my team has ushered in a consumer research and experientially focused planning model, adopted a whole new vision and for the local tourism industry through positioning the community as Canada's Best Outdoor City and embraced regional collaboration beyond our city limits to speak to consumers and tell stories that excite them.

We've done all this as an industry by taking calculated risks and pushing limits and challenging the status quo. Its been a four year adrenaline rush.

For 2011, we will continue to steer the ship on its course, building greater equity into the core "Superior By Nature" brand, moving ever closer to the "Canada's Best Outdoor City" position in the market place and everything we do will reflect that vision by new and creative means that weave our connection to our natural environment with our urban cultural and culinary fibres.

The coming months are going to be amazing, if not insanely busy for our tourism department. We'll be promoting the city and region's experiences in the Toronto, Winnipeg, Chicago and Minneapolis markets, we'll be launching the fourth generation of our Seven Days With the Giant experiential leisure program, generating greater cruise shipping industry awareness for the Lake Superior basin and continuing to build the RTO framework that will change the way we collaborate and communicate. We'll be rolling out an enhanced Meeting and Convention and Incentive Travel tactical creative plan sometime mid year and will continue to increase our digital presence by engaging the latest trends in creative digital social channels.

Most importantly, we're going to continue having fun getting to where we want to go as a tourism economy.

To all reading this, enjoy the day with family and friends and I encourage everyone in the tourism industry to adopt your own professional resolution for the coming year with respect to what you are going to contribute to growing the tourism economy. If we started writing them all down, I'm pretty positive it would paint 2011 as a challenging yet rewarding year for the tourism industry.