Global e-Tourism Frontiers expert Damian Cook recently urged Sri Lanka Tourism Industry stakeholders to identify multiple ways to present a more inclusive destination image to the world thinking like tourists and more importantly thinking like millennial travellers who have upended the established order of the global travel business.
Speaking from Kenya to a virtual meeting in Sri Lanka hosted by Sri Lanka Tourism and Advocata Institute, Damian said the travel market yesterday has radically changed and the way of building a brand has also changed substantially.
“Yesterday a tourism brand is fragmented through the behaviour of millennial travellers. So it becomes much more complex – a logo, pictures of happy people or TV commercials are okay, but more than that, we need to be able to think more like tourists than brand builders. Many of us make that mistake. When we promote our destination, we don’t picture ourselves as tourist,” Damian said.
“This is a conversation which is quite complex, but is very important to have. I know your destination well. You need to be able to present the potential visitors different elements of your destination along with a variety of experiences they can have in Sri Lanka. Your country has a huge diversity of tourism experiences. And they are not for every one. They are for particular types of people or a niche segment. So let’s find those people and show them the Brand Sri Lanka that works for them.”
“The way people perceive travel destinations has changed a lot. This change is not mainly due to the impact of Covid-19. Those changes were there in the travel trade in 2019. Everybody knows that global tourism slowed in 2019 due to a cooling world economy. And hoteliers were concerned about losing their business to Airbnb – the vacation rental online marketplace. So the changes were already taking place. The pandemic has accelerated and amplified them”.
“Millennials won’t just be the initiators of holiday travel post pandemic, their behaviours will influence how younger and older tourists also choose their destinations because these two generations follow the millennials”.
“Thus millennials are the predominant market for travel. They book their holidays using their smartphones. They make their travel itineraries in-destination. They choose experiences over package tours, sea, sun and sand, or one particular tourism feature. They wouldn’t be easily lured by TV commercials or glossy promotional print ads on Tourism. And they are the ones the travel businesses the world over expect will first begin holiday travel post-pandemic becoming key to revival of tourism”.
“Millennial travellers have many instagram followers and fan clubs that are very active in sharing likes, photos and reviews of places they visit. Their followers tend to choose destinations through mutual inspiration. They are not seeing TV commercials or looking at glossy magazine ads. When was the last time you saw a TV commercial when you were watching Netflix and streaming services? You haven’t, because you are not even exposed to that kind of thing now,”
“In the recent past, we have seen the growing impact of travellers in the age range of 24-39 who are the predominant travel market. Their activity in the digital space has grown so substantial that their way of perceiving a travel destination has changed immensely. They consume content online and they book and buy travel online. This practice has given them a different exposure to destination brands; from becoming aware of a destination brand online through to actually travelling to that place.”
“Because they buy online they are very used to customising what they buy according to their unique tastes.. They go for a customised product that satisfies their travel interests. This is why we are seeing the breakdown of mass tourism model. So we need to shift the focus from mass tourism model to niche segments. Millennials are the demographic that doesn’t want to be treated as a commodity, doesn’t want to join a package tour, doesn’t want to board a cruise ship, doesn’t want to be told that this is the destination you are going to, and this is what you will do there. They want to see the destination ‘their way’. And if they recommend a destination, their fan club would also want to have that travel experience through authentic inspiration. On instagram they find thousands of photos posted by passionate individuals and they’d choose destination Sri Lanka when they see that Sri Lanka has got what they are looking for”.
“So it shouldn’t be about one strategic campaign or promoting one single destination image for Sri Lanka. It should be a multiple campaign providing different elements of the destination and the ‘critically different’ experiences that travellers can have in Sri Lanka,” Damian said.
Damian Cook is the CEO of E-Tourism Frontiers, a global initiative which develops Online Tourism in Emerging Markets, such as E-Tourism Africa initiative, which trained hundreds of tourism professionals across Africa, collaborating with international experts and major travel firms to do business in Africa. He made presentations at leading global summits in Tunis, Berlin, the US, and also in China, Japan and Thailand.
