DIGITAL DESTINATIONS

Dr Philip Alford Bournemouth University

www.digitalhub.co.uk

www.pinterest.com/digitaldest www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub

ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk

@schooloftourism | @philipalford

#DDBU

Digital Destinations project is an ESRC funded research project, delivered by Bournemouth University,

with an overarching aim to:

‘capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies and to develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy.

Through increased understanding and use of emerging digital technologies, visitor economy businesses will be in a position to increase their marketing and management effectiveness, and

develop new products and services that will provide an enhanced experience for visitors to their destinations’

The businesses benefited from 4 workshops which covered: Background to on line marketing

Individual Business objectives

Developing the strategy

Measuring impact

Reporting outcomes via case studies

All course material can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub All business outcomes and blogs can be found at http://www.budigitalhub.co.uk/

The following presentation is the case study provided by Pioneer Expeditions Pioneer Expeditions utilised many elements of online marketing but felt they were being left behind especially with regard to social media. Digital Destinations provided a great basis of the tools available to them, as well as some interesting insights and ideas for future improvements to both their website and engaging with their clients. They made some specific improvements to their email newsletter including giving more tips and useful information about travel in general and more opportunities for clients to interact with them.

Digital Destinations

Table of contents

• Background • Reason why Pioneer joined Digital Destinations • Area of focus • 2 objectives • Tactics • Outcome • Challenges • Learnings • Next step

Background

• Who is Pioneer Expeditions? – A niche adventure travel tour operator offering unique off-the-beaten

track holidays

– Main selling channels are exhibitions, website and travel forums

• Where we are in the market – We are a very small fish in a big pond

• Reason why we embarked on Digital Destinations – Wanted to understand and utilise social media better

Main Reasons for signing up to Digital Destinations

• We had decided that our online marketing strategy was a key factor in helping grow our business

• We felt that the we were getting behind with social media

• Thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about best practice in this area

• Wanted the assistance of a student to help with a social media campaign

• Particuarly wanted to develop our presence on Facebook

Initial Benefits and Challenges

• Initial Benefits – found the 1st seminar exciting and instructive - it gave a clear outline

as to all of the different channels to use

– Meeting some other great businesses in the Digital Olympians

• Initial Challenges – Trying to come up with objectives that fitted into the University /

Student requirements. This meant that Pioneer could not really do what Pioneer embarked on the project for (eg. Improving our facebook presence)

– As a result of the change in focus, ultimately we were not as committed to the project as we should have been.

Objectives

• Objectives:- – Increase awareness of company

– Improve website traffic

– Engage with clients and Database

– Improve conversion rate / bookings

Area of focus for Digital Destinations

• To get 5% of prospects that signed up for our e-mail database to re-engage with their site

• To enhance the customer journey on our website to reduce the bounce rate by 5%

Tactics

• E-mail marketing – new design & concept for email-shots

– Providing more informative / interesting content......Less sales

– Regular emailshots

– Encouraging more client interaction through newsletters

• Website optimisation – Reduce the amount of information on show

– Add call to action on every page

– Create a blog

Control

• Newsletter – Actions were put in place but objectives could not be met during the

short timeframe of the project

– The number of opens on the new design raised by 13%

• Site Changes

– Actions not in place

Action Plan

• Email Marketing – We are continuing to improve and develop our email marketing

campaign

• Website – Plan to start implementing some of the improvements over July / Aug

(which is a quieter period for Pioneer in terms of sales)

Benefits of the Program

• Good motivation for us to focus on our online strategy

• A very insightful and interesting final report from our student

• Great to meet other local businesses and exchange ideas

Challenges of the Program • Time & Timescale

– It took about 2 months to decide on the objective, and there was only approx 1 month really available to make all the changes and get some results (to fit in with the university timescale – even though the project officially finished 2 months later).

– The time when the actual work was taking place was the busiest sales period for Pioneer and we found it difficult to spend our time on the project

• Expectations – Originally signed up to the program thinking the main focus was on a

student aiding us in a basic online project. It ended up being more academic than that and the students finished their 2 months before the program finished.

– Having to change our objective for the program to fit into the Bournemouth University / Student requriements for the program

For more information on DIGITAL DESTINATIONS contact:

Dr Philip Alford, Bournemouth University

ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk

@schooloftourism | @philipalford

#DDBU