Archive for the ‘Cultural tourism’ Category

Play nicely with others! It seems that everywhere I go experts are talking about the benefits of collaboration, sharing and smart partnerships. I’ve recently attended two excellent and very different events: Webstock and an arts marketing workshop with international cultural facilitator Jerry Yoshitomi. However, a key message from both events was the value and importance of collaboration to help build your business or your audience.

One of the most recent examples of a successful collaboration in the cultural and tourism communities is the development of the Manaaki Card. The card is a discount card for tourists that includes a variety of Māori cultural activities, accommodation, arts and other wonderful tourism experiences.

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by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

From beaches across the world to cultural learning organisations.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is currently undertaking the World Beach Project (www.vam.ac.uk/worldbeach) in collaboration with artist Sue Lawty. This is a global art project open to anybody in the world and the idea is for people to build on the experiences from holiday of making patterns on beaches and shorelines with numerous different objects. This site is a good example of how cultural organisations can use the elements of web 2.0 to bring in and engage their users through participation in both activities and via mash-ups. 

The idea has been borne from Sue Lawty’s blog on the V&A website. A particularly good post on this blog concerns a family from the UK who relocated to New Zealand for a few years and undertook a family version of some of her beach artwork. This is detailed in the blog post New Zealand Stones.

Bruce Bay - Stones on driftwood

Ensuring that this type of website is integrated into your working practices is important when thinking about sustainability. Ways in which this can be made possible have been investigated by Eva Moraga. She has undertaken the discussion of how cultural organisations need to define new organisational models in order to respond to the constant transformation entailed by new media and Web 2.0.

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The purpose of branding is to add value to your bottom line. A strong brand lets you differentiate your offering from others, it lets you charge a premium for your service, and it builds customer loyalty. Julian Moore, who looks after New Zealand’s brand for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, says his wife is skeptical about the importance of brands. He quipped that next time he was travelling, he’d bring her back some perfume from Poland: aah, the romance of Warsaw. So he’s got a point about the power of country brands!

This blog has been posting about cultural tourism in the last couple of weeks, and while on the subject, it’s worth checking out the country brand index by FutureBrand, a global brand consultancy. They’ve ranked country brands (based on research, expert opinions and relevant statistics):

1. Australia
2. USA
3. Italy
4. France
5. Greece
6. UK
7. Spain
8. New Zealand
9. Maldives
10. India

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The first day of the Maori Tourism Conference was devoted to the subject of creating quality tourism experiences. Craig Wilson from Quality Tourism Development presented, with breaks for groups to apply the ideas to their own businesses.

What do our visitors want?

Research shows that around 70% of a visitor’s overall satisfaction comes from what they do - not where they stay and how they get around (although a bad accommodation or transport experience can undermine their satisfaction).

So what is quality, and what is a quality experience? ‘Quality’ is in the eyes of the customer or - as Fiona Luhrs of TIANZ says - ‘quality is a race without a finish line’ as customers’ expectations continually increase.

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I’ve just attended the Maori Tourism Conference in Taupo. What a great vibe at this conference, with plenty of evidence of entrepreneurial activities taking place all around the country. I’ll probably put up a couple of posts on different topics, but first …

Kylie Ruwhiu-Karawana from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) talked about international markets and the opportunities for Maori tourism. Trends in tourism include:

• low-cost airlines are making short regional breaks increasingly popular (meaning travelers are less inclined to make the long haul flight to NZ - however, this development is good for visitors from Australia)
• travelers are looking for experiences, not just destinations
• other markets are now promoting their environment to the global marketplace, using marketing techniques similar to ours – some of these destinations are closer to travelers than we are
• the internet is a great information gathering and booking tool – we have to become more web savvy to compete with other markets using this channel.

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