Tourism Bureaus and Bloggers

Chris, you are right….and it just makes sense that tourism boards would reach out to influential visitors to their town.

I’ve found that people either love or hate where they live….not much in-between. Glad you hooked up with some of us that love St louis and all that it has to offer….

Chris, you can order the Gooey Butter cakes delivered to your door (or hotel room) at http://www.64Flavors.com

When is your next trip to St Louis? We need to talk toasted ravioli!

One of the biggest issues about hosting bloggers is measurement. Traditional media has great metrics to show constituents. We can show them audited circulation numbers that speak volumes. Many metropolitan areas are reaching out to bloggers, and some more rural communities are also expanding their efforts (though it’s more challenging) to engage bloggers. It will evolve, I believe, and bloggers will be more welcomed down the road. Thanks for the post.

Great post Chris. I was just talking with Justin last week about Visit Pittsburgh and their social media endeavors. I am the Social Media Specialist at BarkleyREI, an interactive agency in Pittsburgh. We service mostly tourism offices, and have just launched a blog for the Pennsylvania State Tourism Office. The purpose of the blog is to gather information for PA enthusiasts and put it all in one spot where everyone can see what everyone else loves about the state of PA. I serve as the Community Manager for the blog, so I conduct outreach to get the guest bloggers and manage the schedules, uploading etc… It is working out really well so far, as we just soft launched in June. We currently have over 15 guest bloggers, myself included. There is a way for tourism to be interacting in the social space and I think http://www.paadventure.com is a cool way to do so.

See you in Foxboro next week!

Great post Chris. I was just talking with Justin last week about Visit Pittsburgh and their social media endeavors. I am the Social Media Specialist at BarkleyREI, an interactive agency in Pittsburgh. We service mostly tourism offices, and have just launched a blog for the Pennsylvania State Tourism Office. The purpose of the blog is to gather information for PA enthusiasts and put it all in one spot where everyone can see what everyone else loves about the state of PA. I serve as the Community Manager for the blog, so I conduct outreach to get the guest bloggers and manage the schedules, uploading etc… It is working out really well so far, as we just soft launched in June. We currently have over 15 guest bloggers, myself included. There is a way for tourism to be interacting in the social space and I think http://www.paadventure.com is a cool way to do so.

See you in Foxboro next week!

Most people mentioned initiatives more relevant than what I wanted to talk about, so. . . but I couldn’t possibly let it go without saying that I wanted to blog about my own personal experience: I live in front of the Louvre, in Paris — I can’t go out without having crowds asking for direction. ;o)

I think it comes down to how you pitch what it is your doing. I run the Kitten Lounge which is based in NYC and my food editor and I have been invited to go to the Poconos next weekend to write about their food oriented weekends, I am going to Atlantic City to cover the Tropicana’s Halloween events and I am heading on to Philly for a few days after that to cover fashion, food, etc there. With upcoming trips in the Bahamas and Miami, I have found that people have reached out to me to attend and to get me familiar on the area. Other times I have pitched directly. I do think it would be nice to have more agencies/bureaus do this but it is definitely a work in progress and something that I am interested in cultivating on an individual basis.

I think it comes down to how you pitch what it is your doing. I run the Kitten Lounge which is based in NYC and my food editor and I have been invited to go to the Poconos next weekend to write about their food oriented weekends, I am going to Atlantic City to cover the Tropicana’s Halloween events and I am heading on to Philly for a few days after that to cover fashion, food, etc there. With upcoming trips in the Bahamas and Miami, I have found that people have reached out to me to attend and to get me familiar on the area. Other times I have pitched directly. I do think it would be nice to have more agencies/bureaus do this but it is definitely a work in progress and something that I am interested in cultivating on an individual basis.

Folks, folks, you’re missing the point…Gooey Butter Cake is absolutely the best. It may or may not be on my top five reasons why I married a girl from St. Louis!

OK, I guess there was more to this post than delicious references. I have seen very limited interaction from tourism bureaus/bloggers and you would think that you would hear from folks when you Twitter you are going to be in a certain city and need a recommendation. Seems like a goldmine to me, not only for tourism boards, but certainly hotels and restaurants. The latter is interesting since in many cities ownership groups have a bunch of restaurants in their stable and could do a really comprehensive job getting involved in the conversation.

/kff

Yeah I could see it being a good idea. For some of us who are the “world traveling” type when we go to a conference in another city it’s not likely we’ve been there before or if we have we don’t know what’s cool about the place. So yeah, I like it.

Hi Chris-
I live in northern Minnesota and our tourism bureau has implemented a social media component to our traditional advertising. Focused on the activities tourists come ‘up north’ for, we launched several blogs featuring local people who are ‘experts’ in those activities. We had “Dave” our snowmobile guru, Larry, the local ATV enthusiast, and me, Kat, the local nightlife and entertainment goddess (LOL). I personally operate my own entertainment web site and blog for the Iron Range and guest blog on the tourism site. For our first year, we gained many ‘friends’ using the blog, MySpace and Facebook to connect with Minnesotans. We feel that when tourists come to the area, they can ‘get to know’ the people who live here and rely on them for tips, ideas and insight. We are continuing to develop our plans and ideas but we think people love it. You can see what we’re up to at http://ironrange.org.

Chris, glad to hear they showed you a great time in St. Louis. When are you coming to Columbus, Ohio so we can shower you with chocolate and peanut butter buckeyes?

Several organizations are doing a great job with blogger relations here in Ohio – most notably Experience Columbus (www.experiencecolumbus.com and @ExpCols on Twitter) and the Ohio Tourism Division (www.discoverohio.com). In the interest of full disclosure, I help out with PR for both.

And in all seriousness, you’re welcome anytime. We’d love to have you!

It fantastic to see the entire Tourism Internet Marketing industry moving to blogging and Social Media!

While many of the Tourism Organizations are steaming ahead into building networks of Friends, Followers and Fans, there is a technology gap between the Baby Boomer Mom & Pop Tourism Camp owner – and these great new Relationship management tools.

Training and Support for business owners who are now forced to start Blogging and and participating in Facebook is a critical component in preparing your Tourism Business for the future.

Oh great, all I can think of is gooey cake now.

I’ve just joined the world of blogging with the OffbeatTravel Blog. I also published a travel website OffbeatTravel.com

And the two serve different functions and have very different slants and voices.

Blogs are immediate, even on the internet stories take time to appear. Blogs are (generally) shorter and more focused, articles take a more indepth approach.

I’ve been blogged about Door County Wisconsin as I took the trip. It will be at least another two months before the article is published. I talked about the experience of a fish boil, and about fresh lawyers (it’s a fish). That probably won’t make it into the article.

The viewpoint and voice is much more personal. It’s kinda the story behind the article.

Neala

Sorry about the bad links. It should be:

OffbeatTravel Blog and OffbeatTravel.com

My bad…

Neala

Number of months traveling: 19
Number of countries visited: 43
Number of tourism groups contacting me: 0

Good stuff Chris. Every city should utilize bloggers. Especially since bloggers have a way of tapping into the latest happenings in whatever scene they operate in.

McNeil Wilson Communications here in Hawaii – realizes the value of working with bloggers and engaging in social media. My client the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) is working with new media professionals on a regular basis and it is a core component of our public relations program. HVCB is also a sponsor of the upcoming Podcamp Hawaii and will be working with incoming bloggers to showcase various aspects of the destination.

I should also mention my other client The Wyland Waikiki hotel has fully embraced the social web as part of its PR strategy. Just this year we launched a blog – Drop In To The Wyland Waikiki , have the GM Robin Graf on Twitter , and are taking an active role in hosting bloggers, and sponsoring events like Podcamp Hawaii.

New media is an area we can’t afford to ignore.

I assure you those of us in the Tourism industry who even know anything about social media are putting everything we have into educating those around us, those we work for, and those we associate with. It’s taking time to learn. No one wants to go in and do it wrong, so we have a tendency to not do it at all.

For the record, Chris, next time you’re in Vancouver, give me a call. I’d love to show you around.

Hi Chris, thank you for this post. The ideas and the reactions are very helpful for me – an Austrian (attention:No Kangaroos)DMO manager.

We set up a blog about 6 months ago, the idea is to involve local people and invite them to present their personal hotspots to our guest. One challenge is to find people who contribute to the blog, mostly because they do not find time for this.

We also thought about the question, “How can we invite our visitors to share their experiences online?”. One idea was the creation of a bookmark. This is distributed through restaurants, hotels, etc… and asks people to share their fotos, videos and stories on flickr, youtube or tripadvisor.

It seems to me, that their is a short delay in the usgae of social web tools between America and Europe/Austria.
So we are not very experienced in how to engage bloggers.
Should they be treated like journalists? Should we organise fam trips for bloggers? How would they react if we invite them? Are there specials services we could provide in the destination which would be helpful for bloggers?

Great post, Chris. I’m a freelance writer who also blogs. I agree that the folks in Florida are doing a good job in recognizing the value of social media. One of the CVB’s saw my blog where I write about active travel for baby boomers, http://www.myitchytravelfeet.com. After reading my posts, she invited me for a visit that will provide plenty of blog material (plus I’ll be pitching stories to print publications).

I agree that measuring the effectiveness is difficult for Tourism offices used to dealing in the printed way of thinking. But, when you stop and think about it, magazines and newspapers are read, then tossed. Articles on blogs and websites are on the internet forever. With so many travelers using the internet as a resource for travel planning, it just makes sense for the travel industry to develop relationships with bloggers.

Hi Chris,

My first comment on here but I’ve read your posts for a little while. I think the travel / tourism industry has only within the past six months really started to sit up and listen to bloggers.

The US is miles ahead of countries like the UK, where trying to contact a company online is a challenge. Tools like Twitter, and Facebook have meant that bloggers and consumers can communicate and interact.

There’s still room for improvement but I think travel companies are starting to realise that people have a voice and blogs are part of that.

This is a great post, Chris. As a freelance writer and Lodging Travel Blog Editor, I hope your blog post makes it into the e-mail box of every Tourism Bureau.

Thanks for the topic.