Early October, Tourism Kamloops attended the premiere global conference for destination marketers put on by Destination Think! in New Orleans, wanting to learn from world-class leaders and innovate within their industry. There was representation all the way from Florida to New Brunswick and a ton of new ideas for the future of digital marketing.
“It’s not social media anymore, its social business” ~ RTO4.ca
There was a lot of focus on targeting to millennials, who are tech savvy and born after 1980. Currently ¼ of the USA population are millennials and about 40% of then are already parents. These millennials also consume on average 18 hours of media a day and 91% are on Facebook and 73% on Instagram. Much emphasis was put on content management as well as several new and engaging applications on social media to highlight your destination. There were several presentations from destinations that have overcome negative exposure such as Tourism Cleveland and success stories on their marketing initiatives which changed the perceptions of travelers. Destination British Columbia attended and presented with Mark Rybchuck from Hootsuite on their current social plan consisting of pilot programs with Hootsuite and Provincial Visitor Centers to create a more streamlined and engaging approach to the traveler experience. At the same time, these new initiatives will provide reporting and new KPI’s for social utilizing conversations and shareable experiences (see image below of the artwork created by Kelly Kingman from this presentation):
Throughout the conference and breakout sessions, attendees were encouraged to tweet using the hashtag #SoMeT15US with highlights and takeaways which received an enormous impressions all over the globe (see below):
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