Weber Shandwick and FutureBrand presented their 2008 Country Brand Index Report this morning. It's a detailed, well researched, study, available online.
One theme emerges that Travolution has touched on before, albeit in a different context: the importance of the actual travel experience matching what the marketing has promised.
One page in the report highlights this perfectly. China has done a great job not only marketing itself as a destination but also delivering - the country has a 7% positive differential, meaning that any one visiting is likely to visit again. Their experience is then shared with others, positively enhancing the overall rating of the country.
Compare this with France and Egypt, where a visit to the country makes it less likely that someone will visit again, and detracts from the overall ranking because, one assumes, their disappointments are shared.
"Underdelivering compared to expectation" is a dangerous game in any climate, never mind the current one. And this applies as strongly to an airline, hotel or package holiday as much as to a destination.
And having spent two and a half hours getting to WTM from Kings Cross this morning, I wonder what the London 2012 team told the IOC about access to the Olympic Park.
Right on Martin. Excellent post. Delivering on the promise is indeed key. I wonder if you have any thoughts on Canada's "official brand" "Keep Exploring." While Canada ranked # 2 overall in the country brand Index, it only ranked # 9 in the very important category you alluded to, namely "want to visit or visit again." I wonder why?
www.canadiantourismblog.ca
This leaves us wondering whether countries such as France and Egypt therefore should tone down their marketing until they have managed to improve the visitor experience, so that there is a lesser chance of disappointment? Or, do they leave the marketing as it is and aim to focus on improving perceptions and experiences once the visitor has been marketed to (at a risk, of course)?
Of most interest within this report, though, I found, were the figures related to the desire to visit and safety ratio of countries - where the top ten countries in the ratio (Israel, Kenya, Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, China, Mexico, Cuba and Ecuador) averaged more than double the tourism growth achieved by the countries that ranked in the bottom ten (Belgium, Malta, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Iceland)!
A useful and enlightening piece of research.
Jaime – I’m not close enough to Canada to understand why that discrepancy exists – it might be to do with the methodology which factors in other criteria such as “quality of life” or “political freedoms” for the overall index. The desire to visit/visit again might be driven by how much it costs to get to Canada, or even how easily accessible it is from the various countries where the sample populations are based.
I’m no marketing expert, but I quite like “Keep Exploring” as a strap-line for Canada. It’s relatively straightforward to deliver on, and could apply to your cities as well as the natural beauty.
Andrea – it’s a dilemma which national tourism offices are struggling to cope with. The perfectionist in me thinks that you should have a tourism infrastructure in place before marketing the destination; the cynic in me thinks it’s easier, cheaper and more fun for a government to fund a big ad campaign than it is to refurbish an airport…
Martin Cowen