“But where does it all end?” That was the plaintive question of a student in one of my workshops on social media tools for marketing tourism. Bad news: It doesn’t.
 |
| Photo by cole24_ on Flickr |
There is no finish line in tourism. There’s no place where you get to stop and say, “Boy, I’m glad we’re done with marketing. Now we can do all that other stuff we need to do!”
Instead, tourism marketing is an on-going project. Learning doesn’t stop. Not if you want to reach people.
See, your potential visitors are changing. People younger than you are traveling. They are more comfortable with different kinds of technology than you are. People older than you are traveling. And some of them are pretty darn technically savvy, too.
I know change moves fast, but I’m not convinced that it’s past our ability to keep up with our selected fields. If you continue to work at learning, you can do it. (I can feel a whole post coming, profiling people who are keeping at it, no matter their age…)
Two Resources for Keeping Up
Though we don’t have a finish line, we do have two resources to help you keep up with the trends in tourism marketing.
- Rural Tourism Marketing by Joanne Steele. Plenty to learn there for communities of any size.
- Tourism Currents: Social Media for Tourism. That’s me and Sheila Scarborough, and I think it’s a pretty amazing resource.
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Small town business idea: cat grooming - November 15, 2021
- Community engagement planning: old way vs. Idea Friendly way - October 3, 2021
- Boost your maker economy with a “Made in” day - September 17, 2021
- How a ghost town made something from nothing with a folk festival - September 3, 2021
- Rural business idea: sell foraged fruits and more - August 3, 2021
- Best practices for rural housing - July 19, 2021
- How to be more open to new ideas #IdeaFriendly - July 3, 2021
- Market your small town as a movie filming location, attract movie and game fan tourists - June 28, 2021
- Survey of Rural Challenges 2021 results, analysis of themes from 2015 through today - June 7, 2021
- What makes a small town a micropolitan or nanopolitan? - May 22, 2021
Hi,
Regarding ‘Learning doesn’t stop.’
I see this as a great thing as there are so many wonderful things to learn. I guess for others it’s a chore.
Each to their own :)
Ivan, so far, I’m with you. We’ll see how far we can carry our enthusiasm into the future.
Thanks Becky! I so appreciate the mention. Sometimes I feel like you, Sheila and I are the internet equivalent of the Three Musketeers for Rural, working daily to bring some order and sense regarding this enormous village of cyberspace. Perhaps we’ll get our own reality show one of these days!
Oh, no! Joanne, I don’t think I could handle a reality show. ;)