Tourism is one of our favorite topics here, especially how to use online tools to reach more visitors. During South by Southwest, Sheila Scarborough and I sat down with Jennifer Navarrete and Luis Sandoval, Jr. of the Tech in Twenty show to talk about how social media can help tourism organizations tell the stories of…
Location based games and applications like FourSquare and Gowalla are hot topics right now. Checking in on Gowalla Players use their mobile phones to check in at various locations to share recommendations with each other, to find friends who happen to be nearby, and to compete with each other. To get a real sense of…
Our crack research staff (my husband) caught a discussion thread about tourism websites. This one happened to be on a hunting safari forum, but there are lessons for anyone’s tourism website.(If you don’t like hunting, or hunting pictures, don’t click through: here is the original hunting discussion thread.) A hunting and tourism operator asked the…
Last week, Enid, Oklahoma, hosted a tourism forum, with over 90 people in attendance. Here are some of the best points captured in my notes. Best silver bullet in travel: People want to eat like the locals. Recommendations from the locals of the hidden gems and “must eat there” places. Hardy Watkins, Oklahoma’s State Tourism…
Imagine if your most enthusiastic and wonderful tour leader could guide every group of visitors. You know, that one person who tells the best stories, who makes it all come to life… what if that person guided every visitor? The next best thing might be to record them and share that audio with your visitors….
When I visited Peru, one highlight was watching a rehearsal parade. It was the day before the Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, in Cusco, Peru. The main festival draws a crowd of thousands and thousands. But this was the day before. The local bands and performing troops held a rehearsal. The crowd was…
What makes for an interesting town history? It’s not names and dates. It’s stories. You’re trying to attract visitors, and the best way to do that is pull them into the story. We don’t care about a list of names of prominent town founders. We do care about the story of the woman who won…
Rural and small town tourism is all about experiences. That is why you should steal this idea for your local tourism: Meet the locals in Jamaica. [There are] about 300 ambassadors who volunteer with the Jamaica Tourist Board’s Meet the People program. Launched nearly 41 years ago, it arranges meetings between visitors and residents, basing…
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