Creating a memorable experience for visitors is the ultimate goal for any destination. However, simply having a strong image and reputation is not enough to achieve this.
To truly exceed visitors’ expectations, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and local operators, such as hoteliers, restaurant owners, and organizations, must work together seamlessly.
By fostering an open-minded, welcoming, and supportive environment, destinations can provide the dream vacation travelers are seeking.
While solid institutions and organization are crucial, the personal touch of those on the front lines cannot be understated.
The northeastern region of Italy, Friuli Venezia Giulia, has achieved this balance by sharing big data and visitors’ sentiment analysis, and organizing training aimed to make local operators more data-aware.
A 3-step process to enhance the Sentiment of the region and visitors’ experiences
Friuli Venezia Giulia managed to increase the general Sentiment and reputation of the region while engaging local operators.
They put in action a structured process to reach their goals:
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- Sentiment analysis and data collection
In 2019, Friuli Venezia Giulia adopted Data Appeal Studio – a platform for DMOs – to gain a comprehensive understanding of the destination, including flight and hotel bookings, arrivals, visitors’ opinions, composition, and origin, local events, and more. Data Appeal Studio helps Friuli Venezia Giulia collect and analyze all relevant data, monitor trends, and track the success of marketing efforts. - Share Results to Improve Local Operators’ Services and Offerings
By analyzing the sentiment of businesses and experiences expressed by visitors in detail, along with their composition and origin, FVG is able to gain actionable insights. The DMO shares this information with stakeholders in the supply chain, such as hospitality, food and beverage, attractions, transportation, and more, to evaluate their performance and make improvements. - Interactive Training: Providing the entire tourism supply chain with access to data for more effective and customized offers
Training is a crucial aspect for Friuli’s DMO, as it plays a vital role in contributing to the growth and improvement of the regional tourism offer. In addition to languages, marketing, and management courses, the DMO has implemented monthly newsletters and webinars to empower hospitality and tourism businesses to use data to better understand and exceed visitor expectations.
- Sentiment analysis and data collection
“The platform revealed emerging trends even in difficult times, like Covid-19 lockdown. This is vital data to convey to those working in the field – hoteliers, restaurateurs, tour guides, etc. – to help them launch effective marketing campaigns. With the tool, we can go into accurate and granular detail. For example, we can drill down to the compassion of demand per city or province, or assess the sentiment by industry or visitor country of origin or typology.”
Bruno Bertero, Marketing Director at PromoTurismoFVG
The data collected through Data Appeal Studio has become the foundation for webinars that have already engaged over 300 operators. These webinars cover a range of topics such as accommodation prices and occupancy trends, Sentiment Scores, the Covid Safety Index and more.
Through this training, the DMO is fostering a mindset transformation within the tourism industry, helping businesses to make data-driven decisions to improve the visitor’s experience.
“We are active advocates in offering the opportunity for operators to utilize data analysis as a starting point to improve their work and create services at an increasingly high level.”
Bruno Bertero, Marketing Director at PromoTurismoFVG
