Last week I participated in Marseille's #Travelmassive organized by my friend @claudebenard of Hotelitur. It was a fun and interactive chat among Keith Jenkins, blogger extraordinaire of VelvetEscape fame, the sweet and brilliant Fabienne Wintle of Untanglemyweb and myself. We connected to the event via Group Skype, and even thought we had a couple of technical glitches, we did have a great time. Our task was to address the question of how can digital marketers, travel bloggers, hoteliers and destination management organizations (DMOs) best work together? Not an easy topic to summarize because there are many variations on the theme. For example we talked about the different types of travel bloggers and their different objectives. A professional blogger working for a large organization (like Conde Nast, for example) would not have the same objectives that a blogger who does note depend on his or her blog to generate revenue. We commented as well on the different projects a digital marketer might encounter. Fabienne, for example specializes in assisting, training, educating and helping small tourism businesses in Australia on the various topics related to digital and social media marketing. Her challenges are very different than those a digital marketer/consultant working for a large DMO or a multi-national hotel chain might face. Keith addressed the issue of fees for blogging - something that might have been taboo 2 years ago, but something that's very important. Some bloggers are quite happy with getting travel invitations from destinations and blogging about them without getting paid for this content hoping that they will generate revenue through advertising. Other bloggers are offering sponsored blog posts thereby getting fees per post. Still other bloggers are now getting speaking fees at various conferences and events.
My conclusion after our very interesting chat is that there are great opportunities for bloggers, digital marketers, hoteliers and DMOs to work more effectively and strategically to achieve the ultimate goal - more satisfied visitors and guests. One of the points we touched on was international collaborations wherein we could share our audiences with each other, offer a syndicate of bloggers (guest blog posts as well) to destinations, access our different networks to offer clients more bang for their marketing dollars - bring in our Facebook and Twitter followers. For example, I offer my clients campaigns that include display advertising, blogging, tweeting, facebooking which reach Hispanic travellers everywhere. What if when I am pitching to them I can offer increased reach by offering them coverage from Keith who reaches another audience altogether. Destinations do this all the time with bloggers. A group of bloggers (Kim Mance, Wendy Perrin, and Shannon Hurst Lane), were invited to Toronto for Canada-e-Connect 2010 in Montreal. Since they were going to be in Montreal, Ottawa invited them to visit there before or after the conference. So destinations and bloggers can reach out to each other to maximize social media and digital marketing opportunities.
As for Travel Massive Marseille, I hope a group of us bloggers get together in Marseille in the near future under a strategic digital marketing plan from the DMO there. We can certainly get some traction in the blogosphere. En Français, in English y en Español.
Bon voyage,
Jaime
