Recently I have been running a series of training workshops. As part of this, I have spent a fair bit of time in regional centres.
The first thing I do upon arrival at my motel is to look at the local tourism material. What does it tell me about the place? What might I like to see or do?
Frankly, some of the stuff remains very ordinary. For some reason, many of Australia's regional areas remain fixated on the simple attractions (what to see)/events (what's on) classification. Many also are still obsessed with the need to prove that they are as good as somewhere else. Far too few focus on maximising the visitor experience.
The central problem with the attraction/event focus lies in its inward looking, passive focus. You create a descriptive list, relying on that to attract a visitor with a given interest. By contrast, the visitor experience focus looks at what visitors want, how you might deepen and richen their experience.
Two things are central to the visitor experience approach.
The first is to understand what you have. The events/attractions list is a start here, but only a start. Now look at everything in the district or region to try to think what might interest the visitor, not just the more obvious things. Build a list.
The second is to think about things that you might do to add to visitor enjoyment. This may be things like clean toilets. More often, it should be things like more information, something that will tell the visitor a story, give them a context.
One key thing to remember is that the visitor experience approach does not require a grand new strategy. You can start small and build.
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