eTravel Project

Copyrights - L'Espresso

I have recently worked on the Italy section of the new European Online Travel Report published by PhoCusWright and one thing that surprised me particularly was the extensive use of social networking back in my country. As a matter of fact, I briefly mention this in the conclusion of my study.

I have been in the US for years now and it has been a struggle to keep in touch with family and friends. The best way has always been the phone and my bills have been traditionally expensive. I have been begging friends and relatives to use email as communication means, but with little success. In the last few years, things have changed for the better thanks to social networking.

Something that I thought was mere perception from my own experience, it is actually confirmed in a recent study published by L’Espresso, an Italian weekly magazine. Italians love online social networking (not just the younger generations) and the sense of community that these web sites create.

Even though the study was conducted on 1,326 social networking users, some results should certainly get the attention of marketers and online travel gurus:

• 93,70% of people surveyed are on Facebook
• 97,20% use e-mail, 79,30% instant messenger, 49,40% forum
• 44,30% check their profile on their favorite social networking web site daily
• 58,70% use social networking web sites to keep in touch with friends,
• 46,30% use social networking to share information.
• 40,70% think that social networking web sites are an effective promotional tool for work related activities
• 45% find information through social networking web sites

The study does not cover the impact of Twitter in Italy. I have seen some professionals and journalists using it, but its adoption – I believe – is still in its infancy. This might change soon since Twitter recently announced an Italian version of the web site. In spite of the fact that social networking web sites have become so big in Italy, businesses (including – above all – travel) are not catching up and are missing on a big opportunity to have their marketing message on steroids with a minimal investment.

An increasing number of tourist offices are turning creative with social networking. A 19-road trip launched on December 12, 2008 brought the mobile studio of the New Zealand Tourist Office from Auckland to other parts of the country. This initiative resulted into a collection of thousands of video interviews to tourists. You can imagine the rest… I have only one issue with this campaign: I cannot embed the videos!

Here are more links about the campaign they ran:

Tourist buzz gets around New Zealand
Tourists get chance to rave about New Zealand
New Zealand video raves

I was on Twitter and learned about this social marketing tool called Community of Sweden launched by VisitSweden. Here is what Bloghound writes.

Here’s a great example of an online community that delivers on its business objectives. I just got back from Scandinavia (Denmark) and want to go back after joining CommunityofSweden.com, the community that is part of VisitSweden, the official Swedish tourism site.

I would be repetitive to write what laready has been said. To read the entire post, visit Bloghound.com

[youtube width="325" height="244"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcXM5LdgWp4[/youtube]

Brand: ENIT (Italian Tourist Board)

Execution: A one-minute youtube video that displays numerous Italian tourist highlights: from the Coliseum to Sicily, from Florence to Naples to name a few. ENIT (the Italian Tourist Board) commissioned a 10 million euro ($13 million) international advertising campaign called Italia Much More to reinvigorate its stagnating tourist industry and attract more international visitors.

Description: The video is divided in three parts (Rome, Venice and Naples) that can be shown separately.  Each one of these segments is introduced briefly by a specific target market (even though it does not look that clear): Rome by a group of friends, Venice by a couple, Naples by a family. At the end, the video directs people to the www.italiamuchmore.com web site, which is just a landing page where you can watch the video and where you can find the links to the US, German and British Italian tourist boards.

What We Like: Italy is Italy and every screenshot you use… It is going to be beautiful.

What We Don’t: However, there is more of what we do not like here. The video is overloaded with sequences of sightseeing that are distracting. In spite of the fact that the three different parts of the video are introduced by 1) a group of friends, 2) a couple and 3) a family, the message to the audience is diluted. The whole thing does not speak to the senses. It does not connect to any specific lifestyle since it is more “look at me and I cool I am” sort of thing rather than see what we could experience together.
The landing page where the video directs looks on the cheap and does not invite to any call to action, but displays the URLs of the markets this campaign pursues. Plus, it is not search engine friendly: the title displays ENIT (I challenge any American, German or British visitor to guess what ENIT stands for) and does not use meta description, metanames and metatags in the HTML source.

Conclusions: A wasted opportunity for Italy. Much less of the sightseeing would have been better too.

[youtube width="325" height="244"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIqGYRuvbk[/youtube]

The Swiss Tourism Board posted a video announcing that it was seeking volunteers to join the Association of Mountain Cleaners. The video claimed, “The Association of Mountain Cleaners… makes sure that our holiday guests can always enjoy perfect mountains. Using brooms, brushes, water and muscle power, they clean the rocks of any bird droppings.”

At the end of the video, visitors to myswitzerland.com were invited to take a mountain cleaner aptitude test and submit their name for a chance to win a week’s holiday in Switzerland.

They got tons of media coverage around the world. No kidding. Simply smart!