1. The DMO of the future Team Exercise 4 Davide Antonelli, Mirko Chianesi, Andrea Scacchioli, Stefania Sossi, Simone Marco Vaglica
2. Whatis a tourismdestination? “A destinationis a space (city, region, major hotel), whichischosenby the guestas the goal ofhistravel. The destinationincludesallfacilitiesnecessaryforaccommodation, catering and entertainment/occupation”1. “A destinationis a pattern ofattractions, relatedtourismfacilities and services, which the tourist or a groupchoosesfor a visitation and which service provider markets”2. Bieger, T., Management von Destinatione und Tourismorganisationem. 2. ed. 1997, Munchen: Oldenburg WTO, SustainableTourismDevelopment. Guide forLocalPlaners. 1993, Madrid
17. A “builder of community pride” byenhancingqualityof life and actingas the chief “flagcarrier” forresidents and visitorsalike.3. Morrison, Bruen and Anderson - 1998
33. On line travel agencies are real travel agencies which run their business only on the web. Some of these OTAs are now becoming true giants of the travel intermediation (i.e. Travelocity, Expedia, Booking.com).
34. Furthermore, airlines are cooperating to develop new portals for online selling (i.e. Opodo, Orbitz) which, thanks to the technical possibilities offered by the GDS, want to increase their market shares, competing against travel agents on costs’ structure.
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36. Social Media (i.e. Trip Advisor, Facebook, Twitter) have changed the way to interact, business and people have become a lot more “open”, having now the possibility to share information and opinions.
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39. THE DMO OF THE FUTURE DMOs will have Virtual Spaces in which customers would be able to interact with the product and “taste” or “simulate their trip experience in advance (Web 2.0) DMOs will have a Social media strategy: With their presence on Social Media they will reach obviously the enormous number of members, they will have useful real-time feedbacks and the possibility to benefit from e-word-of-mouth and other indirect mean of advertisement and communication.
40. THE DMO OF THE FUTURE DMOs will be Mobile: They would develop new apps for mobile device softwares (i.e. Apple, Android) in order to give an “interactive destination service” to their customers. These apps would provide real-time updated information about history, museums, emergency, attractions, hospitality, restaurant daily menus to the customer, directly from the palm of his hand. DMOs will continue to receive Public and private funds: Their core work is not so easily replicable, so public government won’t to loose these powerful allies. Furthermore partnerships between DMOs and new tourism actors (OTAs, Social Media, etc) will continue to growth.
41. CONCLUSION The increased Tourism’ complexity described in the slide before, means that DMOs would have to be taken more seriously and professionally. DMOs would become an elite of people. Their unique skills, experiences and professional attributes with the higher flexibility and technological power will create a very different but more powerful and evolved structure able to lead its destination through this always changing and challenging future .