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I recently read a travel story about ‘Chuppies’ – a buzz word to describe “Chinese Yuppies” – a group who describe Australia as their number one destination.

This got me thinking as to the many buzz words associated with, or created by, the tourism industry.  Here are a few of my personal favourites:

Photourism – taking a tour guided by a photographer with people who share an interest in photography.  The purpose is to return home with the ultimate image gallery.  This one I made up myself, not unlike many of the below which we can assume have been dreamt up by PRs!…

Voluntourism – a holiday mixed with a stint of volunteering, popular in developing countries.

Babymoon – the last holiday a couple will take before their baby is born.

Bizcation – combining a business trip with a vacation.

Staycation  - taking a vacation in your hometown by exploring the tourism attractions whilst saving on accommodation.

Glamping – camping without roughing it (glamorous camping).

Flashpacking – backpacking without roughing it (flash backpacks).

Paliday – a holiday with your best friend.

Weddingmoon – when a wedding and honeymoon combine.

Sabbat-packers – grown up gap year travellers.  This one was popular with those taking a sabbatical from work due to the global financial crisis.

Liecations –lying about being on vacation to hide the fact you are spending a week being lazy at home.

Most of my work in communications involves policy advocacy for global health and  development issues. Last week, I served on a panel at the Corporate Council on Africa’s bi-annual conference in Washington. The subject of the session was how to reposition Africa as a tourist destination.

At first glance, tourism and development  might seem to have little in common. But nothing could be further from the truth. For many African countries, tourism provides a major source of foreign exchange and foreign direct investment, and it is a major money earner in the “formal sector” (i.e., the sector of the economy that provides wage employment, is “on the books,” and generates tax revenues that can fund development).

The challenge is that Africa currently earns very little from tourism relative to other world regions.  (Go to the web sites of the UN’s World Tourism Organization and the World Travel & Tourism Council for more information.) While some African countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa enjoy significant proceeds from tourism, the scale of their revenues just doesn’t compare to destinations in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.

How can African countries turn this around? I think the solution requires a mixture of tried-and-true approaches to destination marketing, as well as a  disciplined approach to: (1) recruiting a broader array of brand ambassadors, and (2) getting the bulk of African news off the front page. (More on that second, seemingly counterintuitive, point below.)

The tried-and-true approach includes a combination of proactive marketing and reactive crisis communications.  This means that African national tourism boards still need to invest in marketing their countries via multiple media channels, trade shows, and events, but they also need to develop effective crisis communications plans that empower brand managers to respond to crises when they arise and take steps to reassure the public and the tourism industry.

In regard to recruiting a broader array of brand ambassadors, I believe that there are four key markets to engage.  First, there are high-net-worth Americans, Europeans, and Asians who are looking for the vacation of a lifetime.  The African tourism sector can target this group with vacation packages that highlight the five-star quality of many African vacations and the unique qualities of a holiday in the Serengeti, or Kruger, or by the boiling waters of Victoria Falls.

Second, African tourism boards can target what I will call - for lack of a better expression - the “backpacker set.”  These are the twenty-something experiential tourists, the returned Peace Corps Volunteers, the American and European university students who pick Ghana or South Africa for their semester abroad, and medical and nursing students who want to practice their professions in communities that need access to primary health care.

If we can target this set when they are young - using the social media channels that are their most credible source of information - we can convert them to the cause and create lifetime brand ambassadors.  This younger set can also sing the praises of destinations that are stilll off the beaten track for high-net-worth tourists - like the beautiful hillsides overlooking the Zambezi inland delta in Mongu, Zambia or the rugged shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

A third critical target audience are African Americans who are seeking to reconnect to their heritage.  The west African tourist industry in particular can benefit by working with African American destination marketers to create tourism packages that highlight 500 years of cultural connection between west Africa and the Americas.

A fourth target audience is the sizable population of first- and second-generation African immigrants to America who maintain strong connections to their countries of origin and can broaden the conversation about Africa beyond landmarks, flora, and fauna to contemporary conversations about music, food, fabrics, and art.

This brings me to my counterintutive observation.  People who think about Africa’s image in the world often say that Africa never makes front page news unless the story relates to war, disease, hunger, or hardship.  While this statement oversimplifies matters (and is a definite reflection of the specific tone and focus of media coverage in the U.S., UK, and Germany), it also bears real elements of truth.

I believe that we need to change the image of Africa by investing in a rebranding process that features more stories - stories that appear in the Food Section, the Business Section, the Style Section, and, yes, the Travel Page.  We need to start telling new stories - based on credible facts - about Africa’s economic growth over the past decade, about Africa’s unrivalled biodiversity, about Africa’s potential leadership in the production of organic foods and materials, about Africa’s diverse cuisine and innovative music scenes (in Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya).

Telling new and surprising stories is key to repositioning Africa as something other than front-page tragedy.  Front pages are normally reserved for crises, wherever they happen, and it’s time to get the bulk of African news off the front page.

World Travel Market – the colossal b2b travel trade event held each year in London’s Docklands- and I will both be celebrating our 30^th birthdays this November, so I thought that it was time I expressed my long-held secret love for the show that costs me my sanity every year.

There’s plenty of reasons for the British travel PR to hate November – not seeing daylight for four entire days, existing on a Morgan Spurlock-style diet of pastries, realising your client is half a mile away from the waiting journalist who you have BEGGED and compromised yourself in five different ways for an interview, I could go on, but I’ve still got to admit that I really quite love WTM week and there’s two main reasons for that:

Firstly, it’s a bit like Ready…Steady…PR! A little holiday from all that strategising, taking the long view, etc. You’ve got a tiny bit of budget, about 3 working days, an eye-watering level of competition from every other travel PR in London but your client is only here for 2 days so it’s well worth pulling something impressive out of the bag. My number one career highlight happened at WTM: back in 2007 I was in the mobile radio studio with Carlos Alberto, captain of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning team. Slightly demented with caffeine, I found myself shedding a little tear as he described the team effort that went into one of the world’s all time greatest goals. It’s not often that you get to sit in a 3ft-wide caravan with a legend.

Secondly, it’s the age-old desire of human beings to get together in one place, have a drink and dish the dirt. Maybe I’m a bit sad, but WTM is one of the few weeks in my year when I’m greeted by more than one person who I know but haven’t seen for a while. Just like the early Britons embraced Christmas because there was already a Pagan celebration to break up the winter misery a bit, no matter how much the travel trade socialises and sells online, I reckon WTM will always be a relevant focal point of the year. Anyone else feel the same? What’s the US version of WTM like?

As we all know, 2009 has been a hard year for almost everyone. There are very few corners of the globe that have not been effected by the crisis. The economic downturn has left many countries in or on the verge of recessions/depressions. To compound these matters, the threat of H1N1 (aka swine flu) is leaving some countries worse off than others.

 
Take Mexico for example. They were at the epicenter of the outbreak and the fall-out has been devastating to their economy. Mexico’s claim that the H1N1 virus emanated from Asia  seems to have fallen on deaf ears as Mexico’s economy, which relies heavily on tourist dollars, has been suffering since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus. As a result, vacations to Mexico are cheaper than they have been in years. Forbes  is reporting that Travel-Ticker is offering over 20 Mexican vacations up to70% off.

Since amazing travel deals alone are not luring the tourists in, Mexico is using social media to entice travelers back to Mexico with its “Believe It” campaign. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History has signed an agreement with Google Mexico to promote archeological and historical sites. This is not a bad idea because according to Trip Advisors 2009 travel trends, 87% of travelers will visit a historical site on vacation. In addition to partnering with Google to showcase the plethora of historical gems in Mexico, they have started a channel on Youtube.com to further showcase their historical landmarks They will also be launching advertising campaigns in 12 major U.S. markets and six in Canada.

There are many communication lessons that can be learned from Mexico’s H1N1 fiasco. Had they handled their communications better from the beginning (apparently blaming Asia did not work) they might have avoided the swine flu’s name metamorphosis into the ‘Mexican flu’ .  Waiting four months to tell the world Mexico is a a safe place to travel might not have been the best idea. We encourage our clients to have crisis plans in place for just these reasons. However, their use of social media to launch a recovery campaign shows how serious they are about revitalizing their image as a safe place with amazing beaches and fabulous historical sites. “Mexico and its tourism sector have proven yet again that we are resilient to crisis,” says Oscar Fitch, CEO of the Mexico Tourism Board. “Not only are we back up and running and receiving tourists every day, but we are showing the world that this administration represents responsibility.”