The launch of STB’s new brand and digital strategy has gotten travel bloggers talking. Some call it innovative, one wonders whether it is too whizzy. The proof is in the durian pudding, as we may say in “YourSingapore”. Yeoh Siew Hoon picks on the buzz after last week’s launch.
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) launched their new brand, “YourSingapore”, and digital strategy at ITB Berlin, the world’s largest travel trade fair yesterday, and already the blogosphere is abuzz with chatter.
Following WIT’s posting and its posting in TNooz, travel technology pundits have shared their comments on the move by a tourism board to move towards a customer-direct and largely digital approach.
Jeremy Head, who runs the Travel Blather blog, commented, “I was in Singapore for the launch of their previous ‘Uniquely Singapore’ brand around 5 years back and remember most of us were a tad underwhelmed. It felt very ‘me too’.
“This conversely looks genuinely groundbreaking and smart too. Would love to know what it cost. It can’t have been cheap. First glance and I’m genuinely impressed… wonder if it will be problematic on slower connections though? It’s quite a heavy site – lots of elements.”
And that’s one of the most common comments coming through about the new website. There are a lot of images on the home page and as attractive as it looks, it can be quite overwhelming for someone, especially someone who’s never been to Singapore.
Sitting in a hotel room in Berlin with fairly fast Internet access, it took more than 30 seconds to download all images. What happens in markets with slow broadband networks?
Kevin May, editor of TNooz, agreed, saying, “There’s a lot in this but one also wonders whether there’s also whizziness for the sake of it. A few months in will determine whether the interaction and engagement will have worked.”
Mark Barry said it was “interesting to see that a Destination Tourism Office would use a travel meta search engine like Wego.com for hotel and flight bookings. I guess a meta search engine is a logical solution for Gov Tourism sites as they are in theory non biased to travel suppliers.”
And he applauded, “Great to see a Gov Tourism Organization being so innovative.”
Joe Buhler, at http://buhlerworks.com/wordpress/, congratulated the STB for “taking a bold step in the right direction by moving the web to the core of their marketing activities and not consider it just another underfunded tool competing for funding in the traditional marketing mix”.
“That is no longer the strategy for success in the second decade of the 21st Century. The web, and increasingly the social web, is where – as their research shows – a large number of their customers already are and where they have to be engaging with them in a smart way. This, at first glance, is what they attempt to do. What is also necessary by now is to offer potential visitors an easy way to book their trip right when they are motivated to do so on a DMO site.
“Now, if only they had named the site “MySingapore”, it would have been perfect for ME as an aspiring visitor to the city state.”
Certainly, STB stands out among tourism boards that are doing something innovative and different. When you attend an event like ITB Berlin, you appreciate first-hand the competition out there among destinations.
The halls are packed with tourism boards who have invested millions in their booths, all trying to fight for attention from a market that’s still not yet fully recovered from the economic shocks of 2009.
Germany may be one of the more resilient markets – Germans are hardy travellers and the economy is still holding steady – but Europe is on shaky ground with problems besetting Greece and the UK, one of the top outbound markets from Asia is floundering.
In many ways, STB by coming with “YourSingapore” is acknowledging the transfer of power from supplier to customer. Let the customer decide what they want from us; let’s just tell them what we have and make it easy for them to research, plan and book – that’s the essence of the new STB campaign.
Some brand owners may baulk at the notion of giving up such control – and if you sit back and think for a moment, it’s ironic that this is coming from Singapore, a city state known more for its controls than lack of – but this is the age of social media, the wisdom of the crowd (whatever there is) and crowd outsourcing.
But let’s face it, of course, it is natural of course for digital media proponents to applaud the new website but what about traditional tour operators who are already facing battles with airlines and hotels who are increasingly going direct?
To get the other side of the story, I asked a leading European tour operator, who did not want to be named, what he thought of the STB move to encourage consumers to plan their own trips and book on its website.
Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “Everyone’s going that way. Airlines are going direct and soon hotels will too. We have to find a way to adapt.”
For STB, the road to “YourSingapore” has just begun. Now they have to make sure the road leads somewhere, and not some dead end.
