A Game Changer for DMOs

No doubt about it. Google has developed a game changer with its new City Tours app. And, as Travel 2.0's Troy quipped, "yeah...they beat you to it."

Enter a city in the search box and you are rewarded with a mapped out itinerary for a day or more of your visit. Naturally, bigger destinations have more robust choices...and Google still has some work to do to make the walking tours customizable and logical. But, I have no doubt that they will...and quickly.

Last Thursday one of their itineraries included a walk across my city's largest lake. By Friday, it had been corrected.

Once again, the question of DMO relevance is being posed. Will we be the trusted source of information and recommendations...or merely content providers to private sector companies that are figuring out how to monetize destination marketing?

Comments

[Reyn]

partners if we're both smart. DMO's need aps, Google for sure now with Telenet needs content support. You probably noticed they suddenly went back to the dark ages by using zip codes for locations. Zip codes haven't been a reliable source for physical locations since oh, 1990.

[Troy Thompson]

Thanks for the mention Bill.

That sort of sums it up, they beat us to it.

- Troy

[Maura Gast]

If the only value we as DMOs bring to every table is "information provider," we can and will and should be replaced.

Relevance is in the eye of the beholder and as long as we keep telling ourselves, our funding sources and our customers that we are (only) about "information," we can and will and should be replaced. See Newspaper Industry.

[Ryan George]

A customer asked for my thoughts on this post, so here goes. As always, Maura has an excellent point...

I would just add that DMOs will learn to fight to their strengths. They provide SERVICES that are often subsidized by bed tax and other co-op dollars that often make them free to a meeting planner or traveler. Sure, Google's foray is "free" to the user as well, but DMOs provide humans in visitors' centers, registration, housing, signage, front line training for better visitor experiences, and real local insight, which is often better for a particular purpose than even almighty social media.

Plus, someone still has to get the user to type "Charlottesville" in to one of Google's amazing widgets and few are better positioned than DMOs to spread that word...