Guidelines on most innovative practices for the promotion and commercialisation of Sustainable Tourist Destinations

In present times, the change of global trends in marketing and the development of digital technologies—electronic tools, systems, devices and resources that generate, store or process data, such as social media, online games and multimedia—represents an ideally unlimited source of opportunities for the promotion and marketing of tourist destinations.

Official institutions and private organisations focus on innovation, digital technologies and creativity to promote and commercialise a tourism destination. At the same time, on the demand side, the planning of a trip tends to take place almost totally, if not exclusively, online. This occurs, for instance, from the search for the destination to the first approach to the monuments to visit, or from hotel reservations and ticket purchases to the share of travel diaries and feedback on hotels and attractions.

Therefore, destination management organisations (DMOs) and destination management companies (DMCs) have a new way to promote products and destinations which is much more effective and less expensive than traditional off-line campaigns. Digital technology also provides them the opportunity to analyse the users’ profiles, the modalities of interaction and the preferences to monitor and regularly boost the campaigns’ effectiveness. Among other advantages, it is worth mentioning that online promotion and commercialisation can reach highly segmented targets. Here, it is also important to highlight that the new EU Programmes—such as the EU Recovery Plan and Next Generation EU—demonstrate clear attention towards online communication. In such a case, the creation and implementation of digital strategies align future projects with the new EU financial schemes.

However, we cannot talk about tourism digital marketing without addressing the importance of the online presence and reputation of companies and tourist destinations. The online experience is itself part of the tourist offering, as it communicates to the users (potential or former visitors) all the values of the destination’s culture and emotions. Consequently, a good user online experience is perceived by tourists as a guarantee. This said, companies working in the tourism and travel industry should be continuously updated about the tools and strategies of tourism marketing to increase their visibility, involve and retain customers, and support users’ knowledge acquisition. This manual provides guidelines and recommendations for small and emerging destinations to support them in the decision-making process related to their promotion and commercialisation.

These guidelines also consider the sectoral crisis due to COVID-19. The rules of social distancing imposed by the COVID-19 emergency have indeed strongly penalised many sectors that are based on human relations and on the reception of people. This crisis in some ways accelerates the adoption of new strategies in communication, which are necessarily based on online strategies. The recommendations of this document aim to support the decision-making process of potential new tourist destinations about the implementation of effective digital marketing.

Recommendations are based on a qualitative analysis involving seven case studies which have been chosen for their uniqueness and creativity in the use of digital technologies, and considering the characteristics and needs of the ENI CBC MED Med Pearls project. The common denominator throughout the case studies is the replicability of their practices to other potential tourist destinations.