"Discovering" new Opportunities on the Web

The 7 September 2006 edition of the Zeitgeist Z-news...

My head is still swimming from last month's exceptionally content-rich TIA/ ESTO event in Minneapolis (and I’m not easily impressed)...and I wanted to alert you to an upcoming move by TIA which might have a long-term impact on a Destination Marketing Organization's choice of web addresses.

Over the next few months, TIA will move from "SeeAmerica.org" to "DiscoverAmerica.com." As they explained the rationale to members of the National Council of Destination Organizations, they suggested that "Discover" resonates with more publics than the generic "See" or "Visit" prefixes. And, they intend to become very aggressive in advancing the "DiscoverAmerica.com" URL.

In the absence of a clear standard for DMO URLs, we believe acquiring "Discover(yourdestination).com" would be a prudent move for DMOs, if for nothing more than maintaining a defensive posture against those third-parties that might want to stake a claim in the on-line battle for internet real estate.

We know that many DMOs have acquired "Visit(yourdestination).com"...and we strongly urge them to retain that URL over time. Along with "(yourdestination).com," it is still the most common style being used in America today. However, if TIA is successful in actually branding "DiscoverAmerica.com" over the next few years, consumers may begin assuming that they can type "Discover" and the name of the destination for which they want information in order to be transported to your site.

Just as the new .travel TLD hopes that typing the destination name and then .travel will become a standard default practice by consumers, we believe TIA hopes the same will occur with "Discover."

If your DMO has already secured yours, congratulations. If not, $8.95/year (at GoDaddy) is a small price to pay for acquiring the “Discover(yourdestination).com” option in case TIA's new “brand” catches on.

And, along that line, I had the chance to speak briefly with Tralliance's Ron Andruff in Minneapolis about the exciting evolution of the .travel TLD. You should know that Tralliance is currently beta testing a new travel specific search engine at www.search.travel. When the kinks get worked out, this engine will give ranking preference to destinations with .travel domains, thus becoming the only search engine that will provide top rankings to "official" DMOs and Tourism Offices. And that's yet another reason for DMOs to grab their .travel domains.

And finally, you may have heard that the folks behind Wikipedia have just launched World Wikia, a user-generated guide to worldwide travel. In the announcement of the new service, World Wikia CEO Bill Kaufmann said, "when I'm planning a trip online, I often feel as if I'm being sold something -- when what I really want is to understand the 'on-the-ground' feeling of what a place is truly like, what the locals do there, and how people live in that region. With World Wikia, we are looking to both residents and to people who have been there before to provide that ground's-eye-view of cities throughout the world." In other words, he's saying that the consumer can't trust the DMO to be straight with them.

And...maybe he's right. But what will stop savvy travel marketers from logging on and uploading the same sales pablum Bill seeks to avoid? I asked just that and his response was a confident: "I'm not worried about the sales-ish aspect of the information because, over time, biases tend to get eroded by the wiki community. If some facet of a locale or vendor is oversold, readers who have been there will eventually adjust it. My preference would be for tourism bureaus and travel agents to establish user pages on World Wikia and offer knowledge and contact information to the community. But if they end up posing as travelers, the community will still edit their information."

And, ain't that the truth? It's no longer about what we, as the "official" (or, in the case of the .travel registry, the "authentic") voice of the destination say. It's what today's consumer's peers say. Technology has allowed us all to have a voice that can be heard where once only mainstream media could tread. Everybody has an opinion, a soapbox and a blog.

Technology as a way to make life easier? For marketers, it's made it harder as we're now "competing" with TripAdvisor.com and World Wikia. Here's hoping that "Discover" and .travel start providing stressed consumers an easier path to our destinations.

Bill

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