Edinburgh destination marketing – when will DMOs will stop recreating the wheel

Here’s a lovely story from an associate of ours- perhaps we should be empowering our University travel and hospitality students to ‘rescue’ Edinburgh’s destination sell and marketing which is pretty average at best for such an outstanding eclectic destination – - and in an extremely cost effective way – I remember when marketing Margate was an Apprentice (TV) challenge and the solutions the contestants came up with in a few hours would have saved days of inflated consultant’s fees —- read on

‘When will DMOs will stop recreating the wheel’ – I love this prediction and its about time someone beats the drum.

The problem is “re-paying” for the re-invention of wheels that are already rolling.

I have a great story about this. One of our local destination marketers got a technology grant and put out a $9,000 RFP for an interactive map to serve about 60 POIs. I had one of my team scrape their data and make their map for them as part of my bid. I mean, why not? It took all of an hour and I offered the DMO the map for free if they used their windfall grant to fund a far more comprehensive solution.

With a free and operating map in hand, they went with another vendor. When they rolled-out their new $9,000 map—a product that any of my university cartography students could have knocked out in a few hours as a class project—the DMO proudly solicited commentary. I happily obliged—linking them to an $89 WordPress template that did interactive maps, websites, reviews, spatial queries, an itinerary builder, and about 20 other things.

There’s a lesson to be learned here that has nothing to do with how to stop scratching my head in wonder. It has to do with a real challenge—folding capacities—many of which already exist—into affordable frameworks the way that mega-players do while adding capacities as means to respond to or drive global destination markets.