Reason 2 - Highlighting local distinctiveness #tourismlove

We thought we would take this opportunity to share what we, the team at The Marketing Collective, enjoy about working in tourism and how we’re championing the industry.

Reason 2 – Highlighting local distinctiveness

With every destination or project in which we work, our role is to identify the local distinctiveness and the opportunities to develop unique destination marketing campaigns.Every destination is different and understanding the local distinctiveness is what can make it stand out and provide a competitive edge over neighboring areas. It provides visitors with a ‘sense of place’ and with more understanding, thus creating more experiences.Visitors want to feel connected to destinations and they want experiences, which allow insight and understanding in a ‘locals way of life’. Often the more ‘quirky’ and intriguing stories are those that visitors are more likely to seek rather than the variety of things to do in any one place.By identifying the local distinctiveness and using it a base for working in collaboration it can help destinations to:

1. Connect with visitors and build loyalty through emotive destination marketing.
2. Encourage visitors to stay longer in one destination by visiting a number of related attractions or venues.
3. Increase visitor spend by keeping visitors longer and providing enriched experiences.
4. Attract more visitors via word of mouth – if visitors have had a good experience, learnt an interesting fact or perhaps can retell a quirky story about a destination it provides intrigue to family and friends and encourage word of mouth marketing.

Through our work with Test Valley Borough Council in the publishing and production of the Test Valley Visitor Guide, we focus our copywriting around the local distinctiveness of the area. For 2016 this has included a focus on the wines and beers produced in the area which include Danebury Vineyard, Cottonworth Vineyard, Flack Manor and Betteridges Brewery - all provide something different to what a visitor to the Test Valley may expect and feature in a new leaflet.Another include the destination branding of the Hamble Valley, which has the strapline: ‘the strawberry coast” The area has a long association with the harvest of the highly esteemed soft fruit. In the early part of the 20th century, the strawberry fields in the area produced around 20,000 strawberries a day. Trains called ‘Strawberry Specials’ out of Botley delivered the strawberries to London’s premier hotels. Linking in with this heritage a number of projects have linked with the local distinctiveness including a Strawberry Trail walking route, food festivals, heritage walks and talks. Local distinctiveness doesn’t just have to relate to the heritage of the area, it can include:

• The local industry and what is produced
• Flora, fauna and the natural environment
• Buildings and structures
• People and traditions

At The Marketing Collective we love delving into the quirky and unusual and can provide toolkits and workshops for destinations to help identify what the local distinctiveness is and how it can be used within destination marketing.