Securing the right types of employees for a business is an ongoing need for companies, particularly companies that employ youth who work various jobs as stepping stones to their career.  In a tight labour market where money is only part of the reason why people choose one place of employ over another you much focus on communicating the ‘ideal employee’ as as much as you do your ‘ideal guest’.

Wildplay Element Park in British Columbia has released a VIMEO video, using the voices of their staff, to explain what the various staff positions are in their company and to provide prospective employees a sense of what it is like to work there.  Take a peak and then see if this represents an opportunity for your business.  Because, in case you haven’t noticed the ‘classified ads’ for employment are not the place most people go to find a job these days!  Link a video like this to your website where you post employment opportunities or link to online employment searches and voila – your voice/company image and invitation is extended. Note, this video is a ‘conversation’ about what is it like to work there – not the sales pitch to apply. Subtle difference to be aware of.

If so, you may be interested in this recent report by Industry Canada titled “Mobile Commerce – New Experiences, Emerging Consumer Issues.” A few teasers as you think about the use of mobile technology for your tourism business.

• 44% of Canadians send/receive text messages
• 11% send/receive emails via a wireless phone
• Canadians are ’slower starters’ than folks in other countries
• 65% of 16- 17 year olds are the main user of a cellphone in a household — think about who is your target market – can you reach them … or not with this method.

Lots more info and facts your’s for the taking, it’s free and informative.

Experiential travel is about engaging travellers in a series of memorable travel activities, revealed over time, that are inherently personal, engage the senses and make connections on an emotional, physical, spiritual or intellectual level. Well that can be done as well online when you are cyber travelling.

This morning I took the TravelPod IQ Challenge - what fun. In a fun ‘click what you know’ game I went through lots of categories – with a time limit to get the brain adrenaline going (engage the senses) in wicked categories such as capital cities of the world, famous places, countries and more. They have UNESCO sites, flags of the world and many fun categories. It tests your knowledge of geography (intellect), takes 5 minutes depending on how many questions you answer right (revealed over time), and reminded me that I know most of the world but struggled on one continent- but I won’t tell you which one (inherently personal)!

Give it a try and see how well you do. The point is it was fun, engaging, didn’t take a lot of time, allowed for an on-line experience and got me thinking — how could you use this for your tourism business?  Here’s a few ideas:

1.  Develop a mini quiz for your destination/region – highlight the things that make your area special.

2. Prepare some mini vignettes of artists and artisans in your area, expose them in video and stills and see who can guess the special people in your area.

3. Take photos of spectacular places – from the well known, to the locals-know and see who can guess them.

4.  Connect visitors with GPS coordinates between cool things to do and engage them in finding them.

5.  Make your own widget!

I could go on, but I challenge to take the quiz, play a little and then make a comment on this blog about other ways to adapt this type of an online experience for your business, in your community!

Tourism is a dynamic industry that often employee youth and young adults in front-line and management training positions – it’s a natural!  If we do it well, we retain them and our industry flourishes with quality and talent of new tourism professionals.  Yet, each major demographic cohort is a little different.  Books such a Rocking the Ages, Chips & Pop, Sex in the Snow, and Boom, Bust and Echo have, over the years provided insights for business to examine social values as it impacts generational marketing, the values of consumers and impacts of demographic shifts to enhance our thinking, our business, our ability to succeed.

We are familiar with Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), Generation X (born between 1968 and 1982 depending on the source) and now there is emerging focus on Millenials (1979 – 1997). As they represent a large part of the tourism workforce and our future customer base, take time to get to know a little more about this cohort.

The Harvard Business Review has posted a report on ‘Mentoring Millennials’ that describes how different this generation is that was raised with technology, has children as young as nine producing video and posting content to the internet (something marketers are to be doing for business purposes, yet some still don’t know how or value the reasons why); and they are the multi-task generation.  So how can you benefit from these folks in your company. The authors recommenda three methods:

1.  Reverse mentoring — appreciate millennials have skills and knowledge that some Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers don’t; optimize this by having them mentor managers and help advance their skill set; rather than rely on the traditional top-down approach to mentoring; and

2.  Work-life balance and a sense of purpose is important — if you are a Baby Boomer, raised by parents of the from the Protestant Work Ethic generationyou may be struggling with work/life balance. Gen X’ers are getting it, Millennials require it.  As a manager you have to truly set out to appreciate what they value and need in a work environment, and then align with opportunities. You don’t have to change your business – as millennials have to learn to ‘fit in’ as well but you do need to be congnizant and use their interests as a trigger to review practice and policy to see if it can be contemporized for today’s employee base.

Remember though that baby boomer still represent a great, under-tapped value proposition for tourism businesses.  Senior people and those with incredible skill sets are starting to say “hey I don’t want to work 60 hours a week’  ”I want to do something that is personally rewarding”  and as a result are happy to take entry positions or lower level positions as part of a partial or retirement strategy.  This needs as much thinking and consideration about ‘what they value’ as do other generational cohorts.  In the end, like your customers, they need/want different things – extend this thinking to your employees and you will be ahead of the game.

Last week I was invited to return to my former place of employment at Royal Roads University to speak to a dynamic group of undergraduate students in the BA in International Hotel Management program about the Customer Experience. They are just about to embark on their 12-week internship program to practice in industry what they have learned in the classroom.

I took them through a series of activities that first began to ‘think like a traveller’, then a careful listening exercise to understand the value of ‘hearing’ what customers are saying. We then reflected on our best and worst travel experiences, analyzing the powerful words and emotions that emerge, and concluded with an interactive session of creativity, engagement and teamwork to respond to a ‘consumer challenge’.

Too often as operators we are so busy ‘running the business’ we forget to stop and think like a traveler, think like our customer, remember what makes travel meaningful, and allowing time to create and innovate.

One of the key messages was the importance of active listening to your guests. In a busy world, sometimes we listen, but do not hear.  Listening with purpose is a valuable tool for operators that can provide a wealth of information about your guests that you will never get from a ’satisfaction’ survey which typically rates only a few elements of your business and doesn’t even touch on ‘their travel experience’. Satisfaction surveys represent supply side thinking and the results do little to inform product or market development.  In contrast, meaningful conversations and listening to your guests provides rich insight that can validate current activities, staff contributions, operations. Careful listening can also help you understand ‘where travellers have been and where they are going’ which can provide valuable insight into travel patterns and the additional types of activities and places your visitors go. This in turn may create new opportunities for collaboration, partnerships, or cluster marketing to niche markets.

OpenForum just posted a blog titled “Listen to your customers” and the key message is the same as the one I was emphasizing with our future tourism colleagues.

When I developed the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management programs at Royal Roads University, during an earlier chapter of my career, the same principle applied — before developing anything, we did the traditional market research, but then engaged in months of active questioning and listening with key audiences of our future programs — people who would enrol in them (students!) and industry folks that would hire them (employers!) to ensure we truly understand the needs of those choosing a career in tourism and hospitality, as well as those that would be hiring graduates.  What was learned through careful listening and being able to respond to the market place was a large range of program ’shifts’ – packaging we call in it tourism, to an educational product.  We adjusted the start times of programs to accommodate for seasonality in the industry, internships for undergraduates were set to the end of the program to allow work experience, then an immediate transfer into the workforce in the fall, when other staff my be departing. At the graduate level we planned courses and residencies (short face-to-face periods of study that complement the online learning) to work around major industry events that would compete with the time of working professionals. Professors were able to accommodate assignment dates around major industry events … and the list goes one.  These evolutions not only created the USP – unique selling proposition — it responded to what industry needed. Listening was the key to learning– then with the traditional market research, we were able to confirm the details of the content, test seasonality interests and ensure we introduced an innovative model for graduate education – the Network Model.

All businesses can benefit from listening. You don’t need a PhD or a professional market research firm to do so, rather you just need  a system to record what you learn and ensure the questions are relevant. Most importantly, you have to be willing to ‘do something’ with what you learn. Product and market innovation requires the desire and ability to things differently and to take measured risks. Organizations must be willing to support the full development and implementation cycle, allowing time to tweak and refine in the early years. If results are different, or slower than anticipated, it is far less expensive to adjust than to toss away your investment and look for a new golden egg.

Active listening to your customers is a valuable market research tool  to gain insight and knowledge.  The ability, time and corporate climate to allow the use of this information to evolve what you are doing is vital.

What happens when a nation has a dream and takes collective action? They get stuff done! In 1999 the Canadian Tourism Commission struck a task-force on Learning and Enrichment Travel. They brought together industry and government to examine “How we could raise the base level of tourism in Canada”. Twelve years later we are doing it – complete with a refreshed brand for the Canadian Tourism Commission based on experiences. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were testimonial to how far we have come as a nation in portraying the richness, diversity and incredible ways to enjoy Canada!

Joggins Fossil Tour

This week, Tourism Nova Scotia released their new Experiential Tool Kit for operators!  It’s hot off the press and free! Check it out, it has great information and worksheets to help you out!  This comes on the heels of a best practices mission to Manitoba where they witnessed how experiential travel can work — an opportunity that will be afforded to delegates attending Rendezvous Canada this year!

Other recent significant milestones and resources (just to name a few as there are so many now) include:

2010 – Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation invested in a customized experiential travel training program in Cypress Hills for their Parks staff and local community members as they look to anchoring experiences into their tourism strategy moving forward. Tucked into the beautiful Cypress Hills Inter-provincial Park, we enjoyed phenomenal training and guest experiences at the Medalta Historic Clay District, the Elkwater Lodge & Resort, and the Historic Reesor Ranch.  Plans to extend this opportunity are under way this year.

2010  Tourism Nova Scotia invested in a best practice mission, hosted by Earth Rhythms, to learn how experiential travel is being brokered with 50 community partners in the rural area around Riding Mountain National Park.

2010-09  Tourism New Brunswick launched their new Inner Journey’s experiential travel brand in April 2009 with a keynote address by Nancy Arsenault on “The Customer is Changing, So Must We” complete with investing in creating ‘experiential market readiness criteria’ for their new Experiences Collection! A year later, they now have 110 new experiences ‘in market’ for visitors in 2010!!
2009  Parks Canada piloted the use of the Explorer Quotient (EQ), a consumer friendly tool developed by the Canadian Tourism Commission in eight sights across Canada. Gros Morne National Park was one of the sites, and now they have a menu of a range of visitor experiences that appeal to nine different types of travellers interests!

2008-09  The Canadian Tourism Commission launched their Experiences Tool Kit for industry, a Photo guide and a number of excellent tools. They can be obtained for free, in French and English through a formal online-request. It takes a little digging around the site and separate requests to get each document, but it is worth the time.

2008  Experience PEI was launched to “create unique, personal experiences designed to provide lifelong memories” and they are doing a smash-up job, complete with community collaboration and working as a collective to “collaborate to compete”.

Zach Saccary, Retired School Teacher and Local Area Story Teller in Norris Point, NL

2007  Tales, Trails and Tunes Festival was launched in the picturesque community of Norris Point Newfoundland. A community collaboration and celebration of the wonderful musical talent of the region blended with daytime walks in spectacular Gros Morne National Park, afternoon workshops with artists and photographers, and evening entertainment by very talented local musicians and storytellers performed in churches, halls, theatres and pubs throughout Norris Point.

2005 – The Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism was created (GMIST) and the signature course “Edge of the Wedge” that delivers leading edge experiential travel training to Atlantic Canada. Twenty courses, 500+ people later, there are excellent examples of business applying the principles and making a difference!

… since the beginning of this evolution, the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site in partnership with the Halifax Citadel Regimental Association have been developing, offering and expanding the range of experiential travel programs for a wide range of FIT (fully independent travelers) to CMIT (corporate, meeting and incentive travel) groups to the site. They work in multiple sectors and optimize the assets and attributes of the historic site in admirable ways that protect and ‘present’ the site in engaging, meaningful ways, customized to different traveler interests/market segments.

I could go on and back track a decade … but this is just a sample of what is happening in Canada on the experiential tourism product and market development front and there is more to come!

What happens when you take an innovative internship coordinator  (Margaret Doyle … aka Mags), a very cool GM of a major hotel property (Martin LeClerc), great hospitality students in a BA in International Hotel Management, awesome staff at the Fairmont Empress and mix it with EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING?

RRU007 Interns demonstrate why they are a tremendous new resource to the tourism and hospitality industry as they look forward to graduate in the fall, and an award winning hotel property demonstrate their knowledge and appreciation for supporting training and education to ensure our labour force remains strong with qualified professionals!

As part of their preparations and learning, Mags set up a wonderful training and marketing opportunity for her students.  Check out the video. I love when creativity mades learning fun, uses people, technology and makes learning relevant. This is this stuff tourism is made of — innovative, entrepreneurial, creative people. Leaders dare to be different, and they are remembered for it.

Combine innovation and entrepreneurship, with a dash of creative passion and knowledge of your ‘ideal customer’ and voila – you could be on the cusp of something very exciting!  Check out these cool ideas that take the ‘ordinary’ and add a touch of the extra-ordinary!  Where’s your innovative thinking going to take your business today? 

Office Efficiency

Customized Product! Just for you

Jonathan Foster is the executive director of The Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism. Celes Davar interviews Jonathan just before the 21st edition of The Edge of the Wedge, in Gros Morne National Park. He is sitting at the Lobster Cove Lighthouse, overlooking the entrance to Bonne Bay.

Training and professional development opportunities can be a valuable investment. Jonathan shares some of the benefits and results of the training for tourism operators, from taking part in The Edge of the Wedge, Canada’s leading training program about experiential tourism.

San Clemente – a peace village hacienda in northern Ecuador from todd lucier on Vimeo.