Using Intrinsic Engagement and Wellbeing to reach visitors
Wow what a month it’s been, with continuing Covid in major areas where our visitors originate from, & border closures.
Here I sit, in one of those locked-down regions of Australia, attempting to manage the handover of part of my tourism business including a venue in regional France, which is also at risk of being up in flames from regional bush fires, the worst in the 20 years we’ve been operating there. Thank goodness it seems to have been saved this time around, though was only a couple of kilometres away from the worst of the flames.
Another venue of mine in the rainforest behind Byron Bay is in regional lockdown, stuck between the most easterly rock of Australia, and the hard border closures of Covid, and hasn’t been able to welcome tourists pretty much since Easter.
We are all feeling this I’m sure, residual stress from bushfires, weather events, and now Covid. It’s quite the longhaul exercise, keeping on top of it all, with ongoing lockdowns in Australia. Knowing full well one of the ways out of this situation may be opening up with a ‘Covid passport’ for tourism, hospitality, events, similar to the ‘Pass Sanitaire’ which has rolled out in our regional tourism area of France in recent weeks.
Meanwhile my university students keep me company via online classes, trying to keep sane in their shared bedrooms, kitchen pantries or walk-in closets – wherever’s the quietest. What do I teach?… international tourism, transformation tourism, sustainable events, leadership & the experience economy; all with a wellbeing edge. Each one of those industries has been greatly impacted for 18 months now.
I spoke at a university faculty day to 100 Academics of these sectors this week, on the importance of intrinsic engagement – the finding of a personal connection between yourself and the client (mature-age private university students in this case), how to reach out to them in the online space, find some common ground and invite them into a piece of your life which your business represents, to create authenticity and a Sense of Place.
The mental, and physical wellbeing of all of us working in regional tourism is an absolute priority, and we also need to keep this front of mind for our visitors, once the 70/80% vaccination target has been hit, and fingers crossed the state and international borders may open, as it has in the rest of the world.
I’m constantly searching for aids and resources to help inspire the way forward, connecting with visitors by intrinsic engagement & wellbeing. I thought I’d share a few current Australian initiatives that you may like to draw inspiration from, to help ready you in visitor wellbeing, & your own business wellbeing.
Wellbeing Providore from a DMO
This is a recent support initiative developed by the young innovative team at Destination Sydney Surrounds South, on what a destination can do to help their tourism community connect both personally & professionally, in an intrinsic way, using wellbeing as a channel:
3 Sessions of one-hour Online Sessions
- | Protecting our Wellbeing
- | Business Support (optional stay back and chat)
- | Opportunity Updates
This first session was presented by a health and wellbeing expert, as a ‘check-in’ session, covering the mental health impacts of a pandemic, with support and resources, including selfcare toolkits. It has featured visitor economy case studies, and the goal was for tourism owners and their employees to gain support during these challenging times.
Wellness Tourism Trail Initiative
This applies the tourism cluster model to wellbeing, where local stakeholders collaborate to develop new tourism products together. A best practice example of a Wellness Trail in current development is Visit Tweed – a region hard-hit by continuing state border closures:
“The Tweed Wellness Trail project is a new initiative to build capacity among Tweed operators and develop content to promote the area, create consumer awareness and ultimately drive visitation. Visit Tweed is committed to the development of The Tweed’s Tourism Wellness strategy and often attend Wellness Tourism Summits – they understand the emphasis on wellness – not only representing the traditional spa experience, but including sustainability, outdoor adventure and quality food & drink offerings, moving toward holistic transformational travel.”
In a region which is currently highly affected by border closures, such as the Tweed – coming up with an initiative like this is fantastic, and will drive visitor demand.
Tap into the #SeeAustralia popularity – posting about furry friends
How can regions capture the growing wellness & sustainable travellers, and what are visitors looking for? How do we drive greater spend from domestic travellers who have an interest in wellness and sustainability? Hint: you don’t have to become a yoga teacher! It’s all about clever marketing.
Australian has a huge expanse, stunning scenery changes & amazing wildlife & livestock / countryside imagery with different personas in each region – tap into this and promote what your region can give for an escapism realm, which is one of the main four realms of the experience economy.
How do we intrinsically connect with visitors whilst we are currently closed off by borders, or people in lockdown feeling fragile? Use soft, nurturing images to connect with their “kawaii”, giving them a sense of escapism online. What’s kawaii? This is a wellbeing mindset originating from Japan which describes an association with producing a nurturing, or ‘cute’ emotion, from looking at a soft, cute, furry, big-eyed image or object. Japanese kawaii is growing as a centre of global popularity due to its association with making cultural productions and consumer products “cute”; even more so during Covid with people feeling a little mortal, and fragile, and looking for these comfort images online.
This remedial mindset pursues a global market, giving rise to numerous applications and interpretations in other cultures. Tourism Australia understands this association, and has gained huge popularity out of it.
As Escape Magazine mentions, despite having closed off our international borders for over a year, Australia is still one of the most sought-after holiday destinations in the world – especially on social media. So what’s the secret to their success? According to Tourism Australia, it all comes down to – no surprise here – cute and cuddly animals and thumb-stopping images and videos. Each day the team scrolls through thousands of pieces of content submitted by travellers and tourism operators through the hashtag #seeaustralia to find the best content from across the country to re-share.
Tourism Australia’s Instagram account has just reached over five million followers, making it the most followed national destination page in the world.
In comparison United States are at 225k, England with 409k, Japan with 516k, and New Zealand with 1.1million followers.
So how can regional tourism operators get a slice of this cutie pie? By posting on Instagram with the #seeaustralia hashtag. Don’t underestimate the power of posting a couple of happy snaps of your farm animals, your livestock, your native wildlife, no matter how menial you think they may look … people cooped up all over Australia, and the world, are wanting to see them. Your business could really benefit from intrinsic engagement such as this, tapping into nurturing imagery, by using this kawaii association.
Australia offers a rich flora, fauna & impressive landscape experience that adds a real sense of adventure, as well as tapping into the online escapism emotion. If you have any form of furry friend near your tourism business – promote it! Advertise this through your social media channels – potential visitors will get that sense of escapism which they’ll remember when planning when jumping into the car for their next roadtrip, or flight.
Business Wellbeing – Being ready for the new traveller’s state of wellbeing
From when I first shared insights on this a year ago at a national wellbeing tourism conference, I wrote about in here for ART. Going forward we absolutely need to maintain focus on positive wellbeing and the promotion of, with most people associating holidays with positive mental health. For example, if people are stressed, before thinking of seeing a psychologist they will tend to think “I need a holiday”. People now are even more acutely aware that restrictions on travel are impacting their enjoyment and wellbeing.
Travellers benefit from a combination of novelty – holidays away from home offer this, and security. Visitors are still going to be more safety conscious in the Covid era, even after being vaccinated. They are likely to be more anxious about general health and mental wellbeing, and of being around other people in general, not just concerns around infection. It’s essential for the industry and travel advisors to really understand what the consumer wants and what they expect in the new normal.
My tip for Industry … think like a psychologist.
“Get into the head of your customer … what do they REALLY want at your business?”
A good idea during quieter business times is to ask colleagues / friends to be ‘mystery shoppers’ at your own business: from the first point of online contact, social media channels, through to arriving at your business and the service – what messaging is there to aid expectations, and to make the visitor feel comfortable, and satisfied with what they were expecting – did they intrinsically connect with the online promotion of your business right through to what they were given during the experience as a customer?
Continue to be COVID-Safe
Communicate with travellers prior to arrival on what they should expect, and reduce the risk of the unknown. Make it very visible and clear what steps are taken to reduce Covid-related risks, and spelling out any other measures that are taken to manage health risk will be reassuring to people.
And above all – take care of them.
The keypoints from the above are quite practical in nature, to be used as takeaways or suggestions to collaborate on for all levels of regional tourism in your destination, using intrinsic engagement and wellbeing strategies.
Katrina Denoux is one of the Ambassadors for Australian Regional Tourism. A tourism practitioner with her own business based both in Europe and Australia, she is also a registered health practitioner with postgraduate qualifications. She specialises in wellness tourism, gastronomy & sustainability; and is a lecturer and speaker on the international academic insights circuit. She feels lucky to be able to combine her two loves: travel & education.
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