Destination unknown, Part I

Destination unknown, Part I

It is essential to find a unique selling point to market a destination, Ken Kelling, communications director for Visit London, tells Communicate magazine, Part I.

January 6, 2010 1:49 by Sam Potter

I think all destinations when they’re looking at their marketing strategies will try to find one or two things that they think sums then up or is the USP or provides some way of distinguishing them. How are you really, distinctly different? Because if everybody is talking about golf, everyone is talking about spas, everyone is talking about luxury, after a while these things can all blend into one. The challenge is really how are you making yourselves unique in an area where a lot of people might be saying the same thing.

What’s the ultimate goal of destination marketing? Is it just altering people’s perceptions, or is it about driving visitor numbers?

It’s all about economic benefit. Our campaigns are measured on the amount of economic benefit that we managed to bring into the city as a result of those campaigns. So we’re measured quite strictly on asking people who’ve come into contact with the visit London campaign. We then have to survey people and say, “Did you come to London, how much did you spend?” and so on, and we calculate the economic benefit from that. We have quite a rigorous way of working out our return on investment.

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Tags: destination, marketing, tourism, Travel, Visit London