Aurora Research in partnership with the 165 accredited Visitor Information Centres across New South Wales are excited to announce a world-first State-wide partnership with online learning specialists, Tourism Tribe that will empower New South Wales destinations to shine online.
Visitor centres play a valuable role in the distribution system, with their staff and volunteers providing expert local advice, bookings and directions to travellers to their destinations.
But like all businesses today visitor centres are impacted by constantly changing technology. 85% of consumers travel with their smart phones and are able to access online destination information and helpful apps constantly before and throughout their journey.
For destinations to remain top of mind and so consumers can access the best a destination has to offer, visitor centres need to not only provide excellent customer service when visitors walk in to their centre, but they also have to have an enticing and helpful multi-channel online presence. This requires staff to be adept at e-tourism marketing techniques so they can manage their centre’s digital strategy and assist local operators to get their businesses online as well.
TourismTribe.com is the brainchild of e-tourism entrepreneurs, Fabienne Wintle and Liz Ward who have developed the online learning hub to address the growing need for more digital capability across the industry. The platform only launched in July 2015 and already has well over 400 active members who can access over 65 online tutorials, support forums, free online training and a team of digital specialists who can help them. The partnership with Aurora Research, who facilitates training, support and research for the accredited Visitor Information Centres in New South Wales, means that all accredited centres can access Tourism Tribe and grow their digital capability with the ongoing support of a team of people at Tourism Tribe who are online and ready to help.
This is one of the most beneficial relationships we’ve ever formed on behalf of our network of accredited centres and given the pace of change in technology and the way consumers make their travel decisions, it’s one of the most important.
It’s really urgent that visitor centre staff get up to date with digital technology and offer all the information in the format that the traveller wants on the web and on social media channels that their customers use, otherwise their destination in regional New South Wales will not be part of their customers’ decision set, said Mr John Larkin, Managing Director of Aurora Research.
Tourism Tribe’s, CEO, Liz Ward, commented “We’re thrilled to welcome all the new members who are joining from the New South Wales VIC network. They’re enthusiastic and eager to make their destination shine online.”
