This week I was asked to lead a workshop on “Understanding your visitors” at the Tourism Vancouver Island Professional Development series. TVI organized full day workshops as a way to build capacity in the industry. From what I can see, they were a great success. One was held in Port Alberni on March 8th and another in Cobble Hill on March 10th.
The line up included an update on TVI marketing opportunities, the workshop on understanding your visitors, followed by a session by "How your business keeps score by Meyers Norris Penny, a session on "Networking - how to" by Nick West, and a closing session on social networking by Jay Somerville from Webacom Media on "Social Networking for your Business".
As the majority of the tourism industry is comprised of small and medium sized businesses, many of whom enter the industry from other occupations – there is a strong need for professional development events like these ones. People need opportunities to keep abreast of what is going on, to learn new things and most of all, to connect with one another. Without these investments in human capital, our industry cannot remain innovative and responsive and we will not have the capacity to collaborate on the many initiatives that we need to.
The line up included an update on TVI marketing opportunities, the workshop on understanding your visitors, followed by a session by "How your business keeps score by Meyers Norris Penny, a session on "Networking - how to" by Nick West, and a closing session on social networking by Jay Somerville from Webacom Media on "Social Networking for your Business".
As the majority of the tourism industry is comprised of small and medium sized businesses, many of whom enter the industry from other occupations – there is a strong need for professional development events like these ones. People need opportunities to keep abreast of what is going on, to learn new things and most of all, to connect with one another. Without these investments in human capital, our industry cannot remain innovative and responsive and we will not have the capacity to collaborate on the many initiatives that we need to.
The event gave me a chance to speak about a topic I am quite passionate about - the need to understand our visitor markets. I am often amazed at how much risky and costly decision making is made on sheer assumptions about who is visiting, what they want, etc. We don't have an ongoing system to provide accurate local data on our visitors, so I tried to get across to folks that they can develop systems to produce their own, or better yet, they can collaborate together to produce information across regions. If you want to know more about the key messages, feel free to download the "how to understand your visitors handbook" on the TRIP site (under resources - for free).
Kudos to TVI for these efforts and for other regional groups in the industry, consider adding more professional development opportunities to your list of industry services – planting these seeds is sure to be appreciated and will pay dividends in the long term.
Kudos to TVI for these efforts and for other regional groups in the industry, consider adding more professional development opportunities to your list of industry services – planting these seeds is sure to be appreciated and will pay dividends in the long term.
Photo: team discussing how to use data from visitors at the Cowichan event
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