Should tourism websites still bother producing their own content? I’m thinking specifically of DMO sites whose difficult job it is to increase the amount of visitors to their destination. High quality content such as videos and images help sell the virtues of a place, but are definitely expensive to produce. And because it’s important to the keep that content fresh, it’s an ongoing expense. Is there a better way?
There are millions of people traveling the world right now, taking photos and shooting videos. How much of that content makes its way online? A lot. According to Wikipedia, 20 hours of YouTube footage is uploaded every minute. And Flickr actually provides a real-time feed of their photo upload numbers:
That works out to 3,407,464,800 photos and 10,512,000 hours of video a year. With that much content available it’s inevitable that DMOs will adopt it more and more. Here’s a recent example I came across on the Tips from the T-List blog:
Natalie Lucier went whale watching in Labrador and captured this amazing video:
Not long after Natalie uploaded it she was approached by Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism who requested permission to use it on their site. Natalie wanted to share her video (that’s why it was on YouTube in the first place afterall!) and the tourism board is helping her do that. The tourism board is always looking for great new content, Natalie is now an important contributor. That’s a win-win.
(Tip of the hat to Todd Lucier for inspiring this post.)
