Digital Destinations: Exchanging Digital Technology Knowledge in Local Tourism Economies

This proposal offers the opportunity to capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies and to develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy. Through their increased understanding and use of emerging digital technologies, tourism businesses will be in a position to increase their marketing and management effectiveness, and develop new products and services that will provide an enhanced experience for visitors to their destinations. This proposal will accelerate tourism business growth via an improved understanding and implementation of digital technologies and facilitate the exchange of knowledge between tourism academics and tourism professionals. Knowledge will be exchanged between businesses that have already reached an advanced state of digital adoption (as well as those who have yet to engage), and leading tourism academics, with support provided by experienced digital and destination management professionals.

In the context of SMEs in local tourism economies, six outputs are proposed in the geographic context of Bournemouth & Poole and the New Forest:

Co-production of Learning Materials:

Using the existing BUDigitalHub website, research-informed 'bitesize' components of learning for tourism businesses will facilitate the transfer of contemporary, relevant and accessible knowledge on the adoption of digital technologies. The existing website will be enhanced significantly to cater for the interactive, networking demands of this project as it will serve as the key vehicle for the exchange and transfer of knowledge across the entire project.

Events to Launch and Disseminate Learning Materials

Local tourism businesses will be made aware of the existence of the appropriate learning materials through a launch event at the University's Executive Business Centre in the centre of Bournemouth which is easily accessible by road and rail. Two additional sub-regional launches will also take place, one at Kingston Maurward College on the outskirts of Dorchester and one at a hotel in the New Forest.

Development and Dissemination of Webinars on Digital Technologies

The co-development and dissemination of a series of webinars is of particular importance to the project due to the ease with which such outputs can be accessed locally or through the Internet. Six webinars will be developed on the following themes: (i) co-working strategies; (ii) online selling; (iii) search engine optimisation; (iv) effective use of online social networks; (v) benefitting from mobile technologies; (vi) developing enabling communities through digital technologies.

Co-production and Delivery of Partnership Marketing Seminars

Three separate seminars will be developed at different levels and covering different themes. Each seminar will be delivered on four separate occasions with 12 seminars taking place across the year. Seminars will run at venues across the area and will adopt a variety of different formats in order to cater to the specific needs of the businesses and to ensure the knowledge is brought effectively to them. Emphasis will be on the exchange of knowledge in a manner that sets the foundations for a longer-term self-sustaining knowledge network 'Digital Destinations'.

Digital Destination Knowledge Networks

Two cohorts of between 8-12 businesses will participate in 10 Digital Destination Knowledge Networks throughout the year commencing in September 2012. Each session will be facilitated by BU and DNFTP staff with each session featuring invited speakers on a specific aspect of digital technology, time for critical self-help, and mentoring activity.

Student Employer Engagement

This component will involve the participation of 40 businesses assigning consultancy projects to final-year students across the spectrum of digital technologies.

Impact outside of the academic arena is primarily behavioural and economic in that the means by which tourism organisations amend their adoption, implementation and interpretation of digital technologies will ultimately have a profound economic impact on their own organisations and the tourist destinations within which they sit. In turn, the public benefit emerges from the strengthening of competitiveness and better economic performance for both private and public organisations. Achieving higher levels of visitation and higher income from tourism is critical for the creation of employment and wealth and as a means of creating and supporting the infrastructure required to support the needs of visitors and resident communities alike. This project will enable SMEs in local tourism economies to use digital technologies to increase their internal coordination and management, improve their global visibility, engage dynamically with their shareholders, manage their online reputation, attract more visitors, strengthen their overall competitiveness and ultimately improve their income and their long-term sustainability.

The key outcome of this proposal is to record an increase in the economic and social value of tourism to the local economy via demonstration that SME tourism businesses across the Dorset and New Forest area have become more proficient and effective in their use of digital technologies. It is critical for this project to show that activity has led to growth in the use of digital technology and with regard to the means by which consumers of the destination product are using and responding to it positively. In this regard, the first to benefit are those SMEs that voluntarily receive the knowledge being transferred in that the knowledge obtained will help enhance their awareness and use of a range of digital technologies. It is anticipated that through their increased awareness of such technologies SMEs will gain benefit from more cost effective and tailored marketing activity, the creation and existence of customer or client communities, and an ability to more accurately research the needs and wants of customers or clients. Additional beneficiaries will be those stakeholders at the destination level who either directly or indirectly come into contact with those SMEs partaking in the transfer of knowledge. Benefits will come in a variety of forms but will primarily be economic in that the composite nature of destinations ensures that non-participants or so-called 'free riders' will also benefit from improved knowledge attained by others. That said, the more SMEs that engage with digital technologies is likely to serve as a catalyst for others whereby eventually a critical mass of digitally-engaged SMEs will be in existence within local tourism economies which over time will enhance the overall competitiveness and sustainability of the local tourism economy. The only way to measure such an outcome is to include an element of longitudinal market research in the proposal which gauges the adoption, implementation and reaction of organisations to their more effective use of digital technologies. Such research is to consist of secondary research to analyse the extent to which tourism businesses are currently using digital technologies in their online marketing activity and postal questionnaires to measure anticipated and actual usage of digital technology and its value to the organisation.