In full swing...

Our summer was spent driving around the Alps sampling the cultural, culinary and natural delights of France, Austria and northern Italy.

But that seems long ago now and it has a been busy start to the second half though with our batteries recharged we are ready for the run in to Christmas. Once again our research and consulting projects are taking us out on the road regularly and we are enjoying the opportunity of working with some new clients doing exciting things locally and internationally.


Speaking of travel, it was interesting the other day to see that shopping has now taken over from culture as the main motivation for visitors to Japan. This hardly surprising given that shopping now seems to be the principal leisure activity of a good part of the rich world's population ( we certainly dragged back a good haul of gourmet booty from the Alps).

However, this is a reminder for the tourism industry that shopping is a central part of the travel experience for nearly every destinations and needs to be addressed. Many destinations focus their offer primarily on their cultural or natural attractions but their visitors soon dispense with these sights and head off to shop and eat.


Eating out is another essential ingredient of travel and restaurant cleanliness ratings were something that caught our attention last time we were in Los Angeles. It's nice to know but anything less than an 'A' and I found myself wondering in which particular department they fell down - bugs? washing hands? Better not to wonder really.

Now Cleanscores also provides online ratings of local restaurants. I wonder how they would go in Spain where cleanliness and service seems to depend mostly on the attitude of the chef and whether the local football team won this weekend. And I can't imagine the chaos this sort of thing would cause in Italy where even trendy cafes in central Milan have bathrooms that would be at home in a third world bus station.

In fact, apart from Ciao, the whole field of consumer reviews doesn't seem to have taken off in Spain yet but will undoubtably. One day soon I'll be able to stop outside a bar in a Barcelona side street and pull up some recent reviews on the Blackberry before venturing in to sample their wares.

Breaking destination stereotypes

In recent months India has been running a major tourism marketing campaign across a wide range of international media and with several themes. Some of these themes including wellbeing, spiritual and eco tourism all help to diversify their offer and fit it to recent tourism trends.

One of the most unique however is medical tourism - come visit us and you can have a cheap operation and a nice holiday while you recover - though they may be up against some pretty strong stereotypes. I'm not sure that most Westerners' mental imagery of Indian hospitals is particularly favourable - though logically in a country as diverse as India standards must range from excellent to, well...

A seemingly underground phenomenon, medical tourism apparently has quite a long history, as patients chase cheaper, better care. From New Yorkers jumping the pond to go to their London dentist, plastic surgery 'getaways', Portugese mums-to-be slipping across the border to superior Spanish hospitals, or the attractions of these same hospitals for the thousands of Europeans who retire to Spain each year. India is leading the way in taking medical tourism mainstream.

Galicia is attempting to doctor their tourism marketing in a different way. In discussing tourism destination marketing last year with one of the regional tourism authorities they expressed their dismay at the consistently negative portrayal of Galicia in the Spanish media. This sad situation reflects several factors including stereotyping of the region, the media's thirst for negative news and some of the climatic and social challenges faced by Galicia. In recent years Galicia has been assaulted by oil spills, fires, floods and the decline of traditional agricultural industries. Attracting less attention has been success in fields as diverse as fashion, pharmaceuticals, tourism and cultural industries.

One suggested response has been to latch onto every national and international event possible that portrays Galicia positively, though unfortunately most often the Galicia link gets lost in the reporting and publicity these events attract. People are more interested in this season's collection than where the designer came from. This approach adds a few drops of differentiation here and there but the destination marketing campaign continues to portray traditional Galicia, and the crucial state tourism website remains 'average' at best.

The strongly held stereotype of Galicia as the wild and somewhat backward north can only be shifted by communication and events that break away from the traditional and cut through. Or focus on developing European markets newly accessible by low cost flights and whose travellers know little of the region and represent an opportunity to build a more positive image of Galicia.

Logos and Nenos

In April and May we continued to make progress in setting up the company and arranging all the nuts and bolts such as website, logos, business cards, laptops, email etc. Most of these things took longer than anticipated but at least we have been relatively happy with the results and what we have will allow us to operate effectively until we are ready to upgrade some of these things in the medium term. Thanks to the guys at Promedia for their support and patience in getting this work completed. However, the bureaucratic delays provided us with an opportunity to take some time studying the local trends in the online space and in relation to youth shopping, media and communication habits. This research and analysis has helped us understand local issues, provided a talking point on our visits to potential clients and was also picked up by the local print media.

Recent years have seen a strong resurgence in the use of the Galician language in all walks of Galician life. We took some time out to see how easy it is for local parents to find kids websites in Galician. Unfortunately this proved to be relatively difficult and searches using a wide range of possible keywords in Galician produced patchy results. Those sites that allow kids to play and learn online in Galician were hard to find with a small number of exceptions such as the regional government´s Department of Education website (Xunta de Galicia, Conselleria de Educacion) but even this site was difficult to navigate.

In some further analysis we reviewed the state of online tourism in the northern “Green Spain” by testing a selection of the leading tourism promotion websites such as Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Santiago and others. Most of these sites were fairly clunky and were outdated designs with basic databases of accomodation, limited content and poor usability. One notable exception was the site of Santiago with offers good content depth around a range of themes of interest to travellers and good usability to make the whole experience painless and stimulating. Other standout sites at a national level offering a great online experience for potential visitors were those of Iles Balears and Valencia.

For the history books...

For the history books and our own benefit we though it best to fill the gap between now and when we arrived back in Spain after our travels, so here's the abridged version of what we got up to in the first half of 2006...

Late January we got down to FITUR in Madrid, Spain´s main tourism trade fair, to see the local industry in action and participated in an online tourism seminar put on by the World Tourism Organisation. Given Spain is one of the most popular destinations globally it was no surprise to find ourselves confronted with acres of stands. A vertitable paradise for anyone who can't resist collecting lots of brightly coloured brochures at these sorts of events.

We enjoyed chatting to some of the local tourism authorities about their current plans and priorities, though I’m not quite sure what function the azafatas (hostesses) perform apart from beautifying the stands, most didn’t seem to know much about the product they were representing.


February saw us kick off the legal process of starting up the company here with registration of business names, tax registration and similar arrangements, most of which was wrapped in a thick bundle of bureaucratic red tape. Most steps we took over the next couple of months seemed to involve getting official stamps and waiting a couple of weeks for a variety of different pieces of paper.

Good news was that we were accepted by the local Chamber of Commerce into their Business Incubator program and were soon able to hang a sign on the door, shop for stationery and most importantly acquire a white board (an essential accessory to brainstorm and workshop in any start-up).

The opening of our first office here in Spain (and those of the other companies with which we share the building) was also accompanied by a press conference with various politicians and local business leaders. This gave Catalina her first chance to meet the press and spread the news about Roadmap and after a crash course in media relations she achieved some excellent coverage with the regional TV, radio and newspapers. From the regional press, Catalina below with Rosa who manages the business centre for the Chamber of Commerce.

February also saw me head to Dubai for a brief consulting engagement with the Middle East office of UK based research firm, YouGov. Office the world over look much the same...

The view from the window is usually more interesting...

Dubai is an interesting place with a sharp contrast between the desert, traditional Arabic culture and Islam; and booming business, trade and construction sectors. Apparently it has a large proportion of the world’s construction cranes and large swathes of town are construction sites. The food was great and the warm weather a relief from the cold and rain in Europe at this time of year.