What not to do
- Over-regulation can stifle creativity
- Under-regulation destroys trust
- Travel is a business
- There’s no substitute for experience
The Ministry of Tourism & Funny Walks
Call it what you will, the Ministry of Tourism, National Tourism Office, Convention and Visitors Bureau, etc., all have different names, but we’ll call it the “Tourism Offices.” Regardless of the term, all have the same job: promoting and bringing tourism and its dollars to their region. How they do it is another matter, and every agency has a different way of doing it. Top-down, bottom-up, side-to-side, it’s like a Wonkavator, but depending on their approach, it dramatically affects their success.
What not to do
Some Tourism Offices attempt to help but lack understanding of how to help. Others are following a playbook out of the top university programs with no foundation in reality. While some genuinely exist to hinder, if not outright destroy, tourism. To understand what works, let’s examine what doesn’t work to start with.
The Taiwan Two-Step
Want to start running tours to Taiwan? Start at the top and work your way to the middle! Our adventures with Taiwan began with contacting the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. They referred us to any of 15 overseas offices worldwide without answering a single question or contacting us directly. Picking the one closest to our office, we called and introduced ourselves, and explained what we were looking for. Their response? They had to defer to someone else for the answers, so “send us an email.” A dozen emails later, and absolutely no response was followed by another call and again, “send us an email.” Does Taiwan lack an infrastructure able to support tourism? Does Taiwan have all the tourists they need, so there’s no need for more? Has Godzilla leveled most of the tourism infrastructure? Does Taiwan even exist? (I haven’t seen it, so I can’t be sure).
As a rule, if the person answering the phone or checking the emails has ever to refer you to someone else, they’re saying, “I don’t have a clue, and I’m not going to find out.” Lots of and or maybes pop up, but the end result is the same. Just hang a great big sign at the airport saying CLOSED FOR BUSINESS. It’s an obvious lack of business understanding (and tourism is a business). All the marketing campaigns, all the adverting, and all the offices scattered around the world won’t make a difference if you can’t help. So why couldn’t our email be forwarded to someone that could help and have them respond instead of having us try to navigate their own bureaucracy and find that someone? A simple rule about tourism: “Go Where You’re Wanted.” An even more straightforward rule of business: “Make it easy for them to give you their money.”
The Saudi Slide
What happens when you let MBAs with overpriced degrees in tourism but no practical experience take over your country’s tourism operation? You get Saudi Arabia. Their attempt to become a tourist Mecca (get it?) has been roundly mocked as an overpriced, overhyped failure. “Not ready for prime time,” wrote one of the commentators. Saudi Araba has discovered you can’t buy your way to tourism success. It’s not a matter of money; it’s a matter of actually offering tourists an easy and unique experience they can’t get by going to EPOCT or Vegas. It falls on the pioneers to create programs and infrastructure needed for tourism, and government can 1) lead, 2) follow, or 3) get out of the way. However, instead, they chose option 4, a myriad of laws, regulations, and fines. After all, can’t have businesses running around willy-nilly giving the traveling public what they want. So there must be an orderly, needlessly complicated process where people who aren’t traveling determine what tourists want and don’t want. This is based on what a professor locked in an ivory tower thinks tourists want, determined by complex calculations performed on an abacus while tripping on LSD (honestly, there’s no other way to explain it). Do you think they ever stopped and thought there may be so many unlicensed operators because getting licensed is so complicated it’s nearly impossible? And maybe they only exist because the official operators aren’t delivering what tourists want. I haven’t even gotten to the culture and religious norms that make Saudi Arabia about as welcoming as a beach resort in N. Korea.
The Pakistan Pop
Long called the next up-and-coming global destination, Pakistan has been self-exiled into a virtual hermit kingdom of tourism. What should be a natural destination for tourism remains unknown, unapproachable, and unattractive. Why? That’d be their Tourism Development Corporation. Why would an agency tasked with developing tourism be the chief obstacle? A quick glance at their website tells the story. “The Pakistan Tours (Pvt.) Limited was incorporated as PTDC’s wholly owned subsidiary in 1977 under the repealed Companies Act 1913 (Now the Companies Ordinance, 1984). PTL has its own Board of Directors with MD PTDC as its Chairman. Under a license from the Federal Government, Pakistan Tours (Pvt.) Limited is organizing package tours and treks, renting tourist transport, and operating a number of domestic/international tourist bus services.” Basically, the tourism office OWNS the tourist resources. And oddly enough, they’re the same ones that license (or refuse to license) other operators in Pakistan. Funny how that works out.
But we tried anyway. Emails, calls, and even an associate went to their office and scheduled a meeting. Emails went unanswered, calls never returned, and their office was closed for the meeting we scheduled weeks in advance. We even went as far as contacting the US Embassy to see if they could put us in direct contact with anyone they had at the TDC. You know you’re not wanted when even the embassy is ignored. But then again, they had a tourism expo promoting Pakistan tours from Myanmar, guess it went really well, and they’re full of tourists now and don’t need any more.
The Morocco Mash
After 20 years working in Morocco, we’ve had a front-row seat to how the country has progressed and changed. Once, tourism was tightly controlled by the Moroccan Tourism Police enforcing its laws. But then the Moroccan government opted to “get out of the way” more or less and loosened its regulations. Now anyone with a car, camel, or Gmail account is advertising tourist services on Facebook and Trip Advisor (often loaded with fake reviews). Mix in cheap flights from the EU, and Morocco tourism exploded. What’s been lost is any guarantee tourists have when they book and send money. As the disreputable mix with the reputable, Morocco’s tourism industry has become a bit of a gamble.
The Beat Goes On
These are just a few examples of what we’ve encountered over the years. I’m sure there are dozens more stories out there, but blogging is a drag, and I’d rather travel. So what can be done? In our next post, we’ll look at what high functioning Tourism Offices can do to make their destination a winner.