No more relaunches
It is becoming more and more difficult for destinations to get the attention of users. Only 19% of holidaymakers still visit a DMO website when planning their holidays (with trends decreasing).
Therefore it is almost absurd how much time and budget is put into building DMO websites every day. Thousands of agencies are developing software on behalf of the destinations at a cost of millions. Simply out of habit, because this has been learned for many years, one shuffles from relaunch to relaunch. As soon as the new site is launched, the planning and tendering of the next relaunch begins after a short recovery phase – the same loop every 3 to 4 years.
If you look at the result, it is usually quite disappointing. The same contents were transferred into a new software with a huge effort. If it goes well, the pictures have grown a little bigger and a few videos have been added.
Most pages are very similar in structure – this is very pleasant for the user. The more standardized the operation of the tools is, the easier it is to cope with them. Nobody wants to search on a website for a long time and find out where the designer has hidden the buttons. Nobody also understands the constantly reinvented menu navigation with extremely creative art terms, e.g. “Sea moments”, or “Traditionally different”, etc. Users want it to be easy, the operation must be fast and practicable on smartphones. On a DMO website, users simply look for: What can I experience in a region? Where can I spend the night and what does it cost? Where can I eat and what is on the menu? Where is the region and how do I get there?
Today nobody would think of having their own office software or email tool programmed individually. Standard software can do everything you need for your daily work and communication with customers. You don’t have to buy this standard software anymore, you can simply rent the service. The price models vary according to the required functions and can be cancelled at any time. The applications are no longer installed on your own computer, but are offered as complete Software-as-a-Service solutions (SaaS) and hosted in cloud solutions. This has the great advantage that customers no longer have to worry about data backup, data protection and legal compliance. The service platforms take care of ongoing development and updates and automatically scale performance as required.
This means that a relaunch is no longer necessary. Successful platforms do not make relaunches anyway, but develop their products permanently (agile). The software is continuously optimized with maximum customer orientation (user centricity).
And what about the DMO websites? Why shouldn’t the same principle work? Exactly. There is no reason for that. Outdooractive’s product “Destination” is also a SaaS product. Besides, the product is much more efficient and cheaper. In contrast to a relaunch, you always have the maximum performance of the website. Between the relaunches the site ages and is no longer state-of-the-art. With a SaaS solution, the software gets better all the time.
If you want to manage your data future-proof, you also work with database solutions and no longer with Web CMS systems. Here you can find more articles on this topic:
- Why touristic websites based on TYPO3 have no prospects
- All existing content into one database
- The world’s digital travel guide
- The must-have for future systems: data quality
- More time for your guests: The SaaS principle at Outdooractive