The Case Study of Edinburgh The Festival City

Edinburgh plays hosts to a number of festivals the whole year round and in August alone, there are many art-related festivals, thus Edinburgh the Festival City:

·         Edinburgh Art Festival 28 July – 28 August 2016

·         Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 5 – 27 August 2016

·         Edinburgh Fringe Festival 5 – 29 August 2016

·         Edinburgh International Festival 5 – 29 August 2016

·         Edinburgh International Book Festival 13 – 29 August 2016

·         Edinburgh Mela 27 – 28 August 2016

·         Scottish International Storytelling Festival 21 -  31 October 2016

·         Edinburgh Hogmanay 30 December 2016 – 1 January 2017

·         Edinburgh International Science Festival 1 – 16 April 2017

·         Imaginate Festival 27 May – 4 June 2017

·         Edinburgh International Film Festival 21 June – 2 July 2017

·         Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival 15 – 24 July 2017

A Case Study Of UNESCO Maritime Greenwich

The Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site comprises the historic town centre, Royal Park and related institutional buildings, and was inscribed by the World Heritage Convention in 1997.

Read the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site Management Plan 2014.

Visit Greenwich is the Royal Borough of Greenwich Destination Management Company, a partnership based, not for profit, Community Interest Company.  It is a public/private partnership, led by a board of tourism professionals, representing different sectors of the industry, with an independent chair. They work with partners e.g. visitor attractions, accommodation providers, transport operators, meetings and events venues, the hospitality and retail sectors and the travel trade and media.

There is also a Business Plan, Business Plan Launch, Annual Report, Destination Management Plan; read them here. 

The Greenwich London Food Tour by the Greenwich Royal Tours in the quaint little urban village:

Brands And Social Purpose: Engaging Singapore's Millennials

Flamingo Group recently hosted a Culture Breakfast series, SG51: Who cares? in June 2016 and shared their research findings which showed that over half of 16-25 year olds wanted a career that can make a social difference, and not just for making money.  

Elly Chiu, associate director of insight and strategy consultancy Flamingo Group said that, "From having material possessions, they are moving towards valuing people and relationships. They also value personal satisfaction and happiness." Other speakers included her fellow Flamingo associate director Regina Tan, The Thought Collective co-founder and director Tong Yee and Logue founder Jean Qingwen Loo.

There are three types of brand purpose behaviour when it comes to social purpose:

• The Cheerleader: Brands that fall into this category motivate and encourage a particular way of living.
• The Community Worker: These brands work with on-ground facilitation with the community, translating tangible actions into visible and immediate impact.
• The Change Maker: Brands that play this role challenge the status quo and provoke societal debates.

There are three do’s and don'ts for brands in social purpose among Singapore's youth:

Don't –

• Use the rhetoric of change or resort to lazy sloganism;
• Expect people to willingly explore new paths;
• Put up symbolic acts that present no enrichment value, or are simply dull and not interesting.

Do –

• Link brand purpose clearly to tangible and visible outcomes;
• Provide a springboard and safety net to guide young Singaporean millennials and aid them in getting started;
• Offer a variety of valuable experiences that can help them gain new skills to add to their resume of life.

Check out the Flamingo Group’s Lens on London.

Also, How to Market Effectively to Millennials lists the potential for success strategies:

1.       Communicate a higher brand purpose

2.       Be authentic and transparent

3.       Leverage digital content smartly

4.       Recognize loyalty with experiences and exclusive access

5.       Reflect diversity beyond traditional multicultural casting

Success Principle # 3 – Leverage digital content and social media smartly. 

1.       Give the consumers a degree of control. To operate effectively, brands must relinquish some of the control they have held for so many years. They have to let the consumer set the terms for ongoing conversation – how often, how deep, etc.

2.       Let them find you / come to you. Millennial consumers want to ensure that nothing alters their social media experience or turns it into something its' not "supposed to be", and they want to preserve the sense of discovery that makes social media fun.

3.       Be interesting. Companies need to move away from the traditional content model and use the consumer as the content creator. Ultimately, content that entertains – or information that is presented in a unique way – works best.

4.       Listen first, then talk – create a dialogue. Millennials want dialogue – a conversation – where brands listen to what they have to say rather than just pushing their messages without taking into account what consumers think, feel and want.

5.       Be relevant. Millennial consumers want to see content that relates to their lives, their interests, their desires, and their needs. It means making every post, link or article, personally relevant and meaning to each individual.

6.       Be open and honest. Millennials want brands to be candid. They don't trust and respect brands that do not post "the good and the bad" on their fan pages. They expect an "open book" approach where brands tell consumers who they are, what they expect/want from them, and what exactly they're offering.

7.       Be accountable and humanize. Brands often suffer in social media because they don't have anyone that answers to the consumer. It is so important for brands to find ways to humanize themselves – and the best way is to have real people who speak on behalf of the brand in social media.

8.       Talk like a friend, not a corporate entity. Millennials want brands to communicate in simple, casual language that is conversational. Don't try to sell, but rather talk in a friendly, casual way about finding ways to meet the needs of the consumer.

9.       Let the consumer talk for you. The best-case scenario for brands is that Millennial consumers take the initiative and advocate for a brand. For this to happen, brands must create the opportunity for consumers to spread the word.

10.     Offer something of value. Millennials are far more likely to respond to brands that offer them something real and tangible, preferably without something in return.

Source: WARC

A Case Study Of Tourism Case Studies

• GREAT Britain Campaign: Creating impact for Britain around the world

The Task: The GREAT Britain campaign is the Government’s most ambitious international marketing campaign launched in 2012 to stimulate jobs and growth, to encourage the world to visit, study and do business with the UK. 

The Problem: There was no consistent approach to country branding or promoting Britain overseas. Instead Government organisations used their own brands, logos, and names. There was also little coordination between tourism, trade, and investment, and educational organisations when promoting the UK overseas. 

The Solution: Define the brand principles, then design the brand identity, assets and guidelines, with a great degree of organisation, control and the production of high-quality imagery, to successfully motivate and align stakeholders from 17 Government departments and 350+ private and public partnerships in 144 markets around the world. GREAT delivery partners use the freely available brand assets and guidelines as the basis for their marketing activities, which currently run at between 80-100 initiatives per month around the world.  

The Result: A comprehensive, flexible, easy-to-use and easily recognisable framework which enables communication of the UK’s key attributes across dozens of different communication applications e.g. outdoor advertising, TV, exhibition and events, social media, PR etc.

• Visit Britain: Great Chinese names for Great Britain

The Problem:  Chinese tourists spend more than any other country’s, due to its growing affluence. However the UK was missing out on this lucrative market amid perceptions that it was not as friendly as other parts of Europe. 

The Solution: Visit Britain addressed this with a campaign that invited Chinese people to come up with names for 100 British attractions that had never officially been translated into Chinese. 

The Result: Millions of people watched an associated video and visited the campaign online, and 13,000 new names were submitted.  Some of these names have since been adopted by Google Maps. Chinese tourism to the UK increased by 27% during the campaign.

• British Airways North America: Visit Mum

The Problem: How do you get more people to fly on British Airways from North America? UK bound traffic was not forecast to grow at a significant rate and the competition was getting tougher.  Research showed British Airways that it’s never been about a flight, but about making the effort to take the journey. 

The Solution: Get mum to deliver a message of nostalgia, memories and a visceral longing to return home.  

The Result: British Airways was able to engage North American Indian expats in a relevant, emotional and completely original way.

• MasterCard: The Priceless Engine

The Problem: To stand out and to add value to its consumers, but the information about the consumers themselves is guarded by the banks who issue the cards. MasterCard did not have the means to interpret all the data and simply pushed more and more irrelevant merchant offers and content to consumers through banner ads, social media, pop-ups etc. 

The Solution: MasterCard launched ‘The Priceless Engine’, a combination of people, process and more than 20 technology platforms to crunch data, track trends and insights, and study social media conversations as they happen. It turns big data into usable data and to deliver the right offers and messages to the right people at the right time. 

The Result: The Priceless Engine was put to work to power MasterCard’s ‘New Year’s Eve’ campaign, featuring Hugh Jackman, across the region. His involvement created an emotional spark with consumers through the local MasterCard Facebook pages, allowing MasterCard to connect to consumers’ hearts. It encouraged people to share who they would want to spend their New Year’s Eve with and why, sharing elaborate and emotional stories, and providing MasterCard with valuable data and insights to optimise the campaign further.  Those insights were then used to provide customers with Priceless Surprises and Priceless Experiences they truly cared about. Subsequently, these Priceless Moments then became a catalyst for even more engagement, allowing MasterCard to get even richer insights. 

Source: WARC

A Case Study Of Cotswold

Walk the 100 miles of the Cotswold Way.  The small villages (Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water, Lower & Upper Slaughter, Stanway, Stanton, Broadway, Snowshill, Chipping Campden etc.) have recently become very popular as tourists look for novel authentic experiences and these villages have a long history in the way their stone houses are built and maintained. 

The Case For Culture

At the Arabian Travel Market 2016 session on ‘The Future of the UAE as a global tourism hub’, it was shared that the seven emirates do not compete but instead complement one another’s tourism offerings.  They sell themselves as seven emirates, one destination.

So while Dubai is the city of superlatives – the tallest tower, highest dancing fountain, biggest shopping mall, man-made islands etc., Abu Dhabi is going down the culture route.  Similarly Sharjah has the Heart of Sharjah, a heritage site that offers a different authentic experience.

Dubai

Dubai received 14.2 million tourists last year, and they hope to target 20 million visitors by 2020, which they would as Dubai is also hosting the World Expo in 2020 expecting 25 million visitors there.

Tapping on its rich heritage, Dubai started the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding (SMCCU) with the theme ‘Open Doors, Open Minds’ to increase awareness and establish understanding between the various cultures that live in Dubai. Activities include a Heritage Tour at the Al Fahidi Historic District through its unique narrow sikkas and beautiful wind towers (olden days natural air-con), a Cultural Meal which allows you to eat and chat with a local Emirati host about its culture, customs and religion, and a guided tour of the Jumeirah Mosque, the only mosque in Dubai open to the public. It also conducts Cultural Awareness Programmes for companies in the public and private sectors. This is especially useful as the increase in investments and job opportunities in Dubai has led to a large proportion of expatriate community with the local UAE community comprising only 12% of the population.

Abu Dhabi

In comparison, Abu Dhabi received 4.1 million tourists (counted as tourists who stayed in the hotels).  It is ramping up its efforts to build itself as a tourism destination.  Abu Dhabi’s tourism development and investment company (TDIC) has developed the Saadiyat Cultural District on Saadiyat Island that will have the world famous Lourve and Guggenheim museums targeted to be ready in 2016 and 2017 respectively, as well as its own Zayed National Museum.  It already has one themepark – the Ferrari World in Yas Island and hosts the Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yasmarina Circuit.

Sharjah

Sharjah, just beside Dubai is also building up its heritage with the Heart of Sharjah, the largest historical preservation and restoration project in the region planned over 15 years to be completed by 2025, by restoring historical buildings, constructing new structures following the Sharjah architecture and transforming them into hotels, restaurants, cafes, art galleries and markets.

Singapore

Singapore too, is promoting its brand as a narrative that draws from history, from pre-colonial and colonial times, leading to its independence and present times; a mix of nostalgia and modernism. This was shared at the recent Tourism Industry Conference 2016, “Tourists come to countries not to imagine what has been erased but to experience what has been retained.”

***

Without a doubt, the case for culture makes sense in any tourism destination, and especially so for today’s well-travelled visitors. People travel to see the world, and buildings are only one aspect of the hardware. In most cases, it is the software - the interaction with its community that travellers look for to enrich their experiences.  So a destination would look to increasingly create opportunities to enhance these authentic interactions for its tourists with the local community.

At the SMCCU Cultural Meal experience, visitors were greeted by very enthusiastic and hospitable volunteer hosts, who assured visitors to “feel free to take any photos and videos, and ask any questions you want”, to clarify misconceptions that visitors may have of UAE, so they walk away with a better understanding and could better appreciate the rationale behind the things they see but don’t understand in the country.

It is a right step towards the ‘Open Doors Open Minds’ mindset.

Al Fahidi historical neighbourbood

Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding

guided tour through the Al Bastakiya neighbourhood

chat with local hosts

meal with local hosts

photo with local hosts

The Case Study Of Dnata

In 2014, Dubai International Airport handled 70.5 million passengers and became the world's busiest international airport (“Critical for Changi Airport and SIA to join hands,” 2015), taking its title from London's Heathrow for the first time.  Changi Airport, on the other hand handled a record 54.1 million passengers but showed a 0.7% growth over the previous year, its lowest since 2009.

How did Dubai make this happen? 

Stewart Angus, who has worked for the Emirates Group for 19 years and oversees international business for the group’s Dnata ground-services unit says that “The success is Dubai’s location – it’s Europe’s most easterly hub and Asia’s most westerly hub.”  Daniel Tsang of Hong Kong consultancy Aspire Aviation adds that “In terms of charter traffic, 25% of Australia-to-Europe traffic has shifted from Hong Kong and Singapore to Dubai in the last couple of years.” (“How Dubai became one of the most important aviation hubs in the world“, 2014).

Who is Dnata?

 

Dnata, or Dubai National Air Travel Agency, is one of the world’s largest providers of airport services that comprises more than 50 specialist businesses.  Part of the Emirates Group, Emirates and Dnata learned from Singapore which saw Singapore Airlines’ partnership with Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS).  Industry sources say Dnata started first, and when Emirates became well-known, Emirates Group was then created. 

Dnata’s annual revenue increased 75% to $2.1 billion in 2013, while SATS’s revenue rose only 5.2% from 2011 - 2013 to $1.45 billion.  More than 40% of Dnata’s revenue now comes from Australasia, partly as a result of a series of acquisitions starting with its first international deal ten years ago when it bought Singapore ground-handling company CIAS. So now Dnata Singapore has a part in the baggage-handling business at Changi Airport, as well as ground services at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, and Xi’an Xianyang International Airport plus ten smaller airports in western China as part of Dnata’s Asia joint venture business.

How can Singapore compete?  

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) will support productivity projects with up to S$17 million in grants to improve cargo- and baggage-handling services (“Changi Airport to boost productivity,” 2015). Mrs Josephine Teo, Senior Minister of State for Transport said “The aim is to further strengthen Singapore's position as a regional air hub”, and that in its next phase of growth, “Changi Airport will focus on innovation, connectivity and the clustering of related industries.” 

When completed, T5 is likely to be the third largest passenger terminal in the world, after facilities in Dubai and Beijing and will take Changi to 140 million passengers a year (“Changi Airport's T5 will be 10 times as big as VivoCity,” 2015).  Associate Professor Terence Fan, a transport specialist from the Singapore Management University, said: "Perhaps Changi can consider opening itself to retail investors so that there is some private investment, either in terms of bonds issued to the public or shares to retail investors, or both, with the Government retaining an important say on strategic decisions."

What more should be done?

Etihad has set up travel agent Hala Group, which could put pressure on Dnata’s $180 million travel services division. It is estimated that six out of top ten Asian megacities of 2030 to be in either China or India.  A map of the Asian megacities in 2030 sees Chengdu and Kunming in the geographic centre of the cluster, and they could be the hub for China-India traffic (“Joining up the dots: non-stop air services between Asia’s megacities,” 2016).  What is our role then?

“Singapore needs air connectivity and that's what we've been saying all the time. If we don't have the money as a company, somebody must pay”, says Mr Liew Mun Leong, Changi Airport Group chairman. 

The question is - who, must pay? 

Arabian Adventures, part of the Emirates Group. Source: https://www.arabian-adventures.com 

Emirates Aviation University, part of the Emirates Group. Source: https://www.eau.ac.ae

Emirates Academy, in academic association with EHL, part of the Jumeirah Group. Source: http://www.emiratesacademy.edu