Week 3
HI. To further refine my ideas, I will need to go through more case study analysis and flesh out the possible directions I could approach.
After presenting my new ideas to the advisors, I started working on the parts that needs to be further refined and improved. The first thing I did was search up more case studies regarding tourism and study how others deliver their content. Then I will have to look back at what Malaysia's ecotourism spots can offer to people.
There were a few tourism campaigns that I found interesting and could help my brainstorming process.
Tourism campaigns:-
These are the list of tourism campaigns for different places, some are more recent than others but I still find it useful.
Case study
This is the color blind campaign that I mentioned before in one of my previous blog. However, this time I will be focusing on their marketing aspect. As Tennessee is filled with lush forest, and during the fall season, the forests will gradually change their colors to orange and amber. This creates a scenery filled with crimson leaves and fall foliage. Tennessee uses the phrase "Nature's spectacular colors" to introduce people the amazing change of their forest scenery in different seasons.
Main focus: Wonderful colors of the fall foliage in Tennessee
On par with the current Covid-19 pandemic, Jeju Tourism Organization decided to market their tourism industry towards domestic travelers. They created a navigation app that allows travelers to easily drive around the island. But this app is no ordinary navigation app, instead of searching for the fasted route for users, this app is cater for travelers to take scenic route and really experience the whole of Jeju Island. They turn their road trips into an interesting adventure, discover places that they've never been to. Their goal was to spread people different parts of the island as part of the social distancing guide, instead of taking the usual congested route, people will be taking the scenic route with less traffic and people.
Main focus: Introducing undiscovered scenic routes to people
This is another tourism campaign done to counter the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this campaign is different from the previous as it is not encouraging people to visit their place right away. Instead, they are allowing people to virtually visit the places through remotely controlling a local Faroese. The local will be wearing a live video camera and users are able to interact with them through their own devices. The Faroe Islands are well-known for their beautiful mountains, waterfalls, traditional grass-roofed houses, etc. The places that they were mainly focusing for people to visit remotely are their steep grassy slopes to highlight their unspoiled, wild and natural countryside.
Main focus: Experiencing the spectacular nature of their countryside
Iowa also joined the trend of creating a tourism campaign to encourage more domestic traveler. However, they used a more gamified approach to encourage people. They introduce the Iowa State Park Passport for people to sign up and track their visits to local state parks. And the more visits people are check-in to, the more extravagant the prices are. This is their way to encourage people to visit and support local state parks in these trying times. Also, Iowa is filled with abundance of state parks, and each of them brings a different experience.
Main focus: Encourage people to visit local state parks through a gamified process
This is from the Ireland tourism website itself and the first tagline that can be seen is "Travel through time". Ireland focuses a lot on their ancient monuments with rich history and culture. In their website, they scope down to places such as Brú na Bóinne that has been around for around 5,000 years.
Main focus: Ancient places with rich history and culture
While other countries are promoting through videos and campaigns, Britain has a different approach. They created an Instagram account named @lovegreatbritain to repost/feature other people photos about the unique and interesting places in Britain. Each post are accompanied with a detailed caption. Some posts even have a link attached to it for people to further read and know more about the specific places.
Main focus: Interesting photos shared by the community
Singapore is very clear in their way of delivering their tourism spots. Singapore is not a very big country and most of it has been develop into modern cities. However, Singapore introduces themselves as a biophilic City in a Garden. They see themselves as a city that is coexisting with nature, integrating nature into their city and transforming it into a livable city while still being conscious about climate change. Tourism spots such as Gardens by the Bay and Sentosa Island are the best example.
Main focus: Introducing themselves as a City in Nature
Summarize thoughts:
After going through different countries' way of promoting their tourism industry, I realized most of them do not cover every single place but only places that they are known and are able to attract people with. Places that carries the country's identity and character. For example, Tennessee is about the fall foliage, Jeju Island is about the scenic routes, Faroe Islands is about their countryside, Iowa is about the state parks, Ireland is about the ancient places and Singapore is about their biophilic city. And I realised, I have to figure out what represents Malaysia and what direction could bring out the country's character and identity.
I started branching out my thoughts and started researching about the different ecotourism spots in Malaysia. I need to analyze them and find out what are the similarities and differences that make each of these places stand out. Then only I can decide on what concept/direction I want to approach for my contents. I started looking for keywords that could represent the tourism industry in Malaysia.
I scope it down to 5 possible keywords that I thought could relate to the tourism industry the most.
Among these 5 keywords, I decided to just choose one to further define and explore. And I feel like 'TROPICAL CLIMATE' is the most underrated statement of Malaysia. However, it is also our consistent climate that attracts many foreign tourist to visit. So from the keyword 'TROPICAL CLIMATE', I started branching out more possible direction. I was searching about the specialty of our wet tropical climate and stumble upon something interesting that might help me. I drew a simple mindmap for easy understanding.
Since I'm targeting on the specialty of our wet tropical climate, I wanted to know how is our weather significant.
Because of our Wet Tropical Climate, our country were able to sustain a high density of biodiversity. This happens because of the favorable conditions in the diversity of our habitats that allows healthy growth of the different species. And these diverse habitats include the seas, rivers, forest, mountains, etc.
And I realized that the habitats are basically the ecotourism spots in Malaysia. I feel like I could utilized the different habitats as part of my deliver concept. Instead of allowing users to go through an entire quiz and find out a suitable place. Why not let them decide on which 'habitat areas' they wanna explore. But I couldn't just introduce all the ecotourism spots according to the specific habitats. So I have to still come up with a question that could determine something more specific.
My thoughts:
I have to quickly finalize my idea and content to be able to start preparing my final proposal and idea pitch deck. The idea that I have currently: (1)A question to determine their ideal ecotourism spot (2)Allow them to choose a specific 'habitat areas' (3)Chosen 'habitat areas' will have 2 places, and they will explore and learn about it (4)After the experience, they will decide whether to plan a trip or not. So far, this is what I have in mind.
I will need to start drafting out my final proposal and final pitch deck. My ideation phase is quite finalize, I am left with the execution phase of the project. I will need to prepare flow chart, sketches, visual concept to support my execution idea.
That's all for now, stay tuned for the next blog as I will be crafting supporting materials to support my execution idea.
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