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How to Accelerate Digital Maturity Across Your Operator Network

Presented by David Brett, COO & Co-Founder of Wheresight

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Over 20 Years working in Digital and Technology for the Tourism Sector��Passionate about improving Digital Maturity and Commercial Impact

About me

David Brett

COO and Co Founder

Wheresight

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Wheresight partners with Travel & Tourism Organizations to measure, benchmark and impact the digital maturity of their operators.

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What I will be talking about today

What digital maturity means for a DMO and why it matters more than ever
A step by step process to audit and benchmark your operators digital performance
Common digital gaps that hold back visitor conversion and how to fix them
How to support your operators in improving their presence without overwhelming them
Examples of how other destinations have successfully approached this challenge

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The Leaky Bucket

Slow pages

No live availability

No checkout flows

“Email for pricing”

Lets talk about the Leaky bucket. DMOs excel at growing awareness — creating interest in the destination, sparking inspiration, telling great storys, growing website sessions, video views and creating social buzz around the destination and its product. When you see a destination marketing video it immediately fires your imagination, picturing what it would be like to experience the destination. You have me hooked.

Yet a silent leak often appears at the very next click. Travellers who leave the DMO site to explore tours, attractions or hotels frequently encounter slow pages, no live availability, or checkout flows that still ask them to “email for pricing.” . This leads to frustration. In a world where the majority of travellers say the ability to book entirely online is vitally important, that friction is enough to send them back to Google and sometimes to a competing destination that makes this easier for them.

Does this challenge resonate with you? I see a lot of nodding heads

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Funnel for Destination Growth

1.

Awareness

2.

Conversion

3.

Visitors

Reach, sessions, intent signals

Destination marketing agencies

Digital maturity specialists

Location intelligence / geofencing platforms

Foot‑traffic lift, dwell time, repeat visits

Operator bookings, digital maturity improvement

Step

Typical partner

Metrics

If we view Destination Visitor Growth as a funnel The first step in the funnel is to drive awareness and inspire potential visitors. This is led by DMO campaigns that inspire and create a social buzz and demand for the destination. This can be measured by metrics such as Reach, Website Visits, Video Views, Social Engagement. However, the next step is often under optimised. The conversion step is where operators look to convert that demand into business on their books and visitors to the destination. This can be where intent leaks and you lose the visitor. The result is a conversion gap that wastes marketing spend and dilutes economic impact. We can measure this by looking at operator conversion rate, website and OTA bookings powered by digital maturity improvements. When operator conversion is optimised fully we will drive more footfall to the destination. We can measure visitors to the destination by using geo fencing or location intelligence platforms. If Conversion is the challenge it can't be fixed with more media spend. We fix it with Digital Maturity.

DMO builds demand → digital maturity specialists lift visitor conversion → geofencing validates visits.

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What is digital maturity?

Digital maturity is the level at which a business effectively uses digital tools, data, and technology to optimize visitor experience and conversion.

It is a measurement of both people skills and technology, peer benchmarked across the travel and tourism industry.

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Digital maturity matters

3 reasons why

Digital

Presence

Global

Competitiveness

Bookability

Today, every tourist business is online first. It must be easily found and accessed, from anywhere

100s of businesses are competing for the same dollar and keywords, standing out is essential or get swiped left

Over 80% of businesses don’t have an optimized and distributable booking tool, missing out on bookings and revenue every single day and over complicating a seamless digital process

2.

1.

3.

2.

1.

3.

The reason that this is so important is that tourist browsing and booking behaviour has changed significantly in the last 5 years. We are no longer flicking through brochures or going to the concierge looking for ideas for great experiences. Everything is being done online on our tablet or mobile often when we are in the car travelling through the state from New York to Niagra. I visited Australia this summer with my wife and we planned the majority of our experiences while travelling in our camper van. We were making decisions like what are we doing today, what camp site will we book for tomorrow, what experience will we book while we were on the move in the destination. Unless the experience has a digital presence and can be easily found, looks good and can be easily booked then it won't convert the visitor and they will move on to the next experience or possibly the next destination. It is no longer good enough to ask travellers to email or phone for availability or walk up. If we don't make it easy for them to book online we risk losing the business. That is a key challenge for operators and one that can be solved.

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Increase in Bookability

300%

Digital Maturity Improvement

50%

Revenue Improvement

30%

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Common operator challenges and how to solve them

I don't know where to start

Provide a tailored roadmap that gives prioritized actions based on the operator's data

Access to expertise for guidance to help them overcome hurdles along the way

Limited time and knowledge

No live booking engine

Digital challenge

Solution

No book now call to action

No measurement

Limited digital presence

Recommendations for off the shelf easy to use booking systems capable of distribution

UX advice on where best to integrate booking engine on website – desktop and mobile

Step by step guide for setting up e-commerce tracking on GA4

Guidance on which digital channels and OTAs to activate to reach their target market

Okay so we agree that it is a problem and that is a problem worth solving. Over the last few years we have identified common challenges that operators have through one to one conversations and also by using AI to develop insights through large survey data sets. Here are the top 6 challenges we see and an overview on some of the solutions we can use. We often hear "We don't know where to start" when it comes to digital – what they need is a plan that they can follow. Another common issue is limited time and knowledge – they need tactical access to expertise to help them overcome specific knowledge gaps, They often lack an optimised booking engine capable of distribution to OTAs (particularly in the attraction and experience sector) but there are numerous low cost off the shelf solutions that make a huge difference to day to day operations. We regularly see operators who save 4-6 hours per week thanks to a booking system integration. Sometimes the challenge is more straight forward like not integrating their call to action on their website. This can easily be fixed once the problem has been identified. Operators can often struggle with effective measurement of their digital campaigns but often don't have fully set up their e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics. We start with 3 essentials in GA4: e-commerce purchase, booking CTA clicks, source/medium sanity. Finally a number of operators we have worked with have had a limited presence. With the right guidence they can more confidently start to enable the right channels and right OTAs for their business. I know we have covered a bit here so let me know if anyone has any questions?

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The 5 key pillars

18 distinct territories supported by data input and logic

Leadership & Governance

Customer experience

Operational capability

Technology

People

Strategy
Leadership
Goals & KPIs
Continuous Investment

Product Readiness
Booking Experience
Digital Marketing
Website Experience

Managing Bookings
Sales Reporting
Managing Website

Booking Technology
Web Analytics
Web Technology
CRM Systems

Skills & Knowledge
Time & Resources
Culture

When you are considering influencing Digital Maturity with your operators our experience shows that is best to use these 5 key pillars

Leadership & Governance which includes Strategy, Leadership, setting business goals and KPIs and a mindset of continuous improvement which is required to thrive in a digital world. This aligns digital and business strategy. Do operators discuss digital performance every month?

Customer Experience which looks at how operators display their product and how they promote this to the right customers at the right time with the right message while also ensuring that the booking process is easy to use. How many taps does it take from landing page to booking?

Technology is about putting and the right technology in place for the business across website, booking engine, AI, analytics and CRM systems. Does your booking engine allow you to display live availability on your own site and third party sites?

, Operational Capability allows operators to optimise their precious time, capitalizing on the technology in place to reduce manual tasks, automate booking management and sales reporting while taking greater control of their website. Can OTA bookings be automatically updated in centralised system?

Finally people as Digital Maturity gains are more sustainable when they pair platform upgrades with skills and knowledge development. For example who is responsible for digital marketing or distribution strategy?

Digital Maturity is about these 5 pillars and 18 activities working together to drive operator performance. Each pillar is scored and lowest scoring pillar can be prioritised.

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Our framework �for Digital Maturity

Audit

Benchmark

Roadmap

Diagnostic

Enable

I have given you an overview of Digital Maturity. I am going to switch hats now and talk to you about how we tackle Digital Maturity with Wheresights Digital Maturity Accelerator, or Wheresight DMA. Because most operators don't know where to start we have found that this 5 step framework can be very effective. This approach focuses on Auditing each operators existing digital maturity, benchmarking them against other operators in the destination to understand where they can improve. We measure against peers, so operators see where they truly stand (not how they feel they’re doing).” We then diagnose where improvements are required and these improvements form an action orientated roadmap giving operators a clear plan outlining the tasks that they need to complete to improve their digital maturity and these tasks are prioritised based on impact and effort required. Then the operators work to complete the tasks and can be supported at key stages of the process by experts who can provide the guidence to help operators overcome roadblocks or challenges along their journey

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Five takeaways

Digital Maturity can drive improved conversion rate – reducing Leaky budget

Operators don't know where to start. A roadmap can provide clarity

Benchmarking helps drive competitive improvement within your operator base

Aggregated operator data can pinpoint where you can be most impactful with resource budget and time

Digital Maturity works best when aligned to business goals and people development

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Thank you for your time

wheresight.com

david@wheresight.com

karl@wheresight.com