Destination marketing writes a cheque. Operators on the ground cash it. When those two groups don’t talk, the visitor experiences the difference as a broken promise, and they blame the destination rather than either team.
A campaign can be beautiful, run everywhere, move every number it was measured on, and still deliver people with young children to a region where the main attractions have no pram access and the visitor centre shuts at three.
The disappointment is never proportionate
Somebody who drove four hours on the strength of a campaign is far angrier about a closed visitor centre than the closure itself warrants. They’ve absorbed a promise and it wasn’t kept.
That reaction gets written off as unreasonable. It isn’t. It’s the predictable cost of a gap between what was sold and what exists.
Ask what the campaign commits you to
Before anything runs, sit down with the words and turn them into obligations.
If we say family friendly, what has to be true on a Saturday in January. If we say accessible, who’s checked. If we say open year round, is that everything or is that the pub.
Most campaigns contain several implicit commitments nobody has written down. Writing them down is a two hour exercise and it prevents most of what goes wrong.
Brief the front line before the public
The people who’ll be asked about the campaign are the ones who find out about it last. Café staff, tour operators, the person at the information desk.
Give them a week’s notice, tell them what’s being promised, and tell them what to say when somebody asks for something the region can’t provide. A local who can offer a real alternative saves the visit. A local who’s confused confirms the visitor’s suspicion that they’ve been sold something.
Undersell what you can’t control
Weather, wildlife sightings, seasonal produce, anything dependent on conditions. Campaigns love these because they photograph well.
Word them so a bad day still fits inside the promise. There’s a version of every one of these that stays true in July when it’s raining and nothing’s flowering, and finding that version is worth more than the marginal appeal you lose.
Measure the arrival, not the reach
Campaign reporting tends to stop at impressions and visitation. Neither tells you whether the promise held.
Ask the operators. What did visitors turn up expecting that you couldn’t give them? Two conversations with a café owner on the main street will tell you more about your campaign’s accuracy than any dashboard.
Worth considering
Take your current campaign copy. For each claim, name the person responsible for it being true on the ground.
Any claim you can’t attach a name to is a promise nobody has actually made.
Ben Webb is an Australian project delivery leader, AIPM Project Manager of the Year 2022 and an IPMA World Project Manager of the Year nominee 2023. He writes about project delivery, leadership and the difference between managing a project and actually delivering one.
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