European Cities Marketing

The video is a lecture about European cities marketing. They studied 14 cities in Europe and did a survey about their usage of social media marketing and also their feelings on it. Most of them thought social media marketing is a very useful tool to promote their own countries and attract tourists to come. They usually use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and their own blogs as tools to do marketing. They believed that this kind of marketing can expand their networks and reach more visitors all over the world. In the future, they will make more use on the internet and have more integration with their marketing strategies.

Blog of London

From this video, it shows that European cities are more rely on social media and internet for marketing. It means that social media is very useful and important for DMOs. In my opinion, not only European countries but also Asian countries tend to use social media marketing for promoting their destinations. Like my home town, Hong Kong, HKTB used a lot of social media to get tourists’ attention and interests to visit Hong Kong. As mentioned in the last blog post, HKTB has lot’s of social media like RSS, podcast, facebook and twitter etc. It shows that HKTB is experienced of using social media as a marketing tool. When using the level of expertise to describe HKTB, it is at level 3. HKTB has its own application for tourists to download from the website. The applications are travel guides and current events hold in Hong Kong. Also, HKTB has a well-organized homepage, with interaction corners which provide lots of social media tool, which help tourists to get the latest news and promotion of Hong Kong.

After watching this video, I am quite sure that more and more DMOs will make use of social media for promoting their countries. Using social media is very convenient and more people can be reached. The more people DMOs can reach, the more people will come and visit the cities. Also, using social media can build up better public relationship. They can have more communications and also knowledge exchange. Tourism is undeniably the main income of most countries. Therefore, a well-developed marketing strategy should be used in order to attract more tourists to visit and spend in the city. Although Hong Kong is now well-developed in using social media marketing, it still have lots to improve. HKTB needs to keep updating the latest technology news so as to modify their existing applications and tools for tourist. Tourists will visit a city if it gives them convenience. So DMOs should always try improving their tools to give tourists more help and social media is undoubtedly the most convenient tool.