Bringing the World to Scotland Again

Article by Geotourist – geotourist.com

Scotland, your visitors haven’t gone away – but they have moved online and they are just as enchanted, as curious and as fond of Scotland as ever.

How do we know…?

For a data-driven organisation like ours, the evidence is everywhere we look, from the activity on our social media feed to the percentage of Geotourist users who are viewing the tour from their laptops, rather than their mobile phones.

Should we be worried that users are checking in from their laptops? No. Right now, figures are exactly what we’d expect them to be when you consider the bigger picture. Across the world, we’re living with localised restrictions on our freedom to travel, however the world hasn’t suddenly lost its wanderlust. While just under two thirds of users are still viewing our naturally socially-distanced tours from across the world on their mobiles, we’re seeing an increase in users who are accessing tours via their laptop.

However you break that data down, it still represents many thousands of users who are actively looking for digital content at a time when we’re meant to be staying put and making do with what we’ve got on our doorstep. The world is still just as keen to explore as ever.

RTMO

Refusal To Miss Out is the new FOMO. Visitors aren’t prepared to cancel their plans to trot the globe – they might postpone, they might reschedule, they might browse the web longingly, but they are still looking to destinations to reward them for their interest. Visitors are still exactly that – visitors – they’re just slightly disempowered versions of their normal selves. ‘When this is all over…’, the world will open up again and they will return. What makes them return to you, in particular, is all to play for, however.

VisitBritain’s ‘I Travel For’ campaign captured the mood around decision-making; while people may travel – and be inspired to travel – for very different reasons, the bottom line is that they travel so that they might connect more deeply with the world that they live in.

Good News

Scotland is as well loved as it ever was – and three particularly interesting Geotourist tours that have been released in Scotland since February are testament to Scotland’s place in the world’s heart. When physical travel was prohibited during the most extreme restrictions, we produced and published Visit Outer Hebrides’ Uist trail. By mid-September, the tour had been visited – either remotely or in person – over 600 times.

What makes this all the more meaningful is that the Outer Hebrides’ Uist tour is on Geotourist’s global platform, which means it is more likely to be discovered from the other side of the world, by our North American users – certainly, our US and Canadian users have viewed the tour, with a number of European nations not far behind. Creating a remotely-accessible digital experience on a worldwide app means that you can still extend your destination’s reach and influence even when in lockdown, ensuring that your destination can stay front and centre of traveller’s minds.

VisitScotland

Working with VisitScotland, we launched the set-jetting trail of Outlander Filming Locations on St Valentine’s Day 2020. The tour takes in 42 locations across Scotland, stretching from the Ayrshire coast to the Cairngorm National Park. Within weeks of the tour’s release, Scotland was in a strict lockdown. Yet, the VisitScotland Outlander Filming Locations trail has over 4,600 views. Season 5 ran across 12 weeks from 17 February to 27 April. Thousands of visitors continued to interact with the tour from all over the world – and was with limited and carefully considered signposting that encouraged people to #ListenFromHome and #StaySafe.

Micro Stats

One of our most recently-released tours in Scotland was developed, produced and delivered entirely remotely during restrictions and the tour stats are already remarkable. The Japanese Garden, Cowden sits nestled in the Ochil Hills and, like many others, is open on a pre-booking basis. A compact, but intrinsically beautiful, site, Cowden is a stunning example of a Japanese garden and the tour has had over 880 views in its first week of release alone, which is more people that can physically visit. With such clearly defined parameters, we’re able to establish the number of in-location (or nearby) visitors and the number of remote visitors who are opting to experience the garden from afar.

Appiness

At Geotourist, we understand the drive to develop and own your own app more than most. We have both experience and evidence of how technology can help visitors to enhance their experience – we’re already working with destinations all over the world and their KPIs– however, we routinely speak with focus groups who tell us apps are at best “disposable.” Proprietary apps that have limited reach and, with visitors not freely able to travel, it’s hard to understand how they might discover or use apps like this while exploring remotely. On Geotourist’s global platform, you’re instantly in the eyeline of users all over the world, who are looking for places and stories to inspire them, with your tour working as lead generation and a brochure, as well as a socially-distant compliant experience acting as a bridge to your destination as we wait for the world to return to normal, that is.