DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS (DMOs) In contrast to tour operators who are bringing you their guests, DMOs will primarily be bringing travel and tourism media outlets that they are courting. For a DMO, the value of your distillery is as an attraction, which encourages greater attention and coverage for the region. (DMOs might also use your distillery for social media value or as an attraction for courting event planners, but those are beyond the scope of this article.) As an attraction, your distillery needs to be attractive. This doesn’t mean Disney-fied beauty, but rather clean, safe, and welcoming. The more your distillery lines up with the region’s destination brand identity, the better because then it’s easier for the DMO to justify including you in the media tour. Media tours, often called FAM or familiarization tours, are an opportunity to showcase the region as worthy of tourism. FAMs will involve multiple stops and will usually have very tight itineraries. The typical FAM visit is your standard experience because that’s what the travel journalist will be promoting to his or her audience. Unlike a media visit where an outlet is covering you exclusively, for these visits the journalist needs to know exactly what you offer to the general public and normally should not receive an alternate or special experience. The one additional element you might incorporate in a FAM visit is greater time and depth to go into your location story. This is subtly different than your brand story because the focus is on locality rather than brand or product. This includes your origin story and why it’s important that you are where you are, perhaps with the history of the building or unique facts and interesting anecdotes about your journey from initial concept in the space (or even a different space) to the state of things today. Sometimes DMOs will be able to pay you for providing a media or planner experience, but more often they be requested for free. Given the earned media value of a successful story, it’s usually worth it to you to offer the experience at no charge.
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MINIMUM VISITOR CENTER OPERATIONS Since hosting guests and working with tour operators and DMOs requires labor, it’s generally seen as an expense to operations. ROI can come through income from ticket purchases and gift shop sales plus value can be generated with brand awareness and social and traditional media promotions. One major difference between hosting drop-in (‘transient’) visitors versus tour operator and DMO guests is in timing. These groups will be planned with specific arrival and departure times, headcounts, and possibly special treatment. This is where the real value of having dedicated visitor program staff comes in. Your time must necessarily be flexible, but a staff member can be a dedicated point of contact, be made available during regular hours to respond to planning inquiries, and be scheduled to attend to a group at the appointed time. Ensuring a quality visit starts before the guests arrive. Are you hard to find and is GPS problematic? Provide directions on the website and in a direct email. Take responsibility for confirming groups one to two days ahead by double-checking arrival and departure times and headcounts, plus reinforce directions if needed. Provide a cell phone number for text updates in case of day-of changes. Have a staff member be ready and waiting to personally greet guests upon arrival; by first greeting the tour operator or DMO staff by name, trust in them is conveyed to the guests. A quality visit ends with a thankyou to the guests and thank-you to the hosts, plus a solid close based on the group’s value. An explicit “We had a great time with you here; we hope you had a great time with us as well” is perfectly fine. Additionally for media guests, be sure to provide a mechanism for follow-up questions or assets such as logos and photographs. WWW.ARTISANSPIRITMAG.COM