tourism websites

Is Finland’s Tourism Website the World’s Best?

Published December 27, 2013 | By Clark Norton

Reindeer in Finnish Lapland. Photo from Visit Finland.

In my last post, I analyzed the six U.S. tourism websites that the travel site skift.com considers to be among the 20 best-designed such websites in the world.

I was particularly impressed with the Oregon and Los Angeles visitor websites. For me, great website design encompasses not just spectacular visuals and clean typography but easy navigability leading to compelling, well-organized content. The other sites (Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Tennessee [Fall season]; and Florida, while all well designed, also contained some flaws.

If potential visitors — the baby boomer travelers that I focus on, in particular — get frustrated by not being able to find something they’re looking for right away, they may go elsewhere to find it rather than spending the crucial extra minutes on the site that might convince them to visit the destination. Tennessee, for example, has beautiful new sites for… Continue reading →

Are These the Best-Designed U.S. Tourism Websites?

Published December 23, 2013 | By Clark Norton

Santa Monica Beach, an iconic site to visit in Los Angeles. Photo from Discover Los Angeles.

I read recently that there are something like 850 million websites in the world, and who knows how many are travel-related, but it must be at least in six figures.

So a new list by skift.com (itself one of the best travel websites) of “The 20 Best Designed Tourism Websites in the World” limits itself to official tourism sites of either countries, states, cities or regions — known as destination marketing organizations, or DMOs. That certainly makes it more manageable.

Even though I always take lists like this with a large shaker of salt, I agree with the sentiment expressed in the accompanying piece by Samantha Shankman: “Websites created by destination marketing organizations are some of the most underused resources in travel today.”

Skift’s analysis of the 50 most visited U.S. tourism websites,… Continue reading →

Posted in Baby boomer travel, Marketing, Technology | Tagged baby boomer marketing strategies, baby boomer travel, baby boomer travelers, baby boomers and tourism, marketing baby boomer travel, selling travel to baby boomers, skift.com, tourism websites, travel marketing, traveling baby boomers | Leave a comment

According to government and private surveys:

Leading-edge baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) and seniors account for four out of every five dollars spent on luxury travel today.
Roughly half the consumer spending money in the U.S.--more than $2 trillion--is in the hands of leading-edge baby boomers and seniors.
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) travel more than any other age group.
When asked what they would most like to spend their money on, baby boomers answered “travel” more than any other category, including improving their health or finances.