To help understand how we Think! about tourism campaigns, I want to share a some information about a little town called Hood River. If you’ve been in one of our strategy sessions you can stop reading because you already know this story.
Hood River is a small town on the bank of the Columbia River in Oregon in the United States. Anyone who has been to Hood River will tell you that it is one of the windiest places on earth. Everyone in tourism marketing has skeletons that they don’t want people to know and for Hood River its wind. Its unbearably windy, unless you like wind.
In the 1970s, Hood River became a mecca for windsurfing. Windsurfers love wind. Presumably, a handful of early-adopters figured out that Hood River is windy. Word of mouth quickly traveled to other windsurfers and all of a sudden a windsurfing community was born.
Some of those windsurfers stuck around after summer and needed something to do in the Winter. Mt Hood is just nearby and skiing seems like a logical option. When Spring arrives and the snow melts people turn to kayaking and mountain biking.. You start to see a natural overlap. No one lives in isolation. Some people who once windsurfed took up kiteboarding when it emerged.
Ideas flow fast within a community of passion. Influencers are closest to that passion and they influence others. Communities of different passions overlap. Passion is a shortcut to increasing tourism through word-of-mouth.
What passions do you have in your community? What are you passionate about?
[...] the internet and social network allow people to connect with people in passionate communities, they want to meet in person. The opportunity lies tourism and hospitality businesses is to find [...]
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