On the one hand there are a plethora of travel content websites, which obviously allow users to print information, while on the other there are pre-printed brochures on the shelves of offline travel agencies.
The area in the middle is where the debate lies as many (probably quite rightly) believe some travel consumers still want to flick through a brochure of some kind as well browse the web.
Maligned by the so-called progressives as an Old School travel industry technique for getting product into the hands of prospective buyers, holiday brochures have remained a strong feature of agency retailing.
Meanwhile others bemoan simple printing out from websites as producing material somewhat lacking in inspiration and not capturing the spirit of a destination or product.
What some travel (and media) organisations have since tried to do – with varying degrees of success – is digitise the classic printed format, such as Thomson.
Others, such as OffBeatGuides, have created an entire service around producing a paid-for build-your-own itinerary pack while Travellerspoint recently did it for free.
The latest to have a go at sprucing up the travel brochure is Discover Ireland, the DMO charged with attracting visitors to the Emerald Isle.
Officials have produced a design-your-experience module on the main Discover Ireland website which allows users to select a range of requirements such as transportation, time frame, region, accommodation and activities/interests.
What comes back via email is a hefty, extremely glossy, web-hosted and personalised PDF which has aggregated the personal preferences into subject areas with embedded links to suppliers, attractions and other relevant sites.
The disappointing thing for those that live and breathe digital brochures and firmly believe in their future is that are often seen in less than favourable terms simply because they are not embracing web-based technology for reproduction of web content, instead opting for ways to regurgitate printed material.
DiscoverIreland has a neat tool but will it (or should it) satisfy the web-focused potential visitors?
And could anyone other than a DMO (with presumably lots of money to spend and not ‘too’ much focus on how it’s spent) cough up the presumably pretty hefty sum necessary to develop something like this? Nice idea… worth doing from a cost-benefit perspective? In my opinion highly doubtful
I think this goes hand in hand with the topic of how people consume data – i.e. are e-readers like the Kindle and Nook going to take off since people like the physical feeling of turning pages, not worrying about glare, etc.
My gut tells me that packaging an old way of delivering the advertising content (brochure) in a new way (customized PDF) isn’t going to be a big game changer.
If I was a betting man, I’d say that relevant information feeds presented in a slick way is going to be the next big thing. (I am thinking back to the first time I saw Google Earth and my jaw dropped.)
For example, let say I have a trip planned for Dublin in April. I click a ‘Your Trip’ link inside the website somewhere and it remembers the locations I’ll be staying at, from there I can ‘fly’ around by topic – i.e. Attractions, Restaurants, Music, Arts. So I hover over Dublin Castle and it will have hover bubbles for pictures (via flickr matching the search words), reviews, summaries of the events at that location for April and so on.
I think the goal of brochures was to make you feel more like you are there. I also think technology has progressed to a point where there are so many better options on how to do that than larger pictures and more text in a PDF.
Matt: agree entirely.
What you speak of (as Jeremy hints at) is expensive from a dev persepective, esp when DMOs are fighting over ever nickel they can get from their agencies, often state-funded.
It’s a nice thing to aim for though.