In order to explain the differences in appeal of destinations, a lot may be said about the role of touristic "ecosystems". Yes, it is important. The only problem is that today this notion is the polar opposite of the reality experienced by clients…

It is hard to talk with travelers about an ecosystem during summer season when train and flight fares soar, offsetting any efforts hoteliers make to control costs, and when during the year accommodations and transportation actors apply opposing rate policies. The reality that must be come to terms with is that tourism professionals went too far with yield management. The notions of "proposed value" and "perceived value" are but a vague memory from marketing manuals that have long been collecting dust on shelves. It's time to dust them off again and open them up.

Airlines and accommodations, which are longstanding rivals, have always loved chipping away at margins. But when everyone is trying to get getting the biggest share of the cake, the problem is that no one is concerned about making that cake bigger, or investing in the product and the destination.

The difficulty is that in some areas the season is too short to justify any real investment. And too many actors prefer to squeeze as much as they can out of peak season figures, rather than collaborating to change things.

The time has thus come for destinations to recognize this coordination and projection, and to understand it. Tomorrow the real competition will not be between private tourism actors, but destinations, because they are what customers look at first.

While their mission is to position themselves as a focal point, they will have to innovate. The most important challenge is to trigger the visit, and –even more difficult– the return visit. And yet, why return to a destination that offers nothing new?

Success comes from their capacity to create a new activities, a new site that is capable stimulating arrivals. Some cities have been successful: it is possible to see what structures such as MUCEM in Marseille, the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux all have to offer …

More punctually, this is also true for events: what Lyon has succeeded in doing in a few years with the Fête des Lumières or Arras has done with the Main Square Festival should encourage other destinations to think outside the classic summer season – the only time of the year when there is special programming with fireworks that have been the only, unchanging, event for decades.

It is all the more paradoxical that simultaneously, the events offered to locals are increasingly numerous. So, why not develop events that are able to attract both tourists and residents?

This is all the more interesting since today's tourists aspire to live like locals… and yet they often find themselves in lodgings in lifeless neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. So it comes as no surprise if the sharing economy for accommodations is taking off in urban centers and beginning to compete with residential properties?

Knowing how to develop and bring out new popular districts is a major challenge: the Kreuzberg in Berlin, the Olympic district in Barcelona, the Alfama in Lisbon and the East End in London were not much of anything a few years ago; today they are real tourism drivers for their respective destinations. One of the keys to the success of tomorrow will be to know how to "create" new destinations at a destination. The other will be the ability of destinations to analyze, compare, coordinate and plan.

Finally, it is necessary to innovate in terms of digital technology. However, travel and/or museum passes are slowly developing, whereas technology makes it possible to do away with them entiorelu. When nearly everyone has a smartphone, destinations are purveying more and more bracelets, is the idea of a line at the entrance to tourist sites still conceivable? Clearly not, and it is only one example among many others. So what are we waiting for?

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