Early in May 2011 I was lucky enough to be a part of what must surely be one of the best blog trips ever, the Costa Brava blog trip.
For those who are not familiar with the term, a blog trip is like a press trip but for travel bloggers. A tourism destination invites a group of the most influential travel bloggers to visit their region, discover the beauty of their landscape, sample their hospitality, their gastronomy and their activities. For their part, the bloggers promote the destination on their blogs before, during and after the trip and use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to broadcast their experiences in real time.
During the seven day trip to Costa Brava, 16 international bloggers were wowed and wooed with experiences that ranged from lunch prepared by fishermen in a hut with no running water to a twenty course lunch at the second best restaurant in the world. They hiked to volcanoes in the rural interior and jumped from aircraft over the stunning coastline and they stayed in idyllic coves, seaside resorts and in Girona; in five star, family run and city centre hotels.
Most importantly of all, the bloggers met fascinating people from across the region who brought Costa Brava alive for them. They met famous chefs and painters, fishermen, sailors and vineyard owners. Everywhere they went they were welcomed with open arms, photographed, filmed and interviewed for TV and press and for their entire trip they were given access to WiFi to ensure that they could effectively do the job they had been brought to Costa Brava to do.
Costa Brava didn’t need a blog trip to raise awareness of a region of Spain that hitherto lay hidden from the tourist trail. Quite the contrary. Resorts like Lloret de Mar, Tossa de Mar and Roses have long been on the holiday destination map. But Costa Brava wants to promote itself as much more than just a seaside resort and has used the blog trip to position itself as a destination for activities, gastronomy, diversity, culture and scenic beauty.
Now, cut to Tenerife…
A popular holiday destination that desperately wants to reposition itself on the travel radar. A destination known only for the sun, sea and sand of its south and west coast resorts while the epic scenery of its mountains, its stunning volcanic interior and its cultural heritage go largely unseen.
The opportunities for activity holidays on Tenerife are endless, with everything from walking to paragliding to highlight. We may not have the world’s best chefs or restaurants but there is first class gastronomy to be enjoyed on the island and there’s a heritage of fine wine production that dates back to Shakepeare. There are five star hotels and rural idylls; festivals and fireworks; mountains, valleys and palm grove coastlines all waiting to be discovered and showcased to the world.
So why do I think a blog trip is unlikely ever to happen on Tenerife? Because any such publicity opportunity would be taken over by the politicians rather than focussing on local people interacting with the bloggers. Because in order to pull this off successfully you would have to have local and island-wide government working in seamless unity, something I have yet to witness on Tenerife. Because in Costa Brava local businesses, hoteliers, restaurateurs and tour operators opened their eyes to the power of social media; on Tenerife most of those people are oblivious to its existence and blind to its power. Because you can’t achieve millions of tweets and retweets and broadcast in real time to the world on an island where high speed WiFi is still a luxury and not a given. Because you can never move forward when you’re stuck in the past.
Wake up Tenerife, the world is passing you by.
Reading the fascinating reports you and other bloggers filed from both Costa Brava and Asturias, I wondered about the possibility of this happening here. Of course, I can see clearly that you are right. This “island mentality” thing will only increase as a result of the recent elections too! I’m told (with a shrug of the shoulders of course) that islands are the same the world over, from Jersey to the Caribbean to this archipelago, yet it seems to me that in this day and age there is no excuse. Either become a quiet backwater – which has its own appeal and charms, without doubt, or wake up to the 21st century. A kind of chauvinism is spreading throughout the islands, and it does them no favors.
I agree wholeheartedly, islandmomma. The question is, how many good businesses will fail and good people leave the island before they wake up, smell the coffee and look around to find that they’re all alone?!
A very good article and one I heartily agree with. The Canarian politicians are largely overly-avaricious. The focus of their activity is on themselves, not on the people. The most recent election clearly supports this. As a result, you will rarely get the kind of co-operation from them that is necessary. Only if the FOCUS is on them. Because of my wife´s family connections here, I have come to know some of them quite well. What I see nauseates me, but this kind of political self-centeredness is happening all over the place.
BTW, I come from an island myself. Hawaii. And while there are commonalities that one can find between Hawaii and the Canaries, Hawaii business and politics is different. Because Hawaii is the 50th state of the United States, a good portion of its cultural backdrop is capitalism. As a result, the concept of “repeat business” and “customer satisfaction” loom large. These are concepts seriously lacking in the Canaries, and if they fail to get their you know what in order, they will most likely fail.
A very interesting comparison, Akualele and I wonder to what extent Spanish sovereignty is part of the problem rather than part of the solution…
In the eight years I have lived on Tenerife I have witnessed the concept of customer satisfaction rarely and the concept of total quality NEVER. These are not just ‘nice to have’ notions in 21st business, they are no longer an option. Unfortunately, as long as the business of politics takes first place on these islands, they will never progress.
Thank you for your comments – much appreciated.
But isn’t the status of the Canary Islands within Spain similar to the status of Hawaii within the US? A US state is an autonomous region, no? I haven’t been to Hawaii so possibly I should keep my mouth shut, but don’t both places promote heavily to a “home” market, even though that market is a flight over an ocean away?
I am very much trying to be objective and take personal experiences and opinions out of this. In fact, I did a poll on my FB page to see what reaction I would get from different parts of the world, and I’ll let you know the result!
My impression is that Tenerife promotes itself to tour operators and on the mainland, and otherwise not much. If you google Tenerife the first information you come up with, after Wiki, of course, is from tour opertors and the dreaded ex-pat fora, nothing from the Cabildo. On the third page the first reference other than aforementioned is “Puertos de Tenerife”, an interesting page, but not aimed at attracting tourists/travellers to the island.
I know that it’s El Día de Canarias today, and so we have had surfeit of shorts on tv aimed at telling us how wonderful the islands are. Er——we know this, it’s why we choose to live here. How about letting others know the same thing??
Dear Andy, first of all congratulations for the blog and for the interesting vision about Tenerife as a tourism destination that you show in it. Regarding this subject -Blog Trip- I can tell that from the Tenerife Tourism Corporation we perform some press and bloggers visits across the year, although we still have not had a chance to make a trip exclusively for bloggers. We completely agree with your vision regarding the importance of this for the island and i can tell you that we are currently performing the Raid Press, which is a press trip for spanish media to show the nature and the vulcanism of our island and we have the presence of five bloggers: Rafael Perez (the traveling photographer), Nani Arenas (The inveterate traveler), Jose Luis Rivera (The Getaway), Alfonso Polvorinos (ecotourism); Nuria Cortés (laloliplanet.com). The group can be followed through twitter # tnfvolcan.
Congratulations again and nice to follow your blog.
Adolfo Betetta
Turismo de Tenerife
Hi Adolfo,
Thank you so much for taking the time to make your comments which are both informative and very welcome. I believe it is the passion of those of us who love this island that will, sooner or later, take us all forward. It is great to hear that there are press trips underway which include bloggers but it is interesting to note that, despite having my finger firmly on the Tenerife social media pulse, both with Spanish and English speaking bloggers, I have not seen any publicity about the event. The amount of publicity generated by the Costa Brava trip was incredible and proved its value before a single word was even published.
If I might make another observation, the hashtag is vital in ensuring that the blogosphere and Twitter latch onto and follow the trip, and #tnfvolcan is, in my opinion, too specialist to allow that to happen. Using the hashtag #inCosta Brava which allowed Twitter users to seamlessly thread it into tweets, generated an unbelievable ten million plus tweet impressions during the trip and caused it to become a trending topic. In essence, Europe and much of the world was talking Costa Brava for a whole week!
We are lucky enough to have here on Tenerife not only travel bloggers who have experience of successful Blog Trips and social media experts, but also the person who organised the Costa Brava and other successful trips. Perhaps if we all work together we could prove my blog wrong
Can I just add that they are STILL talking about Costa Brava. Just today I have read two or three more reports about it – not including yours!
[...] so long ago Andy wrote a blog about why a successful officially organised blog trip to Tenerife was an unlikely concept. Three months down the line and there have been a few ‘blog trips’ to Tenerife. Some [...]
[...] blog trips and Tenerife…but for what I believe is good reason. Andy and I have documented our thoughts about blog trips and Tenerife before; done properly and they can result in priceless promotion of the island but done badly and [...]