The WOW Philippines Website - Case Study Example

How much WOW? An Analysis of the Philippines’ Official Tourism Website Abstract This report examines the main website of the Philippines Department of Tourism, the WOW Philippines website. With regard to the importance of tourism to the country, and the growing market of ‘independent travellers’ who use the Internet to research and plan their own leisure travel, the website is well-designed to attract attention and promote a positive brand image for the Philippines. In design and concept it compares favourably to the website of the Ministry of Tourism of Malaysia, which has a much larger tourism industry than the Philippines. Yet despite the good ideas represented by the WOW Philippines website, there seem to be problems in execution, and the recommendation is for better management of website maintenance and content updating. The WOW Philippines Website: Purpose and Business Model Tourism is a critical component of the Philippine economy, accounting for about 8.8% of the nation’s GNP, second only in importance to remittances from overseas Filipino workers as a source of foreign currency. (Lagman, 2008) For practically all of those foreign visitors the Internet is the sole source of information about the Philippines, and so the WOW Philippines website, managed by the Philippines Department of Tourism, is the most important marketing and promotional tool for the industry. One way to define a business model is as a plan of how value in a customer-driven marketplace can be generated. (Joyce and Winch, 2004, and Keen and Qureshi, 2006) The concept of value is what makes it possible to identify a business model for the WOW Philippines website and separates it from a simple information portal. Many definitions of business models, for a website or otherwise, require some sort of transaction: sales of a product, service, or information. (Dreisbach, 2000, and Lai, Weill, and Malone, 2006) The WOW Philippines website like most websites is a hybrid of several different models (Parsons, n.d.) and resists a single, simple categorisation. Clearly, the purpose of the website is to promote tourism in the Philippines and attract visitors from other places. It generates value in a product – which is, essentially, the country itself – in several ways: As a general information portal – The website contains a large amount of information relevant to travellers, such as about the climate, transportation to and within the country, the currency and exchange rates, legal requirements such as visas, and other matters of basic safety and convenience. As a portfolio site (Parsons, n.d.) – The website is a kind of electronic brochure for the country, promoting the various natural and cultural features of the Philippines. It is not really selling anything per se in this mode, but rather trying to influence customer decisions. As direct advertising in support of an industry or specific businesses – The website devotes a part of its space to taking the portfolio function to a higher stage by advertising specific items for sale – in this case, package tours – and providing links to affiliated tour companies where the actual transaction will occur. Depending on the arrangement between these particular companies and the Department of Tourism, the website might actually be serving as a different kind of model in this case, a broker matching buyers and sellers for a fee, which is usually paid by the seller. This is not obvious from viewing the website, however, and so that presumption cannot be made. Overall, the WOW Philippines website is best described as being promotional in nature. Its business model is not to directly generate revenue, but rather to generate value for customers, which generates revenue indirectly at a later point in the tourism industry’s supply chain. The Target Market and its Behaviour The primary target market of the WOW Philippines website consists of ‘independent travellers’, who plan and book their own travel rather than primarily using the services of a travel agent. This is the fastest-growing segment of the travel market, and is made possible in large part by the Internet. (whl.travel, 2008) These travellers make their own airline and hotel reservations, and plan their itineraries at their destinations using information they find themselves. According to whl.travel (2008), a company which manages an online network for tourism businesses in developing countries, 54% of all trips taken by Americans are booked online, with Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand “slightly behind but rapidly catching up with the USA” in researching and booking trips through the Internet. The WOW Philippines website illustrates some principles of an idea presented in a 2006 paper by J. L. Nicolau and F. J. Más, who demonstrated that market segmentation can be applied to highly-individualised, CRM-intensive markets such as tourism. Tourism in particular demands mass-marketing, for which segmentation is an important tool, to attract large numbers of customers yet in the tourism business customers’ preferences are highly individualised and specific. (Nicolau and Más, 2006) The WOW Philippines website balances catering to individuals by simply presenting a wide range of relevant information, and appealing to particular broad segments of the tourism market through the offer of theme-based tour packages – beach resort holidays, golfing holidays, tours to historical sites, and so on. One segment that the WOW Philippines website does not seem to address is families with children; although photogenic Filipino kids are seen in some of the website’s many pictures, none of the attractions or tour packages described mention any appeal to families. A market segment that the website does not ignore, however, is domestic tourism. A full page of relatively inexpensive getaway packages (ranging in price from $42 to $730) is presented “for local residents only” in an obvious effort to encourage Filipinos to spend their leisure time and money in their own country. Branding an Entire Country on the Internet The Philippine Department of Tourism began the “WOW Philippines” in 2002 in an effort to battle the country’s negative stereotypes and the downturn in tourism caused by the Asian financial crisis and the SARS scare. (Mansfield and Pizam, 2006: 254) The elements of the brand are fairly obvious. First are the catchphrases “WOW”, which originally stood for “Wealth of Wonders” (Travel Weekly, 2003), and “More Than the Usual”. The title header of the website features the red, blue, and white colours of the Philippine flag, animated in Flash with little icons representing the Philippines’ tourism features: bright yellow sun, palm tree, a diver, a windsurfer, a native mask, and a Jeepney, which is a unique form of public transportation in the country. (WOW Philippines, 2009) These motifs are repeated endlessly throughout the site, and on the background wallpaper on every page. The positive brand perception that the WOW Philippines website seems to be attempting to project is that the country is a colourful, unique, cheerful, and friendly place. Without a direct study of the brand perceptions of visitors before and after they visit the Philippines, it is difficult to say how well the brand works; an extensive search through the Internet and other library databases did not turn up such a study. An indication that the brand might be effective is that tourism has steadily increased in the Philippines since 2002. (Philippines DOT, 2009) Site Construction and Traffic-Building Visitors to the WOW Philippines website are greeted with a colourful homepage, which is accompanied by an attention-getting sound loop of vaguely native-sounding music (and for which the site designer thoughtfully included an “off” button). The main page contains a variety of current information; featured at the centre of the page is a listing of upcoming festivals in different places around the country, while tourism-related news announcements and a series of warnings against fraudulent or unregistered tourism companies scroll in a sidebar. At present (19 March 2009) there are 48 primary links from the homepage, most with a half-dozen or more further links. Throughout the website, various natural, cultural, and recreational features of the Philippines are presented, with a focus on the catchphrase “More Than the Usual” and wordplays on the acronym WOW, such as “Wild Over Water”, “Watch Our Whales”, and “Wander Our Wonders”, among others. Visitors are also given the opportunity to enter their e-mail addresses for periodic newsletters and promotions, and to take an online survey “to identify your preferences in visiting our country and ultimately enrich your Philippine experience to the fullest.” (WOW Philippines, 2009) An important tool for building website traffic is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, which is writing a website with keywords and phrases that are most likely to be judged highly relevant to terms entered by users into a search engine. (Marqui, 2004) Websites listed at the top of the results list for a particular search term are textually the most relevant to that term, and as a consequence are most likely to be the sites visited by the user. Thus, an impression of a website’s traffic-building effectiveness can be formed by entering terms into a search engine – in this case, Google – and seeing how close to the top of the list of results that website appears. For the WOW Philippines website, this quick experiment had these results: tourism philippines and philippines tourism: First on the results list for both these entered search terms. things to see and do philippines: Second on the results list for this search term. philippines adventure: Number seven on the results list. philippines travel: Not as highly-placed, falling onto the second page of results at Number 22. philippines holiday: Interestingly, a site called www.wowphilippines.co.uk turns up at Number 13 on the list of search results; it is not connected to the DOT’s WOW Philippines website, but is rather a partner site of the Philippine Embassy in London. WOW Philippines does not appear in the top 200 search results for this search term. Of course, there are many variations of search terms that one could use when planning leisure travel. The important context to WOW Philippine’s traffic-building through SEO is that the user must already be considering “Philippines” to include that as part of his online search. But in that context, the WOW Philippines website places itself in a good position to attract web visitors. That along with highly interactive features on the website such as the marketing survey and multiple links appears to be a good formula for building and retaining web traffic. Matching Up To The Competition: A Comparison with Malaysia’s Official Tourism Website Malaysia represents competition in the tourism market for the Philippines. The two countries have similar cultural and geographical profiles, and take a similar basic approach to promoting their respective tourism industries on the Internet. Yet Malaysia, with a population which is roughly one-fourth that of the Philippines, tremendously outperforms its Southeast Asian neighbour in terms of tourist visitors; in 2007, 20.9 million tourists travelled to Malaysia, while the Philippines welcomed only slightly more than three million visitors. (Philippines DOT, 2008, and Malaysia MOT, 2009) To make the argument that the differences between the Tourism Malaysia website and the WOW Philippines website are responsible for the differences in the size of the two countries’ tourism markets might be specious, because tourism is affected by a wide range of factors. But because of the importance of the Internet-using ‘independent traveller’ market described above, the differences in the websites may indeed be significant. The chart below summarises the key features of each: WOW Philippines website Tourism Malaysia website Overall appearance and impression of the homepage Colourful, animated Clean, corporate-looking Number of primary links from homepage 48 38 Multimedia features on homepage Musical sound loop Video featuring a Tourism Malaysia TV commercial Interactive features User survey and e-mail newsletter sign-up Online chat with Tourism Ministry agent Links to tourism department management? Yes, link leads to page w/ e-mail links for Sec. Of Tourism and key officials Yes, link leads to the government homepage of the Minister of Tourism Links to country-specific pages? 7 (Australia/NZ, Canada, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, UK, US); each has a unique page All of them, through a standard drop-down menu; however, the same page is used for each one Featured attraction (as of 21 March) Masskara, an ethnic festival The upcoming Formula One race at Sepang Although the two websites have different appearances which would appeal to different personal tastes, there is not really much to give one a distinct advantage over the other. The WOW Philippines website has a more defined brand and theme, but the Tourism Malaysia website has somewhat more personalised content through the chat utility, and a large number of personal commentaries from actual visitors. The Tourism Malaysia website gives users the option of English or the Malay language, a clear appeal to domestic tourists, but the WOW Philippines website makes a similar pitch to Filipinos through its ‘local residents only’ special packages. One thing that the WOW Philippines website appears to do better than its Malaysian counterpart is provide more relevant links for the benefit of potential customers in foreign countries; the ‘other countries’ links contain unique content, in those countries’ local languages, whereas Malaysia’s links simply provide one slightly different version of the Tourism Malaysia homepage. Conclusion: Suggestions for Improvements to the Philippines’ Website The WOW Philippines website demonstrates a competent and well-designed strategy for attracting tourists through the Internet. The website employs a versatile business model to promote a clearly-defined brand, and appeals to a variety of segments within the ‘independent traveller’ market. Provided that a user already has in mind “Philippines” as a possible destination for leisure travel, the website is constructed effectively to place it high on the list of search engine results. In concept, the WOW Philippines website is competent and would be expected to yield favourable results. The shortcomings of the WOW Philippines website are technical rather than being flaws in strategy. The content is not changed or updated frequently; the website contained exactly the same information for a three-week period between 1 March and 22 March. By contrast, the Tourism Malaysia website is updated every one or two days. There are a number of broken links and pages missing information within the WOW Philippines website as well. For example, a link to ‘tour packages’ leads one to a page where under the tab ‘other tour packages’ one will find only a message, “We apologise for any inconvenience caused.” This is not likely to attract and hold a potential visitor’s attention. Thus the best recommendation that could be made to the Philippines Department of Tourism to improve the WOW Philippines website would be to take a cue from its much more successful neighbour and increase the frequency of site maintenance and updates. This would not only demonstrate a certain professionalism and attention to detail, but provide potential visitors with new information and a reason to return to the site more than once, increasing the chances that they would actually travel to the Philippines. References Dreisbach, Crystal. (2000) Pick a Web Business Model that Works for You. Inc., June 2000. [Internet] Retrieved 7 March 2009 from: http://www.inc.com/articles/ 2000/06/20003.html. Joyce, Philip, and Winch, Graham. (2004) Developing and Codifying Business Models and Process Models in E-Business Design. UK: University of Plymouth School of Business, May 2004. 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(2009) WOW Philippines. [Website] Available at: http://www.tourism.gov.ph/index.asp. Whl.travel. (2008) A New Tourism Business Model. [Presentation/PDF document] Retrieved 10 March 2009 from: http://www.whl.travel/data/resource/ whl_intro_english__global_.pdf. “WoW Philippines campaign launches product offensive”. (2003) Travel Weekly [Internet], 10 January 2003. Retrieved 12 March 2009 from: http://www.travelweeklyweb.com/article-1223-wowphilippinescampaignlaunchesproductoffensive-Asia.html. Read More