Imaginez un organisme national du tourisme en Europe, WisitSweden, qui se lance dans le Travel 2.0 de façon très professionnelle et qui est en train de construire un site communautaire de voyage afin de communiquer et faire la promotion de sa destination au niveau national via ce nouveau media.

C'est du concret et c'est un très beau projet.

Tommy Sollén qui travaille pourVisitSweden est le project manager et le Official Community Driver de WisitSweden's Online Community. Il nous parle de ce projet innovant.

Décidément, çà bouge très très vite dans cette partie du travel 2.0 et des sites communautaires de voyages.

Le Canada est sur un gros projet au niveau national, des acteurs privés américains se développent et font des partenariats avec des DMO's. (bientôt un interview sur ce sujet avec le CEO de goseetell.com qui motorise la destination Oregon)

En France, Marianne ne vois rien venir ??? et risque de laisser passer le train...

>>Tommy, can you tell some information about you and the other partner in VisitSweden online community?

Certainly Claude.
I work at VisitSweden with web project management and I've been preparing this project on and off for the last year. We're now in pre production mode.
I've put together a team of skilled professionals that complement each other. Together we're creating the foundation for the online community; the purpose, the goals, the personas of the target groups, the services and functionality is being discussed etc.
The members of this team are
me,
Maria Ziv - Marketing Communications Director at VisitSweden,
Hans Leijström - Online Community expert at Trive,
Daniel Ilic - Creative Director at Webupdate,
MÃ¥rten Forslund - Creative Director at Farfar.

>>You manage the operation for this country's online community. Can you tell us the story and some fact about this project? Seems you are very innovative as a national DMO !

VisitSwedens strives to be a modern company in communication and our actions and the way we work has to reflect that ambition.
Last year our creative agency Farfar won prizes for our web campaign "Stockholm the musical".
We're constantly trying to be on the front line on how we're using internet and how we communicate.
Maria Ziv looked at the current trends about a year ago and it was obvious to her that online communities were here to stay. User generated content is not only trustworthy to other users, it's also self regulatory and cost efficient when done properly.
So basically, Maria Ziv had this vision and brought me in to implement it. After a year of preparations we're now on the way.

>>Can you give us some outline about your goals with VisitSweden online community!

The end goal is of course to increase travel to Sweden. We're confident that by creating a virtual meeting place where swedes and foreign tourists can interact with each other we'll raise awareness of Sweden as a tourist destination and lower the threshold for the first time Sweden visitors.

We will set specific goals for the number of members and active members when we're further along in this process. First we have to set the personas and the services and a few other things.

>>Who will use your services ? Do you have a target audience ?

Normally we work against the target group "The Global Traveller" and it's segments DINKs(Double Income No Kids), WHOPs(Wealthy Healthy Older People), and Active Family.

We've just begun the process with "Personas" and we've identified five personas. Three of them are the segments mentioned above and the other two are Swedes and expatriate Swedes.
We feel that there are two main groups of users; Swedes and other nationalities. The key is to get these groups to interact with each other. To Share information and experiences.



visitsweden team for WisitSweden's Online Community

>> Do you plan to work with the professional as well ? Like travel agency, tour operator...or it's only for end customer ?

We feel involving these companies would lessen the authenticity and defeat the purpose of an online community with user generated content.
We'd rather have users recommend which travel agencies they like etc.
However, we're exploring the possibilities for partners to sponsor entire sections of the online community.
For example, a big airline company might sponsor the Travel Story section.
We feel the sponsorship model is less invasive to our community members and that it still provides good impact and credibility for the sponsor.

>>Internet is going faster and we talk now about Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. What do you think about this evolution in the tourism & hotel market place ? Social media and User Generated Content are the big trends for Travel 2.0 ?

The way we use internet is constantly changing and evolving. I think the current trends are a natural progression of this development.
What's interesting is not so much about these trends or buzzwords but more why some actors in these businesses are so slow or unwilling to adapt themselves to what the users want.

>>We see important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vidéo etc), what is your point of view in the travel area ?

All these technologies have some important things in common: they put the importance on the individual and it's content and they make things easier for the user to consume their content of choice.

We're already using many of these technologies and plan to use more. For example we use RSS feeds in our external and internal blogs, like the devblog(http://devblog.visitsweden.com) and the swedish CEO blog. We're implementing Google maps in our map service which is almost ready for release. The online community will probably have some ajax where appropriate and surely some podcasts and video.

We're also looking on how we can improve our PR-work on internet by using some of these technologies.

>>Canadian Tourism Commission ( www.canada.travel) is working on a very exciting and innovative initiative with Real Travel (a travel social networking web site) that will launch in the next few months. You choose to develop your own tool but do you look at some partnership with other travel social network ?

We're not pursuing any such partnership at this time but we might revisit the subject in the future.

>>Any advises for DMO's and Tourism Board who want to start a online community!

They might want to read our Development blog where I blog openly about our process. I'm sure there will be some lessons learned along the way :)

Don't underestimate the amount of work the community will need after the launch. I think we'll need to be active in our own community to support and encourage the members.



visitsweden_development_blog_community

>>What are your taste for:

>>Travel:

I want to get to my destination as quickly as possible. Beam me up, Scotty!

>>Travel destination:

A nice cultural city break in the summer. A new growing interest is skiing and Sweden has some great skiing!

>>Hotel :

I want free wireless internet access. Is that too much to ask for?

>>Business:

As in business conferences?
It's hard to be innovative with big business crowds but the most memorable conferences are the ones where they try.

>> Any advises for French people who want to go to Sweden on vacation?

I think they will be surprised at how good the Swedish food is.
Stockholm, city of islands, is amazing. Lapland in the north is breathtaking in autumn and winter.
Personally I'm planning a vacation this summer in the Stockholm archipelago. I think it will be an amazing experience!

>>You have the micro

VisitSweden is the official website for Sweden as a tourist destination.

Online Community:
http://devblog.visitsweden.com is a blog about all the exciting work that's being done on our biggest web project of 2007 - the development, launch and ongoing activities of VisitSweden´s online community.
Please go there and read all about the project. Also sign up for beta testing, launch notification and if you're a company interested in being an official sponsor.

My name is Tommy Sollén and I work at VisitSweden. I'm a project manager and I'm also the official Community Driver.

Thank you very much for taking the time to get to know us a little better and to find out more about our online community.

Best regards,
--
Tommy Sollén
VisitSweden
http://www.visitsweden.com
http://devblog.visitsweden.com
__________________________________________________________________________

Merci Tommy,

Pensez-vous que les CDT, CRT ou Maison de la France devraient s'investir plus activement dans les sites communautaires de voyages, suivre l'exemple de WisitSweden ou du Canada et des USA qui font des partenariats avec des acteurs privés ?