by: David Peacock, Simpleview
Ten years ago in the province of Ontario in Canada, Regional Tourism Organization Four (or RT04 Inc.) was established as a tourism development incubator to understand and address the changes taking place in tourism in the face of a rapidly globalizing world and pervasive digital disruption.
RTO4 began its work by doing A/B testing, comparing investments in traditional DMO activities such as marketing and promotion to alternative Investments such as building stakeholder and member digital competencies, fixing digital hygiene issues with key stakeholders and tourism and generators, and creating destination networks with partners who would build, guide and fund sustainable and regenerative destination development and animation.