Tourism 2.0

When the Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour
sent out an invitation via Twitter for its Aviation Geekfest at noon one day
last December, it figured the 50 open slots would be grabbed up by the end of
the day.

Elapsed time to claim them all: 52 seconds.

And it wasn’t just locals who were clamoring for the spots,
says Sandy Ward, marketing director for the Snohomish County attraction.
Queries came from as far away as Portland, Denver and Chicago.

That there would be such fervent interest in a special tour
of Boeing’s huge Everett plant isn’t so surprising. The Future of Flight center
draws 200,000 visitors a year.

But what it does illustrate is a new era for the tourism
industry generally and for Washington’s in particular, a new way of getting
information to potential visitors, a new way of connecting and communicating
with them, and a potentially powerful way of converting the curious into paying
customers. And how well Washington’s tourism industry masters those
technologies and techniques matters not only to that sector but also to the
state’s entire economy. 

Tourism may be hard to define precisely—aside from the
obvious components such as hotel stays, it can include everything from museums
to golf courses, wineries, sports venues and shopping malls, and everyone from
locals out for a day trip to visitors from outside the United States here for a
couple of weeks.

Whatever the exact size the tourism industry actually is,
it’s big. An economic impact study prepared for and released by the state Department
of Commerce says tourism accounted for $14.2 billion in spending last year, as
well as $1 billion in state tax revenue and 147,600 jobs (3 percent of the
state’s total employment). The value of Washington’s tourism “exports” was
greater than that for both micro-electronics and wood products. Tourism is also
significant for the companies that have grown up here, from Alaska Air Group to
Holland America Line to Expedia.

Tourism is a big deal for the Seattle-Puget Sound region as
well. Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau preliminary numbers for 2009
show 8.8 million visitors spending $6.8 billion while visiting the city and
King County. The numbers for 2009 are down from 2008, although the Seattle
tourism bureau says it’s expecting a rebound in 2010.

But such fluctuations are typical of a highly cyclical
industry that can be helped

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