Tourism advice networks: planning your first rollout

Start with a moment in the visitor’s stay

At an accommodation reception desk, a market or a visitor attraction, a question can lead to a new discovery. For a tourism office director, organising that advice means choosing the situations where a network could offer useful help. MONA describes SADI, the French framework for visitor welcome and information, as a destination strategy built around visitors’ journeys and expectations, both within and beyond the tourism office.

For an initial Roadpress rollout, we suggest starting with a specific request. Consider this working example: an accommodation host helps a family without a car plan the following day. What should the host ask? Which ideas could they share? Who can help when information is missing? This scenario gives the project a concrete purpose and something participants can work through together.

Source : MONA — Rethinking visitor welcome through SADI (French)

Bring a small group together around a clear service

Offices de Tourisme de Normandie highlights the tourism office’s leadership of local visitor welcome and the importance of working collectively with other hosts. This gives management a clear role in setting the direction and organising the day-to-day work.

Begin with people willing to try the service and discuss difficulties. An accommodation provider and a mobile welcome team could offer two useful settings, if these match your priorities. Talk through their usual requests, equipment and time available for advice. Name a contact at the office for content questions and help with the tool. Together, agree the pilot’s scope, its timing and a review meeting that fits the season. Each participant then knows what they are committing to and where to turn for support.

Source : Offices de Tourisme de Normandie — Welcome strategy and SADI (French)

Prepare the content partners will recommend

In Roadpress, advisors build booklets from the destination’s WordPress content and prepared playlists. For the pilot, choose a collection that fits the requests you have selected: activities reachable without a car, wet-weather options or short outings, for example. Each collection should give advisors room to adapt their selection to the person they are helping.

Check the details visitors need to act on a suggestion: access, opening times, booking arrangements and useful documents. If listings come from a tourism information system, review their availability in WordPress and the usable fields with the implementation team. Agree a simple process for reporting and correcting errors. The office contact should know who checks information and how to tell participants when a recommendation changes.

Give each participant the right account

The office’s authorised administrators manage accounts and permissions. Each advisor has an individual login. The external advisor role lets partners create booklets using the shared content; settings and statistics remain reserved for authorised administrators. Explain this division during training, including whom to contact when a request requires something beyond the assigned role.

Visitor messaging and updates to booklets already shared are available to authorised internal advisors. External advisors cannot use these features. An invited professional has a different purpose: viewing reviews and information about their own points of interest. This consultation role is distinct from the role used to advise visitors. Make that distinction when choosing access, and plan to review or remove permissions when someone leaves the network. Clear responsibilities make it easier for participants to direct questions to the right person.

Practise a complete conversation in the actual setting

Training works well when it follows a request from start to finish: listen, select, personalise and share. Use the device and connection the participant will rely on in practice. Creating and sharing a booklet requires a modern browser and an internet connection, including at mobile welcome points.

Return to the family travelling without a car and let the participant lead the conversation. Visitors can open their selection through a link or QR code, without a mandatory app. Testing it on a phone helps check readability and practical information. Before starting, confirm these points together:

• The advisor can find a listing and adapt a prepared selection.
• The booklet answers the request and its useful links have been opened.
• The participant knows the office contact and how to report a difficulty.
• The office and participant know how to direct a request that needs follow-up.

Use early experience to plan the next stage

During the pilot, collect specific situations: a difficult search, missing information or a sharing step that needs explaining again. Focus the review on these observations and possible improvements. Revising a playlist or clarifying an instruction may be a useful step before bringing in more partners. Give each agreed action an owner and a point at which you will review it.

Administrators can examine recorded activity by information point or advisor type. Created booklets and recommended content help explain the network’s working practices; they do not prove visits to those places. Read this information alongside participants’ feedback to decide whether to continue, adjust or expand. Growth can then follow the office’s capacity to support people and the destination’s needs, with maintained content and responsibilities everyone understands.