Cruise around greater Detroit and you’ll see plenty of promotion — from metro airport wall displays to highway billboards — spotlighting Motown as America’s greatest comeback city.
And, fortunately for meeting and event planners, the metro area’s tourism website also has evolved during these many years of economic rebirth and marketplace rebranding.
So it was good to see the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau staff all smiles this week after Skift named the visitdetroit.com website as one of the 25 best tourism board websites in the world for 2017.
Here’s what Skift says about visitdetroit.com in its listings:
“Everyone likes a comeback story and that’s exactly what Visit Detroit’s website is selling. The tourism board greets visitors with a message of ‘America’s Great Comeback City’ on the homepage. The homepage images portray the city as an exciting place to visit that has a little something for everyone. The site seems very user-friendly. It’s all a bit refreshing for a city that has endured years of setbacks and negative perceptions.”
Dan Peltier, Skift’s tourism reporter, adds: “The best tourism websites in the business in 2017 are emphasizing user-generated content from platforms like Instagram and doubling down on video to make destinations seem more real rather than a part of a traveler’s imagination.”
As we report in our upcoming fall issue, the DMCVB launched its improved and mobile-friendly visitdetroit.com website in May. The redesigned interface combined meetdetroit.com, visitdetroit.com and the Visit Detroit blog, providing a comprehensive online experience for users.
Meeting and event planners now will find plenty of online information to help coordinate their functions in metro Detroit. There are resources to help plan meetings, submit RFPs, review sites, plus learn about facilities, lodging and more.
“Our website is an important visitor resource and we are constantly working to keep up with the ever-changing technology to provide the best platform so our visitors can easily plan their trip to Detroit,” says Larry Alexander, DMCVB president & CEO.
Skift evaluated destination websites on several criteria, including the best user experience overall (especially on mobile), most modern modular layout, seamless navigation and impactful visuals, and the most nuanced multi-format storytelling.
Skift also looked at how sites presented information in a way to make visitors actually want to use the website to research their travel or meeting planning experience.
Eight other North American cities on the Skift list included Visit Idaho, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Visit New Hampshire, Discover The Palm Beaches, Visit Florida, Bermuda Tourism Authority, Destination Canada and Tourisme Montreal.
For more details on the Skift top 25 tourism websites list, visit https://skift.com/2017/08/08/25-best-tourism-board-websites-in-the-world-in-2017/