Dr Philip Alford was invited by Bernard Wildauer of the Zillertal Tourism School to present to tourism teachers from all over Austria on the subject of online tourism marketing. The aim was to provide the teachers with specialist knowledge in the area of online marketing which they could then take back into the classroom. As part of his presentation Dr Alford talked about the Digital Destinations project, funded by the ESRC, and explained some of the insights that he had obtained through leading the project, including:

• The lack of formal digital marketing planning at micro business level
• Importance placed by micro players on peer to peer learning and support
• Increasing need to consider the whole ‘customer journey’
• Optimise use of customer reviews and advocacy through social media

The presentation was very well received and set the scene for the workshops run by Bernard Wildauer of the Zillertal Tourism School and Werner Gschwenter of TourismusTraining.

Dr Alford has been invited back next year to talk about how he uses the Google Online Marketing Challenge in his Digital Marketing Unit.