Building confidence with your stakeholders
From June 9-17, 2020, GainingEdge held individual advice clinics with 25 CVBs/DMOs in Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. These clinics were complimentary and hosted by consultants from GainingEdge. Below is a summary of the advice we provided during these sessions on how destinations can build confidence with stakeholders through effective, credible communications.
Confidence comes from open and transparent communication
It is critical to remember you have multiple audiences and they are all important. The key drive for your communications right now should be about building credibility through openness and transparency. There is only one kind of communication right now that can really bring you value – communication designed to build confidence in you among your stakeholders and MICE customers and buyers.
Use this time to build credibility more than trying to build interest in your destination. Then when the situation improves, you can leverage the goodwill you have built and use it to immediate effect.
What is credible communication? Short, radically transparent, spin-free and to the point information about COVID-19 and your destination.
Because you were transparent, your buyers will trust your information. Again, the trust you can build now could be one of the most positive things you can derive from this whole situation.
This downtime caused by COVID-19 is probably the most opportune time to get your stakeholders working more cooperatively. Leverage that sense of common purpose to build an even stronger and more united supplier community – another lasting positive outcome that you can take from this crisis.
We would like to share a template with you
GainingEdge is pleased to share with you a template for your credible communications about COVID-19 and how it is impacting your destination from the business events point view. Click here to see a suggested table of contents with pointers on what could be included under each topic.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
– George Bernard Shaw