At the beginning of this week, Dubai unveiled at the Asia Golf Tourism Convention (AGTC) in Danang, Vietnam, a new website the GolfinDubai.com to enhance awareness of the world-leading, premium golf destination. The new website is covering in one place everything that visitors and tour operators need to know about experiencing golf in the city.
GolfinDubai.com was launched by Falcon Golf, an entity announced in February of this year to optimise the benefits golf brings to Dubai working closely with key local stakeholders such as its golf clubs and tournament sponsors, as well as Dubai Sports Council, Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) and Emirates Golf Federation.
How could Golfindubai.com communicate more effectively?
At first glance, GolfinDubai.com seems to be very well organized and useful because every information is in one place. However, despite the good intent of the developers, they missed a very important standpoint.
Today not just golf tourists, but other tourists as well care much more about what their peer group members and influencers are saying about a golf tourism destination.
Therefore, I would present the golf attractions of Dubai via golf tourists’ shared experiences and complete them with the official information. These shared experiences can be a photo, video, review. It is not enough to provide golf clubs’ social media channels’ links, but instead, embed into the website these channels’ posts.
As image-centric marketing is gaining momentum it was a good idea to put a promotional video on the top of the website. Its impact would be even bigger if the developers would absorb the full-screen approach (e.g. Campos Coffee website). Another interesting approach would be the usage of parallax. Parallax can add a sense of personality and creativity to a website.
Unfortunately, I can still see overused and staged photography not just here, but on many golf clubs’ website. We should not neglect that more than 65% of consumers are connecting with brands and golf tourism destination emotionally!!
This is why we should utilize selfies, feeties, drone and head-on camera pictures and videos. To persuade potential golf tourists GolfinDubai.com should use numbers (e.g. number of visitors in 2016, the number of golf courses, the number of international tournaments etc.). Believe me or not, but numbers project confidence.
Finally, I think GolfinDubai.com could be more effective if they follow the example of VisitDubai.com and doesn’t forget to add social sharing application to each part of the website (and not just a general social sharing solution).