Skift’s Best Travel Website List Highlights Shifting Trends In Online Marketing

Skift named VisitMusicCity.com one of the best tourism websites. Photo: Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp.

Nashville, New York City and California have top destination websites, says Skift’s Top 25 list of the best tourism web presences. But the real insight for travel agents is the importance of storytelling and rich photos in providing a top-notch mobile experience.

One of the travel industry’s most web-savvy observers, Skift based its list this year primarily on overall user experience, especially on mobile, modern modular layout, navigation, “impactful visuals” and multi-format storytelling.

The final factor was highly subjective, Skift said—it’s how the other elements “worked together to make you want to go visit the destination, and more importantly, actually use the website to research the entire travel experience.”

In its online blog about the list, Skift writer Greg Oates noted that “there are so many better online experiences today in the destination marketing world,” making it hard to produce their latest rankings. Skift last rated destination websites in late 2013.

Nashville Music City was cited for its Story of Nashville, a 43-minute film about the city, and a video series about the city’s neighborhoods.

The recently relaunched NYC & Company site explores the five boroughs and their neighborhoods. “Each of the boroughs has exhaustive travel content, including a wide range of fun live videos with neighborhood locals,” Skift noted.

Visit California also features extensive video that Skift called “compelling.”

Skift believes that Visit California’s launch in January 2015 set the standard for the new style of tourism marketing that includes more storytelling, and ultimately the ability for consumers to customize their online experience and travel planning.

Rounding out the top U.S. 10 sites were:

• Columbus, Ohio
• Oregon
• Seattle
• Los Angeles
• Dallas
• San Francisco
• Canada

Elsewhere, Skift highlighted Keep Exploring Canada, Visit Stockholm, London & Partners and Visit Dubai.

Skift said the list demonstrates how tourism bureaus are “simplifying their websites on the front-end” and “adopting a similar full-width modular design, flat architecture, and streamlined navigation structure due to the demand for speed and efficiency on mobile.”

But the user experience is only half the story, Skift said. Behind the scenes, Oates noted, are “intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) platforms” that generate rich data that helps tourism bureaus constantly improve their content, and develop offers, marketing campaigns and “more targeted partner promotions.”