This essay was written by Bart de Graaf from The Netherlands as entry for the essay competition. The winning article by Silvija Prancane can be found here.
Tourism is probably the industry with the most amazing qualifiers worldwide. Destination Management Company (DMC) is one of these denominations, apparently invented to give more weight to what until recently was called an Incoming Operator, or simply Agent. The abbreviation DMC and what it stands for, indeed better describes what we do, but does it really add value to what we are; for us, for the clients, for our providers? And more importantly: do they know what it means?
CATDMC (www.catdmc.com), part of Global Encounters™ (www.globalencounters.com), was set up in Lima 12 years ago, as Class Adventure Travel; an incoming agent in Peru for the Dutch travel market. Between 1997 and 2004 our company grew to become the largest incoming operator for the Dutch market in Peru and we still are today. Over the past 5 years we have opened new offices in Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica and at the start of that development we felt it became necessary for our company to get a new denomination. So, we decided to become a DMC. Just like that.
Nobody really understood why we did this and nobody told us off either, so for 5 years we have been CATDMC and still we receive questions as to what that actually means; Destination Management Company. Explaining the words usually does not “cut it” and honestly, if people really want to know in detail what the second part of our name is about, things become rather cloudy, rather fast, for us too. So, what is a DMC and why would an incoming agent want to be one?
Something happened recently, that made us think about this decision a little further. Did I say recently? Actually it has been happening for the past decade and a half, but over the last few years its effects are being felt in our neck of the woods as well. Yes, I am talking about Globalization and the Internet. For many of you these are given factors, but when I graduated NHTV in 1996, I could still present my thesis in hand-written form; yes, with a pen. Of course I went for the ultra-modern matrix printers installed in NHTV’s ICT-center, so after some 48 hours I had the obligatory 5 copies of what had cost me a year of my life to put together and not very much later I graduated on the feasibility study for what today is CATDMC. Email had just been brought to the masses, but most written communication was still done by letters and by fax so when we started out in Lima in April 1997, we became part of a by then still holy union of 5: The Travel Value Chain, consisting of Travelers – Travel Agents – Tour Operators – Incoming Operators – Providers. Each of the members of this chain needed the other 4 and there was a certain amount of respect and loyalty between them. Being the only Dutch incoming agent in a country that had been shut to the world for 14 years also helped, but I can say today that in those days the relationships between us and our providers and between us and the tour operators simply were… well, easier.
Lately, as we all know, things have changed. Competition has grown to previously unknown levels, tour operators have decided to go direct, incoming operators are massively going online and the savvy traveler knows how to find the provider of the services necessary for his/her next journey with more ease every day. The playing field is being shaken and positions are shuffled, or in some cases eliminated. The Travel Value Chain is becoming more and more unclear, but it surely is growing a lot shorter.
Chaos = Opportunity and the time seems to have come for Destination Management Companies worldwide to make a stand. Eventually, who does the client really travel with? Not with the travel agent, not with the tour operator, and in most cases also not with just one end-provider. The DMC, however, usually is the one “middle man” that actually builds, reserves, pays and controls the quality of the trip. Therefore wouldn’t it be grand if the Destination Management Company were to get some more recognition with the traveling public?
What if one could get across the value of local standing, knowledge and relationships that are required to build a memorable travel experience? What if there would be a certification system trustworthy enough to give the DMC the extra credibility to stand out in the crowd, to be recognized? What if one could analyze what it is people look for in a DMC and help those DMCs achieve just that? What if the DMC would become the first thing on people’s minds when thinking about travel?
Being great at what you do is not enough; recognition is key. Publicity and branding, although way over the top in some industries can still do a lot for the DMC and make people aware of what it takes to actually make a journey work out the way it has to. But that’s not all: most DMC’s stand alone in many ways. Competition is fierce; differentiation difficult. Price seems to prevail over quality most of the time, mainly due to the difficulty of unquestionably proving one’s capacity compared to the myriad of competitors in the same destination. Certification, association, corporate liability insurance, qualified representation and true ICT and sales support are some of the things that are hard to find, unaffordable, or simply inexistent if you are a DMC.
A befriended managing director of a marketing firm tipped me on The Blue Ocean Strategy and I felt intrigued immediately. What if we could climb out of our red ocean and redefine the rules of the game? What if we could clean up and recreate the market space? How could we become unique and be singled out for it without paying the obvious price? Power lies in numbers: we would need to try to achieve globally differentiated identification for DMCs such as ours by teaming up with some, if not many of them and make sure to create a voice that would be heard… time to get to work.
Today, the Association of Certified Destination Management Companies (www.acdmc.org) aims to become an international community of DMCs with a common view in terms of high end travel management. ACDMC, made up of numerous DMCs, will bring to the table a combination of long-term experience, in-depth knowledge, and solid relationships in destinations worldwide. ACDMC guarantees excellent and consistent service as well as qualitatively measurable standards in order to further strengthen the global position of its DMC associates.
ACDMC will give its members a cutting edge advantage in the market by connecting them in a global DMC community, creating networking & sharing opportunities, offering a rigorous certification process, forging buying power for otherwise unaffordable liability insurances, staging mutual sales & marketing campaigns, and creating a online sales platform. It will help DMCs improve themselves by supplying them with a constantly updated knowledge center as well as training and educational programs on technology, processes and best practices.
ACDMC looks forward to working closely together with the NHTV TDM Master Course in the near future. We hope to help achieve a better understanding of the inner workings of the DMC as well as its local and global challenges when it comes to responsibly manage the tourism destinations of this rapidly changing world.
Bart de Graaf
Director, business development, Global Encounters™
Owner & co-founder, CATDMC
Founding member, ACDMC
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