Storytelling is arguably the most powerful tool in the tourism industry. It is powerful stories that captures the imagination of visitors and gives them an incentive beyond mere sight-seeing to commit to a trip or a visit. By weaving narratives into destinations, attractions, and cultural heritage sites, hospitality businesses, tourism boards and governments can significantly increase visitor engagement and boost tourism numbers.
One of the greatest boxing matches ever seen was between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, on October 30, 1974. The fight is not only memorable because of how Ali pulled of a spectacular win; it is mostly memorable because the fight itself was a brilliant piece of storytelling. It was staged in Kinshasa and was promoted as The Rumble in the Jungle. It made everyone want to see the fight and left people talking about the fight decades after.
That is the sort of compelling narrative required to grow tourism in Nigeria, attract millions of visitors yearly and encourage billions spent in the local economy. Just like it was used in boxing, several other countries have borrowed similar storytelling strategies and are increasing visitor traffic year on year.
In a remote land off the coast of Canada exists a tiny island called the Fogo Island. It is an ancient fishing community of nearly 5,000 people right in the northeast corner of the northeast province of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, the industrialization of the fisheries at the turn of the 20th century dealt a severe blow to community, taking away their livelihoods, and forcing over half the population emigrate.
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Remarkably, things would take a dramatic turn in 2013, when a successful tech entrepreneur returned to the community where her parents and grandparents lived. She built a 29 – room Inn and crafted a compelling narrative around the island and her people. She made the Fogo Island Inn a charitable trust and reinvested the profits back into the community. A room on the island goes for $2,000 a night and it employs 300 people from the community full time. Every room immerses the guest in island’s stories. For instance, the furniture and pillows at the Inn are locally made by women of Fogo Island whose great grandmothers have been making them for their own homes for 400 years.
A powerful story of an island’s heritage and a compelling narrative propagated by a brilliant entrepreneur led to the revival of a dying fish community and transformed it into a unique cultural destination. It was the same thing the Irish tourism board did with the famous Wild Atlantic way. They developed a series of stories about local legends, natural wonders and historical events, along the 2,500km route along the rugged western coastline.
The Wild Atlantic Way launched in 2014 has seen a significant increase in visitors with overseas tourism to the west coast of Ireland growing by 53% in 2017.
The Amsterdam Museum pursued a similar strategy by launching an initiative to tell the city’s history through personal stories of its diverse inhabitants. They created interactive exhibits and walking tours that showcase lesser-known narratives about the city’s multicultural past and present which saw a 20% increase in visitors in the year following the initiative’s launch.
Recently, Tourism Australia has been promoting Aboriginal-led tourism experiences that share the stories and culture of Indigenous Australians. They’ve supported the development of authentic cultural tours, art centres, and immersive experiences led by Indigenous guides. The results have been spectacular so far. Indigenous tourism in Australia grew by 9% annually between 2013 and 2018, outpacing the growth of the wider tourism industry.
The question we must ask ourselves is what stories we are telling about our destinations and how compelling are those stories. We can pull people from all over the world to witness the “arugungu fish festival,” or the “osun Osogbo festival, if we tell the right stories and make the perfect connections. Imagine what brilliant photography did for the last Ojude Oba festival in Ogun state. Just because people could see how beautiful and colorful the event was through the power of the camera lens; thousands of people have now committed to attending the next one.
In Eko Hotel, for instance, every tropical Christmas wonderland event is a story. It is the story that drives our concept, and it is what excites our guest and keeps them coming. This year, we are telling the story of Christmas, not just from an African perspective but in a futurist period, forcing us to stretch the limits of our imagination to create experiences never seen before. We are confident of attracting people from all over the world this year because we are telling a different story and curating a different experience.
