Den digitale rejse

Abstract

Since the late 1990ies, culture heritage attractions have experimented with various forms of digital communication. Many technical problems have been connected to these projects and often the user-experience has been neglected. Today everything digital is possible and so evident to many consumers that digital is considered dead. Thus, the awe or annoyance connected to digital projects are changing. More and more, digital projects are used not only as communication of cultural and museological content, but also as ‘front desk’ strategic marketing aimed at segmented consumers and with the goal of selling customised experience products (B2C). In addition, these projects are also used as ways to handle ‘back-office’ work processes within the industry itself and amongst neighbouring neighbouring businesses (B2B) and at a destination at large. Here, the goal is to manage customer relationships (CRM) i.e. to organise and instrumentalise consumer-data (the so-called big data) in order to better develop and market products to the taste and preferences of groups of consumers. A digital system – like a wifi area – can also accumulate consumer information which can organise visitors in different cultural segmentations based on various identity-markers (‘culture management’). The system can in addition count and estimate the number and nature of tourists arriving at a place. Furthermore, a digital system can make it possible for each firm to match the number of staff and the purchase of resources to the number of relevant tourists. But what can be even more valuable is for the companies to work more closely together by having a digital system which systemise collaboration: although one business will not attract a certain tourism segment, it can still engage in a defined role when delivering a total experience. In this way, the article discusses how small actors at a heritage site idealistically can work in strategic ways by using accumulated digital knowledge when adapting and performing a complete experience package product. In reality though, and through the method of market-ethnography, it is analysed how (digital) business collaboration was very difficult to obtain. The regional tourism, culture- and experience industry is in general very fragmented and is not used to cooperating. This was the case at Fredrikstad Fortress as well. Still, there was a great potential for making a profit since the fortification attracted around half a million visitors pr. year. Hence, for projects like these to succeed, there is a need for large actors at a destination – such as Forsvarsbygg, Fredrikstad Museum, the Section of Culture and Business at the Fredrikstad municipality and not least the DMO Visit Fredrikstad & Hvaler – to follow and communicate visions and supply the industry with enough resources – such as providing relevant consumer data and information on the value of collaborating about targeted experience product assembly.