Look for ways to understand yourself and your customer.

That's the common element that will guide successful travel and tourism promotions in the coming year, industry experts say, and the communities with the best chance for success at capturing traffic are those that have evaluated what their destination offers, who it is likely to attract, and then how to reach that audience. Efforts that are broadcast to the public at large, instead of designed to reach the right customer group, will not be as successful.

"Marketing is all about information and knowing your customers," said Dave Lorenz of Travel Michigan. "One of the things we really need to do is look for ways to understand the customer."

Jon Jarosh agrees. For years, he has been in charge of promoting Door County, Wisconsin, a scenic peninsula on Lake Michigan offering beaches, lighthouses, golf courses, and state parks. His agency recently overhauled its efforts after hiring a research company that helped define Door County's own distint image, called a brand.

"You have to look in the mirror and make sure what you're doing is what the public is looking for," Mr. Jarosh told The St. Ignace News.

"We've tried to stay true to our roots as a destination, and not sell ourselves as something we're not. We did not take the Vegas approach, as when Las Vegas tried to market itself as a family destination," Mr. Jarosh said. "Coming up with branding is not the same as a slogan or a tagline, it's figuring out your destination's unique characteristics. We're a relaxing, restorative, maritime experience, to sum it up."

Mr. Jarosh knows his market. Families with young children are generally drawn to the water parks and attractions at the state's Wisconsin Dells, he said, while at Door County, "we cater to the 35 to 60 or 70 age range, but in the summer we get a lot of families."

About one third of Door County's travelers come from Illinois and the greater Chicago area, and about half are Wisconsin residents.

The 300 miles of shoreline scenery and outdoor pursuits like bicycling and going to the beach are the biggest draw bringing travelers there, so promotional efforts focus on that. For example, in midwinter, a promotion called "The Nature of Romance" is designed to attract couples "a gas tank away" from Door County for a relaxing weekend, he said, and it's been successful. It's promoted online and in print advertising.

"Every destination is different. What works for one won't work for another," he said of promotions. "For us at least, some traditional print advertising as well as online activity has worked. One thing we've done is developed a video travel show for Door County using the Internet as a distributor. We're on YouTube, iTunes, and doorcounty. com. This won't replace traditional advertising, but it does help close the sale."

His agency works with an Internet vendor to place the video. It also sends an online newsletter to 140,000 subscribers.

At Bayfield, in northern Wisconsin near Lake Superior, a program called "voluntourism" is designed to appeal to people who want to travel and do a good turn at the same time, which the Bayfield Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau identifies as a trend. Each year, more than 100 volunteers are recruited to help set up and run one of the largest sled dog races in the country, as a vacation experience. Special package pricing for lodging and meals is offered to the volunteers, who can enroll on the Chamber of Commerce Web site.

Understanding the interests and lifestyles of overseas customers is vital to attracting international travelers to the Great Lakes region, says Toby McCarrick, the executive director of Great Lakes North America. His agency promotes the Great Lakes states as an international travel destination. It uses a lot of printed publications to reach potential tourists in Germany and the United Kingdom, because they are more reliant on information on paper than Americans are today.

"They're very paper oriented over there, and they're two years behind us in online arrangements," Mr. McCarrick said of the European travelers. "Over there, it's very different."

His agency focuses on promoting the region primarly to travel agents and tour organizers, rather than to customers directly, he said, because that's how most international travelers find information about destinations.

Societal trends play a large part in changes the travel industry, and people promoting a community should pay attention to those, said Dave Scheler. Mr. Scheler is the research coordinator for international marketing and public relations for Great Lakes North America.

"Trends are driven by what the destinations each offer" for their audiences, Mr. Scheler said. "I see the trends on a macro scale. For example, with the aging of the Baby Boomers, that calls for adjusting your inventory. Now there's a much larger population of people without small children in the household. When the Baby Boomer market was in its family mode, a lot of vacations were geared toward children. That's shifting.

"Now the Generation X families are starting later and families are smaller," he said. "Generation Y is now coming into spending capability, and you see the same thing, smaller, later families. Now only one third of the people who travel in Wisconsin have children under 18 in the household."

He gave the example of a typical family vacation in the 1950s: When the father takes his yearly two-week vacation from work, the mother (not working) and children join him for at least a week-long road trip. That style of family vacation is long gone, Mr. Scheler said, and now long weekends away, taken more frequently, are becoming more popular all the time.

"Even in a tight economy, it's less related to money being scarce and more to time being scarce," he said, referring to two-career couples.

Those customers want to be treated well when they visit a community, said Mr. Lorenz at Travel Michigan, so expanding hospitality training for the Michigan travel industry will be a focus in 2009. His agency plans to travel around the state offering the training to any interested tourism agencies. The cost will be only lodging and food for the presenters.

"People will come back where they've been treated in a hospitable manner," Mr. Lorenz said. The training "is what every community needs, not just for travel industry people, but for bank people, gas station people, everybody."

Another growing trend, Mr. Lorenz said, will be for tourism promoters and individual business owners to turn new communication tools to their advantage.

"New media is out there, including blogs and twitter, and you can even participate in and change the dialogue that's out there," Mr. Lorenz said. For example, online hotel reviews. "Monitor them, and address those issues. If it's a bad review, we need to correct it and let the world know. Some of the online communication is unfair. You can counter that on the site by posting your own comment. But today's online community does not accept the old public relations schemes that used to go on. It must be honest and truthful communication."

"That's going to be the '09 trend - instantly react, and be proactive, in online communication."

The Travel Michigan Web site is one online tool that offers free resources for communities. It's the most visited state travel Web site in the country, Mr. Lorenz said, with more than 10 million visitors.

"One tactical thing I think people need to do is use the free resources available at Travel Michigan. Businesses can link to this, and they must keep their information updated and fresh," he advised. The agency also can partner with communities for joint promotions, for a fee.

Michigan travelers are interested in getting value for their dollar this year, he said, and businesses who understand that customer need can come up with ways to attract them. He gave the example of a program by Traverse City Convention and Visitors Bureau that awards a gas card to any customer who books overnight stays on their site; the longer the stay, the larger the gas card.

"People are traveling and they are spending money, but they are also looking for deals and discounts," Mr. Lorenz said. "I would encourage businesses to work with other local attractions to offer value-added discounts."

There is success to be found in the tourism industry this year, Mr. Lorenz believes, and he encourages business owners to be creative.

"The most important tool in our toolbox for the tourism industry in the coming year is going to be attitude," he said. "Negative news can get a negative attitude going that can only be destructive and cause us to lag behind. Mind set is number one in my book when it comes to communities and individual businesses moving forward in '09.

"Sometimes people get a little bit down and forget they are entrepreneurs in the first place. Be innovative. It's not going to come unless we work for it."