Destination management organizations (DMOs) and Digital Natives: the neglected \u201cinformal expertise\u201d in web 2.0 implementation and social media presence. Insights from the Italian Friuli Venezia Giulia DMO

The present paper wishes to investigate the perspective of Digital Natives (DNs), described in literature as \u201cinformal experts\u201d, in respect of digital strategies\u2019 implementation of destination management organizations (DMOs). In particular, focus groups of students and workers in the tourism field were asked to browse and discuss the website and social media presence of an Italian regional DMO (i.e. PromoTurismoFVG). Comments were collected and analyzed with the GABEK/Winrelan method for qualitative analysis. Results confirmed the DMO\u2019s adoption of a digital format but with limited social and consumer-generated-contents (CGC). DNs recognized the implementation of a Web 2.0 destination site in a rather traditional marketing mix strategy. Furthermore DMO websites and social media (SM) (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube) content analysis showed that the DMO lacks products and offers for the young market segment. The combination of limited social content and the weak attention to youth market makes the current digital DMO not attractive enough to the digital natives. The work highlights the importance on focusing on DN \u201cinformal expertise\u201d in the planning and development of digital strategies, DMO websites and SM presence. Their proved social media knowledge and digital competences have to be considered as a key opportunity for DMOs and for the improvement of the destination marketing strategies. This research contributes to the academic discussion on SM/Web 2.0 implementation in destination management, by presenting an exploratory study on DNs\u2019 informal expert perspective supported by the use of GABEK/Winrelan as an innovative method