Word of Mouth, Now on Steroids

Travel websites are remaking how visitors experience Branson and how Branson portrays itself.

In the same way that the YouTube debates have remade this year’s presidential primary season, a bottom-up, user-generated conversation carried on via Internet is having its effect on how people travel to Branson. Sites like TripAdvisor, Gusto and iGoUgo not only allow for instant, in-your-jammies price comparisons, but message boards and review posts also allow users to compare notes on what they like—and what they don’t—about their destinations. On the national stage, these facts are old news. But as Branson’s tourist-demographic gets younger, its web-savvy quotient is getting higher.

Gail Bullock works the hostess/reception station at Tony Z’s, a posh Italian restaurant in Branson. She says Tony Z’s definitely sees a travel-website effect on its business. She says it’s common for out-of-town tourists to call her having already read all about the restaurant and menu. They only want to know if Tony Z’s can handle a party of 10 or 20 guests.

The anonymity of user-generated travel reviews also has its effects. TripAdvisor message boards and review options make it a lively forum for tourist-chatterers, and they aren’t shy when they’re disappointed. Praise and damnation for Branson businesses flow like water from hot and cold faucets.

Branson’s Internet image has become so important to the economic life of the community that the Branson establishment is shedding any fuddy-duddiness it once had about all things online. “It is the ultimate word of mouth,” says Lynn Berry, director of public relations for the town’s chamber of commerce.

Online Exclusive Click here for  TripAdvisor’s Branson page, as well as the Rough Guides Branson blurb that’s stirred up so much angst—along with the Branson/Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce’s new blog.

Since January 7, the Branson/Lakes Area Chamber has actually employed a 22-year-old fresh Missouri State grad called Dustin Watkins. His job title is “Internet Image Management Specialist.” In this function, Watkins monitors Branson-mentions across the Internet and aims to make sure everything is as positive as possible. If your site mentions Branson, a Google Alert tells Watkins, as it did recently when a writer for the small-circ national political
magazine Washington Monthly blogged about Las Vegas, saying it was “more artificial than Branson, Missouri.”

Branson’s great enemy on the Internet is Rough Guides. Rough Guides, based in England with offices in New York, is “opinionated, contemporary and independent commentary” on travel by a network of freelance writers flung far across the globe. Its description of Branson is balanced… from the perspective of a person living in London or Manhattan. For Dustin Watkins—whose job is specifically to neutralize stereotypes that Branson is exclusively a traffic-clogged heaven’s waiting room, filled with y’all-saying rednecks—Rough Guides is a serious thorn. He would like to get the company’s editors to change their description of Branson, which, says Watkins, appears verbatim on 2,500 other websites, due to content-sharing agreements. “Well—it’s a very tough process to do because Branson is not important as far as Rough Guides is concerned,” he says. The global company counts top destinations such as Paris, London, Australia, Sweden. Branson’s not quite on the radar. (A message from 417 Magazine to Rough Guides for comment was not returned at press time.)

In the meantime, the chamber’s own Branson blog, written by Watkins and piped to its website and MySpace page, makes for a kind of balance. Watson says daily average blog hits have gone up by 292 percent since January 7, the day he started working for the chamber.