The 25 Best Tourism Websites in the World in 2016

Skift Take
The most modern tourism bureau websites today emphasize neighborhood storytelling, more nuanced content for different consumer profiles, mobile-first modular design, and full-width photos and videos with a strong human voice.
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Choosing the world's best tourism websites is more difficult in 2016 than it was the last time we picked our favorites in late 2013, but that's not because there are so many better online experiences today in the destination marketing world.
It's more challenging because tourism bureaus are all simplifying their websites on the front-end. The best sites are adopting a similar full-width modular design, flat architecture, and streamlined navigation structure due to the demand for speed and efficiency on mobile.
Bells and whistles are getting thrown out in favor of load times and intuitive user experience.
That's not to suggest the best sites aren't more sophisticated than ever before. It's just that the real innovation is happening in the back-end.
The internal engines of today's most modern tourism sites feature much more intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) platforms than a couple years ago. They're capable of generating endless amounts of data analytics for strategizing content, developing more targeted partner promotions, and creating in-depth reporting.
Shift To Neighborhood Storytelling
The big trend in front-end design and content management over the last few years is a shift from static "billboard" websites — promoting tourism and hospitality partners with lots of banner ads and generic descriptions — to more organic story-driven portals that resemble travel media websites.
The launch of Visit California's platform in January 2015 set the standard for the long-scrolling, photo-driven, content-first, mobile-first tourism website. In October 2013, visitcalifornia.com had 150,000 views for the month. In May 2016, the site had 1.5 million views, according to SimilarWeb.
The best tourism storytelling prioritizes three things:
One, tourism bureaus are describing their individual neighborhoods much better, and they're developing proprietary mobile-friendly maps customized to the d