For some people, work is just another part of their life like brushing their teeth or taking out the garbage. But given the amount of time we invest in it, shouldn’t work mean more than that? This article about Inspirational Work, Mindfulness in Tourism and Intentional Disconnecting.

Our last video and photo assignment for the mountain town St Anton is the perfect example for how a job can become an  inspiring resource in your life. It taught us a bit of mindfulness, appreciation for quite moments and intentional disconnecting.

Reinventing our Definition of Work

Work can be many things. It can be duty, be tiring and nerve-racking, something that needs to be done. Work brings in the money and more often than not, that’s all we think about. Many people see their work as functional and daily routine filler.

Watch Our Video: Only One Job This Month

However, this is not the kind of attitude to work that freelancers and entrepreneurs usually follow. For Greg and I work is not a duty, nor should it be done only for the paycheck at the end of the month.

With many of you we share the idea that work needs to be exciting, diverse and have a purpose. Ideally work should be motivating,  and inspirational work in itself. Greg and I don’t know such thing as separation between work and free time, our office hours takes place wherever our laptops meet a stable internet connection – and we love it that way.

St Anton am Arlberg

The partnership with St Anton am Arlberg has developed and improved over a couple of years, with hopefully many events to come. There is more than one reason why we especially enjoy the inspirational work with this client: The natural beauty of the location, the fun and  very supportive team and the type and diversity of activities we are asked to promote make every stay in St Anton feel a bit like being home away from home.

St Anton is situated within a gorgeous village in the Tyrolean Alps, surrounded by impressive mountain ranges and home to crystal-clear lakes and vivid rivers. These geographic conditions make Anton a popular and ideal place for skiing in the winter and kayaking, mountain biking and hiking in the summer time. The valley heavily depends on tourism and naturally has to compete with various other skiing and hiking destination all over Austria, which of course is where our services come in.

Updating Marketing Strategies

As explained in The Importance of Information Gathering, knowing your client’s customers is key in destination marketing. You might assume that working with the same client over several years makes your game easy. You know the client, the client knows you.

To a certain extend that is true. The destination is likely going to stick to an identifiable style once a corporate image has been established. However, in our fastening and globalizing world, it is especially important to develop side by side with your destination.

This basically means that you as a content creator also have to constantly adapt and update technics, equipment, style. Sometimes it is even necessary to try something completely new. In the work of video production, this can mean to film new activities and attractions for the destination, but it can also mean to catch the attention of a new generation, new customer and target group.

Is Offline becoming the New Luxury!?

For a long time, tourism in the St Anton valley has been mainly about action and adventure activities. To this day, these play a key role in their destination marketing campaigns, but new trends are emerging.

Society and personal needs have developed with the rise of the internet, social media and online businesses. The result is a strongly technology-dependent generation Y and X, as well as the adaptation of new lifestyles.

Relying heavily on our smartphones and laptops it might at first seem surprising that especially the younger part of society is looking for mindfulness and disconnection when traveling.

Soft Excercising & Mindfulness

Leading trends are food, health and nature orientated. Soft exercises, such as yoga, hiking and cycling are favored, combined with wellness and natural food consumption.

All these touristic activities are able to counteract against the stress and restlessness of modern work routines. Our generation’s instant urge to be connected to the internet all times makes intentional disconnection difficult. We find it  challenging to embrace nature and to appreciate it’s powerful positive impact on our soul and bodies.

The Mountain Yoga Festival

St Anton is certainly pulling the right strings in order to adapt their touristic offer to the new demands of their visitors. Bringing people and nature closer together is one of their number one marketing strategy.

Greg and I were asked to join the local marketing team creating a very unique promotion campaign. Creating content for the annual Mountain Yoga Festival was  enriching experience to say the least. It was inspiring work from professional perspective and opened my eyes towards mindfulness at work.

I have always experienced Yoga practice in itself as something liberating and settling at the same time. The Mountain Yoga Festival however combines mindfulness, soft exercise and peaceful nature sounds. Surrounded by maestic mountain ranges and fresh air, practicing Mountain Yoga brings out the best in people.

What especially fascinated me about our recent work with St. Anton was that I learned a lot about myself. It was inspiring to promote a destination based on our own personal motives for traveling.

Demographic Generation Y

Most of the above described activities and trends in tourism seem very enjoyable to me. More so, they define exactly the kind of holiday I would looking for myself. While practicing yoga, exploring the St. Anton area on e-bikes or watching the sunset, I found myself getting a little lost in the peaceful sound of the mountains. Neither did I notice that had received several what’s app messages, nor did I check Facebook and Instagram.

Of course, this is makes perfect sense, as our generation is probably the one mostly affected by globalization and digitization. The trick is to practice mindfulness and to realize what this world is really about. Being a Digital Nomad it can be extremely challenging to find moments of complete isolation. However, even we should search for intentional disconnection from time to time.

It will be interesting to see how popular and trend-setting tourist destinations like St Anton will continue to find answers. Answers to the rapidly changing demand for mindfulness in tourism. Their job will be to find a balance between the new generation’s need to stay connected and online and their intuitive wish for isolation, spiritual experiences and physical  and mental relaxation.

The work with St Anton is the perfect example for a destination marketing campaign that is not only profitable and fun, but also inspirational and mindful. This kind of work brings you forward, adds personal value to your job.

Can you identify with our idea of work? Is a combination of mindfulness and work even possible? What is your opinion about intentional disconnecting?

Lets get creative!