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Live blogging from the tips from the tlist panel
05.14.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments
I’ve always wanted to post while sitting on a panel. Done.
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Marketing your small tourism business in the 21th century: #5 Find your target audience and join the conversation
04.05.08 | Permalink | 2 CommentsIn my last post in this series I wrote about encouraging your customer to share their experiences online. Now lets take that concept one step further. You can participate in the online discussion. Some call it “joining the conversation”. By joining, you can make new people aware of your business, but also learn a great deal about your target audience. You might even get a new idea about how to make your business more remarkable.
This is really part of #3 Monitor and Respect Tripadvisor. But I consider Tripadvisor a must-do, while this is a nice-to-do. I understand that the operational side of running a business takes up time enough already so you’ll have to monitor if your efforts are paying off. Maybe there’s a creative way. Use a family or a staff member. Starwood Hotels has somebody employed to answer questions on Flyertalk, a frequent traveler community.
An important aspect of engaging in online communities is that you can’t use traditional marketing tactics. In most cases it’s completely inappropriate to advertise your business. And in Europe, there’s talk about making it illegal. Here’s an bad example from the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum:URGENT!! LOOKING FOR 2 PAX TO JOIN A SAFARI
Hi every one
We are looking for two more people to join a 4 days Camping Safari to Ngorongoro and Serengeti starting from 24th May 2007 to 27th May 2007.
Please Contact us USAP ON xxxxxThis sound like a group who are looking for some people to travel with. No, it’s not.
“Us” meaning ‘our company.’
Stop advertising here Shidolya. You’ll get a bad name.It’s very easy to destroy your reputation and credibility. Don’t be tempted but play by the rules. The risks of getting caught and getting a bad name are too big.
It’s a very delicate line. The best thing to do is to be genuinely helpful. The opportunity you have is to be seen as an expert. An experts of the area where you live, and the secor you represent. If you run a eco touring company in Parksville for example, become the eco expert of the Parksville area in a relevant online community. If you’re helpful, people might seek your services over others as a reward. If you do say something that’s related to your business, stay in context of the conversation and offer full disclosure. The best thing to do is add your website URL in a signature and let people decide for themselves. Here’s a good example:You can visit Tambunan Rafflesia Reserve whn you are at KK, by taking a minivan to Tambunan that only cost your around RM 10. Journey will take approximately 30 to 40 mins only. Note that visit to Tambunan Rafflesia Reserve doesn;t guarantee you that you will spot the blooming rafflesia…
Your ultimate Borneo Longhouse Adventure & Homestay Program:
www.LonghouseAdventure.comSo find the right community for you and join in. It’s fun, you’ll learn a lot, and hopefully drive some customers your way.
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Marketing your small tourism business in the 21th century: #3 Monitor and Respect Tripadvisor
03.29.08 | Permalink | 2 CommentsIf you run a tourism business, and especially if you run an accommodation business, you need to know what people say about you on Tripadvisor. A lot of operators do this already, but I’m amazed at how many don’t. You’ll probably find that most reviews are very positive. (Tracking Tourism blog did some research).
But some ratings might not be positive. Some might even be unfair. Tripadvisor gives you the ability to respond to any review, positive or negative. So you have a change to provide your side of the story and turn a bad review in an opportunity to show you care about your customer.
I’ve seen some very bad management responses. They often read like retaliations. I’m sure it made the operator feel better for a minute, but I don’t think they understand how it will only make things worse. This is one example I found:Either you have never been a guest and grudging on behalf of someone else. Whatever are your reasons, let me tell you something, no one gets rude for no reason. If you push anybody to extreme, then be prepared to be pushed back. Hopefully, we live in a world of sensible people, I didn’t say saints. If your expectation are right, you will always get what you paid for. As someone said, “there are no FREE bananas”Who knows, maybe the guest was completely unreasonable. But consumers don’t know that, and this kind of response won’t make them excited about a possible visit.
Good responses I’ve seen show empathy with the customer and demonstrate actions to avoid these situations in the future where necessary. The best responses I’ve seen include invitations to make up for it (when something obviously bad happened) or new policies based on the feedback. Here’s a good example:Based on the review we have implemented the following changes:
1. Put larger desks in our corporate friendly rooms.
2. Increased the higher voltage bulbs in these rooms.
3. Had our wireless provider fix the errors.
I will like to thank you for your feedback and will like to offer a free night stay at our hotel to change your experience.
Sincerely,
GMI’m not suggesting to hand out free stays to anybody who complains on Tripadvisor. The bottom line is that you can make a bad review into an opportunity to show future readers you care about you customers and are willing to address feedback. And if you follow rule #1, Tripadvisor will be one of your best marketing vehicles. Maybe there is such a thing as “free bananas” after all.
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Marketing your small tourism business in the 21th century: #2 Get your website in order
03.25.08 | Permalink | 10 CommentsThis topic probably needs more than one post because I receive a lot of website related questions from tourism businesses. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that when you operate a tourism business that doesn’t rely on walk-by traffic only, your website is your most important marketing vehicle. Your website has to be up to snuff. I’ll try to keep it simple.
First of all; hire a professional, or a company who build websites. There are still people who think that buying a copy of dreamweaver or frontpage will save them a few bucks by building a website themselves. Please don’t. You’re busy enough already. A simple way to find the right company or professional is to look at your colleague’s websites and get a recommendation.
You first need to think about what you want to achieve with your website in a way that you can measure; sales, transactions, customer emails, phonecalls, etc. The more tangible the better. This is your objective. Your exact objective depends on your type of business. But as a tourism business, I think in most cases you should go for the sale.
There are 4 main aspects to building a website; visual design, content, usability, technology. Most people focus on design and technology (because its fun). Instead, you should worry about content and usability (not so much fun). Content is what your website visitors need, usability is organizing content and providing the functionality to make things easy for your website visitors. The design should reflect your business (if you run a flowery B&B, your website can be flowery as well). Finally, technology is what enables you to deliver everything above.
Your web professional(s) should be competent in all areas. But you’re the expert of your business and should know what content is needed to turn a website visitor in a customer. In general, people don’t visit tourism operator websites for the fun of it. Their visit has a purpose. They want to validate their intent to visit your business, sort out the details and hopefully purchase.
Validating the decision is about the excitement of the experience. Consumers want to picture themselves having fun kayaking a river, playing a round of golf or relaxing in the hot-tub of your B&B. Pictures, videos and testimonials are the most compelling ways to achieve this. The details they nedd depend on your type of business and it can include simple things such as opening hours, your location, pricing, policies, etc. Some consumers just want to make sure a business is legit. Providing contact info is often crucial to meet this.
Make sure you get the content your professional need. Don’t just focus on making your website look pretty. It’s about the content. You probably don’t even need a ‘redesign’, you just need better content (ok, I think I made my point). Finally, you need a mechanism to get the sale. If you can offer an online reservation often, great. If you can’t there are other options.
Looking for an example of a good operator website? Nahanni River Adventures won the Canada eTourism Award for best website. It’s a great example of using pictures, videos and testimonials to validate the intent, provide detailed information, and provide a mechanism to get the sale.
I hope to provide a bit more detail in certain areas soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions about any of this, or have anything to add, or need help finding the right online professional, please leave a comment or drop me an email. My email address is under my picture in the right column. -
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PhocusWright Day 4 – FareCast
11.15.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsFarecast CEO Hugh Crean demo-ed of his travel meta search engine and used it as the basis for his argument that there is a difference between data and expertise, and that travel website should go beyond slapping data in front of consumers.
Currently, travel websites deliver an overwhelming volume of data to users, based on their search queries. Farecast tries to go beyond the data dump by providing consumers with the tools to make intelligent decisions about trade-offs between price and value. Most of the tools are ‘standard’ among meta search engines; # of stops, preferred airlines, preferred times, etc.
Farecast takes this to another level by making predictions about price (will it go up or down). Consumers can even by a “Fare Guard”, an insurance against future price changes. That’s a clear demonstration into their confidence about their predictive modeling. Impressive. 75% of their recommendations is “buy now”, because air travel usually gets more expensive as you get closer to departure date. I like it though, because it adds some confidence to a consumers purchase decision.
Farecast was a website I haven’t used before (they don’t include flight from or to Canada yet), and I was seriously impressed. Cream might very well deliver on his goal that his website needs to go beyond the data dump. -
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Video Host
10.24.07 | Permalink | 6 CommentsWe’re looking for a video host. We’ve been primarily doing this viral. I posted about it last week. You can imagine what happened next; audition videos on YouTube!
Note: I’m not part of the selection process. -
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Innovation Overload
A flood wave of innovation has come over me the last few days. It’s a great time to be a web professional:
- Google launched Google Earth today, an upgrade of the Keyhole software they purchased recently. If you’re impressed with the satellite view of Google maps, Google World will blow you away. It not hard to imagine the potential for the Tourism industry
- Google also launched personalized search (beta) today. This will personalize search results for individual users. It also launches a new era of Search Engine Optimization
- Microsoft announced RSS support in Longhorn and demonstrated this in the new version of Internet Explorer. RSS support isn’t limited to IE7, it is a platform, allowing RSS support for all applications running on Windows. The demo on Channel 9 is mandatory viewing. It’s been a while since I’ve been excited by a Microsoft announcement
- Apple introduces Podcast support in iTunes.
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Agencies with bad homepages
If I were an interactive agency, I would make sure I demonstrate my expertise on my own website. So why do most agencies still have really bad websites?
I’m researching some potential suppliers for work on one of our websites. If you still think this intro is a good idea and you expect me to believe your company understands User Centered Design, you’re wrong.
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Google creating 3D cities
Not to be outdone by A9’s Blockview, Google is reported to be working on something even better. They’re indexing cities in 3D for the purpose of intergrading it with their local search feature. I thought the satellite images in Google maps were pretty cool but this is getting out of hand. Speaking of Google maps. My friend Nigel moved his trampoline from one end of his backyard to another and is waiting for Google to call him to ask if he can move it back.
Update:Turns out an Israeli company has been doing this already for Philidelphia. The NY Times has an article about it. (via Boing Boing)
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William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
