Internet Marketing for Tourism

Nathalie Gara-Boivin and I are in Penetan- guishene for a francophone Tourism Keys workshop. It's late afternoon and we're just teaching about Blogging!

Successfully marketing tourism on the Internet can only be done by understanding how people use the Internet. Many people who plan travel using the Internet, use search engines to ask questions and plan their journeys. When tourism marketing on the Internet matches what people are looking for, tourism products get more visibility by people who are looking for what is being offered.

Many people mistakenly list their tourism experiences on the Internet without understanding what buyers are looking for online. Tourism products must be designed in a way that matches what people are looking for on the Internet.

There are tools available which can help those responsible for Internet Marketing of tourism understand what is being typed into search engines. This simple process can guide your successful tourism marketing on the Internet:

• consider your capacity: what resources do you have in your business and/or community
  
• decide who you want to sell to
• research what keyword searches these people are using: http://inventory.overture.com is a good start
  
• research the market online to see what travel options exist accross the Internet by conducting your own searches
  
• create packages that are designed as answers to search engine questions.
  
• decide what value-added resources you can offer to encourage Small Yes! newsletter subscriptions by searchers
  
• write tourism package Web pages using the same keywords that internet users are typing into search engines.
  
• purchase keyword ads where appropriate.
• Track inquiries and sales using Web stats, newsletter stats, and telephone tracking
  

Monitoring the performance of your Tourism Web site starts with knowing what statistics matter.  As you enhance your Web site consider the actions you want your Web visitors to take and measure them.  A conversion occurs when a Web visitor takes the actions you want them to take once they encounter your Web presence.

Statistics that matter to include:

• volume of phone inquires
• volume of email inquiries
• volume of newsletter sign-ups
• number and value of registrations that originate online
• newsletter sign-ups (small yes!)

I also make it a point to calculate our cost per sale.  We do this by adding our expenses for getting people to our Web site and dividing by the number and volume of desired actions people take.

If tourism businesses spend new money on generating business online, tracking the origin of inquires becomes a critical step in making sure money is spent on tactics that produce results.  This is most simply managed by tourism businesses by asking registrants and/or telephone inquiries where they first heard about your business.

I've been looking for services to enable management of room inventory online and have recently come across a couple of great internet options for tourism businesses.

The first inventory management system is called Host on Call . The service is ideal for Bed and Breakfasts and small Inns that are marketing on the Internet. Host on Call plans on offering merchant services including online payment in the near future. Basic service is free and well worth it.

The second Inventory Management service is called Adventure Engine. This service is also an inventory management and payment processing service; this one is geared towards the adventure tourism industry. The site has advanced settings which allow package providers to give travel agents and others access to booking clients and the site can automatically manage commission sales.
Managing inventory and invoicing as well as managing databases and participant questionaires and reports makes this site worth considering. Adventure Engine offers reasonable rates for online payment services (@2%). The cost of the service is a flat 1% of the value of any products or services managed through the system (ie. $200 000 worth of inventory sold through the site would cost $2000). Credit card processing fees are extra.

If you know of another Inventory Management service that would be beneficial to Canadian Tourism businesses, please comment on this post and we'll let others know about it.

Presently, 160 Million Internet-Enabled Cell phones are in circulation. Over 20 million people surf the Web from their phones regularly, and close to 5 million Americans now owning video-enabled phones. The small screen is clearly ready for some attention from Tourism Businesses.
Connecting with travellers who tote portable Internet access by phone may provide accommodation providers with access to many more last minute web sales than they currently have as travellers seek out options from the road rather than stopping into visitor centres.

How do you design Web pages for the small screen?
Small screens range from 120-340 pixels wide. Most Internet enabled phones chunk down content and do their best to display graphics and images, but often, the phone browsing experience on most Web pages is less than satisfactory as pages get jumbled.

There are a few things you can do right away to ensure these roaming Internet users enjoy their first impressions of you!

1. Be sure at least one of your Web pages is keyword targetted and optimized for your regional place name and accommodation type: ie: bed and breakfast, ottawa.
2. Make your phone number, headline and call to action text appear before any other content on your Web page. Remember, these folks have a phone with them and the first thing they will do if they consider you a likely candidate to meeting their needs is call you! Don't expect phone Internet users to browse your entire Web site.
3. Think about how you can build credibility quickly. A nice graphic showing your ideal guest enjoying your amenities and perhaps a testimonial from a recent guest shoud be placed high on your home page.
4. Create a Web page that is optimized for the small phone screen. This can be difficult with widely varying screen sizes, but think about your road traveller and provide highly relevant information: your address, link to small map, driving directions among them, and cut down your text to the bare minimum on your Web page for phones.

87% of consumers who go on high-end vacations use the Internet to shop for travel, according to a study released Wednesday by Yahoo Search Marketing. What's more, the vast majority of those consumers (61%)
also used the Internet to purchase their most recent vacation. Yahoo surveyed 401 luxury travelers to come up with the data.

The majority of luxury travelers (57%) sought information from general search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com. More than half also reported visiting online travel agencies to research airfares,
hotels, and the like.

44 percent went to online travel suppliers. The other major online
sources of information were travel review chatboards and blogs, frequented by 10% of luxury travelers.

Of the group that purchased online, 49% made a purchase from an online travel agent, while 41% bought directly from an online supplier; 10 percent used both online travel agents and suppliers. So over 50% bought from suppliers!

As a group, the study group had average incomes of at least US $70,000, and were likely to be between 40 and 64 years old. 75% had taken at least five vacations in the last two years.

I don't know about you, but this is a target market that satisfies our needs here at the Edge (Northern Edge Algonquin). Shorter vacations,
multiple trips, high end, booking online!

If 50% are booking online, I hope you are considering that 50% of your marketing budget is best directed toward Web site, search marketing, link building and creating great Web content.

Today I received my official

Visit my Website: TourismClicks.com

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