Tourism’s MUSTs for the web
Tourism is still one of the most applicable industries to the web. Why? Because the web is the perfect tool for those looking to research, inquire and book travel. It therefore stands to reason that any and ALL tourism oriented operations needs to be on the web. And, indeed, most are. So, the question is now, how do you stand out from your competitors? Since this is one of our most popular questions, I thought I’d post a few of my favorite practices and marketing hints …
Design: It has been a bee in my bonnet for a good many years. It doesn’t matter what your content is like, where you rank on the search engines or how much better your products are, if your design is bad, it’s all bad. I always compare it to the color brochure vs the photocopied brochure… who would you trust your business to, the one with the nice glossy colored brochure or the sloppy photocopied one. Also, if you’ve spent so much time on your brand and identity, why throw it away with poor design. Get design done right!
Find your geographical focus: One of the biggest mistakes tourism marketers make is losing their target market focus. Ensure your site, your key words (in your content) and your promotional efforts reflect the proper geographical area. Start with the direct markets, that’s your low-hanging fruit. Then, once you have that pegged, head out into bigger circles with some of the efforts I’ve listed here. But it is key to not go too big right off. Don’t be afraid to cast the big net, but don’t forget your local markets.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engines are where folks find information on tourism. There are sites where visitors go to book flights, but to book the specific visits they will make when in your area, you need to make sure you appear somewhere in the search results. Blog-style tools work well with SEO as they tend to focus on key content, affirming and re-affirming certain key words naturally. They also allow for RSS and an increase in cross-web content push as your posts will automatically get picked up by many of the blog directories out there. Below you will find other means to achieve attention in the search engines… but keep your content relevant and people will find you.
Show people what they’ve missed: Nothing sells tourism, or specific tourism destinations/events like showing off that they’re missing if they don’t go to your tourism destination. With the increase in visitor bandwidth (most are on high speed ), the reduction in image and video size and the new progressive streaming video delivery on the web youtube.com etc.) there is ample opportunity to give the potential tourist a real taste of what you offer. What I like to do is post up galleries of photos each season, show external shots for your outdoor destinations, internal shots for those hosting visitors in buildings, show guests having fun and capture the experience. Video is EASY now. Capture, plug and post to youtube.com and embed your video EASY using some of todays cheap technology. OncouRSS web site tools come with video embed capability built in… alongside easy-to-use photo gallery management tools. If you’re an event coordinator, this rule applies ten-fold! Show them last year’s event and they’ll be tempted to ‘not want to miss this years upcoming event’.Testimonials: The blogging mentality makes for great opportunity for testimonials. I regularly ask my visitors if they have a blog. If they do, I invite them to post up a testimonial. Many don’t so I collect a photo or two and a testimonial. Remember that many of our visitors capture their tourism experiences on camera… many both photo and video. Get them to post them up on the web galleries or at youtube.com and send you the link. Worse case, take the photos yourself. Your publishing tool should allow you to embed the galleries and video… if not, call us, ours does ;-)
Coverage of a whitewater kayaking event series on site provided by OncouRSS to the World Kayak Federation
Cover an event: Lets stick with events. If there is a significant tourism associated event in your area, cover it! Even if you are not a stakeholder in that event, you may want that event’s audience. Post up full description, photos, video … anything. Visitors not able to go to the event will check the sights and sounds out on your web site. This will expose you to a pretty appropriate audience. I’ve seen Bed and Breakfasts cover events each year and gain significant traffic to their web site. Event organizers sent them business and thanked them for their support by chatting them up. Folks who go to events will also want to relive the event with their friends back at the office, taking their friends to your site to see photos.
Become a tourism resource: When potential visitors are looking for things to do, the big frustration is that its all over the map. They end of having to visit tons of individual sites and doing too much homework. Internet browsers are pretty impatient. If you were to offer them more than one answer, you’d be making many happy. List out links to other non-competing tourism providers, list a calendar of events, have a phone directory, a photo gallery of other events, a google map with local tourism establishments pinned… you name it… help your visitors find everything they need on your site. With today’s RSS feed potential you can bring in news from other web sites that feeds news in automatically as they post new stuff to their sites. OncouRSS has this tool built in as well. I’ve gained many a bookmark by doing this.
Find strategic alliances: There are many other non-competitive companies and organizations out there trying to hit your markets. Much of the time you can find them by searching the web using your key words. From event organizers to other local tourism attractions, every one who aims their web efforts towards generating tourism business is your friend. Start with link exchanges, but you can go as far as cooperative advertising, posting banners on each other’s sites, content exchange and much more. Cast a wide net.
