Marketing my tourism business on the internet has become a major focus for me in the past couple of years. Since heading off in my new online marketing direction I have been discovering and enjoying many new advantages of online
marketing so want to share some with other tourism business owners.
Reason 1 to love online tourism marketing: You get paid in advance
Up to 3 years ago my tourism b
usiness relied on traditional booking channels of local booking centres and travel resellers such as wholesalers or inbound operators. It was great to get business from them but I never got paid till the end of the following month, and in some cases it could be much longer than that. For small businesses that is tough.
With online bookings now approaching 50% of total sales I am getting paid in advance for a good chunk of work and we all know how good that is.
Reason 2 to love online tourism marketing: Less commissions = more on our bottom line
A simple example using my own hiking tour as an example will spell it out pretty clearly:
Our day tour costs NZ$322 per person, let's say I have a group of 8 people on this tour.
Commissions associated with online booking (online booking system commission, credit card fees) total 7.5%. Commissions associated with a travel wholesaler would be at least 20%. The difference to our bottom line for this day tour is over $300! For a small tourism operator like me, an extra $300 for the same amount of people on a day tour is something I am very interested in!
Reason 3 to love tourism marketing on the internet: Less lag time
We have all done this before: made a sales call or attended a trade show and met the key person in a major travel company. We do our pitch and they love our product, they are smiling and nodding. Great, we think, this should lead to some new business soon.
Then they tell us the brochure will be printed in 6 months for the following season, anything can happen between now and then. Of course we accept this and realize that things take time but wouldn't it be great to get results a little sooner?
Things happen much quicker on the internet. That's not to say it's any easier but at least we can move through the whole process much faster. An example from my business: I decided to get proactive about encouraging customers to write TripAdvisor reviews last January, it took about a month to get my first 6 or 7 reviews up, then customers started telling me they found me on TA and I noticed more traffic to my site coming from TA as well. Results can come a lot faster on the internet than traditional travel channels.
Reason 4 to love tourism marketing on the internet: We can measure our results accurately and quickly
An example: A couple of season ago I printed some brochures and paid a monthly fee to have them distributed around accommodation & tourist spots in our city. Cost me several thousand dollars for the brochures and several hundred dollars each month for the distribution. I wasn't sure how this would work but I could track the amount of business we got from these brochures over the course of the season. I stuck at this for 2 seasons for little results, the cost was significant and I was locked into a contract for the season so couldn't opt out.
A better example: I paid for a listing on an online travel directory, it was much cheaper than producing and displaying brochures. I could measure exactly how many visitors to my site I was getting from this source and was able to terminate the contract (and I did) if I wasn't happy with the results.
Because we can measure results from internet marketing immediately and effectively, we don't have to stick with things for a long time to find out if they are working or not. We can "fail fast" and move on.
Reason 5 to love tourism marketing on the internet: It's the way of the future
All the market data says that online tourism sales have been increasing and will increase more and more in the coming decade. Success in any business is about being in the right place at the right time to catch a growth wave. With all your experience in tourism ask yourself: In 5 years time how will people be booking travel, on the intenet or walking into travel agents? In 10 years? Position yourself now to be in the right place to take advantage of this growth.
For me, marketing my tourism business on the internet represents way more opportunity than traditional channels so that is where I am concentrating my efforts and resources.
Summary
Online tourism marketing has many advantages over traditional channels and as tourism business owners we need to realize this when we are allocating resources (time, money) to our marketing. It is quite a new field so for many businesses there will be some changes in the way we do things. In this article I have outlined what I see as 5 top reasons we should love internet marketing for our tourism businesses to help owners see the potential benefits for their business. After reading this I hope you will share my thoughts on the potential of online tourism marketing and start making a plan your your business.
Andrew Wells is a tourism professional in New Zealand and writes an Online Tourism Marketing blog [http://www.completetourismmarketing.com] for tourism business owners. Take a look at [http://www.completetourismmarketing.com] for more ideas and resources to help you simplify, control & succeed in internet marketing for your tourism business.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6278112
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