ADEPT Marketing

I’ve been working away on a new initiative for the New Zealand tourism industry to connect together online, sharing business articles, ideas and comments related to all sectors of tourism. A great way to network online and help each tourism business or organisation to succeed in tourism.

This is an independant website where all New Zealand tourism professionals are welcome to participate, and even add their own tourism related media releases or job ads for free.

Check it out here!

[business:Tourism Industry Blog]

One of the most frustrating things for travellers in New Zealand is the lack of accessible free wireless internet. I think it is an obvious opportunity for tourism operators, particularly accommodation, to turn this around and make it easy for their customers to be online. It is actually quite embarrassing that New Zealand is so backward with infrastructure to provide this freely to domestic and international travellers.

For the cafes, motels, hotels, B&B’s and so on that currently do offer their guests free wireless internet access – good on you! I hope you promote this service strongly and get more business as a result. For those that don’t, do it now – it should be part of your service and built into your rates, don’t annoy your customers by charging them extra.

Let’s get our travellers online as much as possible so they can share their experiences with others easily and promote New Zealand for us – it’s obvious isn’t it?

I’m interested to know what website/s you like the best for booking and paying for accommodation in New Zealand and why.

I regularly advise accommodation operators about what websites to list on and what booking systems to use so I am aware of the most popular websites in terms of rankings and website traffic, which I think would correlate with booking popularity too, right?

Well, maybe not – so I’d like to hear about what people think rather than statistics, some things I’m keen to know:

• Do you always use the same tourism or accommodation website to book?
• Or do you tend to book direct with the accommodation property?
• Maybe you don’t book online at all and use email or the phone or even a travel agent?
• Do you use a different website for business versus holiday?

Tell me – I want to know what and why.

I will kick it off, I always book on Travelbug* or Wotif. I like Travelbug because it’s easy to use, good pricing, comprehensive and has an easy booking process, but sometimes I’ll also use Wotif for similar reasons but mainly because it may sometimes offer a better deal.

* Probably best to disclose that I was part of the development and launch of Travelbug when I was Marketing Manager at Vianet, but I stand behind my reasons for liking it and am no longer with Vianet or involved in promoting Travelbug.

Now – let’s hear yours! Add a comment.

When researching online for travel destinations, transport, accommodation and tourism activities travellers have to sift through a huge amount of information. Chances are before they book with you they have looked at several other competitor websites in your area plus many more in other destinations.

Making your website stand out and avoid a negative first impression therefore comes down to some key areas:

• Ensure it is an easy website to use. Clear easy to use and consistent navigation is vital with easy to read, brief content for each page and subsection. Solid professional website design will go a long way to achieve this.

• Provide comprehensive but succinct information about what you offer AND your destination without making your site cluttered. Include transport options and maps. Long-winded flowery marketing content doesn’t work so well online.

• For travel, quality photos and a good selection are vital – make them easy to view using slideshows and options to view enlarged versions.

• Offer online bookings – preferably with the ability to check real-time availability, secure payment and instant confirmation. See Online Booking Strategy for Tourism.

• If using email booking enquiries then make sure you respond quickly.

• Promote previous customer endorsements of your business, see how to Make Traveller Reviews part of your Marketing Strategy.

• Keep your website updated with fresh content – there’s nothing worse than out of date information. Having your own content management system will go a long way to do this. Also having a blog page can give you a quick and easy way to adding new information and news.

Checkout this summary of Content and User Experience in Online Travel 2009 – a global online traveller research study conducted by Frommers Unlimited which gives a lot of detail about the process travellers go through with online research, what they are looking for and what annoys them – very information reading.

Existing websites designed for desktop computers are simply not easy to use on a mobile device. So if you want to cleverly target the increasingly sophisticated FIT traveller then start work now on a “mobile” version of your website or an application for mobile and touch screen devices like the popular iPhone.

This will provide long term benefits for the online marketing of your site and ensure you can capture all of the traveller market, especially for those travelling rugby supporters during the Rugby World Cup 2011.

If you have a WordPress website (like this one) then converting your site for mobile is very easy with this WPtouch iPhone Theme plugin. Good to see Wellington Tourism with a mobile site version and Auckland Tourism with an iPhone application!

For further reading, check out these related blog posts and articles:

Destination Marketing & Mobile Travel on Tnooz by Stephen Joyce

The impact of the iPhone on Travel on eTourism Blogoscope by Prof. Christian Maurer

Mobile Marketing & Distribution in Hospitality by Lawrence from Cabbage Tree Creative

iPhone and Travel on Phocus Wright by Joe Buhler

The recent Aug/Sep 2009 issue of Tourism Business Magazine has an excellent article by Steve Davies from Accommodate Me that effectively outlines the key online booking systems available for New Zealand tourism operators (mainly accommodation) with their different strengths and weaknesses.

In lieu of an online version of the article I have briefly summarised some of it’s key content and suggest any tourism business interested in more detail to grab the latest copy of the magazine. For those needing more advice you can contact me directly to help you develop your own online booking strategy to suit your business.

Key Popular Systems

What you choose to enable online bookings in your website and receive bookings from other online sales channels will depend on your business products, size and strategy – for the use of a system do you prefer paying set regular amounts or nothing upfront with a commission on success model?

Research the differences, the costs and what works best for your business. In addition to the below considerations and others mentioned in the full article, I suggest you also look at how easy the booking system is to use for your guests – can they easily view your availability and then book and pay for it without too many clicks or forms to fill in? It’s ease of use will be a large factor determining it’s success in your website.

Here are some options:

AA Travel – Only available for those who advertise online with AA Travel. Free to set up as an advertiser – 1.75 to 3.75% for bookings. Sales channel also include AA Centre retail network. AA advertising costs range between $299 and $9000+ per year.

Availability – Uses ResBook online inventory management system popular with B&B’s and Lodges. Can integrate with resellers sites but leaves it up to the tourism operator to negotiate terms and commissions. Starts at $480 per year and no commissions.

Bookit – One of the few to offer a solution for accommodation, activities, tours and car rentals. Growing number of sales channels including key sites such as NZ Tourism Guide, Yellow Maps and some Regional Tourism Organisations. Free to use system, 6% fees for bookings in own website plus commission from sales channel bookings.

Jasons/Holiday Guide – Using the Holiday Guide System it is commission free with monthly charges starting at $10 per month. Can be used in your own website, and if a paid advertiser on the Jasons website.

Seekom – Their IBEX system is for accommodation, activities/tours and car rentals with comprehensive options for selling via wholesalers and retailers. Also offers effective sales channel management for online availability and pricing updates. Connects to popular property management system (PMS) Callista with more to come. Pricing from $39 per month.

SiteMinder – Australian based but offering effective channel management for a wide range of NZ, Australian and international online sales channels, plus have more recently added “The Booking Button” for online bookings in your own website. Channel management starts from $44 per month with additional per month for the Booking Button. No commissions. (Sales Channels will still charge their commissions however).

Tourism Exchange – Air NZ owned, the newest system on the market offering integration with your property management system or use of their Eviivo Frontdesk to manage all your bookings. Provides online bookings on your own website and from their sales channels including Air NZ (online, retail and wholesale channels) with many more promised to come. Monthly charges from $0 to $79 depending on room numbers, 6% fee plus cc charges for your website bookings, plus commissions for sales channels bookings that you opt in to.

Vianet – Now Trade Me owned offers a booking tool for your own website and comprehensive network of sales channels including Travelbug, tourism websites and several Regional Tourism Organisations. Free to use the system, 3% fee for bookings from your own website plus commissions from sales channels you opt in to.

For the tourism industry travel reviews posted online is now one of the most important factors people use to make a decision on what to book.

Ignoring review websites because of the risk of negative reviews is a poor and dangerous path for the tourism operator to take. If you are confident of your product and service you should embrace travel reviews as a key strategy for attracting new bookings.  If you are not confident then serious questions need to be asked about your business fullstop – fix the issues and then go for great reviews.

Here are some tips on how to use travel reviews as a marketing strategy:

• Pick one or two key review websites to focus on. Ensure you are listed on the site and then link to your listing from your own website. For New Zealand tourism operators I recommend sites like TripAdvisor and Rankers. TripAdvisor Reviews are also fed through automatically to appear on your business Google Map listing.

• Invite your guests to leave a review. Both TripAdvisor and Rankers provide free “widgets” to place on your website that show your current reviews and ratings plus invite people to write a review. You can also make it standard practise to email your customers with a link to write review.

• Promote your Reviews on your Website. You should have a Reviews page on your website showing a selection of your best reviews with a link to the review on the travel website. This provides credibility and trust that your reviews are authentic.
• Stone Store Lodge Accommodation rated “excellent” by 19 travelers
• Respond to reviews. Particularly if there are some negative comments. Always show you are happy to get feedback and have dealt with any issues identified, this is by far better than just ignoring it.

• Regularly search online for user content. Visit key travel review sites regularly and use websites like Technorati that help you to scour the internet for blog comments, photos or videos posted about your business. Travellers love showing off about their travels so there is a good chance they have posted photos on popular sites like Flickr or videos on sites like YouTube.

Check out this article from Hotelmarketing.com that offers some best practice guidelines for managing online reviews.

Check out this presentation I did about the Online Travel Market in New Zealand and Australia at the 2008 Northland Tourism Conference.

[business:Adept Marketing]