Improving Your Tourism Web Sites and Social Media Strategies

[Adriana Gallegos]

1. Look Good (=Nice & Simple)

Creative web design is all about making a website visually appealing. A visually appealing website is a site that is easy to read and easy to navigate. To create a site that visitors will not click away from immediately, follow some basic design standards, and think about the usability and accessibility of the design.

 

2. Content is Key

The content on your site is your vehicle to present your message and portray your brand. And if you offer the ability to book online or at least direct customers to contact info, the content might be the last stand between you and a booking. Qualitative & diverse information, trip planning tools, attractive visual material including video & photo sharing applications, multilingual content, B2B & Press sections and efficient SEO saturation/meta-tags are all “must” elements of a successful Tourism website.

3. Engage Your Audience!

Identify your visitors’ social activities

• 57% of Tourism website users read travel written reviews
• 32% of Tourism site users post ratings and reviews
• 43% of users visit travel-related forums

What we want to accomplish:

• Promote your brand
• Increase site visitation
• Increase bookings and online transactions
• Encourage repeat visitation

How this will change your relationship with customers

• Forge and strengthen connections with users
• Customers will know your destination much better
• Improved perception of authenticity of brand
• Empower users to become brand evangelists

4. Don’t Forget SEO

In search engine marketing, travel business is a well known category which is vast with a big competition in online marketing. From bookings of flights to hotel reservations, it is estimated that 70% of all flights are booked online through websites. So, we can easily assume this big on line competition. There are many tourism and travel companies having websites on web offering online travel deals and holiday offers. Every website has its own unique range of products, services & travel solutions and likes to be in top search engine placements with their offers.

There is a big challenge here for an SEO as searches on travel related keywords and phrases are very high, even a small travel key phrase has a big amount of search counts on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Msn (Live). So, a travel website requires more hard work, good strategy and regular implementations for getting high search engines rankings. read more at: Search engine optimization for travel websites

Your SEO Strategy:

Identify your audience and goals…

Firstly you must consider the market and type of users you are looking to attract to the site, Google provides the following travel search marketing tips to consider:

1. What is the end objective for your business – transactions, branding, lead generation? Your approach may differ based on the decided outcome.
2. Determine the success metric in advance. What cost per transaction is acceptable? What is your target gross/net ROI?
3. Have a clearly defined target market or user in mind. Are you primarily interested in attracting leisure or business travelers and/or discount, mid-scale, or luxury travelers?

Research your keywords based on the answers to the three questions above

5. Convert!

Conversion strategies are the plans needed to convert a looker into a buyer! Your Website Design & Content, the Use of Social Media and your SEO strategy should all be part of your overall on-line marketing strategy. Without one, the typical conversion rate for a website is about 2% of visitors. This is not only about selling hotels, tickets to cultural events, tourist attractions, museums, sport activities etc but to sell your own products as well (city pass, walking tours, souvenirs etc).

[Nepal everest guide(santosh)]

hi , it looks really useful information any time you uploaded some thing , thank you and as a tourist guide and organizer it is really useful for me thank you and if there are one one who would like to make connection business you can see my page and profile than we can go ahead thank you www.nepaleverestguide.com 

[Adriana Gallegos]

Thank you for your comments. I get a lot of my insights from many different sources like http://www.hotel-blogs.com/, which is a great blog.

[Susan Poole]

Very interesting information, which can also be applied to small properties like bed and breakfasts and inns.  For these properties, the largest component that is often missing is a clear "Call To Action" - how to make a booking, repeated throughout the site.  I would be interested in knowing more about your source for the stats listed under your third point - Engage Your Audience.  Sites like TripAdvisor and BedandBreakfast.com claim that traveler reviews rank much higher than 57% for potential guests when making booking decisions.

[sandra sarandon]

 Dear Adriana,                 www.palliserbaybb.co.nz         Palliser Bay B & B

                    Thank you for your ''POST''  : ''How to improve your Tourism Website' on this Tripatini site'.   .You have provided a lot of helpful advice . Later I shall  study what you have said. I will enquire about the cost of some of these items you have mentioned and if my website is compatible  to have these items  installed into my website.    CHEERS ! From Sandra Sarandon.