Unfortunately as well all know, crisis situations and emergency events do happen – we tend to think it won’t happen to us, but I have recently gone through an experience while at work that I doubt anyone can be 100% prepared for – certainly in my case it was a shocking situation that resulted in the loss of life of a fellow employee with intense media interest from TV, radio and print.

I hope this never happens to you or your business…but if it does you need to have a plan on how to deal with the media interest. As a small business it wasn’t something we had discussed and didn’t have a plan for but fortunately a media expert, who happened to be a regular customer of our business, was in touch with us as soon as he heard the news to see if his help would be needed – and by god yes it was needed, very much appreciated and ultimately the best thing we could have done on the day.

Media are of course very apologetic about contacting you during a tragic situation but they are certainly like a dog with a bone – they don’t tend to give up easily until they get what the need from you, and because news reporting is a very competitive environment if they don’t get the information from you then they will look to other sources that you may or may not be happy with and may or may not be accurate…so…I learnt some very valuable lessons on the few days that followed this event which I want to share.

Have a media/PR consultant with you as soon as possible

Here are some reasons why:

• Unlike you, they will be unemotional and offer clear strategic thinking
• They will have valuable experience of dealing with media and knowledge of individual media personalities
• They can advise on what you should or shouldn’t say and who is best to deal with
• They can prepare media statements and control media liaison
• They can filter the media and act as the first point of contact to reduce what the key company spokesperson has to manage

Media will publish the news whether you like it or not so  “No comment” won’t necessarily cut it

It was certainly our first instinct not to comment to media as the event unfolded but it became apparent pretty quickly that wasn’t necessarily a good strategy…we certainly had nothing to hide and wanted to ensure inaccurate or irrelevant information wasn’t published.  So it’s better to be as open as possible with media offering prepared media statements so they publish information that is accurate and from you as the source. This can make a significant difference on how the event impacts your business reputation in the long run.

Social Media Tools Are a Vital Communication Tool

Communicating via your social media tools such as your business Blog, Facebook and Twitter pages will be a key part of your strategy during this time as an effective and instant method to get media statements and information out there easily. We also found it a great way for others to communicate with us in an unobtrusive way as a form of support.

Who to Contact?

Overall, you may not need to employ a regular media/PR consultant for your business but at least have knowledge of who you might contact if you need to and get in touch to form that relationship. From experience, I can confidently recommend Peter Heath from Text Write as an expert is Crisis Management – Many Thanks Peter for your valuable support of Salt Air.

This article was originally published here by Michelle Ackers

When I say “local searches” I mean searches that include a town or city name in the search for a business type e.g “Taupo Motels”. The impact of this has both positive and negative effects on small businesses. For businesses that fit the location and business type criteria it may mean you now consistently appear on page 1 of the results now. For others that had put a lot of effort into having a well optimised website with strong online marketing it may mean you have slipped down the list onto a lower ranked page.

So if this is now the case, what can you do now to influence your rankings? Here are some tips to get the most out of “local searches” and Google Places:

• Make sure you have a Google Places business listing AND you have claimed it as the business owner so you can edit the content.
• Once you have access to edit your google places listing, make sure you complete all aspects of the content – including an accurate location on the map and choose all 5 category types (e.g for a motel the categories may be: motel, accommodation, motor inn, family accommodation, conference venue). The categories you enter will determine what results your business will appear in so it’s important to make the most of these and pick them wisely. You should have a 100% completed listing, so add your own business photos and YouTube videos too.
• Google Places pulls in content from other websites too – like business content from finda.co.nz or reviews from Tripadvisor, even pricing and booking links from accommodation booking websites. So having a comprehensive online marketing strategy will pay off here too.
• Use the additional free tools on Google Places like the Offer Coupons to help your listing stand out more and provide a mechanism for deals.

You’re probably also wondering, why bother with SEO on my own website now if Google Places results come up first anyway? Well, don’t give up on SEO! It’s still vitally important to rank as highly as possible in organic results and local searches aren’t the only way people will find your website through google (not to mention Google isn’t the only search engine).

For those new to Google Places, this video below is a useful reference for the key areas to cover in the content.

Originally posted on the Adept Marketing blog.

The Rugby World Cup Is Not Showing Widespread Benefits

At this stage the RWC has not increased bookings for most of the travel organizations, if anything they are finding that people are avoiding booking a holiday to New Zealand over Sep/Oct because of the perception of highly priced accommodation and no availability.

Effectively only the RWC Official Travel Agents (OTAs) are benefiting from bookings  and only accommodation in key RWC locations are booked out for specific big match dates. For the rest of the tourism industry the normal travel patterns for spring look to have been displaced by rugby supporters, leaving a potentially patchy couple of months for most tourism operators around NZ and even Air New Zealand has indicated their bookings for this period are not more than usual.

If there’s still time to boost bookings then I suggest hotels and other tourism businesses bring their pricing into more sensible levels to give New Zealand a better image and attract a full range of visitors over this period. We are not yet fully booked!

Forward Bookings Slow

Forward bookings in general are weak. A combination of factors including uncertainty after the Christchurch earthquake, exchange rate fluctuations (weak USD and GBP, high AUD) and ongoing global recession recovery seems to be putting people off booking to this part of the world in any hurry, instead they are opting to leave it as late as possible to decide, giving the industry a poor indication of what the next season will be like.

On a positive note, it does seem that the luxury high end market is reasonably strong however, there are still people out there with large budgets for luxury holidays and so this market is remaining steady.

The Rise of the Cruising Market

The Cruise Ship industry are aggressively targeting the middle travel market with competitive packages that are successfully winning business off the group tour and FIT markets. This changes the dynamics of tourism experiences for visitors to NZ and has considerable effect on accommodation and some tourism activity operators. On the whole it’s not a positive trend economically as they simply don’t see as much of New Zealand and don’t spend as much – only regular cruise ship ports benefit but the benefits don’t run much beyond what people can do in a day visit within walking distance of the ship.

Were you at TRENZ this year? Did you make any other observations to add to this article – your input would be appreciated.

New sites of this nature seem to be popping up on a regular basis with dozens that are New Zealand based. Some of the big online media companies feature strongly in the line up including APN Media’sGrabOne and Trade Me’s Treat Me. There are so many that there are now websites that aggregate all of the one day deals as a quick way to see them all.

It’s unlikely all of them will survive successfully and you have to wonder how willing businesses will be to continue to discount by such large degrees (typically 49-50%) as the economy improves. It’s likely the deals will get less attractive over time and therefore lose their high traffic volumes or perhaps they will just evolve with less focus on heavy discounting.

There’s no doubt they offer an attractive short term marketing tactic for businesses, but are they really a good strategy to undertake?
Let’s analyze the pro’s and con’s from a business perspective…

Pro’s

• Great exposure to a mass audience
• Little or no upfront cost (typically they take a cut of sales made off their site)
• Can create sales and demand that the business otherwise wouldn’t get
• Provides instant cash flow
• If a service provider delivering the service may well be spread out over a long time so low stress on meeting demand

Con’s

• Could deter sales at the normal price and so may cause slower sales after the deal is no longer available
• To achieve big volumes of sales you generally need to offer a considerable discount which will drop yields and profitability
• Selling at discounted prices doesn’t guarantee ongoing business
• Demand may well be significant and hard to meet if you are a small business

Each business thinking of actively offering these deals needs to consider the pro’s and the con’s – does discounting help or hinder your brand image? Do you really want to be flat out busy at very low margins? How will this affect your regular loyal customer relationships? Can you afford such large discounting?

I’d suggest you try being creative with your offers rather than just straight discounting and include terms and conditions that suit you so you don’t find your business losing out in the long run.

These websites will suit some types of businesses more than others – before you go into it make sure you can deliver good service on what you offer.

Have you tried this for your business already? Got any good tips or stories of success/failure to share? Feel free to leave a comment.

This article was originally posted on the Adept Marketing Blog

The main reason being that is really is EASY to use. Mailchimp have gone out to their way to design an interface and online tools that make it simple to set up and manage your own email marketing campaigns – from the design right through to the reporting of the campaign statistics. You don’t have to be a designer or marketing whizz to use this tool.

And to top it all off for most small business owners use of this tool will be completely FREE. Cost only kicks in as your email marketing needs and database gets bigger – for example it will only start costing you once have 2,000 email subscribers on your list and you wish to send emails to more than 12,000 email addresses per month. Even then it’s reasonable cost and the pricing is flexible to suit too – you can opt for set monthly fees or pay as you go credits.

Here are some of the things I especially like about Mailchimp:

• It’s very easy to upload email addresses to Mailchimp – you can simply copy and paste a list from excel for example or upload a spreadsheet or file
• There are many design template options and it’s fairly easy to customise any design to include your own colours, logo and images
• Every task is easy to go through and complete with clear step by step processes and it’s easy to go back and make any changes
• Once you have set up a design template and a campaign you can easily replicate these for future campaigns making it quick to send our new emails to your database
• Once an email has been sent out to your database you can view and track detailed results and statistics straight away. This information is so useful to understand how successful your email marketing efforts are and what works better (or worse)
• They offer online training and webinars for beginners to get you started
• Mailchimp offers an iPhone app for tracking your email campaigns from your phone
• There are some nice social media integration tools to help make it easy for your email marketing efforts to be shared online

Overall the functionality offered by Mailchimp is matched by any other high profile email marketing tools available but I think this one is particularly useful for the small businesses who can’t afford to pay professional designers or agencies to manage their email marketing for them but still gives them a professional and cost effective way to do it themselves.

So give it a go yourself, it’s so easy a monkey could use it!

This article was originally published by Michelle Ackers on her Adept Marketing Blog.

Sales Results

• Go through your sales figures and do some analysis and graphs for different measures – e.g. Sources of bookings (direct, inbound agents, visitor booking offices, online websites, campaigns and advertising etc), Direct booking types (e.g phone, email, website, walk-in), Product Type sales (you may offer different tours, room types etc).
• Compare all of these sales results against last year’s figures too so you know where the changes have been.
• It may be that your current booking system doesn’t allow you to categorise your bookings in these ways – if not, is there a better alternative out there?
• Once you have analysed all of the sales measures that are important to your business you are then armed with great information to make better decisions about your what areas of your marketing and sales efforts need attention.

Your Website and Online Marketing

• This is now undoubtedly a key area for tourism businesses to get right. Have you invested the necessary time and money into delivering a quality website and comprehensive online marketing strategy including social media and networking?
• Does your website reflect the quality of your business and the experience you offer to travellers?
• Is it easy to book with you online?
• Are your number of direct bookings via your website increasing?
• What feedback do you get on your website?
• Do you use tools like google analytics to measure the performance of your website in detail so you know it’s performance rather than just gut feel? For example, knowing how many visits you get from external websites you’ve paid to list on is vital information when it comes to the decision on whether to renew for another year.

Customer Feedback

• Comments and feedback from your customers is always a vital way to improve your product and services, provided you seek out the information.
• Don’t be afraid to ask them, provide customer feedback forms or encourage your customers to place online reviews so you know what is working well and what isn’t.

Don’t just blame poor sales on the recession – in realty there are always areas you can control and plan for in marketing and sales to improve your performance.

Do you have an iconic or simply stunning view from your business or property? It’s worth considering whether a webcam at your location, could be part of your marketing mix that can drive traffic to your website. Tourism operators of any type and RTO’s can showcase their views and location as an information tool to visitors helping to make the vital booking decision.

There are a few Northland webcams from SnapitHD (used on the Takeabreak.co.nz website) that as a tourism business Salt Air uses daily to check weather conditions on where we are flying to, this has really helped our business in terms of operational decision making. The time lapse images enhance the applications even further.

Other than that webcams can simply be stunning to look at – the Mt Cook webcam has to be one of the most stunning examples (when the weather’s good of course…)

With 3 initial different TV commercials it’s clear that the brand is being moved away from the generic to the specific which Tourism New Zealand is hoping will spark action with travellers to increase tourism numbers.

I think this is a good move to both ride off the power of the 100% Pure brand but also offer a range of activities that people love about New Zealand.

What do you think?

Regardless of the cause of dissatisfaction there are a few things you can learn from these situations to help avoid them again in the future:

• Make sure communication to your customers is clear at all points of contact – don’t hide any details or extra charges
• Ensure employee training is thorough and effective so they are delivering the expected information, standard of service delivery desired and are competent to do so. You can’t expect employees to know information you haven’t shared with them or trained them to understand all processes and procedures. Have you got an effective operations or procedures manual to refer to?
• During delivery of the product or service continue to question the customer to ensure they are happy with how things are proceeding – don’t just assume all is well if they say nothing.
• Once the dispute is raised, listen, then handle it effectively and positively – regardless of who is at fault try to resolve it equitably and don’t play the blame game, take responsibility for your business at all levels. It always works well to tell the customer involved you understand their concerns and how you plan to resolve it rather than asking them what they want which could be unrealistic.
• Identify the point where things went wrong and put in place remedies to ensure it won’t happen again or at least lesson it’s likelihood
• Some people are just difficult to deal with so don’t take it personally, be the bigger person – learn from it and move on!

No matter how experienced or developed your business is things can come unstuck from time to time, so don’t worry it happens to the best of us and chalk it up to a fact of life of being in business.

Have you got some good examples of customer disputes or complaints and how you dealt with it? Share it here with us

10 Ideas for content:

• Add Photo Albums – try not to put a lot of photos in just 1 album, create different topics to divide them up so it’s easier for people to view what they are interested in
• Link to some of your latest online traveller reviews or media articles and comment about them
• List some recent accomplishments or news e.g. awards, star rating, sustainability efforts, product development etc
• Set up automated feeds with your other social media such as your Twitter account and Blog articles to create regular content
• Offer a special package and provide a link to book it on your website
• Create a Competition that will attract followers and encourage people to share your Facebook page with others
• Add links to websites for some upcoming events or activities in your area – ideally you would write a blog article about it on your website so the traffic goes to your own site
• Add a link to any relevant YouTube or online videos about your business or location – a link to a video on Facebook will embed the video on your wall so it can be easily viewed
• Ask Your recent customers to post their own photos and comments on your wall about their experience with your business
• Get your whole team involved in adding regular content to your Page – you can add as many “admin” people as you like for the page so make it easy and share the load

How to Get Followers for a New Facebook Page:

• Start connecting with others on Facebook and then use the Facebook “Suggest to Friends” function for your page – ask them to suggest it to their friends too
• Promote it prominently on your website and use the Facebook “social media plugins” to show current activity on your Facebook page and encourage Facebook users to follow you.
• Email your customer database telling them about your new page with a link so they can follow it
• Promote it from Twitter and any other social media sites you belong to
• Once you have 25 followers for a page go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to set a user friendly URL for your page e.g. http://www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname – this makes it easier and more memorable to promote verbally and in print.
• Make it accessible to your customers while they are with you so they can follow it and add content during their experience.

Have you got any other suggestions that has worked for your Business page on Facebook?

Time and time again businesses get emailed with some sort of offer to list on a website to promote their themselves with promises of better search engine rankings and increased website traffic.

My mantra when it comes to this decision is to only pay upfront for a listing which meets the following criteria:

• It is a well known and quality website relevant to your industry or target market.
• It provides a link back to your website.
• It can provide you with it’s monthly web statistics (unique browser visits and page visits) to measure it’s effectiveness.
• It ranks highly in search engine results for your business categories.
• It provides good value for money i.e. the upfront cost is not over the top and realistic for the profile it has and the content it allows you to add.

Know Your Stats!

For any listings you already pay for make sure you can track the traffic sources for your website through tools like Google Analytics, that way when it comes to decide whether to renew any listing you can find out how much traffic you’ve received and work out stats like the cost per click.

There’s a lot of value in checking and knowing your web statistics and traffic sources regularly. Free listings are the way to go for the bulk of your online listings, but there will be a selection of sites that are worth the money if they can give you quality website traffic.

Without analysis of these details I would be blind to the affects of all my online activity – and there’s no fun in that – it’s quite a satisfying thing to post a new blog, tweet about it and then watch the traffic activity and blog comments start coming in. You then know that what you do is not just of interest to you – it is adding value to your customers and target market.

So here are a list of some key things any website owner should know about their website:

• unique visits to the site for any given period
• your top traffic sources and search key words used
• when peaks in traffic have occurred and why (correlated with marketing activity)
• what pages (or blog posts) are the most popular
• average time spent on the site and on each page
• trends for all of the above

These are the main things I always look at using Google Analytics but there are many more metrics available through this tool. It’s also good to know the “bounce rate” (what % of people leave the site after just viewing 1 page), and for the sake of understanding how people use your website check out the “site overlay” function to see the percentage of clicks on any link for each page.

Another key area is “Conversions”. You can set goals on the behaviour you want people to take and track the conversion % achieved.  For example if you have a booking system within your site you could have a goal to have 5% of the traffic convert to bookings. Some booking systems will let you add your google analytics user code so you can effectively track the usage of the booking process (The Siteminder Booking button is one example of this).

It’s amazing how many businesses barely look at their website statistics, which is a shame because online marketing is one of the few marketing activities where you can accurately track activity from marketing campaigns – you can and should use this knowledge to monitor and improve you marketing strategy.

Interested to hear about what other metrics people typically monitor for their websites too, share your thoughts!

What does this mean? Basically they will allow anyone to set up and publish content on the website based around what they are calling information “hubs”.  There will be “destination hubs” and “interest hubs” (e.g walking and hiking). They plan to moderate all content added to approve it being published (to check it is appropriate) but don’t intend on actively changing content. If you publish content then you are the owner of that page (forever) and can edit or add to it anytime.

This is quite a bold strategy, one that will no doubt have a lot of RTO’s, iSITEs, travel sellers and tourism operators in a mad rush to create and own content for their key destinations and areas of interest. They seem to be fairly open to the fact that some may misuse this for their own benefit but will no doubt watch on carefully with interest on how it will evolve.

The key strategy with this is to structure the site around topics of interest that will help sell New Zealand to travellers with content that shows rich New Zealand experiences and their vision is to create a “market place” to connect travellers with tourism experiences and products (although they aren’t going as far as providing a booking system).

Currently they have some hubs set up in a pilot test site and it sounds like they will roll this out on the live site within 6-8 weeks. So keep an eye out for it! What do you think about this concept?

Accommodation providers using the Bookit system and on Travelbug will be able to login to Bookit to set up their auction for any of their room products and the commission will be 10% (including credit card fees).

For the winner of the auction they will provided with a link to a normal Travelbug booking page to complete the booking details and make payment online within 24 hours of winning the auction, so the booking confirmation and payments will be handled as normal via Bookit.

As with any type of auction you can set a reserve price and a buy now price.  The key requirement to place an auction on Trade Me for an accommodation booking is that the room availability must be guaranteed by the operator – so be careful about the date range you set for the date of travel and note that the availability is manually allocated, it is not linked with your Bookit availability.

Given operators have to be certain about the room availability to ensure the success of the auction I’d expect only operators with large inventory levels to be confident with using this and can imagine some awkward situations if the room auction dates get sold out through other booking channels prior to the end of an auction, hmmmm.

The set up looks easy enough though so it will be interesting to see how this gets adopted by accommodation providers, they can also develop packages to auction. Trade Me Travel also intends to add flights, event tickets and activities to this auction section on Trade Me.

Tourism marketing is no exception and it’s something I often say to tourism businesses who are wondering about how to improve their bookings but want to do it without spending (investing) any more money into it – if they don’t bother then nothing will change, bookings won’t improve and they will still be wondering about it.

The trick is finding that something that will give you a good return on your investment. Here are some ideas to help you find that something:

• Have a look around at some of your competitors that you respect and appear to be doing well – what do they do differently from you? Can you learn from them?
• Find people to help you who do know what works through experience or because it’s their business to know and implement these things.
• Never stop learning. There is a wealth of information online, go to workshops, conferences and study.  Arm yourself with skills to make changes and evolve your business.
• You may already have some ideas and know what you are not doing, perhaps you feel you have barriers and restrictions but if you delve into it are these just excuses or are there real options you can take?
• Have you fully explored all the different tourism distribution and sales channels available yet? Online, Wholesale, Retail, inbound tour operators, Information Centres, Tourism partners…
• Look for support from tourism organisations – especially your local RTO. They will have a lot of resources and initiatives to help you get ahead.
• When did you last do a marketing plan? Have you ever done one? It may well be all in your head but the process of putting it onto paper can solidify your ideas and help get you started.

Many of you are probably already entrepreneurial and prepared to put in the hard yards – that’s why you are in business. But there are always times when you can get too comfortable and the energy levels slacken.  Remember, it’s your business and your life so it’s up to you to make things happen – if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

Got any other useful ideas? Add a comment to share.

The solution for most is use of “Channel Management” internet based software that will automatically update pricing and inventory across these key channels by linking the systems together (usually via an API link).

Not only does channel management eliminate the risk of double bookings, it also allows operators to achieve broad exposure for their business internationally and increase their total bookings…a no brainer really.

Increasingly mainstream Property Management System’s (PMS) will link to update the channel manager for you, so keep this in mind when selecting a PMS.

Some channel managers won’t require a link to an automated property management system so these ones can be just as applicable for B&B’s as they are for hotels, motels, and Backpacker accommodation.

Some key Channel Managers relevant for New Zealand accommodation are:

Siteminder

• Australian based with one of the most comprehensive lists of channels that it updates relevant for both NZ and Australian accommodation operators.
• Prices start from $49 per month
• They also offer a booking system for your website called the “Booking Button” from $29 per month
• Can use their channel manager without a PMS
• They have recently implemented a NZ freephone number to improve direct support for NZ operators

Seekom

• A 100% NZ based option with a growing list of key NZ and international booking channels that it updates
• Seekom is primarily an online booking solution but has been expanding it’s software capability and now offer a full PMS, along with channel management and content managed website solutions.
• You can use Seekom Channel Management option on it’s own from $39 per month and is even more cost effective to use it in combination with their online booking system and other solutions.
• Recently been chosen as the preferred channel manager for the HAPNZ group

Staah

• Another NZ owned organisation offering an internet based online booking system for your website and channel management. They also provide website design and SEO services.
• They can link to some the common PMS’s used in NZ
• Set monthly fees, (pricing not published on their website)

RoamFree

• Australian based with links to global channels, they offer channel management and an online booking tool for your own website that can also link to some PMS’s (although at this stage they are not key NZ based ones). Their channels tend to be Australian and Globally focused so exclude some key NZ channels.
• Set monthly fees (not published on their website)
  

Have you got any more information about these channel management options or other options you think are relevant? Leave a comment to let us know.

At present, like the early days of the internet, most of the applications are content focused brochures rather than booking tools.  Many will link you to mobile versions of booking websites that allow you to book but overall the interface for many of these is still cumbersome to use.

Tripadvisor has recently launched their new iPhone to include links to book accommodation online through their OTA (online travel agent) booking partners websites rather than trying to come up with a complete solution.

This article on tnoonz (Talking Travel Tech) “Isango starts work on mobile destination app” highlights the issues over product payments for mobile apps.  The key concern being that with last minute bookings, which are most likely on a mobile device, there is a need to ensure real time availability is accurate in the last minute period (particularly if made with 48 hours of arrival) rather than a simple email confirmation process with accommodation properties.

No doubt many different solutions are being developed and the gap in the travel market to deliver an effective mobile booking and payment solution for mobile devices is being worked on.  According to this article on m-Travel.com “Start-up works on new enterprise mobile platform for hotel reservations“.

The start up named is “TripCraft” and they promote themselves as “the industry’s first enterprise-level mobile application… No more cumbersome mobile browser-based experiences. TripCraft combines the speed and efficiency of a native app with the ability to pull in dynamic content in real-time.”  Their application allows connection to reservations systems to book in real time with the ability to modify and cancel bookings.

At this stage TripCraft is a solution for hoteliers rather than online travel agents, but initiatives such as the Open travel Alliance will be key to standardising ways for the industry to achieve true real time availability distribution no matter what the platform.

No doubt, for accommodation providers, providing your own application for mobile bookings will be a key way to ensure repeat business with your regular and business travellers making it easy for them to book with you no matter where and when.

What is it?

Using a mobile device with GPS, it’s a way to explore a city and find people, places and things to do.  The users “check-in” to their current locations and can earn rewards in doing so.   
It’s got much more of a “game” approach to it than other social media tools where users can “unlock badges and discover new things” for rewards, but the interesting bit is that these things are in the real world so businesses can use it to influence behaviour and actions, turning Foursquare users into paying customers.

Is It Useful for Tourism Businesses and Destination Marketing?

You bet ya it is, well eventually anyway – once more people start to understand it, and provided it’s content continues to grow throughout New Zealand then it could become quite a powerful tool for travellers to decide what do to and where to go while visiting, plus you can incentivise your regular customers.

Here is a link to find out how businesses can use Foursquare to reward their customers with special offers and incentives.  You can either “claim your venue” as the business owner if someone has already added your business on Foursquare, or you can add your venue yourself.  Once you have claimed it you can monitor the stats, add special offers and award prizes etc.

This article “VisitPA uses Foursquare to it’s Full Potential” on the Project Wander blog is perhaps the first example of a Destination Marketing Organisation getting onboard with Foursquare to market it.

The limiting factor right now in New Zealand is the quality and lack of mobile internet access nationwide so it’s use is mainly in the cities….that may take some time to fix, but if your coverage is good then give it a go for your tourism business or organisation.  Would be great to hear about any businesses using it already.

The decision on which online booking system you choose will come down to a few key areas that are relevant to your business:

Cost model

Is it commission based per booking or a set monthly fee?  The certainty of a set monthly fee will suit some and not others.  Those will lower volume bookings are likely to be better off using a supplier with a straight commission model.

Flexibility with Inventory Management

Can you opt to offer real time or on request bookings?  Can you mix it up between the 2 options?  There are definite key benefits to having control over your availability type for different time periods – particularly for smaller suppliers who don’t have the luxury of large room inventories to always offer instant bookings.

Distribution opportunities

Does the system offer a retail distribution channel or network to increase your booking opportunities?  Many of the key systems either have set up their own retail website, work with key retail websites or have been purchased by a large retailer.

Functionality

Does it come with all the bells and whistles of a full reservations system or simply accept online bookings?  Can you choose what you use in the system to suit your business?  Pick a system that will work with your needs.

Channel Management

Does it offer an automated link to updating key retail travel websites or at least link to a channel manager that does?  This ability opens up the opportunity for you to gain broad exposure and easily manage your pricing and availability with key online travel agents.

Easy to use

For both yourself and your customers.  It’s an important consideration as to how your customers experience the booking process on your own website.  It should be simple, quick and easy to understand (likewise for you!).

How Do New Zealand Online Booking Systems Score?

To me, a great system would offer you options in all of these areas and give you the choices to make it work for your business without dictating how you use it.  Does any of the New Zealand systems offer all of this right now?  Not really, there is no perfect system yet that will suit every type of tourism business.

Don’t get me wrong – many of the systems work fine and offer comprehensive solutions, but I think all of them fail in one respect or another so it’s a matter of picking the one that is the best fit for your business based on some of the criteria discussed above.

Joint Ventures

A great way to invent something new is to think about possible partners you could develop a joint venture product with.  Your expertise may be in one area but through your business you have likely networked with other tourism businesses that have different and complimentary skills.  Building an alliance with another tourism operator/s can be an effective approach to develop something new and innovative for continual business development where you can share the benefits and the risks.  Plus with joint marketing funds and knowledge it’s likely you can achieve a lot more and bring it to market faster.

I think this sort of approach can work particularly well in the activities and attractions area of tourism.  For example, some activities may benefit from having a historical or Maori cultural component added to it, a food and beverage component, a marine or water sport, or expertise on nature and eco tourism.  The type of “mix and match” options available is really up to your imagination, your local contacts, and knowledge of what your market likes.

A good example of a new tourism joint venture launched recently in the Bay of Islands is “Dining under the Stars” (see the media release here).  This product has been led by Adventure Puketi (a forest walks tourism operator), who have joined with a local restaurant “Food at Wharepuke” to offer a unique guided kauri forest walk and dining activity  in the Puketi Forest.  The experience includes a night walk in the forest (something they already offered) culminating in an exotic dinner service in a forest clearing under the stars with Maori cultural performers and a guide talking about the stars in the New Zealand night sky.  The target market is aimed at conference groups, tour groups, and the cruise market.

This type of creativity and willingness to work with partners is what small to medium New Zealand tourism businesses can use to revive or expand their tourism products plus create memorable and unique experiences for our visitors.

But every so often we are reminded of it’s risks when a tourist in New Zealand suffers serious injuries or even death by undertaking one of these experiences.  Such was the case on Friday in Hanmer Springs where an Australian tourist slipped out of a bungy harness.

Is adventure tourism inherently risky and something tourists should agree to at their own peril?  Yes, BUT – there should be safety regulations and regular approval/review processes of commercial adventure tourism operations that aim to eliminate or reduce the risks, that are balanced with the need to attract and effectively cater for thrill seekers.  As a backpacker in South America I undertook several adventure tourism activities and recall that asking about safety precautions was not high on my list of key concerns (put that down to youth, being trusting and language barriers), the point being that adventure tourism operators need to be the ones who are concerned and do take the right precautions, training, checking of equipment and conditions etc.

Scarily, over 5 years 29 people have died (and at least 540 seriously injured) in New Zealand adventure tourism activities.  I have no doubt that each time this happens the overall New Zealand tourism reputation takes a hit – particularly when it’s occurred under the management and care of a marketed tourism business and not the result of irresponsible behaviour on the part of the tourist.  Sure accidents happen when people do things in the outdoors – but severe injury and death are not acceptable outcomes during the course of a paid or chaperoned tourism activity if it was avoidable.

The Department of Labour is currently conducting a detailed gap analysis of risk management and safety provisions in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand, due to the Minister of Labour by 31 May.  We will look forward to seeing the outcomes that will hopefully outline a way forward to prevent these statistics from growing.

In the meantime, for the sake our visitors, we hope adventure tourism businesses are reminded that safety is priority at all times and it would be interesting to hear their opinions as to the best way forward to improve safety measures across the industry and for reputation management.

Our Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO’s) seem to be getting into gear with workshops, websites and planning for their regions.

With ticket packs now available to apply for, individual tourism operators should be starting their planning on how to benefit from the expected influx of visitors to New Zealand throughout Sep/Oct 2011 (if you are not already a supplier for an Official Travel Agent).

Key Areas to consider now:

• The starting point has to be understanding the legal aspects of what you can and can’t promote in regard to the RWC brand and events.  For full details go the this link to download a useful guide in relation the RWC2011 Major Events Management Act Guidelines.
• Get in touch with your RTO to find out about events and marketing opportunities relevant to your region that your business may benefit from or be involved with.  Some RTO’s have held workshops (Auckland for example) and Northland have developed a website just for the RWC so this is a good resource for businesses to understand the opportunities available.
• Consider your own pricing levels and packaging opportunities for the RWC period.  We’ve been seeing a lot in the media about over the top hotel pricing being applied, so be realistic about what you can charge based on your location to any of the key matches, team training areas and so on.  Generally it’s recommended you apply your high season pricing during this period and for accommodation minimum stay requirements may help to achieve high occupancy rates.  Operators located in close proximity to major games should achieve pricing that the market is prepared to pay for such a high profile event – which is likely to be well beyond high season prices.

Any other tips out there for tourism operators to maximise the opportunity?

RTO’s and local government will now be considering the impacts of visitors arriving in large numbers and planning towards ensuring a positive impression and everything runs smoothly – a number of events and festivals are being created to entertain and encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more, so bring it on!

If you need more convincing then see this article on Hubspot called “SEO is Evolving Fast – Is Your Website?” – it discusses Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and includes how a blog can now help a small business website to achieve better rankings than a larger/less flexible competitor website.  Another great article on this topic is “6 Reasons Every Small Business Should be Blogging…Are You Missing the Boat?”

For tourism operators or organisations a blog is a great way to promote any news, media releases, tips for travellers coming to your area, events and activities – anything that is relevant to your business, specialist knowledge and tourism in your area.  It doesn’t have to be about opinionated articles and topical issues.  Once you get the hang of it adding new articles is easy and fun.

Another great thing about blog articles and RSS Feeds (all blogs have an automated RSS feed) are that they are very easy to share online adding significant opportunity for you to increase the number of inbound links to your website, which identifies it as a popular or important site by search engines.  You can also list your blog URL with a large number of online blog directories, see this list for starters.

When setting up a blog, to ensure you get the best benefits for search engine rankings, make sure the blog software allows the following:

• The blog can be “self hosted” with your website domain rather than a separate domain e.g. the blog URL is: www.ABCTours.co.nz/blog.  This takes a bit more effort to set up than just using a free blog hosted site and you will need your web designer to get it set up for you – but it’s worth it as all the website traffic to your blog will be credited to your main website ranking which is ultimately where you want the traffic and recognition to be achieved.
• Each blog post title can be set as part of the URL name so that keywords are included, for example this article URL is:

http://www.tourismindustryblog.co.nz/2010/04/why-a-blog-can-improve-your-website-ranking

• Each blog post can have meta tags applied (see this article “Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher in Google“)
• It has a blog plugin to easily share your content online via social media websites or email.
• You can easily set up a blog email subscriber function to build an email database and send out articles as they are published.

If you were to ask my opinion on what blog software to use to achieve all of this (and more) then I would always say WordPress.org (self hosted) wins hands down, but what you use may depend on what website content management system you have, so talk to your web designer.

Got any examples of good tourism websites with blogs? Here’s a couple I’ve spotted recently: Sky Dive Wanaka, Dive! Tutukaka

Changing a brand that works so well is a big decision, a gutsy move and something that perhaps should not be done just because “it’s time” but because it’s no longer relevant or effective.  Tourism New Zealand certainly haven’t indicated a change is coming but it’s no doubt something for the new CEO Kevin Bowler to consider with his team.

Overall I think it’s a been and still is an effective overall umbrella brand for New Zealand and we should continue to create campaigns, like the “Youngest Country” and other more tactical campaign initiatives  under that umbrella that can be differentiated to continue to inspire and attract our various target markets.

I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others in our industry with your opinion is as to whether we should still be “100% Pure New Zealand”?

Not only that, the applications and tools available on Facebook pages are a great fit for tourism businesses that can sell your features based on interactive and user content such as photos, videos and reviews.  The personality that you can show about your brand and your people can come through strongly and add to your online brand profile.

Facebook Pages

• This is the key way for a brand or business to represent themselves on Facebook, and can generally be set up in less than 30 minutes, create a page here.  Note: All Facebook Pages have to be set up by someone with a personal profile.
• It can be viewed without being a Facebook user so you can have a link directly to your page from your website but only Facebook users can follow your page as “fans”
• There are a multitude of free applications that you can add to your Facebook page that can enhance it’s functions, see this article on Mashable.com “5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page“
• Your updates will appear on the personal walls of your fans to draw their attention to the activity on your page
• You can send your fans messages, so it’s essentially another form of database marketing and incredibly powerful because all fans voluntarily opt in to receive your content
• While it all sounds easy, creating and maintaining your content plus attracting user content from your fans requires a time investment and a strategy to keep it growing effectively combining it with your other marketing media
• Always keep in mind that the is aim to use tools like Facebook to drive traffic to your website and increase your marketing database of targeted customers

Establish Your Fan Base

Building your Fan base is always the first challenge for a new Facebook page, so here are some ideas to help get it going:

• Create some interesting content on your Page first so that when you start promoting it will attract fans
• Promote your Page with in a prominent place on your website
• If you have a marketing database then use email marketing to promote your Facebook page, similarly if you already have a following on other social media sites like Twitter then you can promote your page to them
• Use the Facebook Ads to promote your page – costs are based on pay per click and you can select the demographics and location of people you want to target
• Develop some fun and interactive viral marketing initiatives that can be featured on your page, competitions and incentives are a great way to attract visits

Popular Tourism Facebook Pages

If you have some doubts over the benefits of building a busy Facebook Fan Page have a look at the number of fans generated on some the following popular tourism pages – marketing gold!

Australia - 384,220 Fans

100% Pure New Zealand – 118,800 Fans

Air New Zealand – 18,844 fans

WellingtonNZ – 13,846 fans

Have you got any more examples of popular tourism Facebook pages or useful apps to use on your page? What has worked for you to build your fan base?  

Become a Fan of the Tourism Industry Blog Facebook Page

What are the key steps to Get Started?

• Develop a database. You may have a lot of email addresses of regular customers in your email software so add these into an excel spreadsheet for starters (so you can import them into email marketing software).  It’s OK legally to send marketing emails to customers who you already have a relationship, but it might be a good idea to email them first to invite them to subscribe.
• Have an email subscription option on your website.  Make it easy for your regular customers to opt in to receiving your emails.  Ideally this function is linked to your email marketing software so they are automatically added to your database.  “Opt in” email marketing is the most effective in terms of open rates and successful campaigns.
• Use professional email marketing software.  You do not need to purchase or download this software, there are plenty of options that are internet based.  Pricing will depend on how big your database is and how often you send out emails, generally it’s quite cost effective and you will find an option to suit your budget.  There are also free systems like Mailchimp for smaller databases.  Email marketing software provide design templates that you can customise with your own colours and logo, it’s also worth considering have a professionally designed email template that matches your website as a one off cost.  The software will also track the open rate and click throughs from your campaign so you can measure it’s success.  It will also manage unsubscribes and bounced emails.
• Establish a regular email marketing schedule. Too often can be annoying so don’t overdo it, once every 1 or 2 months is a good start or just when you have something newsworthy.
• Keep the content relevant and interesting. Special offers, events, new products and competitions are popular reasons to send out an email, be careful not to make the email too long.  Ideally you will provide links to your website for further details and to make a booking.

Email Marketing Tip: The best time to send out an marketing email is Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon

Got any other tips you want to share or email marketing software you prefer? Let us know.

Click on the image to enlarge

Interesting to see an article on the Mashable website yesterday about Google Testing Hotel Prices in Google Maps. This news, which was announced fairly casually on Monday on the Google Maps blog siting it as an “experiment”, will no doubt spark up interest among the Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) as a new way to advertise pricing and get click through traffic to their website.

For travellers it’s means they can use google maps to find accommodation with the ability to search on dates of travel to get real time pricing and then click through to the provider website to book.

From Google’s perspective it’s probably seen as an evolution of the maps business listings and another way to develop advertising revenues rather than a desire to become part of the online travel market, however it will no doubt have an impact on OTA’s and introduce a fairly competitive necessity to be included as an advertiser on the google maps.

Of interest to accommodation providers will be whether they too get the opportunity to be one of the listed advertisers to attract direct bookings or whether the pricing has to come through an automated feed from participating OTA’s or booking systems – if it’s a bidding model like Google Adwords then it’s likely the large global OTA’s will dominate this opportunity.

Potentially the effects of this will be lesser felt in New Zealand as many accommodation suppliers do not participate on the global OTA’s, leaving the opportunity open perhaps for more of the local accommodation booking websites and accommodation providers themselves.

So time will tell on how this will all work and impact on the market, we will keep an eye on progress of the likely roll out of this new feature.  In the meantime, if I were an accommodation provider I’d make sure I’m listed on a selection of OTA’s.

Developing the right viral campaign is a bit of an art because you have to be careful not to make it too manufactured, it needs to be genuinely funny and the brand or message involved has to be visible but not dominating – potentially the more outrageous and cheeky it is the more success you will have.  People will either love it or hate it – but that’s OK, so long as it gets exposure.

How can tourism use it? Very creatively hopefully!   This is a superb way to create interest in a destination or particular tourism product in a different and memorable way.  A couple of current examples of viral marketing campaigns for New Zealand tourism organisations are:

Air New Zealand – Who Would You Spoon?

A funny video featuring comedian Di Henwood with the campaign centred on the Air New Zeland Facebook page.  They have even produced a Facebook application for the spooning campaign so fans can select some of their friends to spoon and enter a competition to win a weekend away…the marketing message for this campaign?  It’s all about their new Economy Skycouch which allows passengers to lie down during flight to sleep, and presumably spoon if travelling with a close friend…

Destination Northland – Northland For Dummies Aussies

A clever couple of videos have been produced and placed on YouTube with the star of the show being the likeable Bazza from Oz.  Targeted at Australians to visit Northland, these 2 videos (A language Guide and an Outdoor Guide) are being spread virally through You Tube, Facebook and Twitter.  Bazza has his own Facebook page and Twitter account so you can follow his travels through Northland.

Having your own website is a great start, but hoping the high spending European travellers will find it just through search engines is not always easy to achieve.  So a key way to get your website seen online by the overseas markets is to list on international travel websites.

International Travel Websites

You may start off by identifying your target markets and research what international travel websites are popular by the population there.   For a free and easy source for up to date global traffic rankings check out the  Alexa.com Travel website category.  PhocusWright also provides online travel research (at a cost) for markets worldwide which can be an excellent detailed source if you have the funds to buy the research and wish to have a thorough understanding of the online travel market for a particular country or region.

Below are examples of some of the key travel and booking websites that can provide you with global exposure to get you started. With many of the global booking websites you will find your booking information is fed through to a number of affiliate websites as additional benefit.  All of these sites below are free to list on and for the booking sites they take a commission (usually 10%).

• NewZealand.com: Tourism New Zealand promote their website to all key markets for New Zealand, and being free to list on for any type of tourism provider it’s a no brainer to be on there.  It still surprises me when I find an operator who isn’t on there!  If you aren’t then go ahead and register for free now.
• Expedia (also Venere) – One of the top travel booking websites worldwide for accommodation, activities, flights and car rental.
• Travelocity – Similar to Expedia, Travelocity has a comprehensive product range and global exposure.
• Wotif – An important site for Australian accommodationbookings and very much Australasian focused, Wotif also lists relevant operators on their partner sites Lastminute.com.au, Travel.com.au, AsiaWebDirect.com and LateStays.com.
• Tripadvisor – The major travel review site that also shows rates and connects through to bookings if you are listed on one of their affiliate booking sites.

Note: When listing on a number of instant booking websites as identified above it’s beneficial to use a Channel Manager that automates updates of your pricing and availability information across all websites to save time and importantly avoid overbookings.

Google AdWords

Another way to get exposure in offshore markets is through Google using their Adwords product.  You can set your own budget and select which countries and even what regions within countries you can target.  This article on Business Blogs will give you “Tips to get the Best out of Google Adwords“.  If targeting foreign markets it would be a good idea to get advice from someone who knows the language and customs to help with writing the ads and identifying terms for the keyword searches used to trigger your google ads.

Using these basic strategies above will give you an ongoing way to have online exposure globally, and Part 2 for this article by Robyn Bolton focuses on traditional distribution strategies to target international markets.