As a human system that is so embedded in and dependent upon human society and economies, tourism will be profoundly impacted by the scope and depth of the re-think for three reasons:

1. the key human actors in the system are shifting their values due their own personal development and in response to an even deeper shift in our understanding of how the world works . We live at a time in history when an entire worldview is being replaced.
2. The industrial operating model that has enabled the growth and diffusion of tourism is now producing diminishing net returns to most participants. The way business is conducted is being re-shaped.
3. External pressures including global population increase, climate change, resource scarcity, and geo-political and economic shifts in power between regions and countries, will require the tourism economy to pay for services that hitherto have been free or relatively cheap. Increased costs combined with demand volatility will further undermine the resilience of enterprises whose customers have become accustomed to demand more for less and who have not been required to pay the true cost of travel.

I believe that the mass global tourism industry, which is based on a worldview best described as rational, scientific materialism, is in radical decline (despite appearances to the contrary) and needs to be replaced by an alternative.

The industrial model on which tourism is based is collapsing. As it matures, it produces diminishing net, unit returns to all participants, and relies on volume growth to compensate for yield declines.  As visitor volume increases, so do the costs associated with resource depletion, pollution and wealth concentration.

Survival and prosperity depend not just on becoming green but waking up to a whole new way of doing business that can, in part, be summarized as follows:

It’s premature to specify what the emerging model will look like and how it will work but we can speculate.  In my paper titled, Can Tourism Change Its Operating Model: The Necessity and Inevitability, obtainable on request from theconscioushost@gmail.com . I explore its features in more detail. All we can do here is outline some key characteristics:

1. In the old model, the starting point is the Product, an object that is assembled, packaged, produced and priced according to the rules of manufacturing. In the new model, the starting point is a Place that is recognized as qualitatively unique and therefore scarce. While products become commodities and lose value as they become more alike, “Places” that are celebrated for their unique geography, history and culture, gain value and are acknowledged as the primary motivator of travel.
2. In the old model, guest and hosts act in an adversarial role, playing an “I win-you lose” game in which each party tries to win at the cost of the other. In the new model, that puts relationship building ahead of transactions, guest and host co-create experiences of meaning, benefit and value to both parties.
3. In the old model, Hosts are producers who focus on the attributes of their product in order to persuade a target market to purchase. In the new model, hosts orchestrate unique experiences of places that are perceived of value and as transformative by guests.  Guest are attracted to a host for his or her personal, subjective qualities  – what they value; their sense of purpose; contribution to community; their integrity and authenticity over and above the physical artefacts and amenities
4. In the old model, Producers PUSHED their products in front of potential buyers through various promotional techniques and, when that failed, they dropped their prices. The cost cutting methods deployed to maintain profit margins (standardisation, homogenisation and automation) further devalued the experience and guest satisfaction while suggesting that cheap travel was a right. In the new model, producers focus on protecting, rejuvenating and expressing the elements of a place that make it unique, attractive and worth paying for. Hosts who can communicate a strong signal about their values and their appreciation of the uniqueness of their place and corporate culture, PULL towards them customers whose values are aligned with theirs.
5. In the old model, producers assumed that their first priority was to maximise profit for their shareholders. In the new model, producers understand that profit is an outcome that occurs when the enterprise has a higher purpose and when it works to generate net benefit for all its stakeholders (guests, employees, suppliers, and the host community). In the old model, tourism entrepreneurs were followers – applying models and values developed in manufacturing. In the new model. They will be active change agents in their communities and on the forefront of innovation.

This post is s summary of the content presented on the Conscious Travel web site and, more specifically of a discussion paper titled Can Tourism Change Its Operating Model: The Necessity and Inevitability obtainable upon request from theconscioushost@gmail.com. Further relevant references includes:

Rocky Year Ahead for Tourism – by Owen Hembry, NZ Herald 23Jan, 2012

UK Travel Firms must Radically Change Business Models to Survive 2012 – ETN Global Travel Industry News, 28 Dec 2011

The author welcomes all comments and contributions to the concept!

Most problems are relative to property management and issues arising from essentially what is a lack of professional property management policy and/or implemented house rules that set the standard of conduct relative to that property. I respect a lot of holiday home owners don’t want to be property managers but ultimately find themselves as owners of the property having to deal with and resolve short term tenancy issues.

As an owner of several holiday homes i don’t get involved in property management issues anymore and that’s because as i have a property manager in each region with a specific set of house rules to hand out to each person upon check in, these are also laminated on the wall in each significant entertaining area to ensure even visiting guests cannot escape from reading them.

Click here for an unedited version of my house rules that have proven to work! I suggest any home owners looking for inspiration about what needs to be written and included in their house rules reads the PDF.

Here are my top reasons you should give free Wi-Fi at your hospitality or tourism business;

• A recent survey by Hotels.com reported that free Wi-Fi is a must when choosing a hotel room and that it is now the primary in-room and hotel perk that they will base their decision around.
• 31% of those surveyed by hotels.com said they expect free Wi-Fi in a hotel now.
• People are more likely to mention and talk about your business on social media if they are given the opportunity to connect easily with free Wi-Fi.
• You’ll encourage roaming sales people to use your cafe or bar for meetings with people that live locally and will probably come back.
• Everybody knows how inexpensive internet is, by charging your customers; they know it’s just another way for you to make more money on top of their coffee.
• It can encourage people to stay in your cafe or restaurant for longer & spend more money.
• If you don’t, you’ll be put to shame by the Canyons Resort in Utah in the US, who have managed to offer free Wi-Fi from Canyon to Canyon covering its entire hotel, meeting space and ski fields!
• You’ll also be behind this little town in rural Otago that offers free Wi-Fi throughout the whole main street. (It works; I used to drive straight through!)
• By adding a landing page you’ll encourage more people to Like your brand on Facebook, Follow you on Twitter or check-in on FourSquare.
• The technology to set up a secure free Wi-Fi spot is now very affordable & the ongoing costs minimal.
• You’ll actively encourage new customers.
• If they can run to the cost of offering free Wi-Fi on buses and planes, why can’t you?
• You stop the complaints from people who expect it.
• Giving something for free will make you feel good inside.
• Most importantly, because your clients wants it!

If you oversee the website of an RTO or DMO why not try adding ‘places you can access free Wi-Fi’ to your home page. It will be great for your visitors and a compelling incentive for your operators to start offering it!

Do you offer free Wi-Fi at your business? Do you plan to during 2012?
Do you run a travel site? Do you let people filter by properties that offer free Wi-Fi?
Do you look for places with free Wi-Fi as a consumer? Would you like to see more places offer free WiFi?

I’d love to hear your thoughts as a business operator and as a consumer.

As always, if you enjoyed the blog post then please share it on Twitter and let other people have their say too!

Business gurus are climbing over each other to be the first or the loudest to refute Milton Friedman’s assertion that the purpose of business is exclusively to make a profit.

So let me add my prediction to the thousands that will litter the digitized airwaves over the next few months:

2012 will be the year the profit cart will be moved back behind the purpose horse and capitalism, as we knew it, will experience a profound makeover. 

The current prophets of this emerging vision vary from seasoned corporate veterans such as Bill Gates, Tex Gunning of Unilever, John Mackey of Whole Foods (founder of the Conscious Capital Institute) and Joe Stengel (former CEO of  Proctor & Gamble & author of Grow) to perennial entrepreneurs like Richard Branson (author of Screw Business as Usual); upstart academics like Umair Haque (author of Betterness and the New Capitalist Manifesto)  and consultants/thinkers such as Fred Kofman, (Conscious Capitalism); Richard Barrett (The New Leadership Paradigm) and Steve Denning (Radical Management)

The names they have independently applied to describe this emergent form of capitalism also vary from Capitalism 2.0; Conscious Capitalism; Good Capitalism; Creative Capitalism, New Capitalism, Caring Capitalism and, thanks to Sir Richard, Capitalism 24092.

Despite the diversity of the pundits’ pedigree and their use of nomenclature, the message is the same and has three elements:

• doing good is good for business and business is the only global institution whose people can make things better for all of us; and

• conducting business as usual will only produce more of the same problems that challenge humanity today.

• The enterprises that differentiate themselves by “making a difference” will enjoy higher brand equity and profitability than those focused primarily on profit.

Like many good yet revolutionary concepts, those underpinning Conscious Capitalism are not as young as the current spate of authors might have you believe. It’s important to recognize that these authors stand on the shoulders of giants whose names are not as familiar to contemporary audiences but whose thinking created the compost for the current flowering. My source of inspiration in the 1980s were Willis Harman, founder of the World Business Academy and John Renesch who first coined the phrase “conscious capitalism” in 1990 as Editor-in-Chief of New Leaders Press.  Sadly Willis passed away in 1997 unable to witness the revolution taking place now but one of his last interviews shows the clarity and prescience of this thinking. John Renesh is fortunately still very creative and his latest book, The Great Growing Up,  should be included in this anthology.

This is the reason why we’ve brought this debate to tourism through an initiative called Conscious Travel. We’re inviting members of one of the world’s most pervasive industries to stop, re-think and re-make how and why they do tourism. We’re asking them to “wake up” to the unexamined assumptions that have guided their behaviour;  to “grow up” and take more responsibility for all the stakeholders affected by their activities and to “step up” and join the pioneers listed above listed above.

Conscious Travel is a movement, a community and an e-learning platform designed to stimulate and nourish the capacity of tourism entrepreneurs to flourish in new market circumstances. For more information, review www.conscioustourism.wordpress.com or contact founder, Anna Pollock at theconscioushost@gmail.com

Tourism is system of three elements: Places, Guests and Hosts.  As such, it’s all about PEOPLE. If people change their values and their perception of how the world works, then everything else changes.

There are multiple forces shaking up the tourism system:

1. The key human actors in the system are shifting not only their values but their core understanding of how the world works
2. The industrial model on which tourism is based is collapsing. As it matures, it produces diminishing net returns to all participants, and relies on volume growth to compensate for yield declines.  As visitor volume increases, so do the costs associated with resource depletion, pollution and wealth concentration.
3. External pressures will require the tourism economy to pay significantly more for services that hitherto have been free or relatively cheap. These cost increases will occur when reduced incomes and higher demand volatility are already compromising the resilience and profitability of existing businesses.

Survival and prosperity depend not just on becoming green but waking up to a whole new way of doing business that can, in part, be summarized as follows:

Practitioners of the new, ecological model start with a higher sense of Purpose. They know that profit follows purpose – a commitment to use the business to make the world a better place. Instead of discounting their primary asset – the Place – they focus on protecting, expressing and celebrating its unique Personality to sustain and increase its value to guests.  The passion of all hosts (employees, suppliers, residents), combines with a clear sense of Purpose to PULL in (attract) the kind of guest who will most value what the provider has to offer.

Unless tourism enterprises embrace the new model they will continue to see their profit margins shrink; their resilience to external shocks weaken; and their viability diminish. Tourism entrepreneurs and their communities need to assume responsibility for changing and cannot assume that traditional institutions or agencies can supply fixes.

Conscious Travel is building an e-learning platform and on and offline communities designed to stimulate and nourish the capacity of tourism entrepreneurs – the 99% – to flourish in new market circumstances.

The goal is to build an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling form of tourism that generates real net benefits to all stakeholders in the tourism system: guests, employees, investors, suppliers and the host community.

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

It has struck me how few business posts there has been on Twitter in the past couple of days and in the week leading up to Christmas. In many ways I’m sure we’d all expect to not see many truly corporate businesses tweeting just now, however I’m surprised to see the complete silence of many of New Zealand’s biggest and usually most active Tweeting companies.

It seems strange to me that a major bank for instance, with its full financial power, would let their Twitter and Facebook accounts stay silent for days – presumably because their Social Media Manager is on holiday! Surely these major companies understand this is a time social networks are busier with so many people enjoying leisure time; not to mention when many want to be able to ask questions about opening hours etc.

Perhaps what has surprised me more than these major companies however is the lack of engagement from businesses that are notably busier at this time of year – retailers, hospitality and tourism businesses. It is a time of year when many of our local audiences are at a loose end, travelling domestically or even actively looking for something to get out and do. As a pro-active tourism operator you could be reaping the reward by joining the conversation and flying the flag for your business.

This leads me back to a point I’m sure I’ve said before. If the reason you’re not posting on social media is because your Marketing Manager is on holiday, your social media strategy is wrong. It is important to get your wider operations team involved in posting to social media to give diversity to your message and tone, as well as to keep it continuous and ‘real.’ Take this opportunity to buy your business a Christmas present in the form of a smart phone or tablet and encourage your team to share engaging encounters whilst they work – whether it be a photo of a dish being plated up in your cafe, a short video of your latest tour group leaving or simply your special offering of the day. By using this kind of technology you can keep the time it takes to a minimum and avoid team members having to leave the operation.

It is important to remember to distinguish between who is posting when there are multiple users, do this by simply using an upward arrow and the persons initials like this ^JH

Whilst the fruits good for the picking, why not give it a go and try Tweeting/Facebooking when you maybe wouldn’t normally – companies engaging outside of standard business hours often get better results!

They’ve been saying it was the year of mobile for a decade; social media is well and truly entrenched, so what’s new?

What changes do we predict might be normal by next Christmas?
To find out, Fossick’s Genevieve Atkinson decided to ask a few movers and shakers what they predict for the coming year.

James Hacon; Speaker, Writer & Entrepreneur in Tourism & Hospitality

Growth of Last Minute Bookings
When coupling the lowering of rates on ‘distressed inventory’ and the ease for travellers to book when on the road with mobile technology, I believe we will see further increases in last minute bookings. In fact with many of the largest OTA’s not supporting destination marketing and the continued undercutting of long-lead trade generated sales, I would suggest that as an industry we are actively encouraging our guests to leave booking their accommodation until the last minute. So don’t be surprised when you see an increase of walk-ins and a decrease in forward bookings.

Back to good old fashioned values
In a society where so many of us are constantly plugged in to technology, so much of our communication is through email and all too often we are just another number. I believe that we will start to see a further turn towards people wanting ‘real experiences,’ personalised service and attention. I believe the time is done for customers who are forced to choose between price and quality, our customers are expecting good service regardless of the price they pay!

Boycotting of establishments not offering free Wi-Fi
This is more of a hope that a prediction. I know many of my friends are no longer staying in hotels or frequenting cafes that don’t offer free Wi-Fi. Let’s hope those charging exorbitant prices for internet bring themselves into the 21st Century and realise that charging for internet is like charging to have a television or telephone in your room!

The growth of Google+ and slow in growth for Facebook
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but my friends don’t seem to be nearly as active as they once were on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not predicting the downfall of Facebook – in fact I think it will continue to have market dominance. I would however be on the watch out for Google+ that has been slowly creeping up in popularity and infiltrating our email accounts one friend at a time. With people being more selective as to which social platforms they spend their time, they will also become more selective on who they will be engaging with. We’ll see smart companies, that understand social media is all about relationships and being social, continue to see great results, with companies seeing it as another PR platform fail dismally.

Veronica Nobbs;  Founder  Get a room – same day hotel bookings.

The growth of location-based services within the activity space.
Like many other sectors the activity industry continues to struggle. Yes coupon sites do provide another channel, however location based last-second ‘deals’ will prove to be more sustainable.

Smaller players getting better at social media
Smaller travel players looking to place smarter strategies around their use of social media, looking to add value to their customers as opposed to simply pushing advertising to them. A great deal of business still do social media terribly, and many in 2012 will look to reevaluate their approach.

Rise of booking travel on the go
Consumer behaviour within the travel space will continue to change with the continued rise of booking travel on the go, with the likes of Hotels.com and Expedia already experiencing notable growth in the mobile space. As a result more and more companies will seek to enter the space as well as established players introducing additional products.

Tony Marks;  Chairman Rotorua Tourism

Year of the Chinese Travel
Looking back from say 2016, 2012 will be seen as the year when the Chinese dominance of inbound tourism to Australia and New Zealand really started. Businesses will either have to adapt rapidly or see their market share of all inbound decline precipitously. Alternatively, we will have the rise of businesses who will unashamedly focus on the dwindling but yield positive USA or European travel

The growth of personal travel managers will accelerate
While some will operate from travel agencies, most will set up independent businesses and use an affiliated agency buying power. They will cater for an aging market prepared to do some research but really wanting someone who genuinely cares about their travel needs. The key issue will be getting sufficiently close to your customer to be able to not ask them the cliched ” where do you want to go ” but to supply great answers to the more critical ” why do you want to go ” ?

Airlines will become even more focused on ancillary revenue
They will continue to be vertically integrated , web based and seek to wrap up as much of the holiday dollar as possible – bit like the old charter operations in the UK. Being squeezed on a $ 2300 fare to London or a $ 200 fare across the ditch will be increasingly unattractive.

Michelle Ackers; New Zealand Tourism Industry Blog

2012 Will Follow Similar Trends as 2010/11

In general I think 2012 will see some keys trends for the NZ tourism industry continue, namely:

• Strengthening of the China and India inbound markets to New Zealand due to the increased marketing presence in these markets by Tourism New Zealand and various airlines’ commitment to increased flight schedules
• Continuing decreases from UK/Europe travellers visiting New Zealand. We can blame the state of their economies which are still in dire straits with exchange rates not in their favour for travel outside of their borders; increased British departure tax; and possible changes to the Air New Zealand flights from London…
• Continued growth of the cruise ship market for visitors to New Zealand. Cruise ship packages are cleverly marketed offering value for money in tough times. People love the inclusive food offer and the ease of planning a cruise holiday. Australians in particular are lapping this up – evens kiwis are jumping onboard in Sydney or Auckland to enjoy short cruise breaks.
• Slow forward bookings. This is still a problem for most tourism businesses, airlines, wholesalers, inbound tour operators and agents…people are just waiting to book anything until closer to their travel dates, making it a nervous wait until peak season hits.

Online Mobile Marketing in Tourism will Hit its Straps
Large tourism organizations have already become adept and clever with the use of mobile technology – smart phones, apps, social media etc but I think 2012 will see more of this coming from smaller businesses and organizations as they become accustomed to the technology and how to use it effectively.

Genevieve Atkinson;  Founder of Fossick. The locals guide to where to stay in Australia, NZ & the South Pacific.

Reviews will cross the divide into normal not new
For many properties reviews are still annoying, like smart phones or social networks, but as the social networks have crossed the line this year. I think the need and desire for guest reviews will cross the line in 2012.

The rise of permission advertising
We have permission marketing, but I think the advertising industry needs to be disrupted. Group buying sites were the tip of ice-berg and highlight the issue the most businesses today are struggling for consumer attention. My predication is that we have attention around the wrong way and we will see the beginning of self -selected advertising.

QR codes getting massive
Everyone else will say mobile will be huge, but my predication is that QR codes will help bypass the need for apps for everything and create ways for consumers to quickly engage with websites. However the websites needs to be more mobile friendly.

Disagree, have your own predication? please leave a comment.

With the majority of the attendees and speakers being US based, it must be said that most of the statistics are relating to the US market, although fundamental movement to mobile devices is a global trend.

I believe this technological shift is the biggest change to the tourism industry that we have seen since the introduction of online travel sites. For the first time ever, travellers can easily book accommodation during their trip, access tourist information from their car and perhaps most eye opening, check reviews about your business whilst standing outside!

Believe me, it happens! In fact throughout my trip to the US our iPad hardly got a rest (and it wasn’t through me tweeting, for a change) my partner was regularly checking Yelp for restaurant reviews, whilst I made the most of the FourSquare specials and booked accommodation for our next destination – at amazing online rates!

We are certainly not alone, throughout the Rugby World Cup it was interesting to see the constant flow of tweets from overseas visitors about Dunedin and so many people wandering the Octagon iPad’s in hand.

Recent US tourism research undertaken by Destination Analysts showed that 26.4% of leisure travellers are using mobile internet to access travel information. If, like me, you thought people were only using mobile internet during their travels, think again, of those using mobile internet, 80.5% were used it during thier trip, but a massive 65.8% used their mobile device to research their trip before departing!

Check-out some of the travellers were doing on their mobile device;
67.7%    Finding restaurant information
64.7%    Check the weather
56.0%    Look at maps
45.1%    Finding hotel information
36.1%    Finding sightseeing or attraction information
9.4%      Buy tickets (to an event, festival, museum etc.)

When you add to this that mobile internet access with surpass PC by 2015, the big question is…what does this mean? Here are my thoughts…

• If you don’t have a mobile site, you need one!
• If you have flash on your site, change it, it doesn’t show up on an iPad (which makes up 97% of tablet traffic) or the iPhone (which could make up to 13% of global smart phone market.)
• Ensure your booking engine and online payment solution is suitable for use on mobile devices, plus think about providing an option where the traveller doesn’t need to print a ticket or confirmation.
• Ensure that you are encouraging reviews on the major mobile based review sites.
• Register and regularly update your business profile on all geo-location and map services, likes Google Maps & FourSquare.
• Consider how easy it is for your clients to access your mobile site from your advertising mediums, perhaps think about QR codes.

An Overview

Before going any further, I must first say what a truly great event this was. It was brilliantly organised by Jake Steinman, Sofia Williamson and team at NAJ, offering a well balanced mix of inspiring key notes addresses, workshops in three tracks and the much needed opportunity to get one-on-one and round table time with speakers.

Perhaps most impressive was the number of high calibre speakers, from a range of companies including TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google, Expedia, Travel Zoo, Linkedin along with some of the major US based destination marketing agencies.

The stand out difference between this and other conferences I’ve attended, being that, speakers were not there to tout for business, nor to sell their product – instead to provide expert support and guidance as industry leaders.

If you get the opportunity to attend next year or in the future, I would most certainly recommend it.

Google Trip

The first day of the conference was a trip to Mountain View and the global Headquarters of Google and home of the Google Travel team.

The opportunity for a tour of the Googleplex was exciting enough, giving an insight into what it’s like to work for this corporate giant. With staff benefits including, but not limited to free meals, free home internet, shared company cars, swimming pools, flexible working hours, transport to and from San Francisco, onsite doctors and hairdressers, to name but a few, the conversation in the group certainly turned to where to email your application! Saying that, when you consider that on those buses to and from work, free wireless internet is provided for your company laptop and Android, it does make you wonder what kind of work-life balance Google employees really enjoy.

Within the tour we were also treated to a look at a super-size Android cell-phone and an awesome 360 Google Earth experience, just a few of the toys on display! Truly – another world.

After enjoying a Google-style lunch, with a choice of 6 restaurants (who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch), we settled for a much anticipated presentation by the Google Travel team. Here are the main points that I took away;

Don’t underestimate the power of search

It’s important to remember that search is still the number one travel planning resource for leisure travellers.  One stand out piece of advice was to target travellers with tailored messaging as they research sending them to specific pages within your site rather than a blanket approach with everyone landing on your homepage.

Travellers aren’t just visiting your website

When considering that travel bookers are visiting an average of 17.4 travel-related sites across the internet within an average of 8.1 research sessions as they plan a trip, it is important that you think beyond your own website. It is vital to build an expansive online brand for your businesses, utilising third party and social media sites.  Throughout the summit, many people questioned the long-term effectiveness of individual operator websites beyond being a reference point.

Remarketing

The idea of being able to re-target travel bookers who have already visited your website was something I hadn’t heard of before, but really excited me. Just consider that someone had visited your website in the early stages of their travel, but hadn’t booked – wouldn’t it be great if you could target them again, particularly as they’ve already shown an interest in your product. With Google Display advertising you can! We were told by putting certain coding in your website, Google can use their display network to ensure that your message is re-delivered in both text and banner format.

YouTube

Google have the world of search a little sown-up by all accounts. Owning both the world’s largest search engine (Google) and second largest. (YouTube) A massive 89% of personal travellers watch online video content when researching their upcoming trip. If you aren’t present, you need to be. A good start is to create a social hub with a free enhanced YouTube brand channel.  Until this visit I had never considered YouTube advertising, but by all accounts it can be good value, often coming in a lot cheaper than other major social media sites and search engines. Take a look at the YouTube Insights functionality and advertising opportunities. It looks like few destinations in New Zealand have paid results…perhaps a lost opportunity?!?

The concept of being on call directly to guests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, was perhaps the area that I hadn’t thought would be so intrusive, particularly considering I’ve always been on call. It struck me half way through my ‘motelier’ experience, that the main difference was that when I was called in my positions at hotels, it was almost always a member of staff ringing – not the guests themselves. I couldn’t help but feel that the guests were waiting for me sit down before coming to ring the reception bell, and sod’s law, it was always the best bit of the film I was watching or right in the middle of dinner. I quickly discovered why my friends had MySky!

The diversity of work also caught me off guard. Whilst I was a General Manager of a hotel, I felt that I was a jack of all trades, helping to jump in the restaurant when needed, covering reception or even stripping beds if need be. What I had never really considered was that other than the food and beverage areas, the diversity of skills and duties was very similar. The only difference being, where in a hotel you have a number of team members to fulfill these roles, in a motel, bluntly, you don’t.

Another significant difference that really struck me was how lonely you can feel. In a hotel environment, there’s always someone around, whether it be a guest or another member of the team. In fact, one of the things that I miss most about working within a hotel is the social aspect of the work environment and role. Other than checking in, perhaps borrowing a DVD or seeking advice of where to visit, I hardly saw the motel guests at all!

After a couple of years of regularly conversing with a number of friends who own motels, as well as providing consultancy to a few too, here are a couple of my top tips to those running a motel style accommodation business;

• Look into getting a reservation system and channel manager, if you’ve not already got one. With all the things you’ve already got to do, don’t be wasting your time manually checking in to Wotif every time you sell a room. For a very little outlay each month with companies like Seekom, ResBook or Strait PMS, you could be saving yourself a lot of work!
• Take a day off. Make sure you find someone who can give you a day off every week or a short break regularly. With the amount of hours you work and the constant pressure of being ‘on-call,’ it’s important you give yourself a break. Not just for your sake, but for your guests too – the last thing anyone wants is a tired and grumpy host when on holiday!

I’ve stayed in a number of motels across New Zealand and received amazing service from friendly moteliers, through to the rudest from some of the most un-friendliest. I think you’ve got to be someone quite special to pull of being a good motelier. After just a few days in the shoes of a motelier, I can assure you, it’s really not my calling!

Take the time to listen to all of his presentation taken from the TED “Ideas Worth Spreading” website. The key take out for your business or organisation? “Don’t just manage what you can measure.”

Upon moving to New Zealand I remember pondering as to where the division between hospitality and tourism begins and ends. Thinking back I think these thoughts may have been prompted by having to classify your ‘sector’ on Linkedin. Coming from the UK, I would suggest that as a hotelier or restauranter you would have almost certainly consider yourself part of the hospitality industry; however in New Zealand I would many hoteliers would consider themselves part of the tourism industry.

In the past few weeks, I have again been contemplating the relationship between tourism and hospitality. This time the catalyst for these thoughts has come through my recent participation as a panelist in the Brand and Marketing seminar at The Restaurant and Bar Show. One of the key themes around seminars at the Restaurant and Bar Show was the Rugby World Cup and in particularly how restaurants and bars can make the most out of this fast approaching event. Of course many of the seminars were tailored towards what you can and can’t do in terms of the strict licencing of the RWC brand, ours was more orientated towards ways to promote and market your business as well as using the opportunity for brand awareness.

Upon speaking to Auckland Restauranter and fellow panelist, Luke Dallow, it became clear that both of us wanted to ensure what we delivered gave advice and thoughts around branding and marketing that would flow on beyond RWC 2011. Within the run up to the event, I conversed with a number of restaurant and bar owners. There is a clear distinction between those restaurants in key tourist resorts like Queenstown from those in destinations that rely more heavily on local traffic, such as Dunedin. Those in tourist resorts often seem to heavily promote themselves, whilst I would suggest that many outside of these areas don’t market themselves well, if at all.

Interestingly, for a large number of restaurant and bar owners outside the main tourist hotspots, I see that the Rugby World Cup has simply acted as an awakening, encouraging them to realise the potential in the tourism market. Whilst I understand that not all restaurants will receive a large number of tourists, there are certainly some low cost ways that these businesses can ensure they are, at least, on the radar of passing tourists.

For restaurants and bars who may not have seen themselves as a tourism operator until now, a good starting point is to contact your regional tourism organisation. It is important to know that the set-up of regional tourism organisations differs across New Zealand, with some being membership based, some being funded through your rates and others you may have to pay for services. You can find their details of your regional tourism organisation by following this link.

Here are a few ways that they may be able to help you;

• Connect you with marketing groups
• Advise you about the tourism market in your area.
• List your restaurant or bar to be listed on their website.
• Providing training and updates.
• Adding you to their databases, so you receive updates and information on upcoming opportunities.

What I’ve come to realise is that by putting a label on your sector, sometimes you may be closing doors. By embracing that your business is in the tourism and hospitality industry, you could well be seeing more people through your door! With around 2.5 million tourists visiting New Zealand yearly, the 85,000 visitors for the Rugby World Cup is the tip of the iceberg; don’t let the Rugby World Cup be the be all and end all for your restaurant or bar, use it as the prompt that helped you to realise the potential in international and domestic visitors.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/787900846

Guest Speaker: Genevieve Atkinson, Fossick
Host: James Hacon, Kiwi Dreams

Title: Kiwi Dreams & Tourism Inudstry Blog: Tackling the subject of Review Sites
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2011
Time: 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM NZST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

We hope to run two webinars a month over a three month period as a trial with an aim of speaking to people that are doing innovative, quirky or news worthy things in the New Zealand tourism scene.

We’ll be giving you an opportunity to leave questions that you’d like asked here on the Tourism Industry Blog a week before each webinar, then you can log-on and listen in or come and find the recordings afterwards here on the blog.

We’re delighted to have a few speakers confirmed, but we’re asking you – who would you like to see us chat to about what they are up to?

Leave us a comment to let us know.

If you are interested in being involved as a speaker then please contact me by emailing james@kiwi-dreams.co.nz

We look forward to seeing your suggestions!

Enter your vote and comments.

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.

When the time is right perhaps Christchurch & Canterbury Tourism or Tourism New Zealand should think about following a similar strategy, what do you think?

Whether I’m planning a meeting with the CEO at my local RTO, trying to increase uptake of my product from FIT’s through IBO’s or reading the latest newsletter from TNZ – it seems one thing is clear, we love acronyms here in the tourism industry.

The use of acronyms is thought to be a great way of accelerating discussions when conversing with experienced industry professionals, however I’ve come to realise it is all too easy to slip into using these abbreviations in a context when the meaning is not fully understood.

Many of my recent interactions with small and start-up tourism businesses have highlighted how using such acronyms really does ostracise many from the conversation.

In my first draft of this article I had very much concentrated on the need to raise the level of understanding from many of our ‘less informed operators,’ however, after a number of wearisome, yet humorous conversations , I’ve rethought my strategy.

In the research leading up to writing this article, I was very vigilant in avoiding making an embarrassing mistake and misinforming people as to the meaning of an acronym. In my thorough research, I decided I would approach the industry organisations most knowledgeable about each acronym in the New Zealand and Australia. To save embarrassment I did make it clear that I will not name the individuals or organisations to whom I spoke. What did become apparent is the lack of synergy between the use of certain terms.

Many laughed at the acronym ‘FIT’ as being an ‘easy one,’ although it resulted in the most confusion of all. Responses as to what the initials stood for included ‘Free Independent Traveller,’ and ‘Foreign Independent Traveller’.

Moving aside from the initials, I asked each organisation to describe the term.  Again, real disparity seemed to prevail. Only two organisations described the meaning in a concise way, some found it difficult to explain, one representative even openly asked me to hold on the line whilst they checked Wikipedia.

I was surprised with this trail of events to say the least. If the organisations that we willingly turn to, as experts in their field, don’t seem to understand the acronyms we utilise so regularly, what hope do the rest of us have?

It was my original intention to use this opportunity to explain a few of these terms. I’ll now be content in my cowardly admission that if the ‘experts’ can’t get it right – I think I’ll opt out on this one. One suggestion I will put forward, however, is that we should really try to avoid using TLA’s.

I best explain that one… ‘TLA’ = Three Letter Acronyms

I suppose your now wondering as to the title of this blog post. Please be rest assured that this isn’t my normal choice of language, it is in fact the phrase used by a tourism employee on a well-known Brisbane attraction that astonished me so much that I feel necessitated to share the story with you.

The cruise we decided to experience, had two options, one included lunch or ticket only. We had already enjoyed lunch elsewhere, so decided to take the ticket only option. When we were boarding, we were allocated a table set for lunch by the maitre’d, we presumed just the process for listening to the safety briefing. Once we started to set sail, the maitre’d proceeded to come and explain to each table about the buffet. When he came to our table, he checked his sheet and highlighted that we hadn’t paid for the buffet option and went on to tell us that he was the only person onboard that knew what ticket we had and to help ourselves to the buffet. Finishing off the conversation by saying; ‘It’s not my business, I don’t really give a f**k.’

Above and beyond my first feeling of sheer disappointment in his language and conduct, this incident and other responses we received as consumers during the trip really did reassert the importance of communicating and marketing internally to employees as well as externally.

I feel the basis of internal marketing and communication should be through clearly established core values. These core values are not rules, policies and procedures; they should set the basic moral beliefs that are the foundation of your business. Without having these core values clearly defined, how can you create a team culture and truly expect employees to understand your business.

One method of communicating these core values I found very positive in my time at St Clair Beach Resort, was through introducing a structured induction programme based around inspiring as well as informing. A concept I gleaned from changes in attitude by the HR team at my time at Gleneagles.

Whilst the induction process at Gleneagles was always thorough, it was very much based around information, not necessarily experience or inspiration. Fundamentally, the changes put into effect saw new employees treated to breakfast in the main dining room, guest activities, encouraged to socialise and get to meet other staff members, the result being, new team members were introduced to the hotel core values through experiencing them rather than simply being told.

Another great mechanism for inspiring and communicating with your team that I have seen in action in a number of environments from multi-national travel companies through to boutique hotels, can be employee forums. A place that employees can feel they are being listened too, either directly or through voted representatives. The forum is also a great opportunity to share financial information about the business that helps employees comprehend where the thousands of dollars they are cashing up each night, goes.

Educating staff around how the business makes money and its associated costs is a great way of encouraging pride in creating savings or increasing sales, however there are risks associated with this. I feel it’s important to be careful to ensure you aren’t too centred on profit and finances; I have seen firsthand how this can negatively motivate with employees believing the business is just about lining the pockets of the owners. Within tourism a good model that I have seen work is to concentrate on the philosophy:

Experience + Brand = Profit

Hopefully some of these suggestions may help you to ensure you’re business is not represented in this way. You might be able to sleep easy knowing you’re employees will always care, or in the terms of my friend from Brisbane, give a f**k.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

Described as an event to “celebrate the resilience of the local tourism industry” and the fact the aspects of the Christchurch tourism industry for both accommodation and activities are still open.

Being held at the Riccarton Racecourse on the 30th of April, backpacking tourists staying at seven local accommodation providers will be collected and transported to the event, where they will be welcomed by a multitude of entertainment and tourism operators offering great deals on their activities and attractions. Tourism operators have been invited to attend the event, set up displays and offer great specials to actual tourists in Christchurch in an attempt to generate business and revenue. Furthermore, it is hoped that the accommodation providers attending will receive additional bed nights as a result of the event and the enticing offers presented by the tourism operators.

A website has been created to highlight the event and to create some positive media attention for Christchurch (www.christchurchisopen.co.nz). Tourism and hospitality businesses will be able to list their business and any specials or last minute deals they are offering at no cost, with links to their websites or contact details. It is hoped that the site will become a portal after the event for directing tourists who are visiting or planning on visiting the area to use the tourism and hospitality businesses still operating in the Christchurch and Canterbury region, being enticed by the great specials on offer.

The Christchurch is Open event will also be live streamed on social media platforms so everyone who wants to, no matter where in the world they are, can join in on the party. There is no stronger marketing message than showing those contemplating visiting Christchurch actual footage of people having a great time. Furthermore, to assist those businesses attending the event with marketing and promotional material, they will be provided with any imagery, video and other content that they will be able to use in the marketing functions of their own operations.

There is no doubt that Christchurch has suffered much damage and there is a long road ahead. Some businesses will never recover and tourism demand will continue to be affected. However, this event is intended to create some much needed positive attention, implementing a platform to disseminate the message that Christchurch is Open and there are tourism and hospitality businesses ready and willing to welcome the tourist back; even if it is only for a day or two on their journeys throughout the South Island.

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.

Classic Case

We were working with a gorgeous “B&B” just north of Auckland that was owned by a lovely German couple. They desperately wanted to tap into the Auckland weekend getaway market and felt that they had done everything possible to get it. They optimised their website, offered a weekend package on their site and did Google AdWords but to no avail.  They were convinced that online marketing didn’t work and came to us for other options.

This is when we say to people – “show us yours and we will show you ours.” So we ask, what is the title on your website, keywords and what words and phrases do you use in the content on each page. Then what terms did you choose for Google AdWords? You show me what you chose and we will show you what your customers would choose.

Everything they did revolved around the phrase “luxury B&B”. Now put your hands up – how many Kiwis do you know that would search for a B&B for a weekend getaway? B&B is not a Kiwi weekend choice. It is relevant for some international markets but totally wrong for their desired market.

A couple of amendments to the product (change communal breakfasts to providing breakfast hampers), re-write of the title, keyword and content of the site and they have been happily rewarded with their ‘country lodge’ ticking over nicely on the weekends now.

So – don’t think like yourself, research and consider the words and phrases based on the nationality, age, spelling and interests of your customers.

Getting out of your own head pays off!

In recent weeks, I have been working in developing core values in two separate businesses. In both I have been sure to add a value around the importance of understanding that working together with other organisations and enterprise is a major key to success.

In my role at St Clair Beach Resort, I work extremely hard to ensure the business does its bit in terms of supporting joint ventures through our regional tourism organisation as well as playing a central role in bringing together groups of businesses when we can all do better by joining forces.

One recent success, of which I am very proud, was the joint venture between St Clair Beach Resort and Wine Tours Otago which brought Daniel Davis, the very passionate founder of DineTube, to Dunedin. This joint venture resulted in Dunedin being the second city in New Zealand to be featured on this innovative site, after its home city of Auckland.

On this occasion, the deal worked in a way that the hotel provided accommodation, Wine Tours Otago provided flights and the two businesses clubbed together to cover other expenses. Through sharing the costs, we were able to facilitate a project that neither business would have funded alone.

Whilst, we undoubtedly, had the best interests of the primary businesses in mind, we were very much of the opinion that whilst Daniel and his team were here in Dunedin, the city’s food scene should get as much benefit as possible.  The results, which are starting to be released on to the site, now, not only include the videos about Pier 24 Restaurant, Swell Cafe and Wine Tours Otago, but also a number of other associated businesses in Dunedin too. The real icing on the cake for all involved, was the brilliant turn out at the ‘premiere’ event that we held on the last night of filming, seeing a restaurant full of the key players in the city’s food and tourism scene turn out to see the fruits of our labour!

In the coming weeks I will follow up with more ways that we work together with other businesses to help market our business in a cost effective way. For the mean time, enjoy the videos and hopefully I’ve whet your appetite to check back soon for more.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

See “a taste” of DineTube below…

Fletcher Building announced their new estimate of $20 billion to rebuild. Fortunately much of this cost will be borne by international reinsurers. In some ways, that can be seen as a massive injection of foreign capital into economic activity in New Zealand.

The real problem is what, where and how to rebuild?

As business people we must also consider the impact of the earthquakes on our businesses.  What will be the impact on foreign tourists? Will they now see New Zealand as a dangerous destination?  Will that fear, if it exists, extend beyond Canterbury to our region too? We just don’t know yet.

Frankly, we suspect that the impact of the quakes will be soon forgotten by tourists, and itineraries will simply be re-routed to avoid the damaged areas.

Meanwhile, shifts in exchange rates (the NZ dollar is falling, something likely to be accelerated by this morning’s cut in the OCR); international geo-political crises; the dramatic rise in fuel prices; carbon taxes, and so on are potentially greater influences on the tourism industry.

And will the earthquakes drive significant changes in New Zealand demographics?  We have already seen a great deal of migration out of Canterbury to the North Island.  Many of you will have had these refugees as guests over the last couple of weeks.  Question: is that likely to turn into a permanent flow north of Christchurch residents, including tourism and hospitality operators? Or will they return home to rebuild as soon as they feel secure to do so?

We hear, for example, that 40% of Christchurch’s hospitality businesses are ruined.  What can those business people do? It may be months before they can start to rebuild, assuming that they want to.

Dunedin has a wide and diverse offering of attractions and tours available to visitors, with so much to see and do. Having such a broad variety does have its down fall however, with many visitors staying only one or two nights, often people are unsure how to spend their short time. Members of the St Clair Beach Resort reception team regularly get asked what the ‘must do’s’ are for Dunedin – a hard question to answer with such a broad range of product. A question made easier through those businesses that package – and package well.

A product that the reception team have no problem in selling is Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours. John and Jenny Milburn, the owners of the Monarch have packaged a number of tour itineraries based around their core product – a cruise on the m.v. Monarch.

Yes, there are plenty of other good tour companies in Dunedin working with multiple products – so why have I highlighted Monarch as a good example? A professional operation, good products and a good reputation is always a good start, however I feel that there is a number of other reason’s why our reception team reaches for the Monarch leaflet first.

Range

As someone selling an attraction or tour, you don’t want to overwhelm the person with too much information at once. Often you don’t have too much time with the guest, but within this short time you want to ensure that they are going to get the best out of their experience. The last thing the guest wants is to be given too many options, but at the same time they want good recommendations.

Monarch offer four different tour packages, with an array of additional options including trips to a number of other notable attractions in the city. Whether the guest is looking to see Albatross or Penguins, visit Larnach Castle, check out the world’s steepest street, see the sights of the city or all of the above – an option is available right there in that three-fold brochure.

This makes the brochure a high contender when you are picking up just two or three for the guest to peruse.

Consistency & Regularity

When recommending a trip or tour, the last thing you want is a last minute cancellation, or any uncertainty that the tour will be available. Guest satisfaction is everything, no one wants something out of their control to impede on their guests enjoyment. Having to reach into a filing cabinet or log-on to a website to find out what days the tour is running is also very frustrating, often putting off the seller yet again.

As a consumer I understand the disappointment of unclear operating times and last minute cancellations only too well. A recent experience of this kind was late last year, when my partner and I stayed on Stewart Island. Like many tourists we had checked out all the activity websites before we departed and planned to book on arrival, only to find that all the tours had minimum numbers that were not going to be fulfilled at that time of year – resulting in a very quiet and disappointing three days for us.

Again, on this section the Monarch scores full points. They run multiple trips a day, everyday, with no risk of cancellation.

Ease

After you’ve made your recommendation and convinced the person that the trip or tour is right for them, you have to seal the deal as quickly as possible. All to often I see agents or sellers of product spend a cringe worthy amount of time explaining the logistics of travel and parking, followed by a root around in their draw for ten minutes trying to find a dusty voucher book which leads on to a phone call and another 5 minutes of writing the ticket out. The easier you can make the booking process for the agent, the more likely the sale and ultimately the better it is for you.

A few things that you can do to speed this up:

• Online availability and instant confirmation set-up through a channel manager is by far the quickest and easiest way for an agent to book. At St Clair Beach Resort we have recently signed up with Whyte Water for the RTBS system who promote an easy to use booking system for accommodation providers, avoiding telephone calls and voucher writing – an all round winner.
• Until you have this set up try having a quick phone option clearly displayed on your correspondence to your agents that tells them which option to choose on the phone, rather than hearing the 21 options.
• Send out availability for your attraction/tours to accommodation providers by email regularly. You should make sure it is going to reception to ensure it doesn’t just get deleted. (This will also help keep your product fresh in the minds of your agents. You can also fill distressed inventory through special offers.)
• If you are sticking with voucher books, make sure these are small and easy to complete.

The Monarch are currently investigating real time booking systems, however their current system is still straight forward with their leaflets giving clear information about pick up times and directions, leaving only a short phone call and voucher completion. No issue with explaining parking as with each of the packages we promote the guest will be picked up and returned to the hotel door for no extra cost.

Commission and worth the up-sell

As an agent or on-seller of tourism product, you will of course want to know that the activity or attraction offers commission. If you are the person selling the attraction or activity you will want it to be worth your while selling the product – in other words that the value of the ticket is a good amount. Like many accommodation operators, St Clair Beach Resort offers its reception staff an incentive in the way of commission. One of the main reason they’re encourage to sell a Monarch package is because they know the commission on a $100 or $200 package is quite considerable and hence worth their while spending the time recommending and up-selling to the guest.

Since being here in New Zealand, I have spoken to many smaller operators who find it difficult to attract the business of accommodation agents or information centre’s. For many the problem will be their low ticket cost, packaging with other attractions or transport companies often helps increase business in this case – although it must be remembered that you might have to give better discount to the company pulling the package together to make it worth their while.

Packaging and building in an allowance for commission of your product is the key, without the relevant incentive it is very hard to on-sell your product.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

If you can help please do so using the following donation facility provided by www.givealittle.co.nz and goes direct to Bob Parkers Mayoral Fund.

Every little bit will help.

If you have any stories to share regarding the earthquake or would like to offer help to Christchurch tourism businesses please feel free to add your ideas and comments on this blog.

So everyone who has their tickets, and know where they need to go, now need to figure out how they are getting there and where they are going to stay. Are they dossing on a friend’s couch, house swapping with a friendly family, holing up at a temporary campground at a racecourse, or are they going to stump up the cash for a hotel, motel or other professionally-run accommodation? We’ve seen a bunch of bookings since October last year for World Cup accommodation, but that traffic has ramped up significantly this week.

In the last two days, we have seen bookings on Travelbug for $16,500 and $10,000, both out of South Africa, and both for long-stay accommodation at fairly high (but not extortionate by any means) nightly rates in September. “Great news”, you’d say, and generally you’d be right, but bookings of that value raise some serious liability issues regarding credit card fraud and chargeback exposure for the operators concerned.

We take a very proactive approach with these sorts of bookings to help weed out fraudsters because trust in the online marketplace is hugely important. Trade Me is actually a really dumb place to do something dodgy as it is the country’s most transparent marketplace, and we all leave deep footprints of electronic information. The Trade Me Trust and Safety team are champions at protecting Trade Me members from fraud and putting bad guys behind bars. To be safe on the main Trade Me site, never let anyone know your Trade Me password, check member feedback and ask questions of the seller. If you are ever in doubt, or if you think something looks dodgy, hit the Community Watch button at the bottom of every listing.

To stay safe elsewhere online, make sure you lock down the information you make available to those who you want to see it on social networking sites like Facebook and even on your Gmail account. This is handy if you don’t want your boss (who you can’t really ignore when they ask you to be their friend) to see that you’re planning a trip to Vegas but haven’t submitted a leave request. (I’m looking at you Jeff J ) Read here for some excellent best practice advice on social media security and the team at Netsafe have some good tips about staying safe online.

It will be interesting to see how the next few months pan out, not just for booking size, value and traveller origin, but to see how the various players in online accommodation handle the security of their operators and travellers as well as minimising their exposure to credit card fraud. One thing’s for sure, Facebook and Google are going to be pretty handy tools for those doing the policing. But the real question is this – who the hell can afford a $16,500 transaction on their credit card?

In the past few days I’ve been creating accommodation packages for St Clair Beach Resort, in a move to freshen up our website and give more options to our guests, hence the prompt for writing this blog post.

Some of the key benefits of packaging are:

• The ability to leverage off the publicity or promotion of an existing product or event – this can be through web links, search engine results and often brochures too.
• You are offering a broader range of marketable products around your core business – accommodation. Remember that not many people will travel for the experience of staying with a particular accommodation!
• You are supporting other businesses plus ensuring that your guests depart with a great experience of your city and of course, your accommodation.
• Getting media attention for a hotel can often be hard, many hotels use packages as a great way to attraction good PR. (The Langham , Auckland is very good at this!)
• Increased length of stay and spend, not only good for your hotel but also the local economy too!

So, you understand the benefits behind packaging, but who should you package with? Three popular ways to package are;

Events

Whether it be Warbirds Over Wanaka, ID Fashion here in Dunedin, the V8 Supercars in Hamilton or Wellington on a Plate, we have some great local, national and international events right across New Zealand. There are a few different ways that packaging around events can work…

• Approach the organiser directly and investigate whether they would be interested in partnering with you, ultimately it’s all further exposure for the event.
• If you think the event is going to be a sell out, you could always buy the tickets and sell them within an accommodation package. Just be careful of the risk however, if it doesn’t sell out you might have a lot of space to spread out at that concert or event!
• You can create a package around the event, with transport or themed extra’s in the room for those people who have already got their tickets.

It’s also worth noting that the event doesn’t have to be on your doorstep, one of the packages I was involved with at Gleneagles, was a trip to the Edinburgh Tattoo. For those of you that aren’t too familiar with Scottish geography, Edinburgh is an hour from Gleneagles – the key is to make the journey part of the package experience too!

Activities and Attractions

Creating packages with local attractions or tour operators is always popular – working together in this way quite often helps your local attractions sell their higher end products whilst giving you the added benefit of a longer stay.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, have a look at what is going on around your local area and see what packages operators are offering. Don’t create yourself more work than you have to. We have been offering a self-created package, called Discover Dunedin at St Clair Beach Resort for more than one year. Although very popular, this package is not the easiest to book with 6 different operators, welcome letter and the issue of variable rates from some of the attractions too.
We will shortly release a wider range of accommodation packages utilising existing packages created by local tour companies along with additional extras like breakfast and arrival gifts in the room. As well as the traditional tourist attractions, packaging with golf courses, dining outlets and spa’s is also very popular too!

Don’t just think that creating these packages should be for large hotels – check out the website of Eichardts Private Hotel in Queenstown – they’ve created two distinct packages around local attractions.

Internal Packages

If you have a restaurant, golf course, casino or spa on site, make the most of it and create accommodation packages around these features too. It again, will help to guarantee the in-house spend before arrival.

One business that packages internally very well is SkyCity Auckland, who create packages around many of their internal products.

A couple of points of advice when you are putting your packages together:

• Don’t think that you always have to discount every element of the package to make it attractive. Many consumers like to book packages because of the ease of doing so, the safety of knowing someone else is looking after the arrangements or even because of its exclusivity. Don’t lose money where you don’t have too…try adding value rather than reducing revenue!
• Airlines, travel agents and wholesalers are always on the look out for the potential to package. Rather than doing all the leg work yourself you can always suggest the idea of packaging you product for an event or particular attraction to your contacts at your RTO or preferred wholesaler.

So you’ve got the perfect package, but how do you promote it?

Your own website is always a good start when promoting your packages but make sure your load them into your on-line booking inventory, anything that makes your package easier to book with encourage your potential guests.
Once loaded on to your on-line booking inventory make sure you distribute it through your channel manager so that people can book it using third party website like WOTIF or Expedia. (If you are doing this remember to make sure you take into account the commission rate.)  
You can also create the package on NewZealand.com and link it to your relevant article, this way people can book directly on your site, directed through the TNZ site – a great new feature that is working very well for us.  It may also be worthwhile checking with your RTO whether they promote packages on their website or through your local I-Site.

I hope this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others!

To many the changes to this act seem obvious to affect hotels, restaurants, bars, café’s and taverns, however it is also important to remember with changes to special licences and off-licences the changes could also effect wineries, ferries, airlines, gift shops, special events, festivals as well as entertainment and sporting venues. The changes to this bill will have effects right across the tourism industry.

I would very much recommend you visit the HANZ website, where there is more in-depth information on what the reforms could mean to different licence holders, giving you information on how to write a submission – http://www.hanz.org.nz/industry/alcohol_reform_bill.html

I have completed the submissions from our three licenced outlets, which highlighted a number of areas resulting in significant loss of revenue, extra staffing hours through the changing of procedures and additional costs through increased fees.

Many of the industry colleagues I have spoken to recently have not yet put in a submission – many unsure whether they will. If your business will be affected by these proposed changes I strongly recommend that you make a submission – ultimately that is the reason for this process. Submission close on 18th February – make sure you have your say!