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!

When in Auckland a few weeks ago, it was interesting to have met with Kevin Francis, the new CEO at Jasons Travel Media and talk a little bit about their online plans, including the recently launched iPhone app; prompted by a 100% increase in visits to their site from a mobile device in the past year, most of which were from iPhones.

Alongside the functionality that users have come to expect like geo-location, maps and reviews, the new app has some nifty features including the ability to register and log-in using Facebook (allowing for quicker processing) and perhaps most impressive the ability to book directly from the app through a secure encrypted connection. A service that few, if any, New Zealand based companies have yet to release.
Whilst the application was launched a few weeks ago, it seems that this week ‘all systems are go’ at Jasons, in an all out effort to start encouraging its use. Alongside new signage with QR codes on Jasons brochure stands nationwide, from tomorrow all web traffic from an iPhone will be welcomed by encouragement to download the new app for better usability.

The application will certainly be of use to the growing number of visitors travelling with mobile devices, but what about the all important question of how much is it going to cost Jasons advertisers? I was happy to hear that Jasons have chosen not to charge advertisers any more for being listed on the app. A decision I welcome, believing that the cost in developing this type of resource is part of their business development, not a cost to be passed directly on to operators, as other well-known tourism promotion companies continue to do.

It is positive to see Jasons, who may have traditionally been associated with print, offering a range of on and offline solutions including mobile applications; to ensure it continues to service the needs of its advertisers and respond to the ever changing expectations of its end-users.

If you’re not already doing so, I’d recommend downloading apps that you are listed on, to familiarise yourself with what your customers are experiencing and to ensure you fully appreciate the ever-changing functionality available on these devices.

You can find the Jasons App by visiting the App Store from your iPhone or iPad.

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.

In the past few weeks I have been trawling the web to find attraction and restaurant opening hours over the festive period. I’ve been surprised at the number of businesses that have no information about their opening hours or offerings over the Christmas season present online.

Here in Dunedin for instance, we have two cruise-ships in port on Christmas Day prompting many of our tourism operators to open their doors, yet many have not listed this information on there website. Not only are these operators potentially losing out on the business of the cruise-ship passengers they are opening for, but may also be losing out on the patronage of other tourists or even locals like us, who would be keen to get out of the house for a few hours.

As a rule of thumb, as you get close to a public holiday or special event, be sure to update your website to include all the relevant information. I would suggest to do this in a prominent place on your site and perhaps in a little more detail within a blog post. As well as being a resource for those looking for it, it is likely to optimise your website and drive those searching for these special events to you.

Be sure not to just think about your own website, if you have listings on other prominent sites, it can only help by adding this information to these too!

As per my suggestion of building a content map in my workshop, find a copy of the base I use below. I find using a content map will help you to brainstorm and document creative themes for engaging content on your social media channels. I would suggest using as many of your team as possible to build the map within a workshop style environment, this way everyone feels that they have a say and trust me, you’ll get heaps of great ideas!

Click the image to download a larger version

I’ve worked with a number of businesses of all sizes to help build their social media strategy and used this technique to great effect. Feel free to make use of the idea and base ideas on this map – I’d recommend using a mind-mapping piece of software for the best end result.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions. I look forward to hearing your results.  If you’re looking for someone to help with your strategy or facilitate your content development workshop, feel free to get in touch.

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?!?

There were 4 topics that are worth revisiting.

1. Flash sites or daily deals.

Nothing seems to polarise opinion like the daily deals and travel, so I really enjoyed this debate. Clearly a large number of people don’t believe that the model is relevant or appropriate for travel – especially in regards to margin. Most daily deal sites take a high margin (often 50%) and require a huge discount on top.

Some of the interesting facts …

• the money is made by the top 4 players (none of which had a specific travel focus)
• the specific travel deal sites were struggling to get an ongoing supply of deals. It appeared that this was a sandbox that the major hotel chains were not playing in.
• the number of travel deals sold was increasing (whilst the number of beauty deals diminished).

Note: to a room full of men this appeared entirely logical, “how many facials could you really purchase” to which I mentally calculated that for many women – far more than holidays.

To me the most interesting thing was that the travel sites were playing by traditional travel rules - travel is sold in a particular way and they conformed and worked within that – namely to be able to get a steady supply of deals. In contrast, Spreets came across, not in an arrogant manner, but free from constraints as to how it was done. Their take – it’s a great advertising and sales opportunity – plenty of people willing to play, so take it or leave it. I guess that’s the luxury of having an audience of 2 million a day.

2. Mobile

Fascinating that the mobile discussion was being run by activities and insurance companies, not your traditional OTA’s, but this is where the innovation was. World Nomads, an insurance company, belief was that to be successful in mobile you needed to do something different and appropriate for the medium. So selling insurance services, boring – running a Q and A between all the customers that have bought insurance, interesting.

I thought these guys were right on the money and have been extremely successful. The irony is that this was, and probably still is, the key opportunity for traditional travel agents. Utilizing the community nature of your existing audience.

The other highlighted company was Viator, that sells activities. Again, no point just replicating their website, instead they created a “last minute” activities app, a platform they didn’t have and created in order to run the app.

Both achieved significant success, being featured by apple the holy grail of app release. However it was highlighted that Viator spent millions, both in creation and launch, taking over Youtube across the world.

3. Airlines

For those Kiwis out there Air NZ did a fine job showing up the Aussies in its significant worldwide success in social media. With classic underdog lines like -for a small airline at the bottom of the world – we achieved amazing reach. Which they have. I’m looking forward to the launch of the new Air NZ site, as well as Rico’s interviews with Lindsay Lohan and David Hasslehoff.

Although the parting question raised significant debate. The trick with this widespread reach was did it then convert?. Did it sell more airlines seats? The debate centered back on the age old, if its’ social – are you supposed to actually sell something too ?

We then had a panel of the three major airlines, which was tense and jovial. At one point a member of the audience queried Justin Montgomery, GM Virgin about their recent letter to her, a Qantas frequent flyer, offering to replicate her points status on Virgin, “Was this a blatant stealing of customers? ” – “yes – very blatant”. Right then.

To be honest the Qantas man John Lonergan, either wasn’t willing to fight in this context or seemed out of his depth, as he was remarkably quiet with Virgin and Air NZ dominating the microphone.

Around the lunch table, the debate was how Virgin got their list of Qantas Frequent Flyers.

4. The future of the GDS.

I’ll be upfront, I don’t know a lot about GDS’s, but if you know less than me, it stands for Global Distribution System and there are basically 3 companies that sit as the middleman in the distribution chain of flights and room nights. GDS’s have been significant players, but due to a number of direct to consumer models, aka low cost carriers and large OTA distribution systems, like Expedia – their relevance has been in question.

Martin pushed and probed but each replied with the same pat answers unwilling to fight their cause. Which made them dull and irrelevant.

Regardless of your position, it was apparent that they still made significant sums of money and billions of travel transactions. However in a Traveltech conference, not a single one could point to a clear point of difference amongst the 3 players – particularly in technology innovation.

5. Social Media & Facebook

Thankfully there was not a solid focus on social media, but interestingly as it should be, it was pervasive as part of the marketing mix throughout the talks.

Social is often touted as the free medium, achieving massive consumer word of mouth, reach etc etc for minimum spend. Although the spend might be less compared to traditional mediums like advertising. It was interesting to note of the successful campaigns talked about, social was still a significant cost. Creating video campaigns and hiring agencies is still not cheap. Air NZ and Tourism Victoria have achieved significant success, sure, but they still have reasonable budgets to begin with. For start-ups like myself it becomes far more apparent you still need money to make money – even with social media.

Last but no least – the Traveltech awards for best website – which went to Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, a beautifully functional site for car rental comparison. The criteria for the awards was being an Australian owned and run company. However, Martin has now agreed to include New Zealand companies next year. So watch this space for Fossick next year.

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.”

I then put it on snooze for 1 hour and go on to check my emails. I eventually  get involved in some needless crisis which rolls into the weekly Monday company meetings with the various departments to plan the week.

At noon I return to my desk – my task reminder there again blinking at me “Write Blog.”

Why is it that the most important and effective online marketing tool we can all do for our businesses often gets ‘snoozed’ for other tasks that we prioritize as more important?

As a marketing consultant my mantra to our clients is “Blogging is one of the most cost effective ways to increase your SEO – “a blog every other day helps to keep the creditors away.” But advise can be easy to give…and sometimes hard to follow.

And so it dawned on me – I personally struggle to write sometimes because I feel it is necessary to impart some life changing or business empowering idea each blog.  Makes me wonder if this also causes ‘blog paralysis’ for others?

Reality is, most of us don’t have the time to read a long, life altering blog. We really just want to be interrupted and entertained for a moment during our busy lives and hopefully learn a little something along the way. Some small bite of information that is tasty and easy to swallow.

So, here it is – my small, easy to swallow Monday blog message; don’t’ beat yourself up because every one of your blogs does not bring you a slew of new customers, unveil a new idea for getting more bookings or a new way you can reach number one on Goggle.

Just remember and enjoy the 11th commandment – “thou must blog.”

Keep an eye out for the next webinar coming soon…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

How do you create both an emotive and compelling home page?

Here are the four key aspects to flaunt:

1.      High quality photos

One of the best ways to get a message across quickly is pictures. Spend the money on getting professional photos taken. It will make all the difference to your marketing efforts. Think of a website that you like – I would venture to guess that they have clear, crisp and emotive photos that immediately capture you.  Great photos sell your product, mediocre photos do the opposite.

2.      Referrals

Word of mouth is the largest influencer. If your friend tells you a restaurant is fabulous you trust them over any advertisement. WOM or Word of Mouth is what drives many of our decisions so put your Trip Advisor widget with feed on the front page. Yes, adding testimonials to your website is sufficient but we all know that these have been hand-picked. Trip Advisor is straight from the guests’ mouth and a more powerful influencer.

3.      Accreditations & Awards

Love them or hate them – Qualmark and Tourism Awards give a point of reference and confidence to potential guests.  Do you belong to any marketing groups? Put their logos on your front page too.

4.      “Check Availability”

It is 2011, you simply must have an online booking system. You need to offer the ability to book quickly and it needs to be clearly showing on every page, especially your home page.  A clear and easy call to action is what the guest wants, we are all busy.  Having a real-time booking system is also another way to give them confidence that you are a professional business.

Combining these four features will capture a client and give them confidence to book. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

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…

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.

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!

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?

I am sure you have read your fair share of articles or blog posts about best practice to make these sites work for your business. These sites offer a great opportunity for you to communicate and market directly to your consumers without the costs associated with traditional forms of media. Rather than talk about the many benefits social networking has to your business, in this blog post I am going to set about confronting how much social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter may be costing your business and how you might control these costs.

‘But Facebook is free,’ you’re thinking – well, yes, these social networking sites are free to their users but not to you, when paying for your employees time to use them.

It is suggested that over one hour of working time is wasted per employee, per day. A recent study undertaken by an MBA student claims that the main distraction at work is surfing the web. From those surveyed, 64% admitted regular personal use of the internet during working hours and 77% admitted to visiting Facebook at work. 1 in 33 said that they only used Facebook at work.

Based on the findings of this study, a small accommodation business with 5 staff, each being paid the national accommodation average wage of $16.20 per hour could be paying around $18,000 per year for its staff to surf the internet.

This is of course a basic calculation, but never the less; the principal behind this calculation will hopefully get you thinking about how much the cost to your business could be.

Many businesses try to respond to these kind of statistics by blocking certain sites on company computers and banning there use at work completely. This strategy may work well in some environments however perhaps in some environments a more pragmatic approach is called for.

In a world where employees often need access to social networking sites for work related purposes and many have access to mobile internet it is difficult to police internet use. Taking this into consideration perhaps encouraging your team to use these sites openly on their work computers in their break times or in quiet period’s acts as a motivator. This open minded approach will surely avoid your employees scrambling to close down these applications when a customer walks in the office or taking regular toilet breaks to check their Facebook page on their iPhone!

With the use of the internet increasing, the growing popularity of using social networking sites and the potential loss of productivity to your business, this is one area that you cannot afford to overlook.

Being very market focused, it was obvious that it will never be a popular decision to surcharge; however as someone that also has responsibility over the finances of the business it just doesn’t add up, not to.

At one of our outlets, we work on a 32% staffing cost. We don’t have enough staff to only have members of staff that don’t usually work that day, work (Especially when Christmas fell on the weekend!) We want to continue providing a high level of service, so I will not under staff our restaurant, hence we have no real option but to pay the time and half plus a day-in-lieu. Suddenly our staffing cost becomes 80%, leaving no room for our food/beverage cost or our overheads (of which we have many!)

When discussing our stance on this highly controversial issue with my management team, I had a mixed response…some said ‘let’s close,’ others said that we should spread the costs over the year whilst others suggested putting a 20% surcharge in place.

Rather than helping, I felt that this discussion had raised even more problems rather than solutions! As with most other regions, here in Dunedin we have those that choose to surcharge and others that decide not to. I can understand outlets with low staff costs and an increase in business on these day’s choosing not to surcharge, but for us neither is a reality.

Closing is not an option, we are a hotel and must be open for our residents – so why not be open to external guests, providing a service to our regulars and other visitors to the city.

To spread the costs across the year seems most logical, however with eleven public holidays and a number of other dates that are observed adding to the bill…it are a large expense to spread. You also have to ask yourself, is it really fair to add this cost onto the bills of everyone else throughout the year?

With most restaurants and cafés choosing to surcharge, most consumers presume there will be a surcharge. If we made a decision not to surcharge, it then bodes the question how do you let guests know? To those businesses with a high foot traffic simply putting a sign up would probably suffice, but what for the rest of us?  Perhaps I could follow in the footsteps of those who choose to advertise the proud fact that they don’t surcharge. To me this seems even barmier as this then adds to your cost of public holidays yet more!

I feel that the decision we made was a fair one, we charge a 15% surcharge on public holidays – not opting to follow the 20% trend of other contemporary dining restaurants. We ensure that any guest that reserves a table is aware of the surcharge from the outset, we display clear signs on our external doors and have a footnote on our menus throughout the year.

This way we are remaining open when many are not, ensuring we fulfill our responsibility to our regulars, residents and tourists. We communicate this to our guests clearly and thus leave it at the discretion of our patrons as to whether they choose to dine.

One year in, yes, we still get those who are unhappy with our stance, however these days tick over nicely and best of all – I have now come to peace with the decision we made to surcharge.