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!

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!

Joint Ventures

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

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

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

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

This article is not based on statistical data; it is from anecdotal evidence of 12 years in the ecotourism industry as a guide.  These points are ones to ponder and some are very obvious so they reinforce what is already known.

• Firstly, they want to interact with the environment, they most certainly don’t want to be sitting in the bus looking at the views. They want to engage the senses and be stimulated by their exciting surroundings.

• This brings up the next point. They want to have that location / surroundings enhanced by more knowledge / stories so it needs to be interpreted by a local or someone who possesses knowledge. This requires the person interpreting that environment to pick out the relevant bits because tourists are in a perpetual state of sensory overload so we must often break it down into sound bytes. If they want more information, they can ask. The interpretation must give it all context; for example: if you are visiting an ancient forest, to point out a large Kahikatea tree is not very interesting by itself, but if you tell people that this specimen  was around in the dark ages and these trees were used in the early 1900’s to transport butter to Europe because it is an odourless wood, it now has some resonance with them and they can relate it to something they know. To have an educational dimension to your delivery is important and shows the ecotourist that you have an social conscience.

• Touch, smell, listen and feel is good within reason, it is ok to touch trees to feel their texture, stop for a minute and have a smell, listen to that wood pigeon flying away from us, the interpreter or guide does not have to talk all the time, the environment will do the talking if you set the scene for them to open their senses.

• As a guide or interpreter, you can let the ecotourist know that they are privileged to be where they are, this gives the trip a kind of mystique and uniqueness. It also will help you get your environmental message across that we want to have an absolute minimum impact.

• The environmental message is very important to the ecotourist; they want to experience these places but know that you the operator is looking after that place and have a vested interest in it. To mention that you give $2 every person to a revegetation project in the area is great and they will often be keen to either contribute more or even participate while they are there. One way to do this is to get your clients to do one task before you go on the trip or while out there, one good example is to pull out 10 weeds each before you move on.

• The environmental behaviour of your business is important and to let your clients know that you have processes in place to ensure that your business is having minimal impact on the environment is imperative. This can be done either by putting it in your marketing material or telling them on arrival. They can of course see if you have signed up for either Qualmark Green or GreenGlobe21 because they are recognised environmental auditors. The fact that these cost money and are hard to achieve is not a topic for this discussion but it is recognised that it can be a strain on a business to keep these standards up and also a large financial commitment.

• The ecotourist is also very interested in the culture they are in. It is very common to be asked about the political system or any cultural issues that are important in New Zealand. It is great if you or your guides are up on local issues and can relate them to their visitors. They are there to visit your attraction / location but you will usually have a lot of time to talk about other subjects like this. This brings up the point that you need a good communicator and a bit of maturity really helps. If you have a good guide working for you… keep them on and work to keep them, they are gold.

Overall the ecotourist is, in my opinion, much the same as other tourists but they are more demanding that you are looking after your back yard. If you provide them with opportunities to offset their carbon footprint they are more likely to participate than other tourists.

A clear indication that all sectors, businesses and organisations in the New Zealand Tourism industry should be focused on providing an automated online booking and payment option for their customers to easily book online.  See more details about the online booking research here.

To find out more about the different online booking systems available in the New Zealand market read this post I wrote in August 2009: Online Booking Strategy for Tourism Operators.

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