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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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…)

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.

Before going any further, as I did with those who opted into my workshop I only feel it fair to make it clear that I don’t consider myself any kind of expert on TripAdvisor or other review sites. What I have done however is researched the subject. What I am not is an employee or paid sales person for these business.  What I hope to do is just give a few simple pointers based on my experience.

Claim Your Listing

When chatting with people about review sites, it quickly became apparent that rather than trying to come to grips with what these sites have to offer, many opt to firmly stick their head in the sand – ostrich style!

For me…its simple, your consumer can and will post reviews of your hotel or service on the internet, whether you like it or not. You have a choice as to whether you check these reviews or not.

Whether deciding to check, or not to check, one clear piece of advise I will ask you take away is make sure you have claimed your listing on these sites!

In essence these listing are like any other on the web, it is a place to promote your business, ensuring the information available to your consumer is correct and up-to-date.  I ran for a few regularly searched terms such as ‘hotel Dunedin’ or ‘what to do in Dunedin’ for the purpose of the workshop. In each case that I tried the top ten results always included at least one listing from TripAdvisor and often other review sites too.  What surprised me was that these rankings were generally higher than many of the sites we would all pay to have our business listed.  To check out how to claim your review on TripAdvisor check out this short YouTube clip:

Replying to reviews

Once you’ve claimed your listing and updated your business it is your option whether you choose to respond to review or not.  Until now I had always decided only to respond to negative reviews, however after undertaking my research I have personally decided that I will endeavor to reply to each review, whether of a positive or negative nature.

If you choose to ignore them it is like ignoring a complaint letter that the world can see.

Check out this YouTube clip on the process of replying to a review on TripAdvisor:

The way I have dealt with reviews on review sites in the past, is to treat them like a complaint letter. Here’s some tips that I find work well for me;

• Always thank the guest for taking the time to review you.  (Whether you agree with them or not, they have still spent time thinking about your business)
• Briefly review what the person has said in there review, making sure you correct any thing that if wrong (factually, not wrong through your opinion)
• At the very least let the guest know that you have taken on board their comments or concerns, by reading the review and replying you are automatically taking this information on – even if you don’t believe it to be right.
• Then go on to explain if you have or will make any changes after reading the review. No matter how small it will help the person feel valued and listened too.
• If you think that the situation warrants it perhaps you should invite them back or give a gesture of goodwill – a voucher perhaps. At times its best to just swallow a little bit of pride in these situations and sometime give a little more than you may think its worth, because ultimately if this person goes away happy (or at least happier) they may remove their negative review and you never know – could be a positive ambassador for your business.

I think that’s probably enough for now! Remember the way to get good reviews on review sites is simple – being market focused, listen to your consumer and act on their needs!  To get a few more reviews its perhaps a little bit harder, be creative and don’t be shy in asking people to review you.

Personally, I choose to differentiate my personal and professional online presence, presuming that my family and friends probably don’t want to be updated about my attendance at a conference. Equally, my work colleagues hopefully wouldn’t be too fussed that I have been dragged to see the latest chick flick at the cinema by my dearly beloved.  Like 500 million other people across the globe, I entrust Facebook with the personal information I choose to share with my friends and family.

For my professional presence I choose LinkedIn, a purpose built social media site designed for developing an online professional profile, utilised by more than 80 million users.

The benefits of building strong business relationships and the strength of networking need very little explanation. I believe, in today’s digital world practicing strong online networking is as, if not more, important than traditional networking. Becoming ‘Linked-In’ is a great way to get started.

The service is primarily utilised by senior professionals, with around 48% of its users being at management or director level and 66% being considered decision makers within their business.  In essence the site allows you to transfer your curriculum vitae online, gives you the ability to be recommended by industry colleagues, join groups, manage your connections as well as find or offer jobs.

Some of the key benefits that I have found by using the site are;

• Keeping in touch with colleagues from previous workplaces

• Recruitment

• Defining comparable industry pay rates

• Passively keeping in touch with the job market

• Promoting my experience and achievements

• Securing public recommendations

• Searching people by name, company, group or education (always helps when you’re trying to get in contact with the people you met at TRENZ and can’t find their card!)

A great benefit of the site is, that it not only allows you to view the profiles of your direct connections but those connected to your connections and their connections too. According to the site this feature links me to 1,503, 506 professional’s from my mere 200 connections!

My advice would be to sign-up and maximise your career potential…after all – its free!

10 Ideas for content:

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

How to Get Followers for a New Facebook Page:

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

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

The better your website, the more traffic it will receive. And in a win-win deal, the more traffic to your site, ad the more clicks on your site, the higher it will rank in related searches. That’s a visibility advantage over your competitors that you cannot afford to ignore.

Have you looked at your website lately, from a customer point of view? How does it stack up?

Remember that when you come to sell your business in future, a professional and effective website  will be on of the most valuable assets you have to offer.

In our recent travels we have heard the rumbles of approaching spring and increasing traveller numbers. Operators are reporting strong forward bookings.  If that is not your situation, perhaps a good hard look at your website is required?

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

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

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

Know Your Stats!

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

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

Obtaining online bookings for you property is much easier…and cheaper… than you may think. And it can be achieved in days – not weeks or months. This  four pronged approach will ensure your online bookings increase as well as allowing you to maximise revenue from each booking.

So, where do you start? Easy. You can achieve 75 per cent of your online strategy very quickly, cheaply and effectively. The remaining 25 per cent (if you need it) will take more thought and external assistance, but achieving the majority of your objectives instantly allows you to focus on getting the last 25 per cent right.

The first 75 per cent :

The first three  prongs of the approach require you to sign up to an effective channel manager, get yourself a top performing booking engine (a commission free one), and spruce up your website (the last thing you want is a great looking booking engine on a tired old site).

That’s the first 75 per cent of the strategy. Can it really be that simple? Yes, and here is why:

1. Channel Manager

This clever little piece of technology will allow you to list on a multitude of top performing online booking sites worldwide.  The good ones will also link to wholesalers, corporate booking sites and the like. Why is this so important?

Let’s look at a site like Expedia. Expedia invests many millions of dollars on internet search, TV and radio, travel agency relationships, affiliate programs and social media to ensure that your property is put in front of consumers worldwide. Not many accommodation providers can afford to give their property this kind of exposure, so allowing leading booking sites to do it on your behalf is a great way to participate, particularly since it is free to sign up, easy to manage through your channel manager, and you only pay a success fee when a booking occurs.

Have you ever wondered why the property down the road gets more customers from Asia or the UK than you? It could be because they are using their channel manager to update Agoda and Booking.com, the two  leading sites in Asia and the UK respectively.

So what to look for in a channel manager?

• Make sure your channel manager offers a rich selection of major overseas sites; you are limiting your success if you can only update local booking sites
• Make sure you go with a trusted name, that has a significant support team behind them and offers extras like weekend support.
• Ensure your channel manager offers a 2 way, pooled inventory system where inventory is automatically adjusted on all sites when a booking is made on any site. This will maximize your chance of getting bookings while minimizing overbooking risk. Tools that force you to split your inventory across sites and only offer one way updates are yesterday’s news.

2. Online Booking Engine For Your Own Site

This is the one you really want to get right. This determines if people coming to your site with the intent to book, actually end up booking your property or abandoning the booking and going elsewhere. Results from a leading online research company reveal that more than 40 per cent of all bookings on a hotel’s own website are abandoned during the booking cycle due to a complex booking process, as well as sluggish performance by the booking engine on the site (wait time).

So what you are looking for is a booking engine that is:

• Commission free (don’t pay someone else for bookings that are rightfully yours)
• Offers an easy to use, 2 step booking process
• Offers extremely fast response times.

It also won’t hurt if your booking engine looks sexy, allows rich media content like photo libraries of your property, rooms and online maps, and allows you to customise and colour match your website theme to ensure consistency of your brand.

3. Your Own Website

This is the face of your hotel to the entire world. Invest a little to make it appealing. It will pay you back many times. There are companies out there that can provide you with a quality hosted website, at a very reasonable cost.

One golden rule to remember when getting a new website is MAINTAIN OWNERSHIP OF YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME! If you let your website provider own or take control of the ownership of your domain, you will be tied to them for life and at the mercy of whatever prices they want to charge you.

Owning your domain name means you control the destiny of your own website.

The last 25 per cent:

So, you now have 75 per cent of a solid online booking strategy. The last 25 per cent (the fourth prong of our approach) is a detailed and in depth subject, but is equally important as the first 75 per cent.

Assuming you are not 100 per cent occupied after getting a channel manager, quality booking engine and spruced up website, then you will want to consider: search engine marketing and search engine optimisation strategies (SEO and SEM), social media strategies (if applicable), and other direct marketing strategies to drive business to your own website – where of course your new booking engine will do a fantastic job of converting bookings.

If you do not have the expertise to devise and execute such strategies, then it is advisable to engage an external, independent online marketing expert to assist you.

An important note: If you intend on engaging an SEO expert to assist you in the future, then it is worthwhile engaging them prior to your new website being built. The website content and structure can affect SEO results significantly. The website designer/builder does not need to be the same person, but they should work together on the website to ensure best results.

Do not be scared of this last step. You do not have to spend thousands upon thousands – you can spend as much or as little as you want to achieve varying results. With SEO, you should ensure you establish a pay by the month deal so that you can stop at any time. On average, expect a time period of about six months for an SEO strategy to make a difference to the traffic coming to your website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simply put, a channel manager is Internet-based software that allows accommodation providers to manage availability and rates across a multitude of online channels from a single easy-to-use web page. The real benefits to the accommodation business are many and significantly outweigh the investment requirements to get up and running on this vital piece of software. As an accommodation provider, the major business benefits accruing to you include:

• More accurate availability and price parity on online booking channels – by making a single change, your staff can update multitudes of websites immediately. This means availability and pricing across sites will be current, accurate and require minimal staff training to maintain.
• The capability to list on many more online booking channels with little or no additional effort for each channel you add. The result is increased distribution without increased cost and you are able to put your rooms in front of millions of consumers around the globe.
• Free and easy marketing for your property – the major booking site players have the money and the will to market your property effectively online, so let them!
• Increased accuracy with your availability and rates, coupled with increased exposure to local and international online booking channels means increased bookings revenue and more dollars on your bottom line.
• Elimination of double bookings. Any channel manager worth its salt will automatically adjust inventory across all sites when a booking occurs on any site. This means you can have all your availability on all sites all the time and feel secure. This is known as the Pooled Inventory Model and it means you can maximise your chance of being booked without being overbooked.

So, we’ve established that a channel manager will increase your online bookings but what should an accommodation provider look for when selecting among the multitude of offerings on the market? Look for:

• A product that is based on the pooled inventory model, where the tool automatically adjusts inventory across all sites as soon as a booking occurs on any site – this will maximise your inventory and reduce double bookings.
• A product with no transaction fees. Channel managers that work on a flat monthly fee are the best value for money
• A product that allows you to manage inventory on your own website’s booking engine as well as on the third party booking sites.
• A product without lock-in contracts. A channel manager with no lock-in contracts has confidence in their ability to service your business and backs their own product – this is a good sign. Rapid changes in technology you could be left behind if you are locked in to a sub par product.
• A product that does all their own product development in-house – they are more likely to be able to respond to the changes your business needs and adapt their product to a changing online distribution landscape.
• Ensure that you select a channel manager that is backed by a significant support team that can ensure all your needs are taken care of under one roof.
• Ensure your channel manager updates all the major international bookings sites. The local sites are not enough and the international majors are spending up big on marketing your property to the world. Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
• Last but not least, it is advisable to pay your channel manager a visit and view their operation first hand. Many accommodation businesses are doing more than 40% of their business online. You cannot afford to put this business with a fly-by-night company. Remember, you are choosing a long term business partner, not just a product.

So what does the future hold for channel management?

Channel managers are rapidly evolving as the one-stop shop for all your online distribution needs, dis-intermediating some of the more traditional electronic distribution channels.

Channel managers are already connecting to online booking sites, wholesalers, traditional travel agents, GDS and inbound tour operators. Many additional channel options will be connected in the future and booking channels not connected to a reputable channel manager risk being left out in the cold.

The future will see the leading channel managers increasingly connected to more property and central reservation systems, providing seamless connectivity between the property management system and the online bookings channels. Facilitation of automatic delivery of all reservations from online channels directly into the property management systems, is an important capability of the future channel manager. Such a solution completely eliminates the need for the property to recapture online booking channel reservation emails into the property system.

With the proliferation of channel managers and similar distribution switch networks of the future, distribution and acquisition costs to accommodation providers will be dramatically reduced. Channel managers are a far more cost effective option than older distribution systems and these systems are already finding their market challenged with the new kids on the block.

The accommodation providers that embrace the right channel management technology today will have reap the benefits of increased online bookings, lower acquisition costs, increased business efficiency and ultimately, higher profit margins.

Can you afford not to?

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

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

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

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

Some key Channel Managers relevant for New Zealand accommodation are:

Siteminder

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

Seekom

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

Staah

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

RoamFree

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

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

Waiting for an on-request booking request response from an accommodation operator can be a similar experience. Will my booking be confirmed or declined? Should I wait to hear back before I request somewhere else? In managing Travelbug for the last couple of years, there is one thing that has been a constant thorn in my side. It is the cause of more support requests than anything else and the biggest cause of leakage on our reseller network than any other factor: poorly-managed on-request inventory.

On BookIt (as on Vianet), operators can manage their inventory in a variety of ways. They can be fully realtime and offer instant confirmation inventory managed through a direct link to their PMS, through a channel manager or by using our inventory manager tool. They can also manage their inventory on-request meaning that a traveller making a booking on any of our reseller websites must wait to hear back from the operator to see if their booking is going to be accepted or declined.

If it is accepted then that’s great, but if it gets declined then the traveller is faced with a decision. Do they go back to the website and find another place and try and book again (and possibly go through the same painful process) or do they give up on that website and try something else? Either way, significant damage has been done to their impression of that website and the property concerned.

Let me be clear, I’m not against on-request per se, just poorly-managed on-request. I understand that there are certain high-demand periods where operators may need to take extra care regarding double-bookings, and properties with only a few rooms that want to be distributed widely online may need to protect against that possibility as well.  On-request fills that need and allows a safety net.

Outside those two situations, however, if you are choosing to go on-request on a website then you should be actively managing your inventory and blocking out dates as soon as they become unavailable.  On-request as an availability option should not be treated as a free listing or a set-and-forget way of appearing on websites to drag-net for booking leads. It needs to be updated and managed pro-actively to keep the listing as fresh and accurate as possible.

Here’s four reasons why:

• Your listing is the first experience a traveller has with you. Waiting for a reply for a booking is bad enough, but having a booking declined is even worse. A bad experience in making a reservation means that you are on the back foot already.
• Travellers that have bad experiences spread the word, so declining a booking might not just mean you are unlikely to get that traveller’s booking, you might be unlikely to get their friends’ bookings either.
• A declined booking is lost revenue. Many travellers have flexible dates and if they could clearly see which dates are unavailable, they’ll request the available date. This means you’ll be able to accept the booking and everyone wins.
• The websites don’t like lost revenue or declined bookings either, and will likely have measures in place that will decrease your visibility on their site based on how often you have declined booking requests.

The best way around on this is to offer instant confirmation if you can manage it. Your visibility lifts, you have access to a far wider range of promotional possibilities, you don’t lose bookings and travellers have a great experience right from their first interaction with your property.

If you can’t manage instant confirmation then I’ll leave you with this one thought – don’t leave potential guests in the waiting room wondering if they are going to need a cast. Don’t use the on-request feature as a means of getting a free listing. Give it the attention it deserves and update your inventory as often as you possibly can. Use it as a way to increase your familiarity with managing your inventory online and you may be more comfortable with offering instant confirmation.

So what attracts the potential customer to your product, service or activity? When they visit your website or read your printed marketing material, what is it that sways the decision to use your business over your competitors? The importance of having well designed marketing material, whether online or offline, and a level of integration and synergy between them cannot be argued. However, content is king. What does your content say to your potential customers? Is it generic marketing text that is not targeted to the behaviour and language of the target markets you are attempting to serve?

The use of images, photos and videos is essential in the tourism industry, where experience is everything. Interactive media formats are the perfect medium for telling the story, rising emotive decision making processes in consumers and creating a virtual sense of demand. The use of colloquial, descriptive, emotional and experiential text is just as important in spurring the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for consumers to purchase your products and services, or at least qualify your offerings to be in the final decision set.

Social media offers all tourism businesses the perfect platform to share and promote the experiential based tourism product through the use of interactive mediums. Image sites such as Flickr and video sites such as YouTube are obvious sites to utilise. Although not considered as a pure social media tool, these sites have developed over the past several years to include interactive and communication capabilities that are conducive to social networking. However, these could be considered the first steps of social media.

In comparison to sites such as Twitter or Facebook which require a constant level of activity as far as engaging with the audience, Flickr and Youtube can be used simply as a platform for presenting interactive media about your business, the activities, accommodation, customers enjoying their EXPERIENCE. There is the option to engage with other like minded people and current and potential clients though the joining of groups, engaging with conversations and participating in the community, but it is not as essential in other social media platforms. And for this reason, these platforms are the perfect place to start for the novice, even the sceptical tourism operator to dabble with social media.

Here is a simple example of how an activity based tourism operator could utilise either Flickr or Youtube (or both) to build the visibility of their business, utilise experiential based marketing mediums, create a valued personal level of customer service and engage in a basic level of viral marketing: Let’s take the case of a four-wheel drive motorcycle operation. When the customer purchases or attends the activity, get their email address. Before, during and after the activity, take lots of photos and/or videos (basic digital camera is all that you need). Once the activity has finished for the day, upload the photos/videos from the camera to your Flickr/Youtube site, then email the customer saying thank you for using us and having a great time and inform them that you have posted photos/videos of them enjoying their experience.  This proactive level of customer support will impress the customer, leading to greater levels of satisfaction, developing a brand ambassador or who will surely create a level of word of mouth marketing for you. But it doesn’t stop there, the customer will then view their photos/videos on the sites, they will have their experience rekindled and be likely to email and tell their friends of their experiences and direct them to the URL address where the photo is held, your Flickr and Youtube sites. Now you have the start of a viral marketing campaign, where the customer’s friends are viewing the photos/videos and spreading the word about your business.

If you are a tourism operator attempting to gain a greater market share, identifying methods to increase customer satisfaction and support and want to start engaging with social media, implement an experiential and emotional strategy to your online and offline marketing mediums, increase the use of experiential based photos and videos, utilise descriptive text and consider utilising some of the most basic social media tools to promote your business and brand.

With the future looking bright for their outbound travel market to continually grow it makes sense for New Zealand tourism organisations to develop strategies to target the China travel market to compliment efforts already in progress by the likes of Tourism New Zealand, Air New Zealand and the Shanghai World Expo.

So what are the key ways to do this?  It really depends on the resources and size of your organisation.  At present over 71% of travellers from China come as part of a pre-arranged group tour (source: Tourism New Zealand) rather than as FIT so forming relationships with key inbound tour operators and group tours is a logical first step.  The FIT market however is growing so an online strategy is also important, and The Economist has identified social media as another key way.

Here are some further links to articles of interest regarding the Chinese tourism market and China Online Travel

China Travel Trends

Ruder Finn Asia China Travel and Tourism Market Newsletter

Role of Social Networking in Chinese Online Travel Market

Tourism New Zealand – Changes Set to Benefit Chinese Group Tour Market

Tourism New Zealand – ADS Programme (China Monitoring Unit)

Tourism New Zealand – Crossing the Digital Divide in China

TNOOZ: Most Popular Travel Websites In Hong Kong June 2010

Nielsen China Outbound Travel Monitor 2009 (have to purchase the full report)

If you have any tips or success stories about dealing with the Chinese market let us know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cost model

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

Flexibility with Inventory Management

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

Distribution opportunities

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

Functionality

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

Channel Management

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

Easy to use

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

How Do New Zealand Online Booking Systems Score?

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

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

However for a more analytical and quick approach try the Website Grader by HubSpot (internet marketing gurus), this gives a score out of 100 for your website performance (aim for 90+) and will provide a detailed report with recommendations to improve your score.  Our blog currently scores 96! Which means:

“A website grade of 96.3/100 for www.tourismindustryblog.co.nz means that of the millions of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 96.3% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data , website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.”

What did you score?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one has time to surf all the social networking sites. You can’t do everything at once. Try focusing on a few networks and sites at a time to determine which will help you best connect with your customers or generate the most traffic. Once you’ve built a reputation, you can move on to the next on your list.

It’s fine if you don’t jump on the bandwagon of every new site. Take some time to read reviews and watch before deciding to make a move.

Getting involved in a site is the only way to really understand how it operates. Even then, you need to be prepared for things not to work. There are no guarantees of success although with experience, you’ll learn what’s likely to click with your users.

It will take some time to set up the network you want. While you’re building your reputation, don’t forget the real world. Attending travel and marketing conferences, consumer trade shows, events, workshops (either virtual or real), will accelerate growing relationships and you can use those contacts to add to your network.

The first step to trying out social media sites is to check out what’s available. Here’s a list of the most popular sites in different categories for you to take a look at.

Bookmarking
Blinklist www.blinklist.com
Delicious www.delicious.com
StumbleUpon www.stumbleupon.com
Stumpedia www.stumpedia.com
Google Reader www.google.com/reader
CiteULike www.citeulike.org
Simpy www.simpy.com

Blogs
BlogCatalog www.blogcatalog.com
Blogged.com www.blogged.com
Blogger www.blogger.com
Bloglines www.bloglines.com
CoComment www.cocomment.com
LiveJournal www.livejournal.com
MyBlogLog www.mybloglog.com
Tangler www.tangler.com
TypePad www.typepad.com
WordPress www.wordpress.org
Vox www.vox.com

Discussion Groups
Google Groups www.groups.google.com/
Yahoo! Groups www.groups.yahoo.com
Windows Live Groups www.groups.live.com

Events
Upcoming www.upcoming.yahoo.com
Eventful www.eventful.com
Meetup.com www.meetup.com

Forums
Vbulletin www.vbulletin.com
PhpBB www.phpbb.com

Micro-Blogging
Twitter www.twitter.com
Plurk www.plurk.com
SixApart www.sixapart.com
Jaiku www.jaiku.com

Networking
CrowdVine www.crowdvine.com
Facebook www.facebook.com
Hi5 www.hi5.com
MySpace www.myspace.com
Ning www.ning.com
Orkut www.orkut.com
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com
Plaxo www.plaxo.com
Skyrock www.skyrock.com

Network Aggregation
FriendFeed www.friendfeed.com
Ping.fm www.ping.fm
Google Buzz www.google.com/buzz

News
Digg www.digg.com
Hubdub www.hubdub.com
Mixx www.mixx.com
Propeller www.propeller.com
Reddit www.reddit.com
Yahoo Buzz www.buzz.yahoo.com

Product Reviews
TripAdvisor www.TripAdvisor.com
VirtualTourist www.VirtualTourist.com
Yelp www.yelp.com
MouthShut.com www.mouthshut.com

Photo Sharing
Flickr www.flickr.com
Photobucket www.photobucket.com
SmugMug www.smugmug.com
Zooomr www.zooomr.com
Picasa www.picasa.google.com

Video Sharing
Revver www.revver.com
Vimeo www.vimeo.com
YouTube www.youtube.com
Triporia www.Triporia.com
TravelTube www.TravelTube.com
AboutAnyWhere www.AboutAnyWhere.com

Wikis
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org
Pbwiki www.pbworks.com
Wetpaint www.wetpaint.com

Dashboards
iGoolge www.igoogle.com
Netvibes www.netvibes.com

This article was originally posted by Angela Best as part of a series on Social Media for Tourism Marketing on MarketingTourGuide.com

We spent the afternoon downloading applications for magazines and books – sorry Kindle looks like you will have some serious competition. We watched video streamed through Netflix within seconds of the download.

Crossed between a iPhone touch and a laptop the iPad does have some limitations and some hurdles to address so it is probably better to wait until the next version – international sales have already been pushed back to May. However, I’m not going to give you a complete review I found a great one here if you want to read it.

What I wanted to let you know is how the iPad can be used from a travel perspective. There are nine really good download applications that avid travelers can access to enhance the user experience.

1. Lonely Planet- Browse Lonely Planets top 1,000 destinations and experiences. Includes great photography and subjects such as ‘Top travel boasts, myths and legends,’ and ‘Top Tourist traps worth the crowds.’

2. Loopt Pulse – Visiting a strange city and don’t know where you are or what to do or need something to eat? Loopt gives you real time access to maps and photo views. This application is only available in the US at this time.

3. Kayak – similar to their website and iphone app so travelers can search for flights and hotels.

4. FlightTrack – A great way to track flights, get updates on delays or gate changes. The great thing about this application is that if you’ve already purchased it for your iPhone you can use it on your iPad, or vice versa.

5. National Geographic World Atlas – a great planning tool if you’re searching for your next destination but probably not much use once you’re on the road, although extremely helpful to those who are geographically challenged.

6. WeatherBug Elite – the same app is already available on iPhone and iPod and since the iPad doesn’t have a built-in weather app this is perfect. The best thing is that WeatherBug provide global information so it doesn’t matter where you are.

7. Street Maps – one down side to the iPad is that if you don’t have a network signal you can’t use the built in maps application. The Street Maps app, which is available through itunes can be used offline so they’re a good safety net if you’re lost in Paris. NB. You need to download separate street maps for each city you need.

8. Skype or TruPhone – the iPad isn’t the best phone in the world but that’s okay since you can use either Skype or TruPhone. My friend uses Skype so we tested that version. The connection and clarity of sound was awesome. Downside, you do need to be connected to a network so it’s not particularly helpful if you’re in the middle of the Sahara.

9. iBooks – I’m an avid reader so having the ability to take my library with me when I travel is a major bonus. No more extra pounds and trying to jam my 800 page books into the hand luggage, or having to leave them behind because I can’t fit them in.

This article was originally posted on the MarketingTourGuide.Com Blog.