E-tourism Marketing Intelligence

Tourism is, by definition, one of the most information-intensive industries. How are we, as potential customers, going to find information on that fantastic little cottage in the Gold Coast hinterlands that we have been dreaming about for the past 10 days? I need to book it, and I need to book it NOW… So here I start Googling “gold coast hinterland cottage”… to my surprise, not many of these fantastic little cottages come up.

“Thats not possible” you will tell me, “there are millions of them up there. I see the signs in front of these properties every time I drive up! and I am certain that I remember them telling me that they are bookable online.”

Well, well, well. This is the issue. These properties are bookable online, however they are not SEARCHABLE let alone FINDABLE. It is a bit as if they had a phone number but they were not listed in the phone book.

As one would know, over 90% of the key players in the tourism industry are Small and Medium Enterprises. SMEs that focus on their one reason for existence: developing a product or service that will sell. They do however lack a strategic sense of how to move forward in the e-marketplace. They have yet to incorporate an e-business strategy into their business or use Web enabled technologies to assist them in their internal and external business process. However, they are starting to realise that even with a lack of financial resources, they can take advantage of the Internet as a distribution channel which will reach a global market at a lower cost than distributing through the traditional distribution channels.

So, that fantastic little cottage in the Hinterlands simply needs to let the world know it is out there and that the woodfire is on in this rainy winter month. How will it let the world know?

There is an enormous gap in the Tourism industry with regards to web optimisation. Operators get sold fancy online booking platforms by very well trained sales people but unfortunately the link between these online booking platforms and the potential customer is not established. As I mention to my clients, it is as if they now have a phoneline but they are not listed in the phonebook. Operators do not see the expected ROI of their booking platform simply because the client cannot find them.

The discipline that makes these operators findable is called Online Marketing. Online Marketing then branches out into Search Engine Marketing (advertisments that the operator pays for), Search Engine Optimisation (keyword tweaking that should get your ranking up on search engine) and now into Social Media and Social Bookmarking (Digg, Stumbleupon etc). Online Marketing used to be assimilated to Web development a decade ago but it has now become a specialty on its own.

Unfortunately, many tourism and other operators have not yet grasped that concept and believe a Web designer will get them a fantastic website AND lots of traffic and conversions through it. WRONG! The Online Marketer therefore also has a strong educational role in this regard. One way to help operators understand how important it is for them to work on their “online findablility” is to get them to put themselves in their customers’ fingers and Google their service. We need to get the Hinterland Cottage Owner on Google and type in “cottage gold coast hinterlands”, “woodfire accommodation gold coast hinterlands”.

Once the owner has convinced himself (very different from a salesperson telling him that it is the way to do it) he will be very receptive and will with no doubt work with experts to increase not only traffic to his site but also conversions and therefore ROI. 1 happy operator will quickly lead to 100 visible and bookable operators which in turn will eventually lead to a whole destination with a strengthened online reputation.

To facilitate the learning curve that tourism operators need to embrace, I have simply integrated the Google search box to my business’ website: check it out on http://www.untanglemyweb.com/test_business_keywords_google.html. My clients really appreciate being able to become their own customer as it allows them to understand the key relationship between Search Engines and Online Marketing.

How do people book their travel? Is the online share growing? What is certain is that there are many more online bookings of trips and travel over the Internet than there used to be, but there are also many more tourism products that now have online booking facilities and this keeps on growing. Both are growing in parallel. How can you, as a tourism operator compete in this market? Be visible online so people that want to find you and are looking for you actually find you.

Roy Morgan Research in Australia, as part of their Holiday Tracking Survey investigated what method people use to book their holidays:

The diagram above shows that about one third use the phone and another third the Internet. What are the implications for your business? It simply means that for every phone booking that you get you could be getting another booking via the Internet. Now, check your stats, is this what you are getting? No? Less? Is your product bookable online? Most probably. However, what you might be missing is online visibility, which comes through optimisation! Your online booking platform would be similar to having a phone number, but if you are not visible online, it is a bit as if you had a phone but were not listed in the phone book. First thing you should to is test your online visibility: http://www.untanglemyweb.com/test_business_keywords_google.html

Remember, your potential client will be Googling keywords describing your product, most probably not your product name as he does not yet know it! These keywords should be strategically placed within your website content. This technique is called Search Engine Optimisation.

The following chart trends how people use internet to choose their holiday destination. As expected, there has been a very large growth over the past 6 years. One in 5 Australian uses the web to choose his or her next holiday destination. Once again, if your product does not appear on his or her search result page, you are missing out on 20% of extra sales!

Talking about e-marketing, e-business, e-booking is a given. But could we talk about e-behaviour? If I compare myself with my mother, the first thing you could differentiate us is the tightness in my upper back, neck and shoulder area. 90% of my day is spent at a 90 degree angle sitting in front of my monitor. My remedial massage therapist even added “computer” under the “what sports do you play” questions of her diagnostic card.

It made me think…

First thing my mother does in the morning is makes herself a nice cup of coffee and has a chat with my dad and brother around the kitchen table. First thing I do in the morning is unlock my computer (notice how it was not even turned off to gain time) and chat to my friends on Messenger, Skype and Facebook.

Mum then potters around the house, runs some errands, maybe reviews her cookbooks and calls a few friends. I clean my desktop (which has by now become my home), google anything and everything that comes to my mind and eventually sign up on online dating services as it seems to be the natural thing to do since I already do everything online.

My daily activities made me realise that is it not only the traditional services that have switched from offline to online but that the change is at a much bigger level: humans are turning into e-humans and their behaviour has been e-altered.

How does that relate to your business? Well, imagine a customer that had a great experience with your service. He will have a positive e-behaviour and e-brag in social medias all over the Internet. Fantastic free advertising for your company. 10 years ago you would have not dreamt about reaching such a large audience. Now, imagine a very angy customer with a negative e-behaviour. What could he do? Write a nasty blog post? The Web 2.0 offers way better revenge opportunities… such as recording a phone conversation, broadcasting it via on youtube (because when you are angry a blogpost seems too docile) and ruining your business before you even have the opportunity to realise what is e-happening. This is a true story: Mr Vincent Ferrari has a blog. He also happened to want to cancel his AOL account (which is harder than getting out of prison in the USA apparently). Unhappy with the response he got from the AOL customer service representative, he recorded their conversation and eventually broadcasted it on his blog via an audio file, asking his readers if they had experienced a similar situation….
His webserver crashed because it could not cope with the thousands of downloads of the audio file…. AOL had to intervene and the rest is history.

Read more about adapting to the influence of a Social Media Internet on the Search Engine Guide website

You have read and heard about Facebook, MySpace. You do understand that it is an online type of whiteboard where people write thinks on about themselves, their friends and experiences. However, you do not quite grasp how it could directly help your business grow. Well, think again.

TravelBuddy (www.travbuddy.com) is an online social network about travelling. It was launched about 2 years ago but recently has seen its membership not double, not quadruple but grow 100 (yes ONE HUNDRED fold). Do you know how they have done that? No, it was not advertising in traditional travel magazines, nor did they get a PR boost by a fantastic article travel writer. The “culprit” ? Facebook. TravelBuddy developed an application that allows users on Facebook to add a map of the countries they visited to their profile. 500,000 Facebook users have so far installed this application on their profile…

Here are some stats from the TravBuddy homepage: in addition to its 1,018,142 members, the site has “13,530 travel blogs, 9,615 travel reviews, and 333,454 travel photos.” It is not rocket science….

How often have you had a meal out at a restaurant and had a disastrous experience?

Or had to wait over an hour for your meal (even though the waitress was really nice and chatty…). Comes the bill, and the staff asking you how everything was and - since you just want to go home you let him know that you had a “marvelous time”. Truly, you are not doing them any favor (ok, you might be doing one to yourself as you don’t want the chef to spit in your cream of pumpkin…).

I have often wondered if I should just make fake business cards, or even better register a business company credit card as “restaurantguides.com” and hand it to waiter when the bill comes… A few free gourmet meals would be great right now, as I am setting up my own business and need to save every little coin. Well, my dream has almost become reality. This afternoon, I stumbled upon www.mysterydining.co.uk where I registered as a volunteer mystery diner for the Brisbane area (I am in luck, they are currently recruiting a few stomachs on legs!). Mysterydining provides hospitality business owners with extensive intelligence on how their restaurant is performing on different factors. And, if I get accepted, I get to experience new restaurants for free!

It reminds me of a French movie called “l’aile ou la cuisse” (the wing of the thigh, literally) with one of my favourite actors, Louis de Funes…

G’day all, hope you are having a fine day wherever you are. Here on the Gold Coast the weather has been atrocious enough to remind me of the winter in Geneva - minus the heating and the warm fireplaces!

Geneva, yes, in the French part of Switzerland. Switzerland, a country renowned for its hospitality and tourism, and of course hospitality schools! I did not mention tourism schools as there are not many. Or, there WERE not many a few years back. I actually came to Australia to do my Masters in Tourism Management here on the Gold Coast at Griffith University as such a postgraduate degree was not on offer in my home country. The closest thing was a diploma in travel and tourism. Thank god this seems to now have changed!

Great course by the way, trust me, I researched before I made up my mind. If you want to check out the Griffith University department of tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport management it is here. Not only has this degree given me a thorough knowledge of tourism marketing but the relationships I developed with the academics also landed me a job at Gold Coast Tourism, free PR and a seat on many committees…

Anyway, I just wanted to write a post to remind us all that universities are great resources that often get forgotten about or put in the box of “they are just academics - we don’t need theory!). Here on the Gold Coast we have 2 universities that offer an extensive curriculum in tourism and hospitality management. Brisbane universities also offer fabulous tourism curriculums.

I am also currently working with the University of Queensland, Victoria University and the University of South Australian on developing a toolkit to help Small and Medium Tourism Businesses understand and implement Information and Communication Technologies into their business. So keep posted for the updates on this!

Universities do not only educate students but also conduct research, and let me tell you that in the case of Tourism, this research is extremely relevant. What is lacking is a bridge between the great findings of academics (that get published in “journals” that are destined to other academics and not the general public) and how they can be implemented in your business. What is the solution? A simple contact! Trust me, academics love to speak to us in the corporate world, and are delighted to use us as guinea pigs for their research. Is your tourism region in need of a tourism spend study? Why don’t you just pick up the phone and contact the tourism school at your closest university?

ROI used to be and still is one of the hype and buzzy word in the Corporate world. However, over the past few years, his little brother “web-analytics” has grown very tall and seems to now be sharing the podium. I have recently come across two great sites, thanks to Vicky Brock from blog.highlandbusinessresearch.com. The Web Analytics Association www.webanalyticsassociation.org and Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik www.kaushik.net/avinash/.

There is an incredible amount of resources on the net dedicated to Search professionals. However, if I now bring it all back to Small and Medium Enterprises, especially in the tourism industry, there is not much help for them there. Amongst professionals we know what we are talking about, but our industry needs to make an effort and break the barrier and start infiltrating the Small Business Onwer’s minds. After all, over 90% of tourism businesses are Small and Medium Enterprises and tourism is one of the biggest industry in the world… Can anyone see the light bulb flashing there?

Vicky from Highland Business Research has recently written an excellent Tourism focused review of what variables should really be tracked on a website. Her post here: why counting hits and page views leaves you completely in the dark about your website’s success.

Only recently I was meeting with my accounting consultant (I call him consultant and not just accountant cause he helped me see the big picture and not only focused on T-shaped accounts. After a long 2-hour chat on a public holiday (I will be forever grateful) his eyes lit up when I started going on about Google, analytics and search engine optimisation. “Fabienne”, he said, “HOW on earth can I get on top of Google”? Bring on the whiteboard was my reply (which was full of accounting hieroglyphics) and Googy the Googlebot came to life…. My turn to contribute to his education. He actually explained to me that he had asked may people and professionals why he was not appearing on Google but no one seemed to be able to help him. Let me rephrase that: Joe and Jane Bloe probably did not know, or might have read something about it on the Gold Coast Business News (great mag by the way, and yes it did indeed have a great article on SEO a couple of months back) or other, but more importantly Joe and Jane probably were not aware that Search Marketing is a discipline on its own and that it is not just a hobby that web designers to do on the side. My accounting consultant has probably also asked his web designers or hosting company but they might have had bigger web developing projects with greater ROI on their plates… It is a shame he was not pointed in the right direction earlier. But, better late than never, and glad I have been able to help you Paul! Let’s see how long until Google adopts your site!.

My last post was about the issues SMTE’s have with the web… I thought I would explain in further depth what SMTE’s are, and give you a little illustrated taste of what we can find on the Gold Coast!

If you have ever been to Australia’s Gold Coast, you would have hopefully had a great time, fantastic weather (every year it rains for one week non stop, and then it’s pretty much sunshine every day. For those who want to visit soon, it poured 2 weeks ago so you now have about 340 days to come and enjoy our beaches, broadwater and hinterlands). You would have also most probably noticed that tourism businesses are popping everwhere. There are surfschools, jetski and boat hire, jetboating, sailing, parasailing, coffee/book shops, restaurants, bars, restaurants, bars, art galleries, and so many incredible hidden treasures: the lodges in the Gold Coast Hinterlands. The hinterlands has got the most incredible views of the Gold Coast skyline. And of the Hinzedam!

All these businesses are grouped under the industry acronym of SMTE’s. And most of them are a one or two man (men) show with owners that know their product so well and will make your stay memorable. Unfortunately, the owner-operators do not have the time and resources, and understanding of the incredible evolution of tourism and the web. What we call e-tourism. E-tourism is not only one facet of tourism, or one option. It has become the “standard”. It needs to be embraced in order for SMTE’s to be successful.

I am currently working with 3 Australian Universities - University of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia on a project with the objective of developing a toolkit / platform to assist SMTE’s in maximising their e-Tourism potential. It is incredible the amount of academic research that has been done on the subject. However, to my great disappointment, all these very recent articles never made it outside academia. The knowledge is therefore not getting shared with those who need it the most: the SMTE’s.

Let’s hope Untanglemyweb.com and I can reverse this trend!