E-tourism Marketing Intelligence

In Australia, TripAdvisor is one of the most well-known online reputation checker how I like to call it. For those who do not know, TripAdvisor is an Internet site that allows anyone to comment about their experience at any tourism/hospitality related business.

I am asked every second day for a step by step guide to TripAdvisor. As I did not seem to find a 101 Guide to TripAdvisor guide for tourism business owners, I thought I would fill the information gap!

image credit Steve Crane

Every established web surfers will check what is being said on TripAdvisor about the property he is about to book. Some even first start their search on the TripAdvisor site. What is fantastic (for those businesses who have a reputation management strategy in place) is that it can work as your best ally in terms of promoting your business. TripAdvisor has got such a strong online presence that your property’s page on the site will appear on the first pages of Google when your business name is keyed in the search field. Even before your own website sometimes (yep!)

TripAdvisor negative reviews : why you should be aware

image credit this is your brain on lithium

TripAdvisor can also kill your best marketing efforts - that is, if you have not yet tackled the challenge of online marketing or have chosen to stay “passive”. Why? Well, because anyone can say anything about anyone (aka: YOU) on the Internet (this is formally known as User Generated Content). Let me give you an example:

I was conducting an online marketing training session the other day with tourism operators. Part of the workshop included the review of what potential guests might have said about their experience at your (accommodation) property on www.TripAdvisor.com. You should have seen the facial expression of a member of the audience, aka the accommodation property owner, when she realised that a past client has written an extremely negative review about her business.

If you are a tourism business for instance and decided to stay passive and not tackle the online world just yet, you are not simply staying in passive mode but doing your business some damage. People are most probably writing about you somewhere on the net. If not on TripAdvisor, probably somewhere else.

Tourism Online Strategy - How to I check my online reputation?

image credit Tub Gurnard

How do I check what is being said about me online?

1. Simply Google your business name to start with. Have a look through the first few pages of Google and see what has come up. You are meant to find something you did not know about!
2. Go to this page on TripAdvisor and put in your business name or part of it in the top left search box. Go go go, do it now!!! Also try your competitors!!!
3. While catching up on my RSS feeds from my favourite online marketing for tourism blogs, I discovered a little gem: Todd Lucier from TourismKeys.ca mentioned www.twing.com which is a search engine that crawls online forums - you know, forums, these online bars how I like to call them, where you can ask a question and expect a lot of useful answers. I have checked what people are asking about my local tourism region, Australia’s Gold Coast, and its rather amazing! There are people asking about where to stay, if such and such property is friendly and other recommending other properties that they have already stayed at… Talk about free marketing!
4. If you are even more game you could start checking if someone posted some photos of their holiday at your place on Flickr… If not, why don’t you start?

How can I take advantage of TripAdvisor to promote my business?

1. First of all, you need to get listed on TripAdvisor. You can get listed as an accommodation provider, an attraction, a restaurant or a resource such as transport provider, information centre. You will be able to write a short review about your property, add a photo as well. Now, you have done the easiest bit. (if this is too complicated or you are starting to pull your hair out, drop me a line I just love to do all this stuff!). But how to get client reviews??
2. How about about you ask each and every one of your client to visit TripAdvisor (make it easy for them, send them an email with the link to your property - just my 5 cents). If they have had a great experience, I am certain that they will be willing to help you out with your strategy a little. They can even upload their photos you know. If you would like more insight about this, contact me and I will give you a great little story!
3. Next thing you can do is pull the testimonials of TripAdvisor straight into the homepage of your website so that any potential client can read about how much fun past clients had at your proterty! This is done using RSS feeds. This is how you add your trip advisor reviews to your website.

What will I do if someone writes a negative review on TripAdisor about my property?

1. DO NOT STAY PASSIVE! Act! Respond to people’s reviews, and say your side of the story, and what you tried to do to fix the problem.
2. You can also contact the unsatisfied client and offer them a free night at your property for instance. The end goal is for other TripAdvisor readers to see that you are aware of this unfortunate exception and that you are reacting. This is a very old term used in hospitality and called Service Recovery. You have most probably be doing so in the offline world. Now it is just time to realise that there are many more people reading and hearing about you online!

Happy Tripping!

This is what I love about my job, I get to meet real people who all work hard at promoting fantastic tourism products throughout Queensland.

Yesterday morning I made my way to Beaudesert, which is a short hour drive from Brisbane to conduct a second workshop on online marketing. I walked into a room of about 30 small and medium business operators who were all very eager to learn how to optimise their online marketing strategy. Could I expect anything better on a rainy day?! We all had a lot of fun learning, analysing, discussing and planning and by the end of the day I had even lost my voice.

There were many questions which created a great learning atmosphere and we got to review a lot of the attendee’s websites and make recommendations. We also checked the markup validity of the websites and unfortunately not many validated :-(  One of the websites was done using Frames and you can read my blog article about frames search engine optimisation should you wish to gain a bit more knowledge on the matter. We also discussed inbound links and how to check who links to you (or your competitors!)

As promised, the 3 presentations are available for download here. Make sure you print them with the Notes as they give that little bit of extra information that I didn’t want to cram on the slides!

Web 2.0 and web mistakes

PPC and Analytics

SEO Keywords and Links

If you would like to practice your Social Media skills and get your hands dirty, right now is the time! Why don’t you leave me a comment below this post with your remarks and suggestions on the session? This will give you a free inbound link to your site as well and provide me with valuable feedback to improve!

Also make sure you download the free online marketing e-book from Tips from the T-List - these short articles will assist you a lot in setting up a strong online marketing strategy!

Thanks again for attending and I look forward to reading your comments!

Here is what I believe to be a beginner’s glossary to Search engine and Web terms.

I must have of course omitted a few key terms but if you post them in the comments section I will add them. Don’t forget you can use the “define:your term”function in Google!

How wonderful is technology, especially when it can get “translated” into a real, A5 size hard-cover book that I can take on the train and which will not run out of battery?

Jens Thraenhart, Stephen Joyce and many more Travel & Tourism bloggers have participated in the first ever ISBN-identified collection of world-wide tourism and travel marketing best practices, the “Tips from the T-List” book.

As an travel industry blogger, I have had the chance to submit one of my post - “Tourism Website Optimisiation” which has been selected and published in the 148 pages book. Trust me, this is a fantastic feeling and sense of achievement - especially when I came to the realisation that I was one of the only two Aussies selected! I have been working and collaborating with the international online tourism scene for over a decade now but when it all comes together and lands in your mailbox (no, not Outlook or Mail but the real one, outside your house!) and the virtual online world comes to you in black and white, printed on real paper, it is a totally different feeling.

Well, to tell you the truth, it was a feeling of “wetness” to start with - as - believe me - Australian mailboxes have not been designed for rainy situations! What can I say, my very own copy of the book has got some character now!

Even though my book is a hard copy, you can download a pdf version for free on www.tipsfromthetlist.com - I urge all the small and medium tourism operators to get their mouse on a copy as it is a wealth of unique tips from the gurus of the online world! You can also join our group on Facebook.

Happy reading from yours truly “published author”…

A fantastic part of my job is being able to spread my passion for search engine marketing and optimisation. Don’t you just love it when you can make a positive difference in someone’s life or business and give people just that little bit of extra something to help them make that extra step forward?

I conducted a 0ne-day workshop in Beaudesert, QLD yesterday for about 30 tourism operators from the Scenic Rim Region (Beaudesert, Boonah and Ipswich). The Scenic Rim is located about 1.5 hours from Brisbane and the Gold Coast and has got some amazing stuff to see. If the cities are not for you and you have already seen more beaches than you can remember, get in the car and head inland. There is wine tours, luxury bed and breakfast accommodation, water skiing, hot air ballooning and you can even treat your love handles to some delicious fudge.

The 9 to 3 workshop was one full-on day with a fair bit of information overload but I believe it went very well as there was a lot of notes-taking, questions and ah-ha moments happening! You can download Introduction Scenic Rim, the PPC and Analytics and the Keyword and Link Building. I have uploaded the presentation with the Notes pages - so make sure you print all the notes as well! Each powerpoint is about 1 MB in size.

During the presentation I also mentioned:

www.whirlpool.net.au - a wealth of information on Internet connection and any other IT related query in Australia.

small business ideas forum

Firefox is the browser I was using yesterday. Well worth dowloading - and its free of course!

Untanglemyweb.com is my company - the website has a lot of info on SEO, SEM and PPC for tourism and all my contact details. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you would like me to assess your online strategy!

I might have mentioned a few other forums but cannot remember right now! Make sure you post a comment and I will update the post!

If you enjoyed the workshop yesterday, if you hated it or if you have recommendations, please let me know via the comments so I can improve it for the next operators.

I look forward to checking out your sites in a few weeks to see how you have implemented what you learnt yesterday! I am sure there will be a few Google analytics scripts in your HTML!

All the best and Merry Xmas!

fabie

Over the past few months, I have had many discussions with Tourism and Hospitality operators who wanted to know about what my business Untanglemyweb.com was all about. I noticed that after a while, one of the major reocurring theme that I used was “keyword optimisation”. Now, this word is part of us online marketer’s daily vocabulary. However, it can seem pretty scary to your local, small and medium tourism operator or manager… “Fabienne, can you please use plain English” is one of the response I often get! What I do is I give them a few examples and it relaxes the tense atmosphere straight away and the conversation can resume.

Now, I have done a few searches on “tourism keywords” and related, well, keywords on Google and I could not find a post in “plain English” illustrating it for the Tourism and Hospitality industry.

Since it is Indy weekend on the Gold Coast, that the sun is shining and that I have nothing better to do than work on the business, I thought I would take an hour break and set up a case study on keyword generation for the hospitality industry. As you would have noticed, I have started to develop a taste for Bed & Breakfasts (or B&B, bed and breakfasts - as you want it!) so it seemed natural to use them as an example.

I am a bed and breakfast owner and want to increase my rankings on Google….

Background: Let’s pretend I am about to get my website designed. I have found the Bed and Breakfast and Farmstay Queensland website www.bbfq.com.au and I quite like it. Let’s go then!

1) don’t reinvent the wheel, look at what your competitors and industry associations have done: in your browser, explore the “view source” option. Open the www.bbfq.com.au website, and look for the “source code”. In Firefox, its under Edit –> Page source. A window will open with some rather odd looking characters and text, this is normal and its called HTML. What you are after is located in the very top. Look below in the image for the text highlighted in green. This is what you are after. What this actually is the main keywords defined by Bed and Breakfast and Farmstay Queensland.

Is your brain a thesaurus? Had you thought about all these keywords for bed and breakfast? Start a list, write them down, repeat this step with other bed and breakfast websites you would have found on Google, add your own and lets go to point 2)

2) There are specific keyword research tools that exist to help you find keywords. One that is very simple but free is www.thesaurus.com. You then are looking at specific search marketing tools like www.wordtracker.com. They are very powerful but might be a bit too daunting for the small and medium tourism business owner. One that I particularly like is http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/#kw . For the term b&b under Google Synonyms it gives me

Play around with a bit with all the bed and breakfast keywords you have found in 1). Is your list growing? Make sure that you add phrases and swap word positions: eg. gold coast bed and breakfast, b&b gold coast, romantic bed and breakfast, romantic bed&breakfast.

3) Onto more serious things now. This is overture’s tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and Google’s very own keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

If you look at the image below, you will see that I asked Google keyword tool to tell me what keywords were used in the www.bbfq.com.au site. Don’t worry too much about the gauges for now, but if you would like more start educating yourself and read about keyword optimisation. Or contact us!

Once these exported in a text file, I got this:

accommodation gold coast
accommodation nsw
accomodation gold coast
australian bed and breakfast
b &
b&b accommodation
b&b queensland
b&b’s
barn bed and breakfast
beach accommodation
beach holidays
bed & breakfast
bed & breakfast accommodation
bed & breakfast queensland
bed and breakfast accommodation
bed and breakfast association
bed and breakfast barossa
bed and breakfast bondi
bed and breakfast brisbane
bed and breakfast deals
bed and breakfast inn
bed and breakfast nsw
bed and breakfast queensland
bed and breakfast vic
bed and breakfasts
bed and breakfasts queensland
brisbane b&b
brisbane hotel
cairns
cairns accommodation
cairns accommodation specials
cairns bed and breakfast
cairns hotel
cairns hotel accommodation
cairns hotels
cairns wedding
cheap accommodation cairns
cheap bed and breakfast
darwin b&b
darwin bed and breakfast
daylesford bed and breakfast
farm accommodation
farm accommodation queensland
farm cottage holidays
farm cottages
farm holidays
farm stay
farm stay brisbane
farm stay gold coast
farm stay qld
farm stay queensland
farm stays
farm stays brisbane
farmholidays
farmstay
farmstay accomodation
farmstay brisbane
farmstay gold coast
farmstay holidays
farmstay nsw
farmstay qld
farmstay queensland
farmstay south east queensland
farmstay warwick
farmstays
farmstays nsw
farmstays queensland
gold coast holidays
gold coast hotels
great barrier reef
guesthouse
maleny farmstay
mooloolaba
mooloolaba accommodation
outback
qld accommodation
qld bed and breakfast
queensland accommodation
queensland bed breakfast
queensland farm stays
queensland outback
romantic accommodation
scone b&b
scone bed and breakfast
sunshine coast
sunshine coast accommodation
toowoomba b&b
tractor qld
whittlesea bed and breakfast
working farm holidays
working farm stays

Are you starting to get the picture??? Now you can thesaurus each of these new keywords… and get more!

4) now that you have all these great keywords, you need to make sure you use them in your site. Choose the most appropriate ones for each page of your site (different ones to summarise the content), the keyword and description tags in the source code, your blogposts and content… Touch base with your web developer and search engine optimiser and ask them to optimise your site based on these keywords! After all, it is YOUR industry. Give the IT professionals as much info as you can about it and by working hand in hand you will be able to rank higher in Google and drive more traffic, and hopefully bookings to your site!

How do you know if your traffic has increased? Read my post about website analytics!

I spend most of last week travelling around the Whitsunday islands in Queensland, Australia. My incredible husband surprised me with organising it all. All I was given is a list of items to bring. I did not know where we were going, did not even know we had to catch a plane. Now just imagine how scary that is to the tourism professional that I am.

We stayed in Airlie beach, at one of the largest backpackers called Magnum. Backpacking is Australia is not what it used to be in my young (!) days. No more searching for staff member that has gone surfing when you arrive. You are now welcomed almost 24×7 by name-tagged staff in a larger than life reception with the latest computers, broadband and booking systems. They even wear staff uniforms. If you are lucky you will even be given a swipe (yes swipe) card to open your room. Backpacking is an industry. The biggest by far in Airlie Beach. Hostels owners make a mint trust me. When I asked for “industry rate” I was told “we don’t do such thing, we are just a backpackers and you would understand that we cannot afford to offer discounts”. Just a backpackers….Basic service: shared bathroom, no duvet but just one sheet, not much cleaning requirements and all that @ 60 dollars a night for a double room. Time it by approximately 100 and you start getting the picture!

On top of that, backpackers act as booking agents for tours. Another very good income trust me! Especially when a daytour costs minimum $100… Talking about daytours, this is me in a helicopter being whisked off to Whiteheaven beach on a surprise picnic trip…

Another thing is the food. Backpackers used to rhyme with cheap feeds. Now, a plate of pasta will set you back minimum $15… The best I have seen is packets of cereals being itemised in small transparent plastic containers where a few of your favourite corn flakes will cost you $3 dollars… Clever isn’t it? Just add the milk (another dollar? that’s unless you are the “organic” backpacker and want soy… thats another $2 thank you very much!)

These guys have understood it all. Online marketing is key in the backpacking industry as their target market (the average backpacker, between 16 and 40+) is, just like me, an Internet baby.

How is your business telling all these rich backpackers what’s on offer behind your door?

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!

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….