When it comes to digital marketing and management in today’s tourism industry, companies have to face an enormous challenge to break into the travel market segment and fight against the traditional ways of selling a tourist experience: going from the radio and television, and expand to other channels in order to obtain visibility, particularly the internet, whether this represents social media or online platforms.
Tourism Review presents the main trends and key elements to ensure a good digital marketing strategy in your tourism business:
Design simple travel apps for visibility and positioning
Given the boom of apps and their usefulness in smartphones, we are talking about getting a hold of the Millennials and Generation X markets with a remarkable reach, offering advantages for the traveler and the common tourist. Developing simple applications that display lists for accommodations and redirect to your establishment, as well as restaurant services, maps, and travel tips would be the key to maintain a quality application and prevent the user from deleting the app after using it once.
Positioning the business idea in ‘Google My Business’
Google as a search engine where users can access thousands of search results related to travel and tourism, allows the option of guiding the user to offer recommendations, ratings, and rate places, experiences, plans, share photos, and comments. It also gives small businesses that recently entered the tourism sector the possibility to “exist” among the various options that the Internet has to offer.
Social media as a window of the company to the world
Just as search engines such as the above-mentioned Google, social media like Instagram, Facebook, or messaging services like WhatsApp, make advertising easier and with a greater exponential reach in the future than that of radio or TV. With just a click or a tap, users interested in the world of tourism can browse through an ocean of recommendations, and in the same way, contribute themselves to nourish experiences from the world of travel. Other platforms such as TripAdvisor, Twitter, and Pinterest allow a shorter-scale study of travel trends, and in that sense, to assess the preferences of users when it comes to starting an adventure to an unknown destination. Discovering new hotels, holiday activities, attractions, and good restaurants are one of the main goals of the digital marketing strategy of any company when recommending a place.
The power of influencers
Added to an excellent campaign of contents and recommendations in social media, influencers (as opinion leaders) are a fundamental tool to establish trends in the tourism market with respect to digital marketing. Their recommendations and posts in various social media and blogs make it possible for marketing campaigns to have a higher reach and, therefore, allow the positioning of your digital business to grow or not. Influencers are ideal for improving visibility, loyalty, and sales increase strategies.
Highlighting information of interest through email marketing
Although email is seen as obsolete in terms of advertising and marketing, it ends up being quite useful as long as helpful information is shared, adding details of promotions and favorite destinations for vacations and holiday seasons.
Once you have established a database of registered customers in your digital business, it will be of utmost importance to share recommendations and information of interest, such as “the best towns to...”, “the best restaurants of...”, or “top 10 places to visit...”, are a few examples of content you can add in short emails that customers see as commercial treats and invite them to action.
Email, as a tool that allows direct contact with the customer for commercial purposes, should be used consciously to avoid causing discomfort or invading privacy. Once databases and subscribers increase over time, it is advisable to enhance this communication channel in the future through advertising or promotions strategies with the goal of increasing loyalty and presence in the market.
Blogs of traveling experiences
Production of natural and colorful content in social media is the perfect way to portray an image of how digital marketing works in tourism. Telling experiences on microblogging platforms such as Twitter or exploring different narratives can lead to a good amount of traffic through valuable information that generates positive references.
The added value of blogs is that they are not intrusive, but have a persuasive nature when people reach them through keywords or references from specific social circles. The success of a blog is determined by two things: dedication and time.
There’s no doubt that the tourism sector is an industry with infinite opportunities to prosper through digital media. Whether it is travel for recreational, educational or business purposes. Nowadays, travelers spend a good part of their time looking for references, offers on destinations, hotels, parks, activities, etc...
Always keep in mind...
In addition to the above tips, it is highly recommended to work on positioning strategies through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing), so that as a small company or business, you can perform well in the management of keywords and featured snippets as techniques for correct positioning on the web.
In the same way, keep in mind that social media reflect the image and perspective of a company and, while it can increase the popularity and prestige of a business over time, it could also destroy it completely in a second. Social media marketing is vital considering that these interactive platforms have millions of active users on a monthly basis and offer many opportunities to connect with people beyond commercial settings.
Tourism companies must choose the most appropriate channels to develop their strategies while considering the type of content they plan to create and considering video marketing, making the most of stories rather than traditional commercials, and even correctly identifying the segment of the target audience for their digital marketing campaign by age, socioeconomic status, or interests.
Lastly, we must not forget the voice of the tourist. Remember that this is the opinion of your customer and our image in front of the competition, the one who recommends and rates according to their experience.