PeacockTourism.com

The new home of Peacock Tourism Marketing and its associated blogs is PeacockTourism.com.

Digital Marketing Channels and Your Branding

Due to the fast way in which the Internet is evolving, there is now a plethora of digital channels which can be used to hold a dialogue between a brand and a consumer, for example, between your hotel and your future or repeat guests.

The Cluetrain Manifesto written by four visionaries in 1999 (which is now a very long time ago) predicted the Internet would evolve to a point where the consumer holds the "power" and no longer could the corporate world continue to communicate to their markets (the people they wish to interact with) in a push marketing or broadcast manner. How right they were.

The internet has evolved and people/consumers can now be very selective about which brands they choose to interact with; and have the ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings globally. Such mediums on the social web - including blogs, social networks, groups within social networks and video sites - can all be utilised by consumers.

“Travel planning is still one of the leading reasons consumers use these channels. If you want gays and lesbians to find your hotel, attraction, event or tour when they are planning their holidays, you better be going digital,” says gay tourism marketing specialist Dee Farrell.

Ïf you need to assess your online marketing strategy in terms of reaching the gay market, hire an expert to fine tune your campaign and then hirë a content creator to contribute to the blogs, video channels and Facebook and Twitter accounts you’ve established.” Dee@PeacockTourism.com.

Edited from Wikipedia and comments by a Digital Marketing Maven

Creating Events Creates Tourism: Tasmanian Case Study

Tourism operators and community leaders have banded together in Tasmania to create a big revenue generator across the state. The highly successful, 16-day TASPride festival repeats itself in November, and it should not be overlooked as a marketing campaign tactic.

Other regions of the country, and other countries with tourism operators eager to participate in events reaching the gay and lesbian travel market, please take note.

TasPride Festival - 31 Oct. -Nov. 15 2009

The biggest celebration of 2009 for the GLBTI community in Tasmania will be taking place right across the state for two weeks from Saturday 31 October to Sunday 15 November. This is a great period for revisiting (or trying Tassie for the first time) the great state of Tassie. This year the program will include touring options, sample itineraries and special offers for the GLBTI community visiting their shores.

Don’t miss out on the TasPride parties, including the legendary opening night Halloween Party, the film festival, cultural celebrations, live music, theatre and cabaret, community events, the family day picnic - to name a few!

If you're a tourism operator with accommodation, tours, outdoor trips or other, and you or your travel industry association want help in planning an event that gains traction with the lucrative gay travel marketing, go to the experts at Peacock Tourism Marketing. They have tons of experience in both Australia and North America.

What Every Tourism Operator Needs

It's not too late to be up and running with a re-imagined website, accompanying blog, maybe a brand marketing video by the end of the year.

In Part I of an article titled What Every Tourism Operator Needs, you'll learn the first steps to a successful marketing strategy. There are way too many bad websites for good hotels and too many who don't have a blog yet!

By the time you're ready for Part 2: Essentials of Social Media Marketing, you should at least be familiar with the latest marketing channels, Facebook and Twitter. Don't worry, we can walk you through the process and make your staff experts in a jiffy.

Tourism Operators Need Marketing Help - and it has to be savvy as well as a smart value. That's what Peacock Tourism Marketing delivers. A long, accurate drive down the marketing fairway.

Are you connecting with you customers?

With the economy still slow and travel even slower are you taking the opportunities offered by the internet to engage your existing and potential customers?

• Are you engaging with your customers?
• Do you have a twitter account?
• Are you checking for reviews on your business?
• Do you actively seek reviews?
• Are you on facebook?
• Do you have a mailing list?
• Privacy policy on your website?
• Links to things to do from your website?
• A secure booking system?
• Youtube account?
• Using google ads?
• Using yahoo ads?
• Engaging with local travel media for reviews?

While money is tight all of the above things you can do for a small cost.

Rainbow Tourism can assist you with any of these and you will be suprised at how little this costs. Contact us now.

If you want reviews of any services let me know in the comment section.

Sales Channels Matter

An interesting item in the April Seekom newsletter highlights some interesting research results presented at the No Vacancy conference in Sydney.

Some very interesting statistics were provided by Hitwise and Expedia. Hitwise provided figures showing that approximately 70% of all accommodation bookings are made via an aggregator or sales channel, and 30% are made directly with the operator. This ratio is expected to reduce to 60:40 by 2010. Further, of those clients who book directly with a property, 75% found the property as a result of a search of sales channels. Expedia stated that for every booking they provide a property, on average a further 1.8 bookings will be made direct with the property after having been found by the client at Expedia.

These figures highlight 3 important facts:

• Sales channels play a huge part in helping your customers find you. They act as a search engine, however have a major advantage over Google in that they provide the customer an indication of availability.
  
• Bookings will not be made on your website if you cannot provide your customer with the same deal they found at the sales channel and provide them with instant confirmation. Failure to provide this will cause the customer to return to the website of the sales channel where they may, or may not, still elect to book your property.
  
• The more bookings you receive through your website as the result of having been found initially on the website of a sales channel effectively means you are paying your sales channels a lower commission rate than you may have realised.
  

This is something we know from the Rainbow Tourism business - we work on a higher ratio than 1.8 bookings for every booking from us. We know from our experience that if you are listed on the Rainbow Tourism website - which focuses on gay and lesbian travel you will receive at least 5 bookings for every booking we send you.  This ratio is even higher if you have a direct link form our website - which we now have a special US$100 offer .

So if you contact us to help you build your sales channels simply and easily.

Need more website visitors? easy trick to help.

I haven't made a post for a long while, as I have relocated from Tauranga New Zealand to San Diego California and married my Yank. So Hi Again :) if you remember I do SEO, or make websites findable in search engines.

All website names are fictitious, just for examples. and I don't know this area myself, so I'll probably say something wrong, but you should get the idea.

I have a quick easy tip to help your website rank better in search engine results without spending more than $20.

Lets say you would like to attract more international visitors, we'll say Americans, since I'm one now, I'm and expert on how they search :).

Most website names (domain names/urls) are the name of the business right... which is fair enough if it's a great big internationally known business, but often the business names, won't mean much to an American couple, looking for a place to stay near Sydney. Australia.

Say you have a lovely private bed and breakfast, in Edgecliff, which according to google maps is close to Bondi Beach in Sydney, and your website name, is www.koalaB&B.com.au or even KoalaHouse.com.au the chances of our America couple finding your lovely B&B is pretty slim right?

Did you know that a website can have more than one domain name? well your website can have several domain names...it your host allows it... now don't get rid of your original domain name, you want that for a quick easy domain name for business cards, and to tell people over the phone, but consider buying another good keywordy domain name, that is especially for search engines.

If you read the post I made back in Nov 07, you would know that Americans search for Bed and Breakfast rather thanB&B or the other options, read about in the reference at the end of this post. And the cheapest place I know to buy a .com domain name is godaddy.com.

now look at the words on your home page of your website, let’s say you have written you have a private bed and breakfast situated between bondi beach and syndey

So the red bold words are great keywords, so think about and what sort of domain name might suit, it doesn't matter if it's long or has hyphens, remember you aren't going to use this domain name for anything else, just to get people to your website nothing else.

Start searching for a secondary domain name at godaddy.com, they only cost $9.99 USD per year and when you have one you can live with buy it, and have your web designer park the name over your original domain name to your website

When thinking what words to use, think about the sort of thing, that someone that doesn’t know about your business, but would want to stay there or use your service, just might search for, like this one looks like it's available because it's so long.

www.bed-and-breakfast-near-bondi-beach-sydney.com

Now you might think this is overkill, but think about it, if this long name got you just 1 visitor that stayed for 1 night, once a year, it has paid for itself. And depending on what other words you have on your home page, a domain name like that would quite possibly get you many many visitors.

And lets face it, if it didn’t work at all, you have only lost less than $20, 2 tiny ads in the newspaper probably costs about that much.

Reference: What people from various countries search for when looking for a B&B,

http://tourismoperators.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-tell-if-your-seo-has-done-there.html

Cheers Lynny
lynny@canzdesign.com
SEO Services