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

What are your web plans for 2009

With the travel marketing been tight in 2009 it pays to think about your marketing strategy and in particular your online presence.

Some things to consider are:

a) Do you know how your customers find you?

b) Is your website working for you?

c) Can customers book on your website and receive immediate confirmation? Or are you still doing the email tag - with customers booking more last minute accommodation you will be missing out to your competitors who have instant confirmation.

d) If you sell other tours - why not sell them online when customers book your own travel product. Or include a summary of ideas and suggestions for booking with your email confirmation. 

e) Do you have an email newsletter or blog yet?

f) Can you update your website easily?

g) Are you using PPC (pay per click) advertising? Are you paying too much per click? Or paying for irrelevant clicks or missing out on clicks with the wrong key words?

There is a lot more but these are just some of the simplest things you can do to improve your online performance in 2009.

Rainbow Tourism can assist you with managing your online presence as we have a large number of partners who offer great value for money. Contact us and we can give you some ideas and quote for different services we can offer you.

Good ideas from Google and Webmaster Tools

The following post from Google is an example of some quick tips for to check how to make your website work better in google and other search engines.

Quick and easy tips for the holiday rush

There is some great tips in there in particular the tip to check how your website looks in other browsers is important. You can check what browser your visitors are using in your website statistics.

Here are some other thoughts if you are using google analytics then you can create a segment view for each browser type. This is very helpful as it can alert you to potential problems with browsers.

One simple things you could do is to sign up and review your site in the key web search engines - these provide tools for problem urls and give you clues to fix up problems and put in appropriate redirects.

• Google webmaster 
• Live Search Webmaster 
• Yahoo Site Explorer

The above three are the key search engines - you may want to also identify other specifically targeted sites of interest to your business.

This is something that a good SEO specialist will do but once set up is something you should be able to manage simply and easily - contact us for more help.

Customer Service - the tale of two phone companies

Last week I received two phone bills. One from Vodafone as expected and one from Optus not expected. The way the companies handled the matter is an example of how to win a customer loyalty and how not to.

I had reason to call both companies. 

In the case of Vodafone I had a small query on a 90cent charge. The women like me was puzzled about how the charge occured but with some work she identified what she thought the problem was. She then tested this theory by replicating the action. She then waited 24 hours to check billing and sure enough there was the charge. She contacted me again and confirmed the reason for the charge and credited the charge from the message before. 

All I can say it was fantastic customer service and while the amount was small in portion to my total account it showed a company willing to investigate even the smallest error.

In contrast I called Optus and had three very unpleasant phone conversations which resulted in a formal complaint.  Basically this experience was a reminder of my experience back in January 2008 resulting in moving the service in October 2008.

After speaking with two different people the end result was a formal complaint as they refused to investigate the issue but kept insisting I hadn't been disconnected when in fact the service had been disconnected in late October 2008. However what was interesting was that the service had sometime between late November and now been reconnected without my knowledge. Optus didn't seem to care or wish to investigate this issue.

The end result was the filing of a formal complaint to Optus. As previously no response to the email was received I called them the next day to confirm receipt but was told that this wasn't on file yet and to check in another day. On discussing with the person managing the call it became clear that the earlier discussions were not documented correctly but rather were documented with what Optus wanted to believe happened. 

I also asked why instead of transferring me to another department they couldn't send an email to the other department and call me back. I was told that this wasn't possible - the department couldn't call out. This seems to be a common practice of phone companies and other large companies to assume that their time is more valuable than the customers and so refuse to call to their customers but insist you be placed on hold.

End result: Bad customer experience  - sufficient to say Optus should be avoided in Australia. If you are looking for a cheaper option Engin Naked ADSL provides a great value service.

Lessons for a business from this:

a) Listen to the customer. Sometimes the customer may rant but that is okay. You don't need to listen to abuse but do allow the customer to express their feelings and emotions if necessary - remember you have come in at the end of the process.

b) Check what the issue is. It may not be what you think it is.

c) Agree with the customer what the issue is - say something like so you are concerned about xyz. Is that correct?

d) If things get heated not call the customer "uncooperative". Take a deep breath and ask what do you want to do about this?

e) Once agreement on the issue is identified then start looking for a solution - in some cases if you don't have an immediate solution the best option is to offer to investigate and call back later.

e) Agree timeframes  and means to follow up - does the customer have email - get their details and email them what was discussed so they have a copy.

g) Action and followup.

When things go wrong!

At 7:15am the phone rang and a message was left from Jucy rentals.

I missed the call by seconds and checked the voicemail to find a booking we had made for a client had been cancelled and so there was no car ready for them so you can imagine my first reaction on realising in the peak season a clients holiday might be ruined.

The good news is it wasn't and highlights how things can be fixed.

So what happened next highlights how a potential holiday disaster can be turned around when good customer service kicks in.

Jucy found a vehicle at their airport depot and put our clients into a taxi (they got the taxi to agree to a $30 rate instead of $70) and so they got away quickly.

From our end I contacted the guys at Baystay B&B to give them a welcome drink of wine or other treat.

We also credited them for a wine tour to apologise for the inconvenience

In the end the clients got the rental car with some inconvenience and got away on their holiday.

Thanks Jucy Rental for having such great customer service.

The last bit which will happen over the next week is we will trace back through the system to see what went wrong with the booking and put in place systems to stop this happening again.

As always when things go wrong it pays to sort out the customer first then work out what went wrong afterwards to avoid the situation repeating again.

Travel review sites

When you mention to travel businesses, sites such as Trip Advisor, most small businesses haven't give too much thought about the review site - or if they have they have a negative perception.

One of the best things that any travel business can do is encourage feedback.

However if you intend to do nothing with the feedback then don't bother.

The reasons to seek feedback are:

• Find out what things are working well
• What things are not working well
• Identify possible new services you could provide
• Give you a good basis to assess how your are meeting your business expectations for service and quality.

What to do with feedback:

• Collate it into a database
• Look for the good points and bad points
• If you have contact details for the feedback thank the guest for the feedback.
• If the guest provides negative feedback acknowledge this, thank them for the information and that you intend to fix the issue. 
• If you promise to fix the issue make sure you do!

Should you encourage feedback on online forums:

YES

Simply put you want to encourage feedback on the various online forums as the more feedback the better. Ideally you want to encourage guests to comment to you directly on any negative issues and to put their general feedback on line. If you do get negative criticism on a website, review the comments and if you are able feel free to add a comment. Just don't be defensive, rather be open and if there is a real issue acknowledge and state what you are doing to fix it.

If you want assistance on managing review sites why not contact us as we can assist you with a full audit of your web presence and give you some simple tools on how to manage your wider web presence.

How to annoy a potential customer

Just over two years ago I opened an account with Regfly.com to enable a transfer of a domain name to our business.

Once the transfer was completed I moved the domain name to our registry.

After this transfer I received no further emails from Regfly.com then this last two months I received two emails from them saying how they appreciated my business.

Thinking I might have left a domain on their service by mistake I checked but found none. I thought I should close the account so that I didn't get any further emails.

However this proved impossible and I was told by their tech support that this couldn't be done.

So what lessons does this hold for how you treat your customers:

• If you haven't had contact with customers (or previous customers) on your database don't assume they will want to hear from you.
• Ensure you provide a means to opt out of your system and if they ask to be removed from your system simply do it. 
• In every email communication offer a simple means to be removed from your system. It should be a one click system ideally
• The longer the gap in communication the more likely the person won't remember dealing with you.
• Of course this rule applies not only to emails but phone, fax and postal communications.

Have you any experiences like this to share? Feel free to comment below.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you have a website or a blog then you should sign up for Google Webmaster tools.

This service is provided free of charge by google and will show you how details about your website, google indexing of it, keywords been used to find your website on google and more - it also shows a lot more information and can help you tidy up descriptions and titles.

Google also runs a blog - Google Webmaster Central Blog - this gives you information on new products.

Of course if you don't have time that is when you can employ an SEO expert to do this for you.

Ideally if you do employ an SEO company for you they will set google webmaster tools and analytics for you plust much more.

Don't Panic - SNAFU - Emails

The words "Don't Panic" are printed in large friendly letters on the cover of the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

From Wikipedia:

Arthur C. Clarke said Douglas Adams' use of "don't panic" was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity.

So what does this have to do with SNAFU - "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up" and what does this have to do with Emails.

Emails are a great bit tool but sometimes they can cause a lot of communication problems and result in a SNAFU.

When tensions increase in the email STOP sending emails. Ideally give the person a call or if you are in the same office go and talk to them face to face!

Some recent examples of emails which have caused problems:

Example one: SNAFU = Loss of business referral.

A request for a small credit. 

The response was that the amount was so small that they wouldn't credit. The writer then went on to explain in great detail why the charge should stand. This resulted in a further exchange of emails between ourselves and the other company. In the end we stopped emailing them as it was clear they missed the concerns we had and the amount of time wasted on the emails over 10+ was not worth our effort.

End result - we removed our weblinks and recommendations for this company.

How we could have achieved a better outcome - phone them and discuss the issue when it became clear they had misunderstood our concerns. How they could have handled it better. Not insulted us with our request is a waste of time response as their first comment then spent the rest of the time actively defensively.

Example two: Almost a SNAFU

A tourist requested a booking which was confirmed. They then emailed about other dates. We confirmed all options and then after the dates were finalised confirmed back to them what was booked. 

End result  - SNAFU avoided as potentially with so many dates the customer could have ended up thinking we had booked different dates.

However we could have done it better. We should have called the client earlier to confirm what they actually wanted and what options they were looking for - i.e. if we had been a bit more proactive we could have gathered all the information in one phone call rather than 10+ emails.

Google Chrome - check your website stats

While you may be happy using Internet Explorer the launch of Google Chrome is a good time as any to check out how your website looks with a different browser.

You can be sure now that with the growth of Firefox and now the launch of Google Chrome that more and more visitors to your website will be using something other than Internet Explorer.

It is important to check as sometimes different browsers will result in code displaying differently. For example on Rainbow Tourism there is a minor difference on how Internet Explorer displays our site versus Google Chrome and even a difference between Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 3.0

You can always find out how your visitors check your web statistic reports. Our own statistics show that 68% of our visitors currently use internet explorer, 22% firefox, 8% safari, 1% opera and we have  other browsers listed.

I suspect in a month or two that google chrome will have gained a small share at the expense of both firefox and internet explorer but it will also mean people will be more willing to switch browsers.

So why do I need to have more browsers on my desktop - the key reason is to check that your website functions as you expect it to - if it isn't get your webdesigner to fix and make your website code friendly to all browsers.

Social Media - What is it?

The following presentation explains very simply what social media is and how you can use it to market your business and why you can't ignore it.

| View | Upload your own

Email Newsletters - Permission Based Marketing

Email newsletters are a great way to connect with your clients.

Below are some tips we follow at Rainbow Tourism with our email newsletter to ensure we always obtain permission to send the email.

Subscriptions from our website
On our website we have a link on every page to our newsletter page. From this page we offer the visitor the chance to view our newsletters from our archives. We also offer three ways to sign up to our newsletter from this page.

1. Via our constant contact email program we use.
2. Via RSS using feedburner to subscribe to our newsletter blog.
   
3. Via Feedburners email subscription option for updates on our newsletter blog.

This way the user is in full control of how and when they read our newsletter.

Subscriptions from our blog
Just like our newsletter page our main blog has subscription options to sign up to our blog and to our email newsletter.

Subscriptions from bookings
Every time someone makes a reservation on our website we ask them if they want to subscribe to our newsletter. Again we only add those that give us permission.

Offline subscriptions
At gay and lesbian fairs and other events we have sign up forms which seek permission to go on our newsletter list.

These are some of the potential ways you can increase your email distribution list.

One of the important things to remember is to go for quality NOT quantity. You want an active readership not one which just deletes your email.

Finally there is a lot of email delivery options from free to paid. We have found Constant Contact to be one of the better ones for ease of delivery. If you are interested in giving it a free 60 day trial and also want a $30 credit let us know as can refer you and both of us receive a $30 credit.

If you have any ideas for email newsletters or want some assistance in writing and managing your email newsletter contact us.

Sponsorship

When you are in business you will often be asked to offer sponsorships of various kinds.

Sponsorship can be a rewarding option to promote your business but you have to be very clear of what you want to achieve.

Depending on the organisation they may have a plan of what they can offer but in some cases they may not.

So how do you evaluate a sponsorship - you have to be hard nosed and asked what does our business get from this.

Ask for what you need as a business - you are after all putting money into the organisation.

The bottom line is you should be comfortable with the organisation and the end result should be a win / win situation for both your business and the organisation your are sponsoring.

Housekeeping - Audit your business

Ideally once a year you should do an audit of your business.

Be critical and ask questions such as:

• Is the business on track financially?
• Are you achieving your objectives that you intended?
• Is there parts of the business which need focus?
• Are there opportunities which you haven't been able to capitalise on?
• What is holding your business back?
• Do you have the skills to take the business to the next level?
• Should you sell some or all the business?

Finally make sure you ask are you enjoying what you are doing?

This should be a frank and open discussion with your staff and business colleagues and will involve reviewing feedback from customers and other people.

Your should also include in this your personal friends and partner.

With this information make a decision about where you are going and where you want to be in a year, two years or more.

We have been doing this at Rainbow Tourism as we realised we need to focus on our core gay and lesbian business and also need further funds to make it grow. We have decided as part of this review to sell a large number of domains which were used in previous businesses and also sell the Pink Pages.

These decisions are never easy as you can always see the potential but ultimately you have to make a decision of where to focus ones energy.

So when did you last do a business audit?