How can you ensure your  business remains ahead of your competition as worldwide tourism growth is slowing down?
It's not difficult, but you need to take time to think and plan.

In my discussions with visitors, tourism operators, inbound operators, wholesalers, RTO’s, Tourism New Zealand and from the international research I’ve done, these are the trends I see for the coming year(s).

• Product development trends
  • The types of products that visitors are looking for are authentic, personalised experiences. This is something that especially smaller businesses can offer as they are often owner-operated. The passion these operators have for their product shines through. Large businesses get bigger and in the process they tend to lose their personal touch.
  • Multi-day experiences or packages.
  • Off the beaten track and rural experiences
  • Wellness experiences
  • Development of products for niche markets
  • Environmentally sustainable experiences.

• ​Personalisation. There’s a shift back to personal interaction with customers. Sure, social media will remain important, but visitors want to get immersed in the local culture and people.
• Focus on the customer experience every step of the way. There are some businesses that are really good at marketing themselves, but they don’t deliver what they promise. In this day and age of online reviews, these companies will suffer. The businesses that go the extra mile, focus on delivering an exceptional experience throughout the sales funnel, are the ones who will thrive. Training your staff and having great systems is part of delivering a consistently amazing customer experience.
• Customer retention. This goes hand in hand with customer experience and product development. What new product or experience can you offer past customers, what do you do you to keep in touch with them?
• Content marketing. Focus on quality and uniqueness in whatever you do! Don’t post of social media for the sake of it, only post high quality content. Developing a good content strategy will provide more relevant information to your customers, will personalise your experience more and will help you with Search Engine Optimisation.
  • Long form content is on the rise. Rather than short snippets of information, write more in-depth stories, or produce a longer video with more detailed information on a topic. Video holds prospective customers’ attention in a way that photos and text don’t.
• Social media will remain important, but do write regular blog post on your website. This is the only content you ‘own’. You can’t control what happens on social media platforms; they change the ‘rules’ all the time. Instagram and Linkedin are the platforms that are growing fastest.
• Co-operative marketing. I’m a great advocate of businesses working together as many businesses in New Zealand are small and the overheads can be high. By developing and marketing products together, while retaining your businesses 'personality', all involved will benefit.

To operate a successful tourism business, it's important to take time out and work ON your business.
Planning, executing, learning, reading. If you make this a habit, and set a specific time each week to work on this, I can guarantee you that your business will benefit.

If you need help improving your capability, do check out our:

• Tourism Business Success Programme and
  
• Agritourism Success Programme

Have a good rest of your week!
Kind regards, Marijke

Where do the images you have on your website, or the ones you distribute to other websites, agents, media etc. end up? 

It can be useful to know this for several reasons:

• ​You may want to ensure the images is accurately credited to you
• You may want to ensure it's used to promote your business (and not 'illegally' used)
• You may want to update the image with a more current one
• If it's used for media articles, you can then link to that article on your website (on your media, news or blog page.

To find out where your images are used, use Google image search. Here's how:

1. Go to Google Images.

2. Click on the little camera icon in the search bar.

3. You can either paste the image URL, or click "Upload an image" and upload the relevant image.

4. The search results will appear - scroll down the page a bit to see on what website they appear.

PRO tip: do rename your images with keywords before uploading them onto your website. This is great for your search results. Simply right click the image, click 'Rename', then rename it and save.

Till next time, Marijke

The key to achieve tourism distribution success is not rocket science, but it does take a bit of work. The key is to spread your distribution and risk and not put all your eggs in one basket. 

A few years ago I had a client come to me who said he’d lost 45% of his business. The reason: he received 45% of his bookings from one supplier, who decided to go into competition with him.

Your online (and offline) visibility is essential so that your potential customers learn about you when they’re planning their holiday. A well thought-through distribution strategy is therefore essential.

Successful businesses spread their distribution by selling their products through:

• Inbound operators and wholesalers: work with a range of inbound operators and wholesalers rather than everything through one.
• Online Travel Agents: OTA’s are a good way to increase your online visibility, but don’t give them your complete inventory.
• Local booking centres, accommodations and i-sites: especially activities are sold through local booking centres. Ensure they know your products and encourage famils.
• Direct booking through your own website: this is what we all want as we don’t have to pay commission. The key is to have a great website with an online booking system that is optimised for search engines, has great content, is fast and updated regularly
• Direct marketing: this includes your email marketing & social media strategies. Keep in touch with your past and potential customers through a direct marketing and content strategy.

All of the above requires you to set some time aside to work on your distribution strategy – along with the rest of your business’s marketing strategy.

Set specific goals of what you want to achieve and get into the habit of spending a few hours each week – preferably the same day/time - to work ON your business. You will achieve the things you set out to do and build a successful business.

If you need help with this, consider getting a coach or join one of our tourism business success programmes. (note: the next Tourism Business Success Programme starts next week on the 29th of August 2019 - register now!) 

If you use Instagram for your business,  you will have noticed that the number of likes of a post is no longer showing. Why is this?

It’s part of a trial carried out in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Brazil to remove the pressure on how many likes a post received.  Instagram says: “We want your followers to focus on what you share, not on how many likes your post gets. During this test, only you will be able to see the total number on your posts”.

Yeah, right! Instagram is in it to make money. By removing this feature, brands and influencers will be forced to spend more money on boosting posts and advertising. 

A decrease in post likes has already been observed by many operators. Have you noticed this?

Social media is an important marketing tool for tourism businesses, but also one that you don’t have any control over.  And that's a risk.

So what can you do about it?
If you are too reliant on one type of marketing or distribution, I’d advise you to start thinking about spreading your risk. The reason is that if one supplier, or social media platform, Online Travel Agency or wholesaler falls over or changes the way they work with you, you don’t want that to affect your entire business.

A diversified marketing strategy that spreads the risk is the way to go. Especially now that tourism is softening, it’s time to work smarter and plan strategically for the next few years.
What are you doing in terms of local, domestic and international distribution, content marketing, digital marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, partnering with other businesses? Are you keeping up with marketing trends? Do you have sound marketing systems? 

Winter is a good time to work ON your business and the businesses that do this will grow compared with businesses that are complacent. I’ve seen this over and over!

So, set some time aside to work on your business so you can focus on your planning. Go off-site for a few days or join the Tourism Business Success Programme if you need help. Next start: 29th August 2019 in Queenstown, NZ.

Cheers, Marijke

Last month, I met with the Australia/NZ Sales Manager of Tripadvisor in Australia. He mentioned that the key to ranking high on Tripadvisor is:

• Quality of reviews
• Quantity of reviews
• Recency of reviews

I’ll come back to the quality of reviews in a minute.

Quantity of reviews
With regards to quantity of reviews; there are more and more tools out there that send automated emails to every customer encouraging them to write a review. You can also create a miniposter or sheet with a QR code linking directly to your review page. You can hang this in your reception, in your transport van or put it in an in-room compendium. Or you can send them an email with the link to your Tripadvisor review page yourself.

Recency of reviews
These tools also address the ‘recency’ of reviews. If your last review is several months old, Tripadvisor doesn’t rank you as high as they rate the reviews as less relevant.

Now, that’s all good, but what do businesses have in common that are at the top of review sites? And not just Tripadvisor, also Google Reviews, Airbnb reviews, Online Travel Agency reviews etc.

Quality of reviews!
The ‘quality’ of reviews is the most important factor and they don’t just happen by accident. People mostly write reviews if they've had a good experience and they're happy to spread the word for you. 

From my own experience in working with high-ranking businesses, here's what these operators have in common:

• They are passionate about their business and are committed to providing their customers with an amazing experience! They strive for excellence. 
• They take time to  work ON their business  and regularly up-skill, set goals and work on their business and marketing planning.
• The staff they hire are smart, warm, genuine, caring, team players and good at ‘connecting’ with customers. They look after their staff and train them; they have systems in place to ensure the customer experience is consistently great. I always say: hire for personality, train the skill!
• They focus on the customer and take time to personalise the experience and go the extra mile. They provide little extras, unexpected little surprises that delights their customers. I recently stayed in a hotel that provided a free minibar, a free breakfast, a free ‘snack bag’ in the room, free happy hour and lots of other extras that other hotels don’t provide. The welcome at reception was warm, personal, the staff took their time and were very friendly and helpful. 
  ​The rooms themselves where nice, but not exceptional. BUT, due to the lovely experience, it’s no surprise they are number 1 on Tripadvisor of 187 hotels in Brisbane.
• Their Tripadvisor (or other review site) listing is up to date and contains clear information on the products, highlights points of difference and has many photos, both from the operator as from the customers.
• They respond to reviews with individual responses. (click here to read how to respond to negative reviews)
• Many people will visit their website after having looked at Tripadvisor. These high ranking operators also have a great website with quality content that provides relevant content to their customers about their product, the area, themselves, social media feeds and online booking options. It's all part of providing a good experience!

So, have a look at your Tripadvisor reviews and research those of high-ranking operators. What can you learn from it?