Using the Internet

New technologies are bringing new opportunities for tourism businesses and a change in the way we approach visitor experiences.

Due mainly to the internet, radical changes are happening to the way you and your customers find each other and interact.

It’s called personalisation.

You can engage more personally with customers, while they now get to share their own thoughts about your product.

It’s also about different forms of delivery - not just web browsers but mobile phones, MP3 players, car navigation devices and hand-held wireless devices such as the BlackBerryTM.

Latest international research shows that 80% of tourists use the net to plan and organise their holidays. Travellers increasingly rely on fellow travellers rather than travel professionals for holiday suggestions and information.

New information technologies affect every step of the process in building, marketing and delivering visitor experiences so whether you’re a small owner-operator or a tourism business with multiple products you can make this work for you.

These webpages refer to the Tourism e-Kit on this website, a series of easy to use tutorials about online marketing for tourism operators.

Today, the digital age shapes every step in the development, marketing and delivery of visitor experiences. Here are some examples of how technology can contribute to the tourism business process.

Tourism product development

New business or product start-ups can take advantage of:

• web content management systems that allow people inexperienced with technology to edit website content without the need for computer programming skills
• web design geared to the online environment.

Marketing

Technology touches almost every aspect of marketing, including:

• Tourism Tasmania’s TigerTour database that provides the content for the http://www.discovertasmania.com website
• online advertising
• editorial and newsletters
• search engine marketing (also called Pay Per Click)
• RSS feeds, where users subscribe to a ‘feed’ for, typically, web page content such as notification of content updates
• email promotion
• word-of-mouth via social networks like blogs with customer reviews, communities such as the free Flickr photo sharing website and YouTube video sharing site, discussion groups
• promotional podcasts and vodcasts
• co-operative marketing such as the Huon Trail’s Tas4Adventure website campaign.

Booking systems

Latest research suggests that more than half those who travel book online when they have the option so it pays to have a real-time system for sales and reservations.

Delivery of visitor experiences

Tasmanian Royal Botanical Gardens use podcasts to enhance the visitor experience.

Tourism operators are using technology to:

• provide an initial experience on-line, for example, experience-driven web content or tasters delivered pre-trip by online audio podcast or video clips
• deliver audio tours for use on-site via MP3 players
• provide interpretation via mobile phones or handheld devices
• link customers to other experiences in your region, such as recommending other things to see or do on your website or as part of your tour or experience. In this way, you can help your customers understand how they can be part of a bigger visitor experience.

Building customer relationships and follow-up engagement

Technology is a great way to continue customer contact using:

• a contact database
• an electronic newsletter to help keep your brand and the visitor experiences you provide in people's minds
• group email lists for regular updates
• incentives or encouragement for customers to place reviews on travel sharing websites such as TripAdvisor
• customer email feedback that you can use to improve your product
• email-based customer satisfaction surveys.

Tutorials

See the Tourism e-kit for tutorials on:

• Content Management Systems [PDF 220KB]
• Online Marketing PDF - 209KB]
  
• Booking Systems [PDF 230KB]

What You Can Do

It doesn’t matter if you’re an owner-operator or have a small number of employees, you can still use the Internet to achieve better outcomes.

Do the ‘small stuff’ that makes a difference.

Update your entry on Tourism Tasmania’s TigerTOUR database

Update your entry on Tourism Tasmania’s TigerTOUR database at least once a year and provide quality images of your product. Your information is displayed free of charge on www.discovertasmania.com and eight Tasmanian regional websites as well as around 25 national websites via the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW). It is also published in the Travelways magazine.

Be an active blogger

Bring your product and your region to life by telling an authentic story. Reveal people, places and activities with words, photos, audio and video.

Use email to your advantage

Learn how to create PDF files that are easily attached to emails – PDF is an electronic format for storing and sending documents and ensures that the document you send looks exactly the same when read on someone else’s computer. You may need PDF creation software for your promotional documents, media releases, newsletters but it is available cheaply or can be downloaded free from the web.

Work towards building a complete online strategy

Start with an easy tutorial on Assessing your e-readiness [PDF 132KB]. This will take you from doing business with a simple, information-based website through to a complete approach incorporating a content management system with regular updates, search engine optimisation principles and an online booking system – all resulting in regular inquiries and bookings from your site.

Maintain your online presence

The following are easy ways to make the most of your online presence.

Keep information current

Nothing ruins a website quicker than old content so make sure you:

• regularly update your entry on Tourism Tasmania’s TigerTOUR database for www.discovertasmania.com
• review your site and remove out-of-date content
• add new content at least once a week, either relating to your product or local features of interest to your customers, such as events.

Make the most of your website

It’s no longer competitive to use your website simply as a business tool. Changing travel trends mean that, as a tourism business, you must have your website at the heart of what you do. This means you must:

• provide content that’s relevant, current and motivates visitors to choose your product
• structure your site in a user-friendly way, using clear titles and headings to guide users and using words your potential customers seek out optimise your site for search engines, with content that search engines can access, good links within the site, and use of keywords within content, these selected on the basis of research into what words your potential customers use to search the web
• make it easy for users to move from interest in your product to an online booking or sale.

See the tutorials on Critical components of optimising a website [PDF 476KB] and Keywords [PDF 317KB].

Consult the experts

Do what you can do best – write your web content, using your knowledge and experience. But unless you are skilled in current web processes and systems, it pays to get the assistance of a web professional. Get advice with this tutorial on Finding a good web professional [PDF 339KB].

Use email to your advantage There are many ways to start the visitor experience before your customers even leave home – and to continue reinforcing it after they return and encourage repeat visits. Some suggestions are:

• build a database – ask customers and those who contact you if they’d like to go on your mailing list
• prepare and distribute a media release when you have news, such as a new product, special deal, winning an award or celebrity review. Send it with your email or provide a link to the release on your website (dedicated email marketing programs enable you to personalise emails)
• set up a regular newsletter or news update
• work with tourism partners to set up cluster email campaigns.

Take a holistic approach to your visitor experience

Your emails and online communications should help potential customers imagine themselves experiencing your offer. Engage your customers with compelling messages, images, sound, videos and personal connection, both pre-visit and during their experience on-site or on your tour.

Visitors want to be engaged in an online experience, and are after websites that allow them to feel they are experiencing what they are reading about. They want to access information that answers their questions; otherwise they will leave the site. – Tourism ekit tutorial 11

Always speak to your target market or on-site audience in a way that appeals to them. Use words and a tone that they relate to, highlight aspects of your visitor experience that will excite them - like descriptions, photos, and stories - and provide supporting information they need like maps, timetables and suggested itineraries.

Make sure your website design also reflects the quality and point of difference of your product. It should help form a bond between you and consumers.

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