Tourism and Search Engines

In recent years people are using the search engines to find information with the intention to purchase. Thus, if they can’t find you then they won’t book with you!

This is especially the case within Travel and Tourism sectors as more and more people look to make up there own holiday packages by booking flights independently to accommodation. This means if you are an accommodation provider you need an engaging website, with detailed text and pictures. The visitor needs to totally understand what they will get, if they think something is missing they won’t ring or email you but just go back to the search engine results and try the next one on the list.  You also need to be ready for when they make a decision as you need them to book and pay a deposit whilst you have them interested. A lot of people that leave the site to fill in a form and post a cheque will have second thoughts and re-consider.

This all means travel and tourism operators need to:

• Have an informing and visually stimulating website. Photo and Videos help travel websites more so than other markets.
• Manage online reputations and be open by integrating them into your website. A piece of negative feedback does not have to be bad if handled appropriately.
• Make use of third party distributor sites such as Coast Radar, Last Minute, as they have bigger marketing budgets and rank well under highly competitive keywords.
• Give information on the surrounding area to give the visitor ideas on what they can do when they visit.

A lot of small travel and tourism websites don’t put the amount of effort they should into marketing. All too often a website is created and left to market itself, which of course it can’t do. This means those websites are missing out on all those people ready to buy.

Remember your website is operational 24 hours a day and will receive more visitors than you received phone calls, make sure it reflects your business, provides all the answers to visitors questions and allows them to book.