Online marketing blog by Stuart Gow aimed B2B for small to medium operators looking for a cost effective and measurable way to use their marketing funds!
Tourpreneur is excited to partner with Google to provide you with this free course on how to harness the power of Google ‘Things to do’ for your tour & activity business.
The goal of this short course is to introduce you to ‘Things to do’, help you enroll, and harness its power to grow direct bookings for your business.
We’re launching this course in coordination with the announcement of Google’s new Ticket & Activities Editor, a way to list your tours on ‘Things to do’ directly through your Google Business Profile.
Even if you’re very familiar with ‘Things to do’, this course will help you get up to speed with the latest developments.
Yesterday Google held a fantastic event focused on small business owners harnessing the power of Google's tools to grow your travel businesses.
Here
are a few takeaways and updates you should think about in relation to
your Business Profile on Google (and if you don't have one, claim yours
immediately!):
Do not “set and forget” about your Business Profile.
Tend to it regularly—adding posts, updates, new photos, responding to
reviews, adding or updating your tours. This matters a lot.
Use the new features of Business Profile,
including "Business Posts" to announce discounts and product updates.
These posts show up on your Business Profile and in search results. (50%
of customers look for promotions and discounts when searching for a
business online.)
Create an FAQ in the “Questions and Answers” section of your profile to save you time and help your customer.
You can now add links to your social media accounts. Up to 7 accounts, and they'll display 5 of them.
Update your photos at least monthly, and make sure they’re authentic—not staged, not overly edited.
Load your individual tours on your profile using the new Ticket Editor!
Do it now, it's so easy. If you're using booking software, chances are
they might be connectivity partners with Google Things to do. But if
not, simply go into your Business Profile, click on Activities and load
your tours, with links to the individual tour pages. Now your Business
Profile becomes a one-stop shop for the customer, linking directly to
your tours.
Mobile, mobile mobile: make sure your site is fast and friendly for phone users. Several Googlers brought this up, so it's clearly on their minds.
Use the analytics from your Business Profile! It's
actually quite powerful. Google shares a lot of useful analytics with
you, such as where your guests are coming, highest activity times and
days, search queries that led them to your profile, and much more.
We
are excited to announce that the SPTO SME Recovery Toolkit is now
available in video format! The Toolkit was developed to support the
recovery of small, medium, and micro-sized tourism enterprises in the
Pacific. It provides guidance on the entire product development process,
from understanding market trends to online sales and marketing.
We
thank the SPTO member countries, industry and partners who contributed
to this initiative and we hope you find these videos informative and
helpful.
Best regards,
The Division of Sustainable Tourism
Pacific Tourism Organisation
These
videos are a great way to gain insight into the toolkit and its
chapters. We encourage you to watch each video to fully grasp the
concepts and principles presented. Let us walk you through each of the
videos and their corresponding chapters:
This
chapter supports users to understand the evolving market trends. It
provides guidance on different types of tour operators and agents before
introducing key evolving consumer trends and how to apply these trends
to your particular destination and business.
This
chapter provides tips on adapting your product to ensure it appeals to
the right target market. It presents important considerations that must
be made in designing your tourism product. Learn how to refine your
ideas for adapting or enhancing your product or creating a new
experience.
This
chapter provides you with essential information about international
standards for health, safety, and security, as well as information on
health and safety guidelines for COVID-19 safe operations.
This
chapter guides users on pricing principles to ensure that your products
are priced competitively while providing a profit. It walks you through
the different steps to calculating prices for different types of
products and how to allow mark-ups to be added with different businesses
you might work with.
This
chapter provides guidance in preparing your businesses for this new
normal and re-evaluating how your business connects to customers,
considering the importance of digitalization.
This
chapter provides a clear understanding of the role played by staff,
particularly tour guides, in the delivery of quality service and what
practices to adopt to build reputation and trust.
In
this final chapter, users will learn the different digital marketing
options they can explore for their businesses. It introduces the
different types of online sales and marketing platforms to promote your
business, generate sales, and build relationships with your targeted
audience.
Tourism is an important economic driver for islands.
The sector is actively shifting towards becoming more sustainable in the face of environmental degradation caused by climate change - but what exactly are the options being developed?
Airbnb mothballed its experiences business — and ceased investing in hotels — at the beginning of the pandemic, but CEO Brian Chesky said earlier this week that Airbnb will begin to invest in its experiences business again in 2023 after a two-year pause.
A file photo of an Airbnb host greeting participants in a bread-baking experience. Source: Airbnb
“It’s ready to invest like significantly in this business again,” he said.
Trotting out another e-commerce buzzword after discussing funnels, namely “flywheels,” Chesky argued that Airbnb’s homes and experiences businesses would invigorate each other.
“We have some really exciting things in the roadmap,” Chesky said, including for 2023. “And I think that experience is a great flywheel for homes because, again, the number one thing in travel is you want to have direct traffic, booking something unique that you can’t find anywhere else.”
Booking.com: Attractions Won’t Be a ‘Huge Money Spinner’
Booking Holdings Chief Financial Officer David Goulden, speaking at an Evercore technology conference September 8, noted that the company transitioned from a “homegrown acquisition strategy” for tours and activities — when it acquired Fareharbor in 2018 — to a partnerships model, such as through deals with TUI Musement and Viator.
He added that the market size and transaction values for attractions are not as substantial as for accommodations or flights.
“So I don’t think it will be a huge money spinner for us, but it’s certainly something that will create, I think, a lot of value for our customers, therefore, something we want to continue to focus on,” Goulden said.
