Why Google City Tours is Important to Tourism

Google released their latest labs project called “City Tours” last week.  I was quick to jump on the bandwagon and take a look, but I resisted from posting right away because I wanted to think a little more deeply about the implications of the application.  Let’s not forget that Google is a powerhouse and, if they wanted to, develop and release ANY travel application they want in any vertical.  With a single mouse click they could probably brush Kayak, Fly.com, Bing.com, or anyone else off the on-line travel landscape.  Google could have developed a meta-search engine for flights, a hotel comparison application, a packaging engine, or even a review aggregation engine, but they didn’t.  Instead, Google focused on local points of interest and in-destination activities and attractions using their wildly popular Google Maps API.

Why City Tours is important to tourism

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

In my opinion, Google has focused on the right target.  This may seem small but think about the data set required to produce City Tours.  They have combined their Google Local Search and business listings from partner directories, geo-tagged the data (presumably with street name data and their API), and then mapped them along with suggested itineraries for major cities all around the World.  City Tours is totally in line with Google’s mission.  The interface seems simple enough and the features are limited at the moment, but the potential impact on in-destination tourism is massive.  Think about all the local businesses like guided city tours, tour guides, bike tours, and the like that can (and will) jump in and add their information to Google Local Search so they get listed.  But developing City Tours, Google stands to add hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of new data points to their index.  Imagine what can be done with that data through various devices.

The Google Revenue Model

Google obviously hasn’t disclosed their revenue model for City Tours, but given their history, it is not unlikely that it will come from sponsored listings.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they sell sponsored listings within the application itself so that suggested itineraries have a set of sponsored businesses at the top of the list.  In Vancouver, for example, that might be the big attractions like Grouse Mountain, Capilano Suspension Bridge, and the Vancouver Aquarium.  All the other listings would be organic listings based on proximity to the sponsored ones.  This is all speculation, but hopefully you can begin to see the opportunity for small business in this space.  In very short order, Google has brought location based services on mobile devices one step closer to reality by connecting the critical data and the technology together in a relatively open way.

The Future for Destinations

DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations) all over the World should be taking a very close look at what Google is doing.  Google has just saved many organizations a lot of work (and money) in developing and aggregating the technology together for use by local tourism businesses.  Instead of trying to develop totally separate directories and business listings, they should be aggregating this data and feeding it to Google for the purposes of creating richer, more interesting, and more relevant tour experiences.  PhoCusWright research has shown that a majority of travel searching begins with Google, so why not make the results more relevant for travelers.

The Future of Booking

If you follow my work, you are probably aware that I am a believer in the four stages of the travel purchasing process (DREAM-PLAN-GO-SHARE).  Trip planning sites like TravelMuse.com, Uptake.com, PlanetEye.com, and others have been very good at taking care of the DREAM-PLAN steps.  Sites like Expedia.com and Travelocity.com (and many many others) focus on the GO or booking part.  Site like Flickr, Youtube, Bootsnall, WorldNomads, and other social sites take care of the SHARE part.  Google can begin to bring these disparate pieces together in a way that many others cannot.  Currently the map detail provides the name of the attraction, the recommended time to spend at the location, the star rating and the hours of operation.  Imagine the details including a short description, integration with Flickr or Panoramio for photos, contact details (phone number), and a BOOK NOW button.  Now imagine that detail available on your iPhone so that when City Tours recommends the attraction, you can book tickets in advance so you don’t have to wait in line.  For many tour operators this would be a dream come true especially if they are able to drive direct bookings to their own tour or activity booking website instead of having the sale go through an intermediary.

For now it is a bit early to tell what Google will do with City Tours.  As a strong proponent and developer of on-line tools and reservation systems for small tourism businesses, this is a great first step.  With Google shining a very bright light on local businesses, specifically destination tours and activities, I hope that small operators will begin to realize that they have an impact on tourism and that the travel community (and others) will begin to realize the potential of the tour and activity segment that, for a long time, has been largely ignored.

5 Tools for Building On-line Trust in Travel

One of the biggest challenges for any on-line business, especially on-line travel businesses is building trust with the on-line consumer.  In my Tourism week post titled “Building On-line Credibility” I discussed ways that businesses can build their credibility on-line.  In this post, I am going to share with you my five favorite tools for building and sharing trust on-line.  Some of these tools are free and some require payment, but they are all worthwhile ways to make your customers more comfortable with doing business with you and, most importantly, transacting with you, on-line:

1. Secure your site with RapidSSL.com - The most basic, and yet commonly forgotten, requirement of tourism e-commerce is site security.  I can’t tell you how many small tourism websites, especially those from tour and activity providers, I have visited that have booking forms or reservation request forms that ask for personal information that are not secured using a secure certificate.  It doesn’t really matter if you are asking for credit card information or not, if you are asking a customer to devulge personal information in the form of a request to do business, you owe it to them to secure that information as best you can.  If you are asking for credit card information then securing the form and the subsequent success or failure page with a secure certificate is MANDATORY.  If you are at all in the dark about why secure certificate is important, I recommend you take a look at this guide from RapidSSL.com.  This guide is a great primer for learning the ins and outs of website security.  If you don’t have a secure certificate for your site, you can often purchase one through your website hosting company or you can purchase one directly from RapidSSL.com.  Purchasing a certificate does require some technical knowledge so you will need to ask for help from your web host or web developer.  The cost of a secure certificate ranges from $79USD - $995 USD per year and the installation costs about $150 USD.  Alternatively, you can use a tour operator software or tour booking engine that already has security built into the system.

2. Get a real merchant account from PayPros, Versapay, Ogone or Eway - Notwithstanding the success of PayPal, WorldPay, 2Checkout and other payment systems, there is nothing more credible then having your own credit card merchant account.  If you already accept credit cards for your tourism business, then you already have a merchant account.  To do e-commerce, however, you must apply for and be approved for an e-commerce merchant account by your payment provider.  The rules vary from country to country, but the basics are the same.  You WILL pay more for your e-commerce account then you will for your “card present” account because the risks are higher with e-commerce, but the convenience and opportunity costs tend to outweigh the increase in cost.  The benefit to the customer and for your business, is instant payment and instant confirmation of payment.  The benefit from a trust standpoint is that the customer remains on your secure site (see 1.)  throughout the payment process and that their credit card statements has your company name on it versus “2CheckOut” or “PayPal * Your name”.  The costs of setting up a merchant vary from country to country.  We recommend the following:

• US - Paypros
• Canada - Verspay
• Europe - Ogone
• Australia - Eway

3. Run secure scans with Security Metrics - When you start accepting payments on-line, you will be required to run security scans on your website and to be “PCI Compliant”.  Depending on the volume of transactions you push through your website, your requirements for compliance will vary.  Small companies that do less than $1 Million in on-line transactions require a level of compliance that includes a server scan and a self assessment. Companies that do more than $1 Million require a higher level of compliance that includes an on-site visit and daily security scans.  This level of compliance can be very expensive.  The basic level of compliance will cost about $99 USD per year from a company like Security Metrics.  The higher level compliance can cost from $7,000 USD to $20,000 USD per year.   If you want to read more about PCI Compliance, you can download this ebook titled “PCI Compliance for Dummies” from QualSys. It’s a pretty good resource, but remember it is a marketing piece for Qualsys as well. As with the secure certificate, it may make sense to use an on-line reservation software that is already PCI Compliant in order to save you the costs and headaches of going through the PCI Compliance requirements yourself.

4. Set-up your Privacy Policy and Seal with TRUSTe - How you handle your customer’s sensitive private information is critical to creating a trusted relationship with your current and potential customers.  TRUSTe is the best known and most credible on-line privacy services companies.  TRUSTe offers a privacy service and seal program which allows businesses of any size (including small businesses) the ability to create a standards compliant privacy policy and to display a seal certifying that your business complies with the standards outlined in your privacy policy.  The Privacy Service program is available for $49 USD per month and is a great way to make your privacy policy transparent.  It is critical however that if you commit to using this program that you understand the requirements and act on your policy when necessary.  Betraying customer trust by not complying with the terms of your own privacy policy can be even more devastating to your credibility then not having a policy in the first place.

5. Display your association seal or certification mark - Unlike travel agents or tour operators that must be certified or belong to an industry association, small destination based operators are not generally required to be part of a large certification body like IATA, ACTA (in Canada) or ABTA (in the U.K.).  These organizations, by virtue of their industry brand, are comforting to the consumer because they know that they are protected, to some degree.  Belonging to these organization is an expensive proposition however and requires, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars in bonds.  Destination operators can build trust by making it known that they belong to a business organization like their local Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Association, or the Better Business Bureau.  Many of these organizations will have badge that you can place on your site that links back to your listing on their website.  Obtaining this badge may take time because it will involve a verification process, but it is worthwhile to consider. Here are a few sites that provide Business Verification seals:

*Note: some of these sites are dual purpose sites that provide PCI compliance testing or secure certificates as well.

• Better Business Bureau On-line Seal Program
• Trust Guard Verified Business Seal
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID SSL Certificate
• Comodo Hacker Proof
• McAfee Secure - Formerly HackerSafe
• ChamberTrust - World Chambers Network
• SiteTrust Network - Approved Website Seal
• Control Scan - Verified Secure Seal

Open Travel Alliance and the Future of Travel Distribution

For many in travel, distribution would be considered the lifeblood of the industry.  The triumverate of travel, or the BIG THREE of distribution, would tend to agree.  These companies, born from the days when the only products you could distribute were airline tickets, have now expanded into other products like hotel rooms, cruise, and car rentals.  But we are now at the point where many of the systems required to distribute the basics of travel are quite mature, so what is the next frontier for distribution?

In a recent PhoCusWright Roundtable discussion, the big discussion was around vacation rentals and the value of this disparate and fragmented market estimated to be around $24 Billion annually.  This vertical in addition to the destination product (tour & activities) market, also estimated to be worth $24-27 Billion dollars are, in my opinion, the emerging markets for distribution.  Both these markets share many commonalities that make them ripe for distribution:

• Little to no representation in the supply chain - In both the vacation rental market and the tour & activity market, there is very little distribution in the current supply chain.  Except for a few larger players like Viator, Isango, and Homeaway, these products are not distributed at all and there are certainly very few vacation rental or tour operator software solutions out there for small tourism businesses or individual property owners to use that allow for distribution.
• Lots of non-traditional marketing opportunities - A lot of tour & activity products can be sold on a freesale basis (unlike hotels and air), and as such, they are a great candidate for non-traditional marketing opportunities more commonly associated with traditional tangible products.  These may include Ebay, Craigslist, Vast.com, or other on-line marketplaces.
• Ripe for consolidation - There are many smaller software solutions out there that provide small tourism businesses and individual property owners with reservation capabilities but there are only a few leaders that have embraced distribution and, it is these products that will set the stage for the next step in distribution.
• No distribution standards - This is where organizations like OpenTravel Alliance can play a significant role in determining the standards for this sector.  Unlike air, hotel, and car, there are no widespread standards for this sector of the travel market.  Tour and activity products, adventure products, and attractions can (at their core) be supported by a common set of xml messages.  Additional messages can be appended to support new media and content distribution requirements.
• Destinations & Travel Resellers are looking for products - Destinations around the World are not generally in the booking business and as such offer only limited capabilities to stakeholders.  By providing standardized methods of connectivity, destinations can get access to a wider range of products and simplify their technology requirements.  This is always a good thing when working with shrinking technical budgets.

Over the next few years I am convinced that we will see standards developed that will shape the future of distribution for a wider array of travel products.  Our role as travel technologists and industry insiders will be to encourage the development of these standards and to educate suppliers and vendors alike to embrace these standards.  Unlike air, hotel, and car, we have the opportunity to shape the systems that develop around the standards rather than trying to build standards around systems that already exist.  What a great opportunity this will be to shape the largest untapped segment of the travel marketplace.

Tourism is an Experience Industry, So Deliver Experiences

One of my favorite things about speaking at conferences and seminars around the World is what I learn while I’m there.  I often find that I learn just as much being at these confernences as the attendees learn from me.  One such experience was at the Creative Lapland Seminar in Rovaniemi, Finland.  The theme of the seminar this year was “The Best Show Cases in the Experience Economy Focused on Tourism”.  My contribution was to talk about the philosophies behind the creation of Rezgo.com and to share some of my experiences working with small tourism businesses around the World.

What I found most interesting about presenting in Finland, a country I had never been to, was just how similar my experiences were to theirs in terms of working with small tourism businesses.  The internal & industry research that we gathered during our beta development was almost identical to the research that the LEO group and the academics in the Lapland had gathered.  It seems that the same SME tour operator anatomy exists all over the World:

• The majority of SME tour operator businesses are single owner/operators.
• Most of the owner/operators come from a guiding or experience background.  They love the outdoors or they are passionate about their chosen are of expertise (i.e. kayaking, river rafting, skiing, etc.)
• The operators don’t have a formal business background and so they tend to lack the underlying foundational business knowledge and concepts.
• Most of the businesses lack formalized best practices or documented business processes.
• The businesses generally have little or no access to capital for technology.

It may seem odd to invite a technologist to speak when the theme is about the experience economy, but actually, it makes a lot of sense.  I believe the reason for having me participate was to demonstrate how small tourism businesses can use leading edge web technologies and on-line tour operator software to sell their experiences around the World.  How else is that snowmobile tour operator going to attract the customers they need to make their business viable for the long term.  Well, traditionally, they would have relied on the efforts of the local destination marketing organization to help drive visitors to the region.  With the increased potential of what I like to refer to as “Supplier Generated Content“, there is immense opportunities for DMOs and other marketers to aggregate, repurpose, and reuse the text, photo, video, geotag, pricing, and availability data that is being created by tour operators for their own marketing purposes in order to drive more visitors and customers.

What is Supplier Generated Content? Quite simply it is all the content created by tour operators that they control in their various content management systems.  In the case of Rezgo, this content includes rich text descriptions, itineraries, experience photos, videos, geotags, pricing, and even real-time availability.  Other supplier generated content may include blog posts, marketing collateral, reviews, presentations, or other materials specifically created by the tour operator.  The key is that the content is created by the provider of the service rather than an intermediary.   The biggest challenge with supplier generated content, however, is that the quality of the content can vary from supplier to supplier.  In my opinion, DMOs and intermediaries need to be focusing on ensuring that, as an experience industry, we encourage and develop the skills required to relay and describe those experiences with the authenticity that can only come from the tour operator who ultimately delivers the experience.

One of the presenters, Pål K. Medhus, is a small tour operator from Norway.   He changed his whole business after implementing the Experience Pyramid, a framework for analyzing, understanding, and enhancing experience based products.  His company, Høve Støtt, has seen tremendous growth and is now considered one of the leading tour operators in Geilo, Norway. Pål attributes this growth to the shift away from a service or product model and to an experience model, like the one developed in part by LEO. If you are interested, you can see the Experience Pyramid on the LEO (English) website, and also read a description of the Elements of a Meaningful Experience. Both are worthwhile and certainly could have a profound effect on how a tour operator envisions their product offering.

In conclusion, I feel strongly that, as an industry, tourism needs to stop focusing so much on the commoditisation of travel and put more focus on developing and delivering superior experiences to visitors. Before we can do that, we need to educate operators in the development of experiences and in the documenting of those of experiences for the purposes of marketing them to visitors. Ultimately, the flight, the hotel stay, and the car rental are only small parts of the overall visitor experience and yet they are the three most readily marketed and purchased travel commodities. By shifting the model and engaging suppliers in the creation of Supplier generated content, destinations can focus on marketing and delivering experiences that are unique to them and desirable to visitors while ensuring that local tour operators are generating the revenue they need to remain viable for the long term.

* Photo Credit: Iisakki Härmä, www.iisakki.com

Tourism Week - Technology Tip #5 - Sell Globally Deliver Locally

Distribution has been a common (if not cumbersome) part of life for airlines and hotels for many years now.  But hotels and airlines are only the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to the abundance of tourism products that could potentially be distributed.  Destination product suppliers like walking tours, whale watching, boat tours, bicycle tours, bus tours, and the like are, for the most part, absent from distribution channels.  Although there are a few applications that cater specifically to small tour operators almost none of them have been built with channel management capabilities.  Even fewer resellers have invested in developing connectors to these applications because no of them has emerged as the leading platform.  The main reason for this appears to be that distribution is not something that most small companies think about.  Most small operators think of distribution as the local concierge or the Visitor Information Centre who refers a new customer.  Very few think about selling their products through a travel agent half way around the World.  Even fewer can think about using a software that can allow them to manage selling their products through multiple channels.

One of the reasons why I love tourism is because I believe that unlike any other industry, tourism gives individuals the opportunity to build a business without a huge upfront investment in time, materials, or capital.  I watched Slum Dog Millionaire recently and there is a scene where the lead character finds himself becoming a tour guide to German tourists at the Taj Mahal.  The tourists pay the boy a relatively large amount of money to have him guide them through the Palace and give them an insider’s view of the history of the attraction.  He soon realizes that he can make a good income by becoming a guide.  He even finds additional ways to make money like taking photos of the tourists and selling the photos to them.  Although this is a fictional scenario, it struck me that anyone in any destination in the World can be that little boy (a.k.a. tour operator), if they have the wherewithal.  My challenge, from a technology standpoint, has always been how do I help make that tour operator successful.

I believe the way that I can help that tour operator be successful is by making sure they have lots of tourists waiting for them at the Palace and that they’ve already paid them so they don’t have to worry about collecting money after the fact.  The other way I can help that tour operator is by making sure that every traveler going to the Taj Mahal knows that the tour operator is there and what they can expect to experience if they pay for a tour with them.  The caveat is that the tour operator must be able to price their products with enough of a margin to make it competitive but still leave room to pay a commission to a reseller.  This one caveat, however, is tied to a much greater issue and that is coming to grips with the concept of selling globally.

There is no easy way to instill the concept of distribution and resale pricing in tour operators, it really seems to be something that has to be promoted by local trusted organizations like the tourist board or CVB.  That said, if the technical capabilities exist within the tour operator on-line booking software, then the tour operator is more likely to experiment with distribution.  In the next few years we are going to see more and more tour operators distributing their tours & activities through websites and resellers all over the World.  In advance of that day, we can expect organizations like OpenTravel to build standards that promote interconnectivity and we can expect to see tour operator software companies develop tour & activity distribution platforms that set the stage for more global delivery of local tourism products and services.

Tourism Week - Technology Tip #4 - Social Media Must Dos

One of the major benefits that small tourism companies have over larger competitors is that they tend to me more nimble and quick to respond to opportunities with technology.  The other clear benefit is that the owner/operator or someone very close to the company can add a human face and element to the organizations social media efforts.  If you have not yet jumped on to the Social media bandwagon and are considering it, here are my top 5 recommendations:

1. Know your goal with Social Media: This seems like a pretty basic point, but it is critical.  You need to define what your expectations are with Social media or it can become a time and energy vortex.  Is your goal to open up communications with your current and potential customers or do you want to write interesting stories that will bring more potential customers to your website?  Both of these are perfectly good goals, but the social media approaches are different.
2. Philosophy NOT technology: Okay, being a techno-junkie this seems counter intuitive, but my point is that your customer philosophy and your goals should drive the type of technology you choose and not the other way around.  If your goal is to build content and engage with potential customers then using a blogging platform is probably the best way to go, but which blogging platform really depends on your comfort level and your technical abilities.  For starters, I recommend using Wordpress.com, a hosted blogging platform.  There are many others out there to choose from.  As you become more comfortable with the technology, you can find the one that best fits your needs.  If you are looking to engage with customers in a more casual way then you might consider Twitter, FriendFeed, or even Facebook (now that it is more like Twitter).  These applications present conversations in a “lifestream” format giving people updates on what you are doing as you post them.  They are not good for writing long posts but are very good at notifying your followers of what is going on and for starting or continuing conversations.
3. Walk before you Run: If you have not yet tried social media, I recommend you start slow and begin by joining one or two networks.  Just like on-line bookings, you have to prepare yourself and your products for on-line bookings before you can actually start taking advantage of your tour operator software.  A good way to engage with a social network and prepare yourself for further engagement is to join http://travelblogexchange.ning.com/.  This travel blogging social network is built on the NING platform which hosts many niche social networks.  The benefit with NING is that you don’t have to create multiple logins.  Start by commenting on posts you like, photos that you find captivating, or videos that interest you.  Once you get a feel for participating you can move to the next step of contributing your own content by writing your own blog post or posting your own photos.
4. Be Yourself: Those of you who are Saturday Night Live fans will remember the immortal quote from Stuart Smalley “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!“.  Well, it’s true.  If you are yourself, share your experience and expertise in an open and authentic manner then, generally speaking, people will want to engage with you.  People are drawn to others who share and who do so without expectation of reciprocity.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of negative people on the Internet as well, but when it comes to social networks, the people that you attract to your posts, photos, videos, etc. will relate to the way in which you compose your content.  Positive words feed positivity, negative words feed negativity. It’s really that simple.
5. Pace Yourself: It is easy to burn yourself out with Social media.  At one point I think I had about twenty different usernames and profiles to manage.  Eventually you will find the balance that makes it easy for you to remain engaged with the networks that are important to you and the ones where you contribute the most.  Just like real-life, how engaged you are with a particular network will depend on how much of an impact you feel you have on the community as a whole.  There is no reason not to join a community if you feel that you might be able to contribute to it at some point, but if you find that you are not able to continue contributing becuase of time constraints, then focus on the communities where you have the greatest impact.

On-line social networks are very much like their off-line counterparts.  Your local Chamber of Commerce, business association, or club are all examples of real-world social networks.  From experience, I can tell you that being a member of these organizations requires commitment and time if you expect to see tangible results from your membership.  The same is true for on-line social networks and social media.  The more you participate, the more you contribute, the more impact you will have on the community and the more likely you will be to achieve your goals.

Photo: That’s me going for an ice swim in the Kemi River (I think that’s the name) in Rovaniemi Finland.  Like technology, I believe in just jumping in and giving things a try.

Tourism Week - Technology Tip #3 - EmbraceYour Mobile

To demonstrate my point, I’m writing this post on my iPhone. Why, you ask, would I take the time to tap out a full post on my mobile? Partly because I wanted to prove a point but mostly because the battery on my laptop ran out and I really wanted to get this post done.

Okay, back to the point. Mobile devices like the iPhone are so capable now that you can write content and submit posts where ever you happen to be. The benefit to tourism is obvious, at least in my mind, and that is that you can now share experiences in real-time from where ever you happen to be. As a small tour operator or activity provider, you can post images to the web or even take small snippets of video and post them without having to go back to your office. Take my recent trip to Prince Rupert, BC for example. During my visit, I witnessed the most amazing scene of forty bald eagles feeding off a local pier. I was able take a photo with my iPhone and post it to twitpic within minutes. This is an experience you can only have in few locations in the World. The more you can share what makes your destination, tour, or attraction unique, the better off you’ll be.

Besides creating compelling and timely content, mobiles like the iPhone and Nokias give you access to some powerful business tools. Many of the tour operators I work with, for example, offer printable on-line vouchers as part of their on-line booking process. Many, however, have experienced increased voucher fraud, or duplicate vouchers. The challenge is that there is no easy way to check the vouchers until the tour operator is back at their computer. To address this, we decided to print out a 2D barcode on the vouchers produced by our tour operator software, Rezgo, which could be read using the iPhone using an app like BeeTag or any web enabled camera phone. The benefit is that any tour operator can now check the validity of a voucher by simply taking a picture of the 2D barcode using their mobile device. As long as they have a connection, they can make sure the voucher is valid. No special hardware is required and the feature is standard in Rezgo. There are a lot of new opportunities presenting themselves in the mobile space. The key for tour operators is to focus on opportunities that increase their ability to market & sell their tourism products and to reduce their administrative burden and costs. If you think of your mobile as a tool rather than just a phone, the opportunities very quickly present themselves.

Tourism Week - Technology Tip #2 - Building On-line Credibility

One of the biggest on-line challenges for a small business, especially a tourism related business, is developing on-line credibility.  What do I mean by on-line credibility?  Basically it is how credible or legitimate your business appears to be to yout on-line audience.

On-line credibility is very much like your real world credibility. In fact, I would argue that they should be part of the same strategy.  The difference between the off-line and on-line credibility however, is that your on-line credibility tends to be driven more by your brand, design, and professionalism of your website and not by you as the business owner.  In the off-line world, a customer can meet you and your staff and determine your credibility with personal contact.  In the on-line world, a customer must make a judgement on your credibility based on the information you provide on your site, the design of your site, the way you conduct your bookings, and the way you follow up with communications.  For many small business, this can be a challenge, especially when faced with competing with large on-line brands.

Here are some ways that you can build and maintain your on-line credibility:

1. Professional appearance & quality design: This is critical to your on-line credibility.  Why? Because you have about 8 seconds to impress your visitor enough to convince them to explore your site further.  Remember the old saying… “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”. When that saying is doubly true for the web.  If your website is poorly designed or broken, you will probably lose that visitor to a competitor.  Here are examples of small tour operators who have professional designs:

Both these designs are clean and well branded.  The products are easy to see with readable text, lots of attractive photos, and compelling calls to action.  Both of these sites also clearly display their memberships and association relationships.

2. Content, Content, Content: Need I say more? You are an expert at what you do, so share your expertise with your visitors.  That said, you may not be a great writer, so if need be, find someone who can translate your message into compelling text for your visitors.  Be careful though, your message needs to be compelling, interesting, and AUTHENTIC.  Your customers can tell when you are spinning a marketing message versus just telling it like it is.  Your greatest advantage over your larger travel competitors is that you can tell your message in your own voice, because for many of you, your company and brand are intricately tied to you as the business owner.  In this seemingly impersonal World, people are craving connections with authentic local experiences.  You have a very real opportunity to build your on-line credibility by becoming the voice for your business and, in part, your community.

3. Share your credentials: Are you a member of your local Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Associations, Better Business Bureau, or Travel Association?  Make sure that you clearly display your memberships and link to your profiles on these sites.  The Better Business Bureau (BBB) for example, has an online certification program that allows visitors to view your company’s profile with the BBB.  Assuming you have a good reputation and have been diligent about customer service, you should be proud to display this badge to your customers.  The same may be true for other organizations but you may have to contact them directly to find out.  Be careful of fake business sites that will create a certified badge for your company for a fee but with no background checks.  A fake badge can do a lot of damage to your credibility and will destroy your trust with your potential customer.

Here is an example of our BBB badge for reference:

4. Embrace On-line Customer Reviews: Don’t fear on-line review websites.  They can, in fact, be a powerful referral source for your business.  Sites like TripReviews.com, which is one of only a few travel review sites that supports tours and activities, can add a lot of credibility by allowing you to collect and display your customer reviews on your website.  Some booking engines, like Rezgo.com for example, also provide integration with customer reviews, so you can often combine the review process directly with the booking in order to support the sales process.  Other sites, like GetSatisfaction.com, are not necessarily designed for tourism related businesses but can still be used to facilitate open customer communications. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you must take control of your reputation on-line or you will miss out on the conversations that are happening around your service.  A simple way of taking control is to send your customers a follow-up email after they take your tour with a link to your TripReviews.com or TripAdvisor.com page and ask them to write a review of their experience.  Don’t worry, over 70% of the reviews on review websites are positive, so chances are good that your customers will give you praise.

5. Security & PCI Compliance: If you offer on-line bookings (and I highly recommend that you do), you absolutely MUST have a booking process that is PCI compliant.  PCI stands for “Payment Card Industry” and the compliance refers to a strict set of rules that your website must adhere to in order to reduce your liability as an on-line merchant.  By ensuring that your booking engine is PCI compliant, you reduce your risk of fraudulent transactions and, more importantly, you protect your customers from possible credit card fraud.  Using a hosted booking engine, like Rezgo.com for example, you can easily check if they are PCI Compliant by looking for a “Credit Card Safe” logo or security mark.  If you have installed a stand-a-lone booking software, you may need to undergo the PCI compliance yourself which can cost between $99 - $7,000 per year depending on your volume of bookings.  I recommend you contact Security Metrics if you need a good PCI service provider.

Here is an example of our Security Metrics PCI Compliance Mark for reference:

In conclusion, there are a lot of little things you can do to build trust in your on-line visitors.  All of these credibility building measures mean nothing, however,  if you don’t provide a good service or product.  When combined with a solid offering, building your on-line credibility can go a long way to keeping you one step ahead of your competition and top of mind with your current and future customers.

Tourism Week - Technology Tip #1 - The Costs of a Website

In celebration of Tourism Week 2009, I would like to present a series of posts that will provide you with the basic tools you’ll need to take the leap to on-line marketing and sales for your tourism business.  Although the principles are shared across many industries, I will be referring to tourism specific terms and technologies.

The first in my series is about the costs associated with developing your website.  There are a number of parts to a web project, however, there is one thing for sure, the overall costs of web projects have decreased.  Applications such as booking engines, content management systems, and hosting have all decreased in cost since they were introduced in the mid to late 1990s.  There are, in fact, many software as a service applications that can help your business get up and running without a large capital investment.

1. Website and Content Management System - There are a number of ways to go about designing your website.  You can choose to use a professional web designer to design your site from scratch, you can use a pre-designed template and have it professionally customized, or you can use a pre-designed template and modify it yourself.  The quality of the result will depend greatly on the quality of the original template and your skill or the skill of the designer.  If you have the budget, I would highly recommend using a professional designer where possible.  My reasons for this are:

• The design will be finely tuned to your brand.
• The navigation structure will be specific to your company and your product type (this may not be true if you use a template that is generic in scope).
• Your design will be unique (as opposed to a commonly used template).

Once your site is designed you will want to consider using a content management system to make it easy to manage and control the content of your website.  There are a number of CMS (content management system) applications available including opensource and proprietary brands.  As a start, I would recommend using Wordpress as a start.  Even though Wordpress is considered a blogging platform, it can be used as a traditional content management system with support for pages and a wide variety of plugins.  In addition to Wordpress, you may want to consider using Drupal or Joomla.  Both CMS platforms are opensource and have a very large (and strong) user/developer community.  Remember, the key is to use a system that is easy for you to use on a daily basis.  Before you choose a solution, make sure you try them out or ask for examples.

COST OF WEBSITE DESIGN & CMS IMPLEMENTATION: $3,000 - $8,000 UPFRONT

2. Web Booking Engine - In my opinion, if your website is not transactional, then you are losing out on a huge opportunity.  Your website is available 24/7/365, so why not give your customers the ability to book from you even if you’re asleep or out on tour.  There are a number of booking engines that are available, but only a handful have been designed specifically for SME operators that provide tours and activities.  A few things to consider looking for in a booking system include:

• Make sure you can fully co-brand the booking process. This is important because you want your customers to have a seamless and continuous experience.
• Ensure that the booking engine can integrate with your payment gateway or offer a secure manual payment method.
• Make sure the system is PCI compliant, which means that it has been tested by a certified security professional for possible vulnerabilities.  PCI compliance ensures that your transactions will be secured and that your customer credit card information is safe.
• You’ll want to make sure the system supports rich media including a photo and video gallery.  This is particularly important now because, according to PhoCusWright, videos can increase a consumer’s decision to book a travel product.  I believe this is especially true for experience based products like tours and activities.
• Your booking engine should be search engine friendly.  Look for systems that use search engine friendly urls and that products are easily indexed by the search engines.  This will save you a considerable amount of work in search engine optimization.
• I recommend that you consider using a hosted booking service or a software-as-a-service.  Booking engines that are provided as a service (as long as they meet the above criteria) are generally much easier to maintain then stand-a-lone systems and are more cost-effective.
• Distribution is a huge opportunity for every SME tour operator.  The biggest issue is that there are very few booking engines that provide distribution opportunities or channel management.
• Pricing for booking engines can vary greatly from one-time set-up fees, flat monthly payments, or pay-as-you-go pricing.  Ultimately, the best pricing will be based on your specific needs and the value delivered by the system.  Many of the most popular e-commerce systems, such as Shopify.com, are embracing a pay-as-you-go pricing model.  The main benefit of a pay-as-you-go model is that you only pay for the system when it delivers bookings.  There are generally low or no set-up costs and no monthly fees other than the transaction fees.  The draw back is that pay-as-you-go pricing can be expensive if you experience a high volume of booking.  Generally, many booking engines will negotiate better rates with you if you can show a high volume of sales.

COST OF WEB BOOKING ENGINE: $1,000 - $12,000 ANNUALLY

3. SEO and Online Marketing - Depending on your budget, you will want to consider making your website optimized for search engines.  The best way to go about this is to ensure that the content management system and the booking engine you choose are already optimized for search.  Wordpress and Rezgo for example are both optimized for search out of the box and provide RSS feeds for content.  There are even additional seo features available through Wordpress, like the Google Sitemap generator and SEO Optimizer, which allows you to customize the title, meta keywords, and descriptions for every page and post on your site.  In addition to your basic seo efforts, you will want to ensure that your company and products are available for review through sites TripReviews.com, which is one of the few customer review sites that supports tours and activities.

COST OF SEO & ON-LINE MARKETING: $500 - $4000 ANNUALLY

So, in conclusion, there are a number of options available to you as a business owner.  The web can be a powerful source of both marketing and sales for your tourism business.  The most important thing to remember is that your online presence will most likely be your most pervasive marketing tool and will be seen by more consumers than your rack card or brochure.  When considering how much to budget for your web strategy, consider how much your brochures cost to design and print and their conversion rate, not to mention the environmental impact of all that paper and ink.  Done well, your website can be a powerful and much greener sales channel for your tourism business.

Photo Credit:
Tour Bus http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarscot/2577242866/sizes/s/
Boat Cruise http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdwbarber/3030149814/sizes/s/

Australia’s Tourism E-Kit Model is one to Emulate

I was recently informed that Rezgo.com has been included in the latest version of the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse Tourism E-Kit.  This is exciting news because I really like the concept of the Tourism E-Kit and the way that it is put together.  I would gather that most tourism businesses outside of Australia have never heard of the Tourism E-Kit, but it is a resource that applies to tourism businesses in all corners of the World.

The Tourism E-Kit covers a variety of subjects from the basics such as planning your success, assessing your needs, planning your website, and email best practices to more advanced subjects like choosing a booking engine, search engine marketing, and even customer reviews & Tripadvisor.

The complete kit is about 250 pages and takes about eleven hours to read, but it is a worthwhile exercise.  I had been thinking about working on a similar tool kit for Canadian and U.S. tour operators and I am convinced that the ATDW Tourism E-Kit is the model to follow.

For more information about the ATDW Tourism E-Kit, visit http://www.atdw.com.au/tourism_e_kit.asp

Big Thanks to Fabienne Rabbiosi from UntangleMyWeb.com for her help in getting Rezgo added to the Tourism E-Kit.