A Marketing Culture Based on Helping
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...I’ve been learning recently that marketing isn’t just about getting people to recognize your brand, it is about feeling good about promoting your product. At the beginning of the year we were focused on a direct marketing strategy that involved sourcing and calling local tour operators in an effort to convert them into users. We found over a few months that the conversion ratio was very low and that the likelihood of the user to convert into a paid subscriber let alone use the system for its free services was very low. But the thing we noticed most about this strategy is that it... Read more »
What in the World is the T-List?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...I’ve had several people ask me about the T-List, primarily other bloggers who have heard about it but can’t find the most recent version of it. Quite simply,the T-List is an evolving list of travel related blogs from around the World. The concept was started by Matthieu at the Radar Blog back in March of 2007. Honestly, I have no idea where the most recent list is, and I suppose that is part of the fun of the list. It is moving, evolving, and growing independently in various places around the Web. Jens Thraenhart at the Canadian Tourism Commission started a group on Facebook to... Read more »
Comparing Web Booking Engines
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...It seems that the Internet is full of applications that allow tour operators, independent hotel and motel owners and packaged vacation providers with online booking capabilities. Many of these booking engines are extremely expensive and many are not. Some are hosted and some are stand-a-lone. So how do you choose one that is right for your organization? Here are some important things to keep in mind as you begin your research and compare the products. 1. Compare apples to applesMany booking engines are actually booking portals. This is especially true if you are an Adventure Travel company... Read more »
(1 votes, average: 2 out of 5) Loading ...For a long time now, prospective travelers have had the ability to search, find and make their basic flight and hotel reservations on-line. Only recently has it been possible for these same travelers to book their destination products, such as sightseeing tours and attraction tickets on line as well. Despite this trend, however, there is still no primary distribution system; which means that most travelers have to visit many different individual websites in order to purchase their destination products. For a tour operator, one of the most important goals is to sell seats. The challenge is how... Read more »
Evolving into a Web 2.0 company
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...So what is this Web 2.0 thing anyway? I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. Having gone through the Internet rise and fall, I am always skeptical of band wagons, buzz words, and hype. Call me cynical, but “Blogosphere” and all the other current terms associated with what amounts to basic guestbook (do you remember guestbooks?) mean nothing to me. So Web 2.0 seemed to me to be just another way of refering to “software as a service”. That said, we’ve made a dedicated push to migrate our transactional based products into hosted services. Why? Because... Read more »
