All-inclusive packages and Gift Vouchers are a popular and growing trend in tourism again! Travellers love the convenience and ease of booking that two-night romance package that includes a sunset cruise and dinner or that super combo hike and bike tour in just one click.

And with the new ‘revenge travel’ mindset post covid and Tourism New Zealand’s on-going voucher promotion, buying Gift Vouchers as a present for experiences and travel is hitting an all-time high.

Step One

So how can you benefit from these trends? First, find out if your booking engine has Gift Voucher capability and “upsell/add-on/packaging capability. If not, Tomahawk can help with a free Gift Voucher Module.

Step Two

The second step is to create irresistible packages that add value to the current...

Digital marketing is essential to creating more awareness of your brand and what you offer. The biggest challenge for small businesses is attracting the right people to find your business online. In the scope of tourism, digital marketing plans and strategies are all about The 5 Stages of Travel. Besides making an effort to create engaging content on your social media or website, it’s always important if the high-quality content can reach your customers before your competitors do!  

The key objective is to make sure that your website can be found at the top, and on the first page when people search for what they want or need. To better achieve this, you can use both organic and paid search strategies.  

What are the differences between organic and paid search...

Digital Marketing or "online marketing" for tourism has now become the key marketing focus at all stages of a traveller's interaction with your business.

If you think about this customer journey in marketing terms, and more specifically for tourism marketing, we talk about The 5 Stages of Travel which include: Dream, Plan/Research, Book, Experience and Share.

The 5 Stages of Travel

There's a lot of information about digital marketing and plenty of sources of advice - it can actually seem a bit over-whelming to try and figure out your own digital marketing strategy! This guide is aimed at providing an "overview" of all the different components that might make up your digital marketing plan, with links to information on topics you may want to delve into further.

Digital...

For many years the primary focus for building reviews for tourism businesses has been with Tripadvisor listings. However the ways in which travellers now access information and reviews about your tourism business has evolved.

Travellers no longer solely use Tripadvisor - now they will make judgement calls from a variety of review sources including Facebook (pages and friend referrals), Instagram, OTA review listings, and most prominently, from your Google Business Profile.

Why Google Reviews are important for your tourism business

Your business reviews are part of the Google local search results.

For travellers, local search is a vital tool for both travel research and as a guide when on the road. Your Google Business Profile will appear in results along with your...

We all talk about the weather on a daily basis and for tourism businesses the weather often has quite a significant impact on your bookings and visitation numbers. Whether it be for seasonal or simply short-term weather conditions, the weather can dictate who turns up. 

What if you could be a bit more clever about the weather and integrate it into your digital marketing plan to attract bookings? This brings us to what we call “Weather Ads.” 

What are Weather Ads? 

As the name suggests, “Weather Ads” is an ad campaign tactic based around the weather forecast to match an activity or location with upcoming weather conditions.  

Will it be snowing next weekend? Then ski packages are a timely ad to use. Will it be hot and sunny on the coast? Then let people know they can...

If you’ve ever wondered how marketing experts (like the good people here at Tomahawk) know all about who’s visiting your website, the pages they’re viewing and how they’re finding you in the first place, the answer usually lies within one powerful tool… Google Analytics.

Since its original release in 2005, Google Analytics has helped millions of people improve their websites, better understand their audiences and get great results from their marketing campaigns.

And in October 2020, Google released a new version of its analytics tool and the most powerful version yet – GA4.

What is GA4 and how is it different from the previous version?

Most businesses are currently using Universal Google Analytics (UGA.) which was released in 2012. UGA served us well for almost a...