If you've read about the 5 stages of travel, you will know that most travellers will progress through 5 stages in their journey from dreaming about travel through to sharing their travel experiences:

1. Dreaming
2. Planning/Researching
3. Booking
4. Experiencing
5. Sharing

82% of people’s time is spent within the researching stage!

Within the 5 stages of travel, the planning/researching stage is where CMO of Uberflip Randy Frisch says people spend the most time trying to find out about:

• the location they are looking to visit
• what to do while they’re there
• how they will get around
• where they will stay
• what the must do’s are, and
• what are other people saying about the activity, accommodation, or transport options

With the majority of this time spent...

Embrace technology & AI to help your business succeed in tourism

Love it or hate it, technology offers significant advantages for supporting tourism businesses to promote and sell what they offer in the digital world. 

In this article, we'll delve into technology tips, including AI powered tools, for tourism recommended by our digital performance expert, Lez Gunnion. We also share a recording of our Tourism Tech Talks webinar hosted by Lez that covers these strategies along with additional questions from tourism businesses.

1. Something New: AI Chatbots

Chatbots are found on a website as a pop-up that allows visitors to the site to ask questions in a live chat format. They are used to provide automated customer service, answering questions to solve issues, and to...

Social media and paid search campaigns are a great way to create awareness and attract traffic to your website to boost bookings, particularly if you have a special offer or you have a seasonal campaign in mind. 

Let’s look at the key components for planning a campaign and apply it to a Mother's Day campaign. If you follow this basic approach each time, you will find it easy to build and implement campaigns regularly to meet any marketing objective and it will become a key tool for marketing your tourism business.

1. Identify your Target Audience 

Determine who your target audience is and what they might be interested in. In the case of a Mother’s Day campaign your target audience may be anyone with a Mum living in New Zealand (or you may break it down by region). With...

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 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...