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...

Selling private or “exclusive use” accommodation, tours, and activities is not a new concept in tourism, but it’s increasingly becoming a significant opportunity for tourism businesses.   

Selling your tourism product as a fully private experience is no longer just the domain of the luxury or VIP market. Businesses that have never considered or marketed this option before are now seeing a significant increase in enquiries.  

Across all sectors, the growth in demand is being driven from a broad range of travellers who are seeking a more private and meaningful experience principally because of the COVID pandemic and being more cautious about sharing spaces.  

What are the benefits?

People want to get away from the crowds and value more than ever before their own space....

Every tourism business owner knows that a great website means more direct bookings. So what makes a great website?  

We have broken it down to 5 key ingredients for you to focus on to please your potential customers while also ensuring you are pleasing Google too! 

It all comes down to great content and ensuring you follow the 5 Stages of Travel, especially in the dream, research, and book stages.  

Here are the five MUST HAVEs for any tourism website: 

1. Enticing & emotive images & video  

Images and video are your number one tool in your toolbox to attract and capture your target audience by creating an emotional connection in that key 3-second moment when your website opens.  

A picture speaks 1,000 words, so what words do your images say about your...