Category Archives: Tourism Marketing

The majority voice of travel is now more powerful than ever. She’s the female traveller, and her fistful of dollars packs a serious punch.

“The gatekeeper,” “the adventure traveler” – referred to by various monikers for her value in group, family, and solo travel, her nature as a planner is intrinsically tied to revenue potential in tourism. Her collective opinion can make or break a travel business. She’s ascended to absolute power in trip planning and she rocks a size 12 dress.

If your business has roots in tourism, make sure there’s a marketing strategy in place speaking directly to women. Why? Because the value is mind blowing.

Dollar Power

Women make up the bulk of travel’s target market. According to Forbes, this segment makes 80% of travel decisions. That’s a...

We're excited to announce a new office in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Welcome to Marica Mackenroth Brewster, a digital tourism marketing veteran, to head the new region as Accounts Director – US. Our goal is to offer a new audience their highly specialized tourism expertise with a centrally located agent available during business hours in the States. Mrs. Brewster will bring the firm’s strategy consulting, digital creative and website construction, SEO and SEM, and ResBook – the company’s boutique hotel reservation software - to new and existing clients.

Marica's background includes keyword bidding for the city of New Orleans’ publicly funded post Hurricane Katrina recovery campaign, a position leading 300 clients on the digital agency side, and marketing direction for Pelican New...

Photo credit: SimilarWeb

If you haven’t heard of Pokemon Go by now, you may be in the minority. The Nintendo-game based app created by developer Niantic, has taken the world by storm since its release a week ago.

According to SimilarWeb, the game already has twice as many users as the popular dating app Tinder, and is on track to have more active users than Twitter by the end of the week.

Integrated with Google Maps, the app requires users to travel to exact locations to play and progress in the game, overlaying the characters with real-world landmarks.

To sweeten the experience, users can purchase “lures” which cause characters to spawn in a specific location for a limited time, drawing crowds of other users to that location. This has an intriguing application for...

Shoulder Season. Definition: Noun. The time of year right before and after high season when the weather is still favourable and tourism operators worldwide want more bookings. (Also: shoulder period)

With some forward planning and tactics before your shoulder season starts, there are tried and true strategies to stretch out the peak season and boost bookings.

1. Create a New Inclusive Package

Offering the ability to have an “easy to book in one click”, all-inclusive package motivates bookings. Create a multiple day stay with tickets to a local event, or negotiate a favourable rate with a local activity and/or restaurant.

Besides adding the package to your website and booking engine, add it to your business listing on TripAdvisor and be sure to promote on all online...

Gina's November presentation to the Tourism Industry Association New Zealand delves into the Big Question - will virtual reality help or hinder tourism business?

Virtual reality is the biggest game-changer in our lives since the launch of the iPhone.

The seemingly simple ability to see an image or video in 360 degrees is about to revolutionise the way we live.

Imagine being able to virtually travel anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home. Fly over the Grand Canyon looking up, down and all around you as if you were really there, or “dive” underwater at the Great Barrier Reef and watch as a turtle swims past you.

Jaunt, a VR technology and content company, claims “You will feel transported directly into the middle of the action. Look anywhere. See...

Part III in our Halloween 2015 blog series.

As the world’s number-one tourism website, TripAdvisor is an audacious and powerful beast. For travellers sharing a review or researching a trip, it works a treat. For tourism operators it can prove a powerful marketing and distribution tool. But for all of these treats, this powerful beast can serve up a trick or two.

Handling Reviews

Since anyone can post a review on TripAdvisor, it can create some scary situations for a tourism operator. Travellers threatening a negative review as an attempt to get a discount, competitors purchasing fake reviews to boost their rankings, or a sinister traveller who is simply miserable about life and uses the platform to constantly complain.

Some operators believe fake or venomous reviews are...