Finally, businesses are catered for on the popular image-based social media site, Pinterest!
Pinterest's premise is to provide an online space where users can curate their own pin boards of things they love, places that inspire, destinations they want to go, anything that's important to them that they want to share.
For the tourism business, this is great news. As a tourism product is experiential, images and video are what inspire and resonate with potential guests.
Some of the specific features for businesses which have been released previously include 'pin it' buttons, which you can add to your website allowing people to 'pin' their favourite content from your site. Awesome tours, stunning destinations and beautiful accommodations can all be pinned from your site to...
More and more tourism businesses are coming to grips with the reality that Social Media is an important component of their brand and customer engagement.
One of the best ways to do this is using Facebook and adding 'apps' to your page which showcase products and get people talking about your brand.
Two handy Facebook apps for the tourism business:
Tour Radar
If you run a tour company, this great Aussie-born App is ideal. Tour Radar provides the ability to sell tours, offers a platform for travellers to meet each other prior to the tour starting and share qualified reviews - all on your Facebook page. Another very attractive feature of Tour Radar is the all-important Facebook Competition. Tour Radar has a competition component that can dramatically increase your...
For the last two years, Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) has been leading the parade celebrating the emerging markets for tourism businesses. Of these new markets, the spotlight is brightly shining on the Chinese traveller.
At numerous conferences and AGMs, a speaker will tell us what we need to do to prepare: including cooking Congee, preparing special teas, creating a Chinese website and being active on the Chinese social network, Weibo. They tell us that without creating a suitable environment for Chinese tourists to book and experience New Zealand, we'll miss out on the 'golden goose of tourism'.
Last week, I attended Tourism New Zealand's all day workshop on the Chinese and Halal market along with two others from the Tomahawk Team.
Curious about how many people are viewing your site on a mobile phone? You can easily find out using Google Analytics.
You'll need to have analytics installed on your website first, which is totally free and just requires a Google email address for you to create the account.
If you've got Google running, log in and head to "Audience" and then select the "Mobile" option. The "Overview" and "Devices" dropdowns will appear.
On "Overview" you'll be able to see the number of people viewing on a mobile device vs. a desktop, find out how many pages they look at and how many of those visits "Bounce" which means they look at one page, and then exit the site:
A total of US$126 billion in outbound travel expenditure was recorded in 2011 for the Muslim market, which came to 12.3% of the total global tourism expenditure. Indeed, the Halal (or Muslim) market is growing in prominence by the day. Projected travel expenditure values are at US$195 million for 2020.
For those who find the terminology perplexing at best - Muslim refers to a practitioner of the Islamic faith, and halal is a term designating any object or an action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic law (known as Sharia).
Businesses and services hoping to enter the halal/Muslim market need to bear in mind a few non-negotiable requirements of the Islamic faith. But before we get into that, here are a few useful facts about the Muslim diaspora:
So, you understand that the world is going mobile and you need to get a mobile site for your business - but now what?
First, don't panic, they aren't as expensive as you might think!
Learning the different types of mobile sites available along with the pros and cons of each can help you bravely enter the world of mobile. Mobile is offering the biggest shift and growth opportunity we have seen since the birth of the world-wide-web.
Also, distinguishing the difference between a mobile site and an 'app' is important, as these are very different and often confused.
Apps are custom-made applications that your customers need to download onto their smart phone to use. Mobile websites are accessed on the web browser of a mobile phone, and are generally a mobile friendly or...
