Trip Advisor - For around USD600.00, a B&B can get a business account with Trip Advisor that not only lets you list contact details and your website, but lets you add a special offer to the front page for the region when searched. Even better - travellers can receive your specials by email for each region they will be visiting
Newsletters - When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, but not with MailChimp! It's free if you have less than 2000 contacts, and offers a slew of templates, or lets you design your own email newsletters. You can share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results.
See some of our tourism marketing newsletter designs or head to www.mailchimp.com and get started!
There are many millions of written words on how to and not too when it comes to guests staying with you and how to treat them the right location, food, bedding, wine the list goes on.
When it comes to providing the best hosting, we believe there are four key points that make the difference.
1. Personality - if you're relaxed and comfortable in your own skin and like what you do it shines through and your guests will relish in your glow.
2. Passion - if you love the thought of having people to stay and engaging them in good conversation then your 50% there. However, on the reverse if you don't feel the love for your guests, no stunning house, amazing location or 800 thread Egyptian cotton sheets are going to make it happen. Your passion drives the business - if you ain't...
Every Monday morning my task reminder goes off at 7am "Write Blog."
I then put it on snooze for 1 hour and go on to check my emails. I eventually get involved in some needless crisis which rolls into the weekly Monday company meetings with the various departments to plan the week.
At noon I return to my desk - my task reminder there again blinking at me "Write Blog."
Why is it that the most important and effective online marketing tool we can all do for our businesses often gets 'snoozed' for other tasks that we prioritize as more important?
As a marketing consultant my mantra to our clients is "Blogging is one of the most cost effective ways to increase your SEO - a blog every other day keeps the creditors away." But advice can be easy to give and sometimes hard to...
This week there has been some arboreal action like never before at Tomahawk HQ. Thanks to the fabulous help of Ruth at Trees Please we're sending out baby native New Zealand trees all over the country. Here they are, all packed and ready to go to their new homes. Aww!
Encouraging travellers to return to a country in the months and sometimes years following a natural disaster can be a challenge. I was reminded once again of Iceland with the May 21st eruption of 'Grimsvotn' volcano appearing in the news, and their Inspired by Iceland campaign - www.inspiredbyiceland.com which followed the eruption of 'Eyjafjallajokull' in 2010.
This video from the Inspired by Iceland campaign is an inspirational example of a country telling the world that their tourism industry is open for business.
As many tourism providers will know, there are a large number of providers that you can choose to join that offer Channel Management. Some profess to be the "Best" some profess to be "Free", some say they have the most channels and others just use the hard word to get you feeling that if you don't go with them you will miss out on the all important bottom line of increased bookings.
The true test of any system is two fold:
1. Do they offer channels that are actually relevant to your property and the market you want to target?
This is an important point to take into consideration as you can be sold on the idea that they have 20, 30 or more sites that you can connect to via their system, but in reality, there will only be a small number that really mean anything to your...
