Tips from the T-List

Social media and Web 2.0: which strategy for the professionals of tourism?

vincent.v — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:47:03 +0000

Tourmag.com sort aujourd’hui un article sur les stratégies marketing à mettre en place dans le cadre du web 2.0 à vocation touristique. Nous ne sommes pas face à un article de fond mais c’est une bonne première approche du domaine.

De retour du ski je trouve dans ma boite de réception la newsletter de tourmag.com qui fait référence à un article qui me semblait particulièrement intéressant : “Marketing : quelle est votre stratégie pour les médias sociaux ?“.

Cet article est en fait issu d’un site que j’affectionne plus particulièrement, veilletourisme.ca.
Spécialisé dans la veille stratégique en tourisme, le Réseau de veille en tourisme a été créé par la Chaire de Tourisme de l’École des sciences de la gestion de l’Université du Québec à Montréal en 2004. C’est une source d’information pointue et fiable que je vous invite à consulter le plus souvent possible.

Revenons à cet article. Il vous permettra de faire un rapide tour d’horizon des différentes stratégies marketing possibles au niveau des médias sociaux et des principales actions pour rendre votre présence sur le net un peu plus Web 2.0
Encore une fois c’est un survol rapide mais il vous permettra de faire un lien entre tous les services et sites dont je peux vous parler ici et votre activité professionnelle.

S’il y avait un conseil à conserver ce serait celui-là : “Pour cibler une action parmi les centaines de sites de médias sociaux, sélectionnez ceux susceptibles de regrouper des utilisateurs qualifiés, compatibles avec votre catégorie de clientèle.”
Nous parlons ici de marketing et dans ce domaine c’est le choix du support en fonction de votre cible qui est capital. C’est règle reste, bien sûr, valable pour le web 2.0.
Un site comme TripAdvisor (voir mon billet sur les Traveller’ Choice 2008), même si il est le leader incontesté du segment des site d’avis de voyageurs, n’est peut-être pas le plus adapté à votre stratégie et à votre budget. Le nombre de réseau sociaux liés au tourisme est en croissance exponentielle, vous trouverez sûrement un réseau plus ciblé et spécifique que TripAdvisor et qui vous permettra de toucher des utilisateurs sensibles à votre thématique.

Un article à lire et à conserver dans un coin de vos favoris.

Tags:e-tourisme, Web 2.0, réseau social, e-marketing, Avis voyageurs, services 2.0

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This article was originally posted on eTourisme English Translation.You can read and comment on the original article here.

Travel Blog Carnival : reviews for week 2

claude — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:13:35 +0000

Hello travel bloggers,

So, it's my time to make the Travel Blog Carnival reviews. Hope it will be clear with my not so super english writting ;-)

Eclectic travel blog posts this week, from travel writer to travel marketing expert. Hope you will enjoy their posts, so here we go for the reviews.

Theresa Russel from Cruisebugchatter.com suggest some “fun new years resolutions” and describe the first one : Try your first cruise.
She explain also how several factors can reduce your chance of sea sickness.
A great expert point of view !

Vicky Brock from www.trackingtourism.com is starting a blog post serie about “Are customer comment cards worth the effort? Part 1″
As usual, I am amazing by the indeep analyse from Vicky and their original thoughs.

Vicky point out the question : “Do customer comment cards deliver useful benefits to tourism and hospitality businesses?”

and explain

“In part 1 of this post I will explore my concerns with over reliance on comments cards as a research tool. In part 2 (to follow) I will look at how tourism businesses can get more from comments cards, through systematic analysis and combining them with other data sources.”

So, a post for the travel pro readers (hotelier, travel marketing guys, DMO's management, etc)

Less Than from http://nobudgettravel.wordpress.com write a interesting post about the main travel events in 2008.

This calendar of travel events is interesting.

Find a resum below:

>> January: Celebrate Carnival in Netherlands Antilles.
>> February: Total Lunar Eclipse .
>> March: Indian Holi Festival.
>> April: Canberra Balloon Fiesta.
>> May: Eurovision Song Contest.
>> June: Quebec City's 400th Birthday Celebrations.
>> July: Baltica International Folklore Festival.
>> August: Beijing Summer Olympics
>> September: National Party Conventions.
>> October: Georgian Wine Harvest.
>> November: Anne of Green Gables Turns 100.
> December: Fiestas de Quito.

Pam Mandel from www.nerdseyeview.com write about their experience trip to Hawaïï : Hawaii: Two Day Trips Worth an Overnight

A great piece of Travel User Generated Content and advises about Hawaïï trip and recommended accomodations.

That's All Folks !

But don't forget my following post about Travel Blog Carnival LOGO.

I suggest some logos, please give comments and tell your choice !

Lire l’article.

Kayak buys SideStep, some thoughts !

claude — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:13:09 +0000

Kayak travel meta-search has acquired rival SideStep for $200 million, say Techrunch in this post.

So, we have now a big market leadership in the travel meta-search space.

This players are american, but other actors are interesting to see :

Sprice (with a international focus, Europe and Asia at this time)
DoHop (with great technology for Low Cost airfare in Europe)
Bezurk (for asian market)

Adam Healey, Co-founder & CEO VibeAgent Inc., write some thoughts about this buying in the VibeAgent blog.

“I think this deal is further market validation of the meta-search model that VibeAgent utilizes and which consumers and travel suppliers alike increasingly prefer (see PhoCusWright's latest research showing OTA hotel market share declining to 40% of total online bookings in '06 at the expense of travel supplier sites selling direct).”

Read his post here.

Lire l’article.

If you want to follow me on Twitter

claude — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:13:02 +0000

I use Twitter since few days. If you want to follow me, it's here: http://twitter.com/ClaudeBenard

I don't promise to update this stuff every mn. like geeks junky, but i'll try to update Twitter 3 or 4 time a week.

If you use Twitter, leave a comment with your adress.

Lire l’article.

Awesome Touch Screen Interface from Tokyo’s UT store

wilhelmus — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:13:00 +0000

While looking for a cool Japanese t-shirt last week I came across this touch screen interface at Tokyo’s UT store. This store is awesome. They sell designs for only a month. The shirts are sold in tubes and the store layout and artworks are replaced every month as well. This touch screen allows you to browse the store inventory in a very cool and interactive way. Their website is pretty interesting as well.

This article was originally posted on Wilhelmus.You can read and comment on the original article here.

Tourism Internet Marketing Blog 2.0

Jens — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:12:57 +0000

Welcome to the new blog layout!

Jens Thraenhart recently asked me to participate as a contributor on this blog, the second edition of his Tourism Internet Marketing site. That sounded like fun to me, so I was happy to agree.

Jens knows lots about e-marketing for the travel trade. And he has many savvy friends and colleagues in the industry, some of whom will be posting right here on the blog. I’m excited to be a part of that momentum.
(more…)

This article was originally posted on Tourism Internet Marketing.You can read and comment on the original article here.

Online Revealed Regional workshops continue in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Alicia Whalen — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:10:22 +0000

We are hitting the road again with the Online Revealed regional educational exchanges - this time landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia on January 24th. With 3 great shows in Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary in 2007, we are gearing up for 2008 with regional shows in Halifax, then to Toronto, and finally to Vancouver before the annual Online Revealed Canada Conference, which will be held this year in Calgary, Alberta.

The regional roadshows have really helped us to reach out to the industry both small and large to understand the issues that are of most concern as it relates to online marketing success. The regional workshops have been a place for us to gather a smaller group and provide a more interactive learning environmnent with topics like; social media marketing, search engine optimization, web strategy and new media applications addressed.

The Halifax show will feature local “talent” including Rob Swick of Alpha Search, Savior Joseph of Colour.ca an interactive Advertising agency based in Halifax, and Malcome Fraser, President and Founder of ISL, a well know web marketing, design and development firm based in Halifax, as well as Martin Byrn, Director of Search Marketing for Yahoo! Canada and the Chicks of course!

I will re-cap some sound bites from the day next week - I am interested to see how the discussions differ from the other Canadian markets we have been speaking in. Stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: online revealed, internet marketing workshops, online marketing training, a couple of chicks e-marketing, Halifax, ISL, seo, search marketing, web strategy, social media marketing

This article was originally posted on Ideahatching.com.You can read and comment on the original article here.

Marketing your website – the magic formula to success as defined by a couple of chicks

Alicia Whalen — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:10:04 +0000

I have had two meetings in the past week with bewildered clients who were thrilled with an upturn in traffic and phone calls with a few SEO quick fixes before the holidays – and now only a few short weeks later are questioning whether they are “doing enough” to generate business or if their website is being “found” by their perspective customers.

I have also had confused clients who are asking what the Alexa ranking is and how many “hits” to the website they should be getting, and many simply looking at me asking me to tell them with the “magic formula” is to a successful website.

So I can now confidently say to them and to anyone else who is reading this that there is a magic formula to a successful website! So now you want to know what that magic is right? Ok – I am going to tell you. I will break it down to 10 steps.

The magic formula consists of the following 10 steps:

1. A good product and a Plan of “attack” – a website strategy.
2. A visually pleasing and user friendly design – test test and test.
3. Good quality and relevant content to engage a customer and prompt them to act.
4. A basic understanding of SEO best practices (or an SEO consultant that understands that this is secondary to the above 3 points)
5. Simple site architecture (with Flash, sound and other forms of media embedded into the pages of the site and not directly on the home page)
6. An understanding of what your customers are looking for – and a call-to-action to give them what they want.
7. An Online Marketing Budget (if the website needs to generate traffic/revenue)
8. Want targeted traffic immediately? You can always pay for it with pay per click or paid search marketing.
9. Commitment to continually providing relevant and new content that both your customers and the search engines will love.
10. Implementing and monitoring of Google Analytics (or another web analytics tool) to measure the success of the website and tweak accordingly.

That’s it! That is the magic formula! Ok – so perhaps a further explanation of each might be helpful. You might also want to keep in mind that although this is the magic formula – this does not mean this can be done without resources, commitment and some dollars. This is why you want to make sure that step #1 – the Plan of Attack is in place so that you understand your goals and can measure your success accordingly.

1. A good Product – pretty self explanatory. This is what you do best! You know your product and you know how to sell it! Now the plan. Map out how your customers might find you online – and how they might navigate your site to a purchase or other objective you may have. (an email sign up, a registration etc.) Have your website tested by friends and colleagues to make sure that your website properly sells your product. You may be surprised with the results of some user testing.
2. Visually appealing and user friendly design is essential with any form of advertising whether it is a print Ad, a Billboard or a website.
3. Good quality and relevant content – now this one is important. When the search engines are indexing content, they are looking to serve up the most relevant result for a search query so that a searcher can find what they are looking for. That is really all there is to it. Search engines are not out to trick us marketers – they are just trying to serve up relevant results to searchers (and make a little money too of course!) Search engines cannot read graphics so content really is king.

SEO (search engine optimization) really can’t be about “tricking” the search engines to index a website for a keyword or phrase if that website is not relevant because if it is not what the searcher is looking for – they will leave.

4. Some basic SEO best practices are as follows: Proper keyword research to understand what words your target audience are looking for – use tools like the Google keyword search tool, add those terms to your written content and your websites meta data, add hyperlinks from those keywords to other pages within your site with relevant content around the keyword, make sure your titles/tags and descriptions (meta data) contain these keywords as well and are written by you and not your webmaster – make them unique for every page of your website and write them properly to describe the page. For more on SEO best practices – see www.acoupleofchicks.com or search “SEO best practices”.

You can always hire a professional SEO consultant to assist you with keyword research and proper set up – but this can be done with some time and attention internally.

5. Simple website architecture with clear, simple navigation, limited distractions from flash or music, and a clear call to action. Don’t forget to add your phone number and other contact details in a primary location (eyes usually scan the top left of a website first then zig zag right and down towards the centre). Website usability should be addressed often and tested.
6. Understanding what you customers are looking for – pretty self explanatory
7. An online marketing budget. The Internet has created a new marketing medium that should be addressed as a separate part of your marketing mix depending on how important your website is in generating sales. If your website is your primary source for lead generation or sales, you should consider developing an online marketing budget that is separate from your offline marketing.
8. You want traffic now? Paid search marketing is the most targeted and measurable form of advertising I have ever seen. If you properly set up a paid search campaign – or have a firm do it for you, and you have the dollars to support it - then you can be found for your target search terms right away. Also – try Google local advertising, it is a paid search vehicle but it is starting to replace the top “above the fold” results in the organic space. This makes sense to anyone with a “bricks and mortar” business.
9. Commitment to ongoing quality content updates – this is important to both search engines and your customer. The search engines love new content to index – they will rank your site higher if content is refreshed often, and customers will visit more often if there is something new to see. You can add fresh content to your site easily by adding an RSS feed to your site and posting news, specials and other updates, adding a Blog or simply making sure that your website is current.
10.Web analytics – now this is a big one. All of the above recommendations mean absolutely nothing unless you are properly measuring the success of your website.

This is the critical piece of the pie, and I am by no means a lover of statistics – but understanding what to look for in your analytics is critical to the success of your site. We recommend Google Analytics to everyone we work with. It is free, user friendly and provides a guide to how your website is performing breaking it down by geographic area, keyword, unique visitors by day, week, month or any point of measurement you wish. A full review of Google Analytics warrants another post – stay tuned – statistics can be fun!

So there it is! It is not magic at all, just commitment, resources and an online plan that makes sense to your business.

More and more websites are acting as an additional salesperson – or sometimes as the primary sales engine to businesses who have found an expanded client base outside of their local area. The Internet has allowed us to expand our target markets outside geographic borders – now the only thing we have to do now is attract the traffic and convert it to sales – sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Technorati Tags: online marketing, search marketing, seo, sem, pay per click, web analytics, internet marketing, seo best practices, online marketing plan, search marketing

This article was originally posted on Ideahatching.com.You can read and comment on the original article here.

British Airways gets the X-Factor

Kevin May — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:53:20 +0000

The British Airways boys at last week’s Travolution Summit premiered a project they are working on with Microsoft.

The audible gasps from some parts of the room when the demo was shown by Carsten Willert and Chris Carmichael indicated that this is A Major Thing for BA and the industry in general.

The company is going beyond selling a single product to creating “experiences”. Of course BA has an advantage because of its breadth of product and the soon-to-be-launched dynamic packaging capability.

Nevertheless, it’s a big deal. And the fact that an airline has done it is nothing short of extraordinary - bar Expedia’s Insprioscope, which of the UK OTAs are heading in this direction.?

But at least the floodgates will probably now open.

“If I was an OTA I’d be shi**ting myself,” said one attendee.

Here are some screengrabs from the demo.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: british airways BA microsoft silverlight x-factor

This article was originally posted on Travolution Blog.You can read and comment on the original article here.

How does a swanky airline tell its customers it’s going out of business [EOS style]

Kevin May — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:53:13 +0000

The relationship we have is very special. You have shown a true appreciation for the commitment and service that defines Eos Class and it has always been our pleasure to deliver Eos Class service to you. The sense of camaraderie and level of engagement we’ve developed together transcends the traditional airline space.

The customer service puffery on the EOS homepage is followed by something far more difficult to convey:

It goes on to say how the business class-only airline between New York JFK and London Stansted has filed for bankruptcy in the US and will fly its last scheduled service tonight (Sunday 27).

Who would be an airline right now?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: EOS

This article was originally posted on Travolution Blog.You can read and comment on the original article here.