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Posts tagged online travel
Lure, Sample, Buy: The New Destination Marketing Mix
Jul 4th
Nova Scotia is leading the way in destination advertising. They recently released this article
that covers their new strategy to attract web friendly tourists. The three tenets that they use in their marketing efforts are lure, sample, buy.
They lure guests with traditional media like news paper, and TV spots. These ads direct them to the NovaScotia.com website. The website has Google Earth tags that relay information on some of the major destinations in the province. These tags coordinate with video vignettes on the web site. This allows potential tourists to get a taste of the culture before they arrive.
Guests of the site will then have the option to find flight information and start the process of buying their next vacation.
This process really reminds me of the Prosumer video that was hosted on the Travel and Marketing 2.0 blog. Travel is all about experience, and the more that consumers can taste the experience before they commit, the more likely they are to buy.
Booking Travel Products Online
Jun 15th
In the last quarter of ‘06, Forrester Research released findings on why there is still a resistance for consumers to book their tour and travel plans through the Web. Over 5,000 North American tourists were polled to reveal the top 3 reasons why they put down the mouse and pick up a phone to book their travel plans. The top of the list is an obvious choice, people are affraid to put their personal information over the Net. With the rampent credit card fraud and identity theft in the news, people don’t know what they can trust. In 2006 32 percent of those polled said that the reason they use traditional travel-reservation methods is fear of identity theft.If you are an online retailor you better make it clear that your site is secure from the beggining of any transaction in order to appease any of these fears.
The second largest turn-off of those polled was the lack of customizable options for their selection. Whether it was a type of model, room configuration, dietary requirements, the people want to be heard. Give the options when customers are booking, you never know this could lead to an upsale!
The last reason people preferred not to book on line was that there were user interface problems. If a common tourist can not figure out how to book and what the result will be, they are not going to follow through with the reservation. Give the consumer some scope, let them know how many steps are required to complete the booking. Tell them what the outcome will be, will they receive an email? Will they get further confirmation once the tour has been validated? Give them a sense of control of the situation and you will guarantee more reservations streaming in through your website.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.nl/idgns/bericht.phtml?id=002570DE00740E18002572A400017306