PR Blog

Rather than making predictions for 2013, when we look at tourism public relations at the Tartan Group, we decided to do some research into what marketers wanted to do in 2012. Frommer's and Tnooz's "2011 Digital Marketing and Content Survey", reveals how tourism marketers planned to spend their digital marketing budgets in 2012. This is a great basis for understanding what will happen in 2013.

The big number is that 78% of travel professionals worldwide intend to increase their digital marketing budget. This has huge implications: digital marketing for travel is now a known entity and must have in your tourism marketing mix.

What tactics will tourism marketers use? Here is an infographic for you to share.

Not surprisingly, while 65% intended to increase their budgets with social media marketing, 55% intend on also increasing budgets in content creation. These statistics resonate with us as smart marketing and will likely translate into continued spending on social media in 2013.

As a company that focuses on tourism PR, we tell know that successfully building a tourism brand and presence whether on line or in traditional media resides in clarifying your story, your key messages and what makes your tourism offering different.  Then you tell the story across multiple channels whether it is to a journalist, via a high ranking authority site or on your Pinterest or Facebook page. Integrated marketing communications really matters in tourism because your people are in different places on the web. You need to let them find your authentic story. We would put the trend to video in this content creation bucket. The need with tourism is to create videos that are short. While we know you want to focus on selling, more videos that are shorter will give you more content to socialize.

We absolutely agree that tourism marketing needs to increase budgets on organic search. We want our clients to be SEO savvy. Even if you end up hiring an SEO specialist, every tourism marketer needs to know the basics and which keywords are best for their product offering. We often work with client web masters to make sure our language and messages flow with their efforts to be seen by the search engines. It makes sense that meta search engines rate lower that organic search; meta search are sites that crawl the search engine databases and present the information found there (like Dogpile). We find it curious though why tourism marketers haven’t indicated a need to list on third party review and guidebook sites, the authority sites that help other find you but also provide quality backlinks. This category may be captured under social media marketing or organic search.

The mobile apps development could use a bit of granularity. We absolutely believe having an optimized mobile site for those promoting tourism products is a positive move though whether or not you need your own app is up for discussion. There are a lot of apps out there already and multiple paths to either use software as a service mobile apps or be listed on existing mobile travel review and information sharing sites. Most of our clients are smaller brands so investing in a mobile site and optimizing for mobile is within reach though developing their own app may not provide the return on investment that leveraging existing offerings would.

Paid search, paid ads and email marketing still remain strong in the marketing mix. New software and tools mean that these marketing tools are more accessible to tourism brands of all sizes rather than just the big brands.

We believe the tourism communications is about integration of print, on line story telling bolstered with advertising and SEO. The lines between PR, marketing and advertising are blurry.

Where are you going to invest your marketing dollars in 2013?

And please, feel free to share our infographic with your tourism marketing team. Get the conversation started!

Click here for infographic on Tourism PR and Marketing: on line search statistics

Terry Rachwalski is a CMC providing business management consulting in Victoria BC providing tourism digital marketing services to Tartan Group clients. The Tartan Group is top tourism communications and marketing firm working with eco and sustainable tourism clients worldwide.

For travel and hospitality operators, deciding where to spend your precious tourism public relations and marketing dollars has to go beyond what your gut tells you. We like to use statistics to drive the fundamental elements of tourism marketing campaigns.

Please feel free to share this infographic (go to the bottom for the Pinterest embed code).

Fully 27% of site visitors worldwide use organic search to arrive at a hospitality or tourism site.

Large companies know this – 84% of them invest in search engine optimization as a tourism digital marketing strategy and see it as a critical tool that backstops their communications and media relations efforts. At Tartan Group, we would like to see smaller tourism companies start to invest in more savvy SEO work. The key is to know what your offering and brand is so that once armed with the technical fundamentals , you can target your offers to your people. Google keyword tool is your friend or should be.

A whopping 73% of users worldwide use the internet as the path to their destination. Of those, 28% knew what they wanted and went directly to the URL they were looking for with another 17% using an existing bookmark or favorite.

With so many travellers using known URL, it makes logical sense that four out of ten international visitors base their destination decision on recommendations from friends and relatives. That is how they got the URL! What this means it that your tourism marketing mix needs to make sure your brand and offerings are top of mind  and web visible – with their previous guests and with their friends. Help users know what they want and then help them find it and make it easy for them to share their positive experiences with their networks both online and in person.

Besides travel recommendations from friends and relatives, what other methods do travellers use to choose a destination? Being a world renowned world destination drives 32% of travel decisions. We can’t all have pyramids in our backyards. But we would argue that beyond the iconic signature experiences , tourism marketeres can create a self proclaimed signature experience using public relations to bring destinations and experiences to mind for the traveler. We love bucket lists!

Another 22% use the web and 15% like deals…so how about a series of web based promotions? We prefer speical offers as we frown on discounting for the sake of driving sales – particularly with signature travel experiences!

Movies, print articles, television shows are part of the puzzle. These statistics indicate final decision making but don’t rate the influence factor of brand awareness. Traditional media will help drive brand awareness, but people make the final travel decision based on friends, known destinations, web backup and promotions. So better to make your destination known!

These travel statistics tell us that choices are driven by multiple methods working together. Which means tourism operators need an integrated tourism marketing approach using tourism PR and digital marketing.

How will you use these stats to drive your campaigns?

The Tartan Group is top tourism public relations and marketing firm working with eco and sustainable tourism clients worldwide. Blog author Terry Rachwalski is a Certified Management Consultant in Victoria BC is a whole hearted advocate of integrated marketing  and provides digital service advice to Tartan Group clients.