Social Media Marketing for Travel & Tourism

AXSES launches Social Media Marketing for Travel

http://SocialMarketing4travel.com

A complete system of services and technology for hotels and tourism companies.

What is Social For Travel

AXSES has been a leader in Social Media for Travel over the last several years. We were the first company to develop a booking and marketing system, for Facebook. When we went to the market with this product in 2008, it was considered a technology without a market. Our Search Engine Optimisation consultants said they could not help us market the product because there was no demand for it. That proved to be very wrong, and we took pride in helping small hotels, car rental companies and tourism operators in Barbados to be the first in the world to add bookings and marketing to their Facebook pages.see arcRes Facebook links at end of page

Since then, we have upgraded the application a couple of time. It now creates a Reservations Page automatically as it loads and manages brand content right onto the page. It is integrated with our arcRes V5 upgrade that effectively displays and markets all brand products.

More Breakthrough apps for Facebook on the way

We recently launched another addition to arcRes for Facebook that helps tourism suppliers automate posts and build a larger Fan base. This is a great help to hotels and tourism companies who are finding it difficult to manage posts and engage fans. So we will be offering a solution and a service to do it for them.see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD6nXZcTYKI

AXSES’ leadership in Social Media for Travel was recognized by the New York Times, who interviewed us for their article on Social technology in Travel and featured AXSES in their report.

Social Marketing for Travel Goes Beyond Facebook

But Social Marketing for travel extends far beyond Facebook. Over the last year we have been putting all the pieces in place, integrating our travel technology with proven techniques in Social Media Marketing and Social Networking. The result is a new service in Social Media with a focus on travel described as SocialMarketing4Travel. It incorporates videos, mobile, bookmarks, podcasts, articles, blogs, Twitter and other social sites like LinkedIn. It is geared to the new media landscape which we discuss in our hubs pages on the future of social media for hotels and tourism marketing.

The full service is a combination of the very best marketing gurus’ techniques and strategies, with our own focus on marketing travel and tourism. We have not just studied the gurus; we have subscribed to their training and partnered with them to provide a unique set of travel-focused social media services, technology and products.

Building with the Best from the Best

Our gurus include the best of the best: Jeff Johnson, the man who consistently wins all affiliate contests and has built an empire on Internet Marketing. Mike Koenings, founder of Main Street Marketing & Trafic Geyser and a Video Marketing genius. Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula. Don Crowther of Social Profit Formula, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies and small business, helping them use the media to their best advantage, and is making it work. There are others, like Howie Schwatrz of Black Hat fame, who are going main stream with cutting edge techniques that might, in some cases, still be too close to the wind for us. He is one of the most knowledgeable gurus on Google’s latest moves, so we follow him and we have tested many of his system and products.

Strategies for Tourism Businesses who want results beyond advice

We are going to share our strategies and our new technology over the next several months. We will introduce our own breakthroughs and new travel marketing products for social media and beyond.

For example, we will be offering a social indexing package (Social Index Engine) with article blogging and video marketing FREE to all clients who purchase 3 arcRes products (i) in 2010. This is a winning formula: you can choose to get an arcRes Mobile Website, an arcRes Facebook Reservation page and arcRes Specials Marketing for just 150$ one-time and 75$ monthly. In addition, we do a complete analysis or your social footprint, your target market and brand position and engineer your social index strategy. Then, we implement it.

We do all the work; we do the articles, the video blogging, create your niche profiles and post them out to 100s of sites. No one else has this combination of the technology and systems together tied together with knowledge and expertise of social media marketing for travel

Proudly Grass Roots

Even before it is officially launched, we have enquiries every day from across the globe. Tourism companies are looking at how to use social media, video blogging and even the largest companies are outsourcing social media management.

We are very proud of our client-driven initiative, that are featured in the New York Times and that have a global reach. Thanks to our loyal customers who have helped us formulate and perfect our services we continue to role out leading marketing and services for tourism.

Subscribe to Social4Travel.com for our Complimentary "How To" Videos
Be sure to subscribe to SocialMarketing4Travel.com to get the latest free reports on video and on everything Social 4 Travel.

- What is article Bloging for travel and how to use content to build your market

- What is video blogging for travel and how to use videos to publish to 100s of sites

- 10 top strategies for creating travel videos quickly and at low cost

- What are bookmarks and how best to use them

- How to make twitter work for you

‘- Google +1 and Travel

- Making Facebook work for travel

- 10 top things you should do with Facebook for Travel

- How to use linkedIn for Travel

- Your Social Index and how you create it?

- Mobile Travel: Latest research, facts and case studies

- The Social Media Platform

Resource

Clay Shirky - How Facebook and Twitter can make History

Signup for arcRes Facebook
Bookings app http://facebook.arcres.biz
arcRes Fan Page Posts - Special Offers 
http://TourismMarketingPlatform.com

Marketing Travel with Facebook Ads: #1

With the unprecedented move by Expedia to advertising on Facebook, we ask the question: is Facebook Advertising right for Travel? And the best way to answer that is by doing a test. 

Proof of Concept

Objective: To test if we can get Facebook fans to a landing page and establish the cost per fan.  We are not concerned with the effectiveness of the landing page in this stage. That will be evaluated and optimized later. For this test we worked with Errol Griffith of Freemind Institute who had commissioned AXSES to develop the booking portal for Great Barbados Soccer Classic (GBSC). GBSC is a sport tourism invitational for 2012. Errol has negotiate rates with several hotels to participate and with this he is able to offer a discount to Fans. The test campaign could result in some Fan sales going to his hotel, which would be good business for his group. The  test product is deployed using GBSC,  with a bit of tweaking.

Fan Holiday Special: We set up a series of ads for a Caribbean Fan Holiday Promotion, using Toronto, Ontario, Canada as a test market for the proof of concept. Facebook users respond to special offers, we did not test a non special offer, and don't intend to as all the study indicate offers work.

The first ad targeted the Toronto area exclusively. We aimed to display the ad to males and females age 25 and over, within a 50-mile radius of Toronto. With Facebook demographics, we can target those in relationships, single, married, by interest and by education. As Facebook users also describe their interests, we can target those who have an interest in travel, etc. The demographic and social graphics targeting is very detailed and unique.

Estimated Reach:

26,480 people

• who live in Canada
• who live within 50 miles of Toronto, ON
• age exactly 25 and older
• who like 'i love travel' or 'travel' 

Date	Imp.	Social	Clicks	CTR (%)	Avg. CPC ($)	Avg. CPM ($)	Spent ($)
04/06/2011	151,306	0.0%	33	0.022%	0.77	0.17	25.35
04/05/2011	203,077	0.0%	47	0.023%	0.75	0.17	35.45
Lifetime	558,733	0.0%	127	0.023%	0.76	0.17	96.25

In 2 days, we had half a million impressions, and 127 clicks to the landing page at a total cost of $96.25 USD, or less that a Dollar a click. A pretty good rate for a hot search item, and a lot less than it would cost on search advertising.

So far, a good proof of concept. We consulted our Facebook Guru, Martin Maybrook, who agreed it was a good market, but we needed next to work on the target and the landing page. Martin liked the idea of offering a Facebook Fan Special -"all Fans like the idea that they are special"- but seeing as we only were featuring Barbados, he suggested doing another ad for Barbados only.  In this, we added the Discount. The number of Facebookers who like Barbados is far smaller, so in order to grow the market, we made this ad available to all in Ontario, Canada.

1,960 people

• who live in Canada
• who live in Ontario
• age exactly 25 and older
• who like Barbados

Date	Imp.	Social %	Clicks	CTR (%)	Avg. CPC ($)	Avg. CPM ($)	Spent ($)
04/09/2011	5,629	0.0%	1	0.018%	0.45	0.08	0.45
04/08/2011	25,886	0.0%	22	0.085%	0.57	0.48	12.52
04/07/2011	12,417	0.0%	14	0.113%	0.57	0.64	7.94
Lifetime	43,932	0.0%	37	0.084%	0.57	0.48	20.91

For about $100, we have completed the proof of concept, defined a lively target market and a successful ad and ad copy. We will tweak the ad by running many split tests, where we vary the message and the image. At the same time, we will begin to build a conversion strategy and an effective landing page. These campaigns will give Hotels the option to advertise to a focused  Facebook marketplace with managed campaigns that deliver direct business.

Facebook users like to stay on Facebook. We want to restrict the special only to new fans and we want to build a fan base. So we will run several ads with options for people to 'Like'.

The best strategy is to get users to link to a fan page were they must 'like' the page in order to get the special fan offer; similar to what we are doing with our SmartphoneTraveller marketing. Here the users is invited to click 'Like' to become a Fan.





On clicking 'Like', the page changes to a Fan Offer (on Facebook),  which links to the sign-up page. These are Business to Business ads, which so far do not seem to be performing well on Facebook.

The Business to Consumer Travels ads are, however, doing very well, as noted above.

AXSES arcResBookings.com, our Facebook Hotel and Tourism Application that adds hotels rates, room, photos and brand info onto Facebook pages, now has over 350 active monthly users, and those hotels who offer fan specials are seeing good value in booking from their Facebook pages.

Facebook certainly has come of age for Travel!
What you notice with Facebook advertising is that it is Instant! As soon as the ad is published, you get results. Ads on search engines, by comparison, will take several days to get approved and to get results.



Stay tuned - Next we will optimize the Facebook Holiday Specials - Create target ads for Themes, like romance and adventure, and invite our Facebook clients to participate in targeted and tested campaigns.

Contact us for a campaign designed just for you, or to be included in our next group marketing on Facebook.

links:
Sign-up for FB Bookings http://facebook.arcres.biz
Join AXSES Facebook Hotel & amp; Travel Marketing fbads@axses.com





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NEXT in the series >> http://bit.ly/facebooktravel2mobile

Facebook Direct Bookings for Hotels & Tourism

A new Release of arcResBookings.com for Facebook with a new Video showing  just how easy it is to get your arcRes content, rooms, rates, images and property info onto your Facebook pages. Special rates and coupons can be offered to Facebook fans special content and welcome message may be customised for Facebook. Works for Hotels, villas and all accommodation as well as car rentals and tourism operators.

See story on our HubPages  

facebook

How to use Facebook for tourism and travel marketing

A frank discussion of how Facebook operates and what its terms and condition imply. The article illustrates how Facebook is positioned relative to search engines and what may be in store!. It illustrates how to use FaceBook to boost your position on the search engines and drive more travelers to your website. How to use Facebook pages, discussions, groups and events for tourism and travel marketing. There are strategic Tips on how Facebook can help you reach out to new social groups and market your hotel, activity or tourism destination.

Links to the best social media marketing resources and technology on the net.

http://arcres.com/facebook-travel-marketing.cfm

SocialMedia4TravelMarketing

How to market travel on social media

Who is using which social media - how is the traveler using social media, which social media site is best for travel marketing.

This blog/web page offers a simple explanation with easy to understand detail. Social media clients have been analyzed in depth. Patricia Brusha of hospitality.net talks about 5 types of social media users - what they like and what social sites they might frequent - she adds marketing implications and lots of good advice for the travel marketer.

The blog/page summaries this dialogue with a simple table chart. In addition it offers a table of the leading social media channels for travel - with a layman's explanation of what they are and how they can apply. The page is full of examples and links to useful tool and resources for hotels, tourism operators and destination marketers.

The page is a social media resource of AXSES.

AXSES is a travel marketing and applications developer; building tools for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators) to market and manage their travel business. AXSES recently launched a Bookings engine and tourism marketing & e-commerce application for Facebook.

Travel Marketing

Travel Marketing Tools for Travel Suppliers
(hotels & tourism operators)

Marketing tools for travel marketing and management range from a simple booking engine to managing content on multinational sites and on numerous Internet travel portals and marketing channels. They also include property management systems relating to managing inventory and reservations.

To optimize an Internet marketing campaign, hotels and tourism operators need to deploy multiple strategies such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Brand advertising (Impression), Direct e-mail marketing (such as iContact) and a spectrum of e-commerce and rates management across channels such as Global Distribution Systems(GDS), Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), Social Media Channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Affiliate Programs, Travel Agents and Tour Operators.

Managing allocation in all channels has become a major problem for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators). It is so complex that many hotels and tourism operators opt out and prefer to contract their entire inventory with prime wholesalers and distributors.

The opt-out strategy is a quick fix, but it is not sustainable in the new order. All too often, these dependencies result in huge loss of market when things go wrong. A hotel I know lost its entire distribution when its sole contractor asked for conditions it could not meet. They took their business elsewhere and bookings of 100 rooms per night were gone. It is imperative that hotels and tourism operators build a balanced strategy and take more control of their own brand and marketing.
A wide array of tools, technology and marketing options exists for tourism operators. Channel management systems such as EZYield, rates management with RateGain, Global Distribution via many GDS integration companies and hundreds of Internet Distribution Systems (IDS) like Travelocity, as well a thousand Destination Travel Portals and Travel Guides.

At AXSES, we have developed a marketing suite for small and mid-sized hotels and tourism operators. This was built on our travel booking engine, arcRes Bookings-Expert.com. The Booking Engine has been vastly expanded to do much more, and it is now a Travel Marketing Suite; an e-commerce platform that works for Social Media and conventional travel channels. See http://www.arcres.com/ecommerce-and-travel-marketing suites

Many hotels have opted to jump on the GDS bandwagon and mistakenly concluded that they are now well represented on thousands of IDS channels, such as Travelocity. Wishful thinking! It was true, at one time, but IDS are opting for direct contracts with hotels – Expedia has signed up nearly 100,000 hotels to its Expedia Special Rates (ESP) program and GDS content is far down the line in priority. That is unfortunate for the hotels, as they must now manage Expedia, Travelocity and all the major distribution contracts that they choose.

Optimising distribution channels requires diligence. To be on the top of the IDS ‘by price’ list, you have to offer the best rate. But it is not always desirable to be at the very top! You need to be high on the list for hotels in your own class and offer a value added service rather that the best price. That way, your ROI and Brand is protected. There are e-commerce companies and consultants that specialize in running IDS campaigns. They arrange the contracts and manage them for you.

The travel industry is working to integrate the marketing channels and you can purchase channel management software. Generally, this software is not easy to use and is too expensive for a small hotel. An industry standard that would ease the management of channels is not imminent.

The GDS representative companies who have built Central Reservation Systems (CRS) that interface hotels to the GDS systems ( Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport and Pegasus) >, are also building systems to help hotels manage many IDS channels (Expedia, etc.) from the same CRS. For example, Genares has integrated their CRS with Expedia/TravelWeb (Expedia Quick Connect). This allows hotels to manage Expedia and TravelWeb rates and allocation using the Genares CRS and saves having to learn another online system. The cost is $4 US per booking. For Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline and others the fee is $4 plus the GDS fees. The IDS will generally require a minimum of 25% discount from your rack rate. Using the GDS as a channel manager thus will cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per booking in addition to the channel cost (25% minimum). It’s not a lot, if you consider the time it takes to learn all the different systems.

arcRes Travel Bookings for Facebook (arcResBookings) is the first-of-its-kind travel bookings application. It allows any hotel to load rates, property information, room descriptions, photos and rates directly from arcRes into Facebook and manage it from arcRes. It is a huge time saver and makes managing Facebook very easy. Both the booking engine and quotation system are embedded in Facebook, so that guests can easily book directly with the property or tourism operator, or get an immediate quote. See Facebook Travel Bookings (Live example)

ArcResBooking.com for Facebook is a part of the arcRes Marketing Suites, a comprehensive e-commerce platform for travel. It is currently the easiest GDS setup in the industry. Contracts are signed online, and the hotel's information, rates and seasons are all loaded directly from information already in arcRes.

As more and better tools for travel marketing become available, the role of the hotel marketer is becoming more technology-driven. Hotels need to invest in hiring the right people and training staff to understand and be comfortable with technology. It cannot be avoided! It is essential to success in the long term.