Tourism Marketing: How TravelShopping may be Leaving you out of the Loop

Another free video in hotel and tourism marketing by TourismMarketingMachines.com

See more details on our YouTube page on how Travelshopping may be hurting you!

Visual Bookings Technology's Astounding Success Is Changing Travel

See details on YouTube re Visual Booking Technology for Hotels and Tourism

It's a remarkable story:  A small tourism development company in the tiny island of Barbados, builds a better way to plan and book holidays and travel. Not ever planning to make a breakthrough, the developers just set out to make it better; make it more effective for travelers to see the products that suited them best.

They also wanted to make it better for hotels who were listed on their site at Barbados.org, the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia; making it easier for guests to find properties that really suited them, and easier to choose amongst options by offering visual cues and advise in an instant.

They wanted to make changes to the old ways and bring something new to the table. The result is Visual Bookings Technology which is an exciting new tool for travel planning and bookings.

Installed on the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia,  Central Reservations Systems (CRS), booking engines and property lists, the new system is an astounding success.

Guests are loving the instant visual results they see with each click of a button. They simply click on features and options and presto it's there in glowing colour, along with relevant information. They stay longer looking at options and do more, enjoying the immediate feedback and rapid fire display of every nuance.

The rate at which guests click through to the hotel's own website after seeing images, rates and getting quotes has gone through the roof.

Hotels are seeing 10 times more leads and some 100 times more. It's simply amazing says "Kathy-Lynn Ward" who heads the team and manages the development of new technology at AXSES, the company which owns the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia and has installed many great innovative solutions on that site.

Well done Kathy - we will take this to the world next!

See more and contact us at http://visualbookingstechnology.com |

Be ready for the revolution!!

Keyword Marketing & SEO For Tourism - When Words Fail You

See  Keyword Marketing & SEO YouTube for details

Part of the series of videos on keywords marketing and  research in your Search Engine Optimize.

In thi svideo we look at what happens when keywords fail. It gives 4 strategies to drive trafic to your website


For More Tourism Marketing Videos like this go to

TourismMarketingMachine.com Free Videos

Keywords Strategies |  The TravelerShopping Footprint  | Using Press Releases to Boost Traffic | Why you need to Diversify your OTA Strategy | What's in Store for GDS | Case Study Video Promotion |  Why you must have a Social Network | The New Role of Publishing | Social PR | Case Study: MultiMedia & MultiChannel Publishing

Marketing Hotels & Tourism Online - Pre- Launch Bonus

See details on YouTube For Marketing Hotels & Tourism Online - Book Buyers Bonus

Choosing The Right Keywords for Hotels & Tourism Marketing

When Words Fail - See the full story on YouTube - why words fail and how to choose the right keywords for tourism This video will explain everything!

This is part of the free series on hotel and tourism marketing video available from TourismMarketingMachines.com (TMM)

The TMM videos cover the future of media and its effect on tourism, video and content blogging, the art of the Press Release, The peril of OTAs, the rebirth of GDS, how to beome your own publisher, they key to direct bookings and much much more-- Register to be a member TMM is free and packed with hot tips on how to market your hotel and tourism online.

Barbados Family Holidays Make your Spirit Soar

Family Holidays Barbados Style




See this amazing Barbados Family Holidays Video On YouTube.

With more things to do per mile than any other Caribbean Vacation Destination Barbados tops chart for the perfect Family Getaway and adventure holiday. Barbados Holidays are for all ages and this is are especially true for families. Children love the deep sea dive on Atlantis Submarine, the Pirate ships sailing, safari trips, zips lines and the underground caves, even the museums cater to kids with talking pirates. A perennial favorite is Hunts Fantasy Garden near to Bathsheba: Truly a delight where birds join in your joy. See the video to experience a true delight and let your spirits soar with a trip to this magical tropical island.

This is another of the Distinctively Charming Series on Barbados. See all in the playlist Below: Watch Barbados Distinctively Charming Playlist on Youtube

Evolution of Search as Media is Hurting Hotel Marketing

Search Marketing for Small Hotels is Dead

Search has been sabotaged by Google (G) and does not exist as we know it anymore. It's now a G product offering entry to G services and soon will be exclusively a G media. It has been changing for 10 years and has gone through at least 6 steps in evolution so far, as outlined by Danny Sullivan on Moz (discussed below).

Big trouble for small hotels

 

see YouTube video how penguin is hurting hotel and tourism marketing

The evolution is insidious and worrying and is not ending with the knowledge graph. Unfortunately this is just the beginning of the new order where search is not an opportunity for local players, hotels and tourism operators, but a closed loop service of the largest conglomerate in the world.See the video below for details of exactly how this is a disaster for small and independent hotels, travel and tourism marketing..


The Trouble With Search

Right now we can see the implications of consolidation at international brand and OTA level. We once saw independent hotels showing up on the first page of search results; those days have gone. For the short term future it's the OTAs and big brands that are the winners.  But as the knowledge graph takes effect, search will more and more be geared to Google products, which will include bookings; Bookings via Google is the ultimate destination of this conglomeration.

We talked about this in 2009 with our blog on the new order of everything and followed it with our blog "the future of media," citing Clay Shirley then with several discussions on hotel finder, search as media (see below) and the knowledge graph . 

Big Brother Bid Data and the Age of Surveillance

The next step in the evolution is what Danny calls the Prism. "It's a spy program or an eavesdropping program or a data mining program, depending on who you want to talk to, that the US government is running."  In my view, the new search is about this Big Data thing, where we gather intelligence and inferences from all of the searches, browsing, profiles, choices and intelligence gather from people's actions, habits, searches and footprints. It's pervasive as more and more information is now put on the Internet and much more of this than anyone would care for can be accessed and used for intelligence in marketing and providing products and services.

The age of persuasion has moved to the age of  influence (Terry O'Reilly) but the next age is far more insidious and pulls the rug out from the idea of a social age of participation. What's next is the age of Big data/ Big brother and those who know how to use it will dominate marketing. The new age designation is not going to be fussy sounding like persuasion, influence or participation because it's not. The game is not equal and all the promise of social media being democratic and an equalizer may vanish. In its place is the age of surveillance, where everything we do, like, dislike and think is measured, analyzed and profiled, creating targets for suppliers and clients of the big data.

Worst Case Scenario

Market dominance centered in a few big data corporations like Amazon and Google-Commoditization of  brands. 

This seems to be the way we are heading. It does not bode well for the smaller independent brand.


Best Case Scenario

Ubiquitous access - Democratic distribution - Level Marketplace. This can happen, but it is not likely to be the preference of the Big Brothers who are determining the future of travel search, technology and media. We do have the opportunity to influence - this is still the age of influence, but do we have the passion?


More on Why search is failing small hotels and tourism

 
 see more on SEO for Hotels and Tourism failing  on Youtube

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links

Danny Sullivan On Moz- The evolution of Search 

Trouble in search - SEO Google pulls the rug away
hotel and tourism marketing takes hit from penguin

  What is the knowledge graph - First Iterationhttp://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2012/08/the-future-of-search-knowledge-graph.html.

The Future of Media
Clay Shirley  http://irclay.hubpages.com/hub/The-Future-of-Social-Media-for-Hotel-Marketing-Travel-and-Tourism

Search as Media

http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2011/09/is-search-new-media.html
http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2011/10/search-as-media-4-googles-hotel-finder.html  
 http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2011/10/how-small-hotels-tourism-cos-can.html
 http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2011/10/is-search-pushing-out-small-hotel-and.html

Travel At a Crossroad

http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.ca/2008/04/have-now-lost-their-opportunity-to-be.html