In our research in building the marketing strategy for our client, we decided that Bolivia would be best promoted with appealing tours and packaged holidays. All will be locally managed with local experts who have an understanding at the grassroots level of the special places and popular attractions. It’s a huge country and travellers will need to visit several cities to see its many unique points of interest.
Today we have published a new Video on Bolivia. You may see this on the YouTube channel.
It is also published with separate and unique blog posts on several other channels and, of course, here in TravelWatchNews.
In addition, there are several articles and several more videos planned to help promote Bolivia Hotels and Tours for our client.
We take pride in this work as Bolivia is a beautiful country with a culture and lifestyle that has existed almost unchanged for centuries. It is the home of the Incas and the Tiwanaku before them and the ruins of their monuments, temples and building are scattered in the landscape.
Our client, Hostal de Su Merced, agreed and went to work on creating the tours and teaming up with other hotels to deliver a countrywide experience. There is much to explore in Bolivia, from the footprints of the dinosaurs to the floating island in Lake Titicaca as well as amazing landscapes and wildlife.
The program is in the early stages and we are implementing a basic Social Index campaign that has already shown results. This includes publishing several videos, articles and blogs. We have created a social network for Bolivian hotels including authority social bookmark, status sites and video sharing portals.
Stay tuned for more as we progress with this project and update our blogs. Enjoy the video and we hope that you learn something about this unique country. Perhaps you will visit Bolivia and stay at Hostal de Su Merced, or contact them to discuss their special 3-City tour.
For more about this type of content and video marketing, keep tuned in to this channel. Coming up next, we will share with you a video and review of article blogging for Dominica. In this case study we share the successes and disappointments. What we have learned is put to good use in our new fully managed SocialIndexEngine and its marketing strategy.
Today we look at Google’s Hotel Finder. This is still at the experimental stage. It's supposed to be open to the world but you can't find the Caribbean or any place in the Caribbean that are like their places. Google is targeting major destinations first.
It starts with an intelligent mapping system that allows you to define a catchment area for the hotels that you want to see. and they are displayed in the hotel listings.
You can change your dates, which would make a difference. If the date change causes a different price to be calculated, then they would be reflected in the results up here. But, as you can see, you’re getting star ratings and prices.
Right away, Google is treating hotels as somewhat of a commodity here; nothing on the features as yet, but that will probably come. The 'word on the street' is that Google is planning to do a lot more with regard to filters for hotels. When you click on a hotel, you get hotel details similar to an Expedia layout here or an OTA of any kind.
Note that there are hotel reviews by Google users; they’re quickly moving into the TripAdvisor space.
You can add a hotel to your shortlist, a comparison list similar to what we do with Barbados and the mapping systems. This allows you to select the points and add them to a list.
You can at any point go back to your shortlist, have a look at your shortlist on the top and remove an item from the shortlist or, in fact, book it on the shortlist.
And you get the options to book with Expedia, Travelocity and the major Online Travel Agents or go to the owner's site!
The information is well presented and useful. This is a powerful solution for anyone that’s looking for the hotel in a particular destination, and you need to be in here. I don’t think you can not be in here.
If you are not a Travelocity or a major brand, you are not automatically going to be on Google radar and thus not included in these listings.
How to get listed
The way to get on that radar is through search engine optimization, listing in authority information sites, and building your u,brand authority with social media and social indexing to create a presence that Google will take note of. All this and more is done with the SocialIndexEngine.com marketing services.
It is time to start thinking about it because this is the next phase of Google as Media. It is going to be very easy for travelers to get to this service and to avoid having to wait through all of the other services that are in there, including the organic search results.
So that’s all we need to say for right now. Another reason to consider marketing yourself, another reason to consider making sure that you get on to Google’s radar and another reason to look at services such as SocialIndexEngine.com which will put you in the right place.
Our last blog showed how search results are favoring advertisers, and how Google is offering eCommerce services, embedded in search results.
Advertising will be a necessity
We are going to see more advertisers and more Google results versus Organic. It’s going to become more important to advertise, more important to be a preferred supplier and more important to get Google’s attention so that you get into their Maps and get into their supply lists.
Shopping Services will be ubiquitous
There is going to be more eCommerce driving business to suppliers. I don’t think that Google is going to go into the transaction business; they’d be crazy to do that. There are enough eCommerce systems and services and those are their customers.,But it appears that Google might be very selective in who they choose as preferred supplies. Clearly Google will be offering more shopping services; this is to be expected as travelers want to know price and availability.
Enabling Participation
You’re going to see a lot more enabling processes like hangouts, chat, video sharing and GoToMeeting-type services. All of this is going to be there to help search users participate and help us find the right suppliers. But the question is: who are the right suppliers? That’s where we have to be very careful. Be aware also that these processes, social interaction and engagement will present a new layer of application and engagement at the point of decision and will affect where travelers go and which sites they visit. If you are not in the process, you are not in the game.
A single correct answer
Remember that Google is trying to deliver a single result to a single person for a single inquiry. What that means is that the result going to YOU will not necessarily be the result coming to ME for the same question. That means that everyone may have a very personal result based on their personal profile and current interest.
That means Social Media is really going to be increasingly important. This is why Google has made such an effort to develop and push Google Plus. Social Media is the source of who we are. Your reputation on sites like TripAdvisor and others are all going to play into Google's selection of who and what the authority for a particular result is.
The question is: What do we do about it?
We need to create our own authority status. Here is how you can do that:
Get Links from top sites. Sites with PR 6 and up; the higher the better. Linking from Barbados.org is a good example. It’s a highly relevant site and is considered an authority site. We have seen that people that link from that site will automatically get pulled up in the rank and pulled up in the Google results.
We need to publish. We can’t rely on other people to carry our message, because that’s going to undermine us totally. We can’t rely on Expedia carrying our brand - they won’t. We have to do more to brand ourselves in the travel industry. We must do that by publishing: comment on other sites, engage with social media, blog, create informative, educational and entertaining videos that are not totally self-serving messages. There are all sorts of ideas for video and YouTube is now the second largest search engine. Make sure you have a YouTube channel and add videos to it.
And finally, we will use Google Plus. I think that this is going to be very important because Google is looking at its Plus activity to gauge who we are. Google accounts for 70% of search now. If you are not on Google results you will miss out big time. The objective is to be on Page 1 for key phrases. You cannot do this on your own, but you can use services like http://SocialIndexEngine.com and you will have to.
Need to Take Charge of Brand Marketing
It's important that we see the implications of what is happening here and why it’s becoming so essential for you to take charge of your own marketing and your own brand. The market will not take care of this for you. The OTAs can bring you business but they do not build sustainable brands for hotels. You cannot abdicate this job.
Managing marketing, social media, publishing and content marketing is a lot of work. Hotels will increasingly have to subcontract the job out because they do not have the time or the inclination. And they should not; running a hotel and managing staff, looking after guests and maintaining the property, standards and service is a full-time job. Hotel managers do not have the skill sets or the understanding of the new media landscape.
AXSES can help. We have an arsenal of unique technology built to do the job. We have a team who understands the market and the resources and we are teaming with the very best Internet Marketers and Social Media professionals in the world. We answer the questions, like what you need to do and we can show you success.
There are big changes in the wind that are going to shake up travel shopping and eCommerce. This article is a must-read to understanding what is happening.
In a previous blog (Is search the new media), we talked about how Search is changing and become more like Media. We suggested that Search is the perfect example of the sort of platform and function we can expect in the new media of the future.
We saw that Google is upping the ante for organic search and featuring its own properties, as well as preferred suppliers and advertisers, in preference to organic search.
To illustrate the point, we have created a video here. You will notice Google advertisers are on top on the right and its own places now above organic results. Organic is way down the list on many result pages. Ads on the right, sponsors on the top, Places under that, leave organic off the screen and much depreciated.
Notice also that Google Search is now in the eCommerce business, offering rates by date and links to booking options. And Google is providing its own places' websites in several cases. It lists seven properties on top of the map; these are 7 they think are the most appropriate search results. The mechanics of choosing the top 7 is not clear at all.
The fact is that Google is becoming a full-service platform providing websites, hosting, technology and fulfillment. But it is not necessarily working with YOU!
We note that Expedia is well represented in Google Places' results and we know that Expedia is a big advertiser. But we also notice that a small hotel who does not advertise (Dover Beach in Barbados) is on Places and when you click on the link, it takes you directly to Dover Beach Hotel's official website. This is encouraging, as we were instrumental in getting Dover Beach Placed. It shows that big advertisers do not necessarily dominate. They do things right, they are authority sites, and they get listed. But as a small hotel owner, You too can be listed and linked directly. And it is not always the big OTAs that are the preferred suppliers. In the case of Coconut Court Hotel a small OTA is listed, and that is likely a result of their work in listing the Place and marketing it.
When you examine the Map-Website that Google creates for properties, you will notice that it is getting its photos from Panorama. So Panorama is a good place to put your images. It's an authority site respected by Google. Be there and you increase your chances of the largest search engine in the world listing you.
Summary
Its clear that search is transforming into a much more encompassing media. It is becoming a full service solution, offering e-commerce and fulfillment. Its methods to evaluate ranking are favoring large companies who are the major advertisers and depreciating organic search results. It is already very difficult for small hotel and tourism operators to gain first page ranking for their target searches. Small companies do not have the collateral of the big companies, they don’t have the content, and are not woven into the web in the same way as the big companies. They don’t have the know how or the time and resources to compete.
The new changes appear to make it almost impossible for small travel companies to get into the first page of search results for generic terms other that their own name.
Coming Next
In our next Blog we will look at these issue in detail and suggest what a small tourism company can do to market its brand and sustain its niche against these odds.
AXSES Social Marketing For Travel (Social4Travel.com), which harnesses the Internet, Social Media and Mobile Marketing to enhance the business of hotels and tourism firms, is proud to be working in conjunction with Marigot Beach Club in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia (see http://MarigotBeachClub.com).
Marigot Beach Club is an exclusive villa-style resort on Marigot Bay in St. Lucia. It is an ideal destination for travelers seeking a romantic getaway or a memorable family vacation.
Marigot Beach Club is being marketed with AXSES SocialIndexEngine.com which includes being featured on high-quality sites in specific markets and special purpose site like http://Travel2ExoticPlaces.com, launched for this project. AXSES also produces several videos, articles and blogs (see video example below.
AXSES Social Marketing for Travel (Social4Travel.com) helps clients in the travel industry, gain increased online visibility, more Internet traffic, more customers and ultimately, a higher number of direct bookings.
The procedure is very intensive. A comprehensive marketing campaign combining technology, video, magazine placement, publishing and advertising can easily exceed $50,000 US for launch and management in a year.
But with a Joint Venture approach, a hotel or travel company will pay AXSES as little as 10% of the cost and share in the revenue. This way, the risk to the hotel or tourism company is minimal.
About AXSES Social4Travel Technology & Services
The core travel technology is the arcRes Tourism Publishing System. This provides a convenient way to publish promotions, photos and content to social media sites as well as affiliates, independent travel sites, shopping sites and magazine sites across the Internet.
Key arcRes applications include: Facebook Marketing, Booking Engines, SmartphoneTraveller Marketing Systems, Destination Systems, a network of sites, affiliates and a basket of marketing applications for tourism: from mobile apps to Facebook apps like arcResBookings and FanPagePosts.
With Social Media demographics, arcRes Publishing can now target specific audiences such as families, single travelers and travelers in certain countries, as well as by their own special interests.
arcResBookings for Facebook features direct sales and bookings with no commissions, Fan Page Branding, Marketing and a professional Content Management System, that keeps content fresh and current. The arcRes secure Booking Engine for Facebook provides safety and peace of mind. Family plans, flexible terms, payment plans, inventory choices and many marketing options are available. http://facebook.arcres.biz
FanPagePosts allows hotels and tourism companies to post special offers to their Facebook pages, Wall and news feeds. This gets the word out about the Brand. It is effective, as fans are always on the lookout for a fair deal and a Special Facebook offer. It can create viral exposure, as friends and friends of friends read each others’ news and share the offers with other. Ultimately, it means more direct sales. http://FanPagePosts.com
With the arcRes Specials and Packages Publishing Tool, hotels and travel companies can publish travel deals and promotions through an easy click on their computer keyboard. The publishing network is vast and includes AXSES’ own sites as well as 100s of affiliates, travel sites and services that subscribe to the arcRes RSS Feeds. http://specials.arcRes.biz
The arcRes Mobile Travel applications give smartphone users an easy-to-use format to search, explore, plan and book their holiday at anytime, from anywhere. Hotels and restaurants can easily create their own comprehensive Mobile websites and booking engine using the arcRes Mobile Publisher. The sites can be accessed on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and any smart mobile devices. The smartphone websites and applications also help the Brand get found on Google Mobile Search. http://smartphonetraveller.com.
All of these are integrated with AXSES SocialIndexEngine which creates the social footprint using a mix of strategies and techniques. For this project AXSES has also created a new site http://Travel2ExoticPlaces.com to help market Marigot Beach Club
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This blog is about how articles can get you to the top of Google, especially if it’s done in conjunction with video blogging and the full social media indexing.
Social media is about conversation publishing: making comments in blogs, articles, videos, tweets and to web properties, about telling people something which is of interest to them and sharing your knowledge and experience.
The best way to describe this is to take you to an example. We were commissioned to build an eCommerce marketing platform for Dominica and to integrate that with the official Dominica website. We built the Bookings Dominica Central Reservation System. We created about 50 pages of information and wrote a major article: a Travelogue. From this we built several videos, articles, a magazine, bookmarks, tweets and press releases.
We then published the articles and videos. Articles must be unique; otherwise you might get ignored by Google and in some cases slapped. But videos can be populated over the net. We published the videos to our network of sites such as adventure travel destinations, romantic holiday destinations and many others.
We also used our eCommerce engine as a publishing system for travel products, specials, promos and packages. This is very effective way of advertising a car rental, package, room, holiday experience, etc. arcRes will publish these to our own portals, on the destination portals, the suppliers' own websites and hundreds - or thousands, in some cases - of affiliate sites.
We build magazines, another way to get good quality content into high quality sites, and create footprints on the internet. We’re doing this for entertainment, for education, to publicize, and most importantly to get links back to our sites and clients' sites. Google counts links; they see and rank this activity because it is useful quality content on quality sites.
The name of the game is to publish and market your brand in the best possible places, ones with high relevancy to the content and which are highly regarded by Google.
We then turn around and market those same places that are carrying your brand. It sounds like a lot of work and it is. That’s the subject of our next video, which you can get by just subscribing to our YouTube channel, Social4Travel1:
I’d like just to share with you the results of this particular program for Dominica. The website that we’re promoting primarily was the BookingsDominica.com website. We gained a PR4, a page rank of four, in just under a year. This is good; by contrast, the Dominica Authority Sites have a PR of 6, but they have been in business for many years and have a significant budget and network of links.
We had 500,000 Unique Visitors in that year, 30,000 linked directly to the Hotel Members' Websites. We will create a video detailing this shortly, which will be available to anyone who subscribes to our Social4Travel1 YouTube channel.
Article Marketing is a major component of AXSES SocialIndexEngine.com The Complete "Done for You" Social Media Management and Brand Marketing Program that Drives Direct Bookings to your Website on Autopiulot.
We will be sharing a whole library of HOW TO Market Travel videos. To find out more or to see the next articles, all you need to do is subscribe to our video channel, which is YouTube.com/user/social4travel1, click on “subscribe” and you will then get notified of any new videos that we produce about how to market travel, hotels and toward some destinations.
If you would also like to subscribe to our Social4Travel newsletter, just enter your email on http://social4travel.com; you’ll also be able to access white papers, reports, PDFs and information on how to market your travel business.
Search engines have elevated certain sites, notably Social Networking sites, Bookmarks and Web 2.0 properties to "authority status". In many cases, Fan Pages will outrank the official website. Done right, bookmarks, fan pages and social profiles help company sites rank well and get found in search results. In effect this makes Marshall McLuhan's, "The Media is the Message", a tangible reality. In other words, say it on a social media site and your message will have more visibility and more impact.
Search Engines are a vital part of the new media; it too is morphing into a far more interactive channel, as we see with maps and pricing options now right in search results. The answer to the question "are search engines the new media?" is not so simple. But look at Google + and ask yourself: where this is heading? Media, I say. Look at Google + Hangouts - a go-to meeting-like option. There a small business can conduct its own impromptu team meetings, seminars, share documents and interact with customers. In this case Google is enabling us to publish and engage, by delivering the tools we need. Recall that the new media is not about broadcasting (see the future of media) but about enabling participation. In this respect Hangouts is an enabler, is it media?, perhaps it will be!
Where will Google draw the line on process? It's moves into shopping, e-commerce and fulfillment on search, is starting to get creepy: booking flights, creating webpages for small business, choosing which hotels it maps, which Online Travel Agents Agents (OTA's) it displays in Google Places. Google Places now takes up the top of the search results, meaning organic search is way down the page. It is getting a little scary and clearly could lead to a realignment of business services. Business as we know it may never be the same if Google takes over website provision and hosting.
I fear that the New Media may displace many small businesses, and that could be evil. But give them some slack, these are early days and Google is not evil.
I have spent some time with them on online seminars, product reviews and open discussions and i am impressed by the character of its people. These are not tycoons, but rather bright and enthusiastic people who care about what they are doing and the world they might be creating. I believe that Google cares about its bottom line, but it also cares about the little guy and my instinct is that it will build systems for all. That just my instinct and perhaps my hope. Nevertheless we need to be watchful. Innovation and change is rampant and some change may hurt.
We are witness to the birth of the new media. Traditional channels, processes, form and function are all morphing in some way to be relevant in the new age of participation. Search will be more Social and be more interactive, enabling participation. I like using search as a metaphor of the new media because it is interactive and enabling. YOU search; you ask the questions; you select the answers.
Search delivers maps, prices, content and process. It is, like media, supported by advertising. I see it become more and more a media offering rich content to complex queries, including seasonally relevant rates and "personal" packages.
The maps on Google are still limited but look at Bookable-Maps, as seen in the Tourism Marketing of Barbados.org (http://bookable-maps.com). These are good examples of the interactivity we will see more of in the digital age of participation. It will be in search. Search will evolve and become more social, it will evolve to answer question of price, availability, shopping and fulfillment.
Google's aim is to deliver a single right answer for every single query by a single person. In other words the answer that I get will often not be the same as the one you get. And that means Google will know an awful lot about you and me, and our preferences and interest at any one particular time.
Google plus with its circle of friends and interest will be a key player in defining these very personal search results. So will social media. Our profiles, bookmarks, friends, business and our activity all make up the index which search engines are accumulating.
Going forward it is important to be prudent in what we do and how we do it and especially how we market.
