Posts tagged as:

tourism

Social X Media = Social Media Success
(twit video)

by Todd Lucier on April 1, 2011

What are you investing in? This Week in Tourism from Gros Morne Nat’l Park.

{ 1 comment }

Latest trends in mobile:

  • over a third of folks are using Facebook with their handheld device. (that’s over 200 Million people!)
  • Travelport reports more than half of business customers now use mobile technology for researching and booking hotels.
  • 80% of these folks said mobile applications offering suggested restaurants and bars around the hotel location and a similar number want suggestions for recreational activities.
  • 71% think Wi-Fi should be standard in hotel rooms.  (Just who are the other 29% hotel bookkeepers?)
  • EMarketer estimates that 31% of mobile Internet users / 34% of smartphone users (nearly 25 million US mobile users) will research travel information on their mobile devices before making a trip this year. Nearly 12 million will use the mobile channel to book their plans.


I have answers to the most common reasons why many tourism folks haven’t started working on a handheld version of their website.

  • keep your mobile site simple.You don’t know where to start. You hesitating because you don’t know what to do or how to do it.   Ask your guests what kind of info would be helpful.  Think like a traveler.  That’s a good start. Then see this little video.
    • Start with a map
    • Your phone number
    • Your SMS text number (if you don’t have one, get one.  Simple solution is a dedicated cell phone, but there are other options – Google Voice, Toktumi.)
  • You can’t afford another website. You can’t afford NOT to have a mobile site.  Your traditional website will be gathering dust and be all but forgotten once you see the responses to your mobile efforts grow.  Check out Onbile.com and try their mobile website creation tool.  We used it to create our site.  Makes it easy to make changes anytime online and opens in a browser for those with mobile devices instead of our main site.  Oh, btw, it’s Free.
  • You think your site looks just fine on the tiny screens. Get real.  Even with those fancy phones that zoom in are poor substitute to a well designed mobile website.  Take care of simple things for your traveler with a clean minimalist site.
  • You don’t have the time to get working on your mobile site. You will soon have lots of time.   When all the business is going to those who make the time to create their mobile site.
  • You think this accelerating growth trend is temporary and that folks will soon abandon their mobile devices? Your website is probably still a free geocities website and you still use a  hotmail address.  How did you ever find yourself on this page discussing mobile websites and tourism?

What are your thoughts on mobile websites? Any tips or resources to share?  Do you use a mobile service, a web or app designer that could help others get their mobile site up and running?

{ 6 comments }

How long should your tourism promotional video be?

October 5, 2010

With most savvy tourism businesses starting to look seriously at video, a question I frequently get from tourism operators is How long should my promotional video be? When considering video length it is best to measure time in seconds rather than minutes.  After 2 minutes, 60% of people have tuned out! The best answer to [...]

Read the full article →

How to Invest in Video: Editing and Producing Video (Part 2 of 3)

February 14, 2010

There are three essential ingredients to getting started with video: shooting video (which was the focus of part 1 of the series) editing and producing video posting and sharing video Editing and Producing Video Editing and Producing Video is perhaps the most challenging aspect of getting great video online for your tourism business.   It [...]

Read the full article →

How to Invest in Video:
Shooting Video (Part 1 of 3)

February 8, 2010

Online Video viewership continues to grow, making production and distribution of video a must for any tourism business serious about marketing on the Web. ComScore reports the average viewer watches 187 videos per month in the U.S.  In the month of December 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos. How to Invest in Video: There are three [...]

Read the full article →

What Makes a Successful DMO?

October 8, 2009

Successful Destination Marketing Organizations Tourism businesses can succeed with the help of a strong destination marketing organization. At the core, a shared community vision about the values in a community are at the heart of any shared marketing project. By bringing together traditional and non-traditional partners in tourism and getting the word out with a [...]

Read the full article →

Augmented Reality in Travel and Tourism: merging digital information with the real world

September 3, 2009

Early Augmented Reality Travel Gadgets are like having God in your Pocket An early GPS-linked project in the UK demonstrated how a tourism region could put information in the fingertips of visitors. The project used a tiny electronic machine to add interactivity to visiting ancient ruins by linking hotspots to audio/video content to tell the [...]

Read the full article →

Resist the Race to the Bottom

April 14, 2009

In a recessionary market there can be significant price pressures on your products and services. Instead of looking at price as the only thing you can control, have a look at the opportunities you may have in front of you to create new products or packages. Instead of joining in the race to the bottom, [...]

Read the full article →

Missed Opportunities for Travel and Tourism in Social Media

March 26, 2009

Today I chatted with Alli Lindsey (@allilindsey), a Public Relations and Advertising student at Loyola University, Chicago. Her questions on social media prompted really great discussion about some great opportunities that most tourism businesses and regions are missing out on. Travel and Tourism Social Media – Missed Opportunities Download podcast This Internet Marketing podcast has [...]

Read the full article →

Put Video Libraries on Your Web site – free!

March 11, 2009

Datatubes allows users to upload their videos to datatubes and offers playback of the videos on your own web site. This isn’t any old Youtube embed code. Not only are individual videos embed-able in your Web site. You can embed entire libraries of videos on your primary Web site! and… when the videos in your [...]

Read the full article →