Top 10 Marketing Strategies For Tourism Businesses

Google, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Kayak, Instagram… The tourism industry is constantly evolving as the algorithms, tools and key players are joining the party! How can you make sure that your tourism or hospitality business is thriving and will keep being successful in the long term? With a solid marketing strategy! After working with travel businesses for years, we have been able to see trends come and go, allowing us to define a top 10 list of marketing strategies that are worth implementing for your travel business. Why 10? Because Vancouver has been breaking records 3 years in a row with 10 million visitors each year. One or two just won’t cut it!

1. Be informed

Travel regulations, political environment, natural disasters… You need to know what is going on in your industry, what is the latest news about the destinations you are selling to your potential customers and be able to quickly distribute that information accordingly. With COVID-19, it has been particularly important as travel and safety regulations were changing almost every week, if not every day! 

What are the trendy destination or travel activity of the year/season? 

Barcelona? Maldives? Las Vegas? What is the travel destination that your target wants to visit this year? As a tourism expert, you need to know what the current popular destinations are and adapt your marketing strategy. Whether it’s through your SEO strategy, social media content or event product offering. 

Depending on the specific products or services you are offering, keep in mind that your sales cycle could be seasonal. You need to know when your target will want to buy. Is it a year in advance, or is it a last minute item that people tend to buy while travelling?

Travel marketing tip: As social media and SEO (Google ranking) will probably play a major part in your strategy, try to stay up to date on their best practices. Changes in their algorithm happen pretty regularly, and could impact your business. Your marketing manager or a marketing consultant are the best people to advise you on that.    

2. Have a solid content generation strategy

As a tourism business, keep in mind that your target is here to travel, and this travel experience should start from the minute you have a first touch point with them. Social media, website, apps, advertising… Your entire strategy should be about travel and immersion. 

Blog posts, photos and videos… this is the content you need to have on a regular basis for your brand. Generating travel content on a regular basis can be challenging, especially for a small business with limited resources, that is why you need to consider user generated content. Different approaches are possible:

Influencers marketing:

Travel bloggers, instagrammers, youtubers… Define who is popular among your potential clients and could talk about your brand. The idea is to reach out to the influencers that have similar values to what your brand is about and a high engagement rate (the number of followers being secondary). Lots of influencers are already working with travel and hospitality brands and are producing great articles, photos and videos. Depending on influencers, budget can be variable, if you can’t spend too much on influencer marketing, prioritize influencers with less than 10,000 followers. If you are a vacation rental owner or an hospitality business owner, a service like Stayamo, for example, helps you connect with quality content creators that will create content for your business and promote it for no fees, in exchange of a free stay. 

Organize contests:

To engage your current fans or clients, raise awareness and create content, organise a contest. This can be done on one of your social media platforms or even on your website. This can be setup pretty easily and generate lots of value for your business. 

Create a community:

Is travel photography, video or articles part of your brand positioning. Have you considered creating a member community on your website, where people could exchange tips or upload their content? This is a key successful pillar of brands content strategy, like National Geographic for example.  

Collaborate with content writers:

Do you have a company blog? Are you a travel publisher? The team writing your content, whether they are in house or not, could be a serious asset to your strategy. Don’t forget to ask them to generate different types of content while they are working for you.

Hire a content creator! If you don’t have the time, or struggle with well-written content, you can hire on contracted writers who will deliver what you want to put out to your readers. 

Travel marketing tip: Are you already doing all the above but are struggling with conversions? Partnering with complementary businesses can also help retain your website visitors. For example, if you are selling trips to Mexico, why not partnering with the Tourism Office of Mexico to provide, on your website, useful information about this destination. Your users will have more reasons to stay on your website, meaning more conversion potential for you.

3. Think SEO

• Have a website optimized, focus on how it works as a mobile site and the overall speed. 
• Create internal links between pages
• Create external links to your pages
• Use SEO keywords on your website navigation and content
• Have an optimized Google My Business profile

Travel marketing tip: Optimize ALL your content for SEO, even the content that is not on your website, like Youtube videos for example.

4. Instagram is your friend

• Posts on the platform regularly. 
• Create nice visual content.
• Curate content from other accounts (if you have their permission!).
• Contact influencers and see if there is any collaboration possible.
• Use the right hashtags that will allow your account to be more visible to your potential target.
• Engage with the community.

Don’t forget other social media platforms that could be beneficial to your business like Youtube, Facebook, Tiktok and Twitter mostly. 

The platforms you will put your efforts into and the content you will publish will really depend on what your brand is about and what your niche is, but keep in mind that people want to be inspired. 

Travel marketing tip: When posting, try to keep the ⅓-⅔ rule in mind: ⅓ of the content should be about your brand or products, ⅔ should be more inspirational (something that is linked to your brand positioning and that your audience should like).

5. Get positive reviews

Make sure to provide a great customer service to your clients and ask them to leave reviews. You can do that the old traditional way (just ask them face to face), through a follow up email or through print. The solution you will adopt depends on what you are selling. 

Travel marketing tip: Not only you need positive reviews, but you need to have recent reviews. Also don’t forget to reply to negative reviews.

6. Run PPC campaigns

Don’t underestimate the power of remarketing. Customer’s journey can include dozens of searches and visits to hundreds of web pages, especially in the tourism industry. Remarketing ensure that one interaction someone has with your brand isn’t the only interaction. People who know your brand will be more receptive to your future messaging. 

Travel marketing tip: Have a clear idea of who your target is. This will help you define the targeting of your PPC campaigns and optimize your ad spent. When it comes to Google Ads campaigns, ask a PPC marketing consultant to help you. They have lots of experience running ads and will help you maximize your ROI.

7. Define a clear target and unique positioning

Travel marketing tip: Writing buyer personas will help you create successful campaigns that will speak to your target and get them to click and convert.

8. Meet your target at events

Travel marketing tip: Events can also be a great opportunity for you to meet and collaborate with potential partners targeting the same audience. Bring your business cards!

9. Be reactive

As most of the visitors who come to your travel website for the first time might not make an immediate purchase, get them to subscribe to your newsletter, so that you can send them valuable content, encouraging them to buy your travel products. 

Don’t forget that email marketing can be a great tool to stay in touch with your existing clients. You have higher chances to convert an existing client than a new lead, that’s why you need to have a clear email marketing strategy when it comes to your regular customers. 

Travel marketing tip: Customize the content of your newsletters and transactional emails so that it is relevant to the experience that your clients had with you. Did they book a trip in the Rockies in the past? They might be interested by other National Parks or mountain trip for example.  

10. Raise awareness and stay in touch with your target through email marketing

As most of the visitors who come to your travel website for the first time might not make an immediate purchase, get them to subscribe to your newsletter, so that you can send them valuable content, encouraging them to buy your travel products. 

Don’t forget that email marketing can be a great tool to stay in touch with your existing clients. You have higher chances to convert an existing client than a new lead, that’s why you need to have a clear email marketing strategy when it comes to your regular customers. 

Travel marketing tip: Customize the content of your newsletters and transactional emails so that it is relevant to the experience that your clients had with you. Did they book a trip in the Rockies in the past? They might be interested by other National Parks or mountain trip for example.  

Do you have the feeling that your current marketing strategy is not strong enough to get more awareness and conversions among your target market? We have been working with lots of travel businesses like you for decades. From National Geographic to small travel businesses, we know what is working and what is not. From a marketing assessment to a full action plan, we work with you on finding which marketing strategy will help your travel business reach its goals. Contact us!