Category Archives: Tourism Marketing

It's time to throw away previous models of online distribution! Tomahawk Director and tourism marketing expert Gina Paladini presents the drastic changes in online distribution for tourism, and how your business can stay ahead of the curve.

Download the whitepaper as a PDF

Let’s start by looking back to the 1990 era of travel distribution.

“Those were the days.” The distribution chain was an easy, single flat line with the novel addition of a supplier having their first website.

Today the available distribution "chain" is more like a bicycle wheel with spokes than a chain!\

The increase of distribution channels options requires an deep understanding of your customers, and which channels are best for each stage of the travel purchase...

Photo credit: SimilarWeb

If you haven’t heard of Pokemon Go by now, you may be in the minority. The Nintendo-game based app created by developer Niantic, has taken the world by storm since its release a week ago.

According to SimilarWeb, the game already has twice as many users as the popular dating app Tinder, and is on track to have more active users than Twitter by the end of the week.

Integrated with Google Maps, the app requires users to travel to exact locations to play and progress in the game, overlaying the characters with real-world landmarks.

To sweeten the experience, users can purchase “lures” which cause characters to spawn in a specific location for a limited time, drawing crowds of other users to that location. This has an intriguing application for...

Shoulder Season. Definition: Noun. The time of year right before and after high season when the weather is still favourable and tourism operators worldwide want more bookings. (Also: shoulder period)

With some forward planning and tactics before your shoulder season starts, there are tried and true strategies to stretch out the peak season and boost bookings.

1. Create a New Inclusive Package

Offering the ability to have an “easy to book in one click”, all-inclusive package motivates bookings. Create a multiple day stay with tickets to a local event, or negotiate a favourable rate with a local activity and/or restaurant.

Besides adding the package to your website and booking engine, add it to your business listing on TripAdvisor and be sure to promote on all online...

Gina's November presentation to the Tourism Industry Association New Zealand delves into the Big Question - will virtual reality help or hinder tourism business?

Virtual reality is the biggest game-changer in our lives since the launch of the iPhone.

The seemingly simple ability to see an image or video in 360 degrees is about to revolutionise the way we live.

Imagine being able to virtually travel anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home. Fly over the Grand Canyon looking up, down and all around you as if you were really there, or “dive” underwater at the Great Barrier Reef and watch as a turtle swims past you.

Jaunt, a VR technology and content company, claims “You will feel transported directly into the middle of the action. Look anywhere. See...

Part III in our Halloween 2015 blog series.

As the world’s number-one tourism website, TripAdvisor is an audacious and powerful beast. For travellers sharing a review or researching a trip, it works a treat. For tourism operators it can prove a powerful marketing and distribution tool. But for all of these treats, this powerful beast can serve up a trick or two.

Handling Reviews

Since anyone can post a review on TripAdvisor, it can create some scary situations for a tourism operator. Travellers threatening a negative review as an attempt to get a discount, competitors purchasing fake reviews to boost their rankings, or a sinister traveller who is simply miserable about life and uses the platform to constantly complain.

Some operators believe fake or venomous reviews are...

Online marketing is forever evolving. Four years ago we would frequently give advice to accommodation providers on how to increase their bookings by optimising listings on online travel agents (OTAs) like Booking.com. These days our conversations revolve around how to increase direct bookings to their own websites, partly to avoid paying the OTAs commission.

Ultimately, the best way to do this is not by changing anything on your OTA listings, but by taking a look at everything else you are doing online. Here are five ways to help achieve this.

Take a good look at your website

Open up your website and imagine you are a first-time visitor who has never seen your business before. Ask yourself, can you immediately understand from your homepage what you are selling and why you...