I attended the E-Tourism Africa Summit at the CTICC in Cape Town this week. It was a great event, with interesting and inspiring speakers covering a range of topics relevant to the online tourism industry.
Here’s my round up of the most interesting points from some of the presentations.
Damian Cook, the founder of E-Tourism Frontiers, the company that organises the E-Tourism Africa Summits, gave the first presentation, which was about the world’s changing tourism landscape.
Damian said that in Africa and other emerging markets, we need to enable a shift away from traditional marketing to make the tourism industry more sustainable and appropriate to global market.
One of the real challenges that people have when thinking about online tourism is getting to grips with what online tourism means. Online tourism is about communicating the right content across a variety of channels to the best value clients who will convert to a sale and keep coming back.
What’s interesting about the African tourism industry is that travel in Africa is mostly being sold to an older demographic. Damian stressed the need for the African travel industry to market travel towards the digital generation (people aged between 11 and 31). This generation prioritises these things when shopping online: Freedom, customisation, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation – all good points for online travel operators to take into account.
Some other interesting points from his presentation:
– 95% of travellers use web as primary source of info – it’s now about “˜word of mouse’
– More than 55% of all travel bookings were generated by the Internet last year, and for the past 3 years travel has been the best selling commodity online
– Lots of people are social media, especially Twitter and Foursquare, as a bragging tool, which is great for the online travel industry. We should tap into the online bragging culture.
– The shift in control has moved from us to our customers. We need to accept that and make the most of that. We need to encourage them to produce that content. Don’t charge them to work for you. If you are a hotel, people expect the internet now like they expect any amenity. People want the internet to be there, and they don’t like paying for it. People more likely to write review of hotel while staying there, using free internet. Hotels should always provide free Wifi. Hotels don’t ask guests to pay for water and lights – why make them pay for Internet?
– Huge growth of people watching travel videos as part of their research process when researching travel. Most of those videos produced by individuals.
– The Battle of Kruger is the best example of viral marketing for an emerging market destination. The video has had 54 million views and is the 12th most watched video on You Tube. This is an unbelievable audience reached with zero budget. It was produced by a user, published by a user, marketed by users.
– A lot of people get concerned about the threat of extinction because of the growth of online travel. It’s about evolution, without it destinations face extinction – embrace and evolve with the web.
– Augmented reality is the next step in the online travel space.
Jesse DesJardins, once voted the world’s most connected traveller, conducts social media experiments where he spends 72 hours in global destinations and posts the content he generates on social media platforms. He talked about his 72-hour trip to Cape Town and presented his brilliant and fun 72-second video of his trip. He posted the video on a Facebook page he created for 72 hours in Cape Town and within a short space of time, the page has attracted hundreds of likes. Jess gave some easy tips and inspiration on how to work social media and the web as a hotel or tour operator.
Only 4% of hotels respond to reviews on Trip Advisor. If you’re a hotel, put the right people in charge to manage your social media CV.
Look outside the tourism industry for e marketing ideas.
It’s about content, not advertising when it comes to social media – make sure you tell a good story.
Think of bite-sized goodness when making a video for the web. Videos should only be 2-3 min long, which is a good time for people to absorb content.
Commenting on social media platforms get you noticed.
Make it easy for customers to share their trip online.
With regards to social media, at the end of the day it’s about caring, not about the latest toys. Learn to engage in an authentic way.
Helena Egan, head of destination marketing at Trip Advisor presented on how hotels can use Trip Advisor to their advantage, and shared some interesting stats about the one of the world’s most popular travel websites.
Trip Advisor has 42 million unique monthly visitors and 40 million reviews and opionions
60% of the views on Trip Advisor are destination reviews, 40% are hotel reviews
20 new pieces of content a minute sent to Trip Advisor, 38% of which are positive. The things people complain about most are cleanliness and service.
In 2009 TripAdvisor had around 1.4 million hits on South Africa a month. In 2010 the figure has risen to 1.7 million. Apart from South Africans reading reviews on local destinations, most of the interest comes from Britain, America, Germany, Australia, The Netherlands, Italy and increasingly China.
Justin Spratt from Quirk E-Marketing spoke about Facebook, Twitter and blogs.
The global online travel retail sector is worth $125 billion.
Recent studies show that 88% of Trip Advisor visitors are influenced by the content they read.
Socialisation is innate in us – social media is a way to drive this.
77% of Internet users read blogs.
Curatorships are important – you need curators to manage your social media platforms and website.
Use Twitter to seed content from your site that you’ve posted on Facebook.
An important thing to remember when promoting your business on social media – rather target the people who want to listen than interrupt the people who don’t care.
Stick to the 9-in-10 rule – for every 9 pieces of interesting content you post on social media, you can do one self-promotional post.
Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, the CEO of Cape Town Tourism, spoke about how Cape Town Tourism turned World Cup fans into Cape Town fans using social media.
Cape Town is a challenger brand – we are more interesting than a London or a New York. The world is tired of generic, flattened-out destinations. They want real places with rough edges that tell a story. Responsible living, environment and climate change are incredibly important for long-haul destinations like Cape Town.The story of a destination is the unique selling point, not the product.
The customer journey (traveller as marketer) was the foundation of Cape Town Tourism’s World Cup planning.
Cape Town Tourism made Facebook into a virtual fan park for World Cup visitors. Key to the World Cup strategy was to encourage world cup fans to join our I love Cape Town Facebook fan page. Thus capturing these fans into a valuable cultivation pool for future destination marketing campaigns and research.
How Cape Town Tourism have made their Facebook page successful
– Activating fans as brand ambassdors through campaigns and competitions
– Promoting big events that appeal to a mass audience.
– Providing a platform to take live events online with BeenThere.TV. Post World Cup we use BeenThere.TV units at events like the Loeries.
– Reminding fans why Cape Town is one of the greatest cities in the world.
There are now 150 000 fans on the Facebook page, which makes it one of largest pages in South Africa.
The destination asset – at its simplest, a destination is a place where people want to be. People want real places with rough edges, quirky locals, interesting stories that are real. As people search for authentic and real places, social media has allowed places like Cape Town to compete in the global market.
Global head of online marketing at South Africa Tourism William Price presented on South Africa Tourism’s digital strategies in a post-World Cup landscape.
The days of travel and destination marketing where we only paid attention to bed and hotel are over. We need to get back into that dream language. If we cant sell a dream to people then we cant get them to come here.
Travel is social – that’s why social media is such a great way to promote travel online.
50% of visitors to southfrica.net are South Africans, which means we want to travel our own country. We value travel.
Social media is the biggest thing since Industrial Revolution
At South African Tourism, our e marketing strategy focuses on attracting, engaging, converting and retaining
Sell the experience, not the product. An example – selling the experience of afternoon tea at the Mount Nelson works better rather than marketing the luxury room. There are luxury rooms at hotels all over the world – people are after unique experiences.
Travellers want to read between the lines, and are now looking for authentic experiences
Content is the wrapper that keeps things together for your online business. Strategy and technology are good but ultimately bad content will mean failure.
Tara Turkington from Flow Communications talked about the importance of storytelling as an online strategy for business growth.
You will never be able to grow a strong fan base for a destination without a good story
Effective online strategy is about creating good content. Good story telling is a conversation.
Utilise classic journalistic elements of newsworthiness to create your story – timeliness, proximity, prominence, impact, and novelty.
The better the online content you serve and the more widely it appeals, the more chance you have that your efforts on the web will ultimately translate into more feet through your doors, and potentially more revenue.
You have to be ‘content fit’ on the web – you need to serve good content all the time to make an impact
Getaway Magazine editor Cameron Ewart-Smith presented on Getaway’s digital strategy, touching on our social media presence, digizine, website and iPad application.
Stefan Ekbergh, CEO of TravelStart, gave us a brief history of the company and some tips for building a successful online travel business.
1. Make sure people see and hear you – be present on sites like Trip Advisor.
2. Do things differently to everyone else to get noticed
3. Don’t just look at what other people are doing in order to get ideas for differentiating yourself – get ideas from within your organisation.
4. Take care of the customer – make sure you place enough emphasis on customer service; it’s key.
Amanda Forsythe from Mobiguides focused on an important part of online travel – mobile.
The new consumer is a prosumer – this means that they are no longer just consuming what we give them, they are taking an active role in what they consume.
Mobile phones are not just an extension of the web – they offer portability, voice and location awareness. These can all be leveraged to increase sales.
Mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet by 2015.
Video accounts for 69% of mobile data traffic – make sure you have video on your mobi site.
It’s important to give away content for free – people are used to getting free content.
To round up, Damian Cook shared his thoughts on the 10 critical steps to succeeding online.
1. Strategise for change
– Develop an e marketing strategy
– Start reallocating traditional budgets
– Reinvest 25% in online at first
– Set realistic time goals
2. Build internal resources
– Read, learn and join communities
– Bring in some interns/hire some students to help, especially with social media
3. Re-develop your website
– Plan it strategically
– Focus on room for growth
– Make it social-driven
4. Go social
– Use social media in all you do
– Build relationships and links
– Make social media part of your standard procedure
5. Be content-driven
– Make use of your own and your users’ content
6. Engage
– Talk to your users
Interact, ask and discuss
– don’t deny, challenge or fight users – ask them to collaborate with you as you grow
7. Have fun
– Put a bit of yourself into your social media profile
– Encourage sharing
8. Don’t forget to make money
– Focus on conversion
– Invest in promotions/SEO where needed
9. Keep changing
– Use new technology and innovation
– Be visual and use multimedia
– React and respond to friends, feedback and data
10. Keep an open mind
– Keep retaining, studying and engaging
– Stay social and keep talking
– Look at what’s working online – work with favourites but also look for new popular things
If you want to find out more about the presentations at the conference, all the slides are online at www.slideshare.net/eTourismAfrica.
