Tourism Exchange Jan 2012 - First I-Site to Join TXNZ

Happy New Year from TXNZ

We hope you all had a great Xmas and New Year and are enjoying summer, or at least the 2012 version of it!
This year will be an exciting year for us, which means and exciting year for you as well. We will be announcing some new integrations over the coming months which will increase your online exposure and potential for new bookings. We will have news coming out soon so keep your eyes out.
             

First NZ I-Site to join TXNZ

We are also happy to announce the first I-Site in NZ to join the Tourism Exchange, the town of Trees & Champions, Cambridge. What this means is local businesses will be live and bookable on the Cambridge I-Site website and their consultants can check live availability and give travellers instant confirmations over the counter, no phone calls required! Businesses outside Cambridge will also be able take advantage of this as consultants can now check live availability and book onward accommodation or activities anywhere in New Zealand. We will be contacting all TXNZ businesses again very soon to let you know how to opt in to this new channel once their setup is complete.

Online Tip of the Month

How does your website perform for you? Does it keep people interested and help close sales?
Your website is your shop window and you should manage it as such. The following items have all been proven to improve sales performance of websites and are quick, easy & inexpensive to implement:

•    Up to date, good quality images with people (your target market) enjoying your experience.
•    Recent video footage, keep it under 2 minutes. Give people a tour, a slice of the action or a traditional welcome.
•    Location maps that are correct and can be copied or printed. Help your customers find you and they will appreciate it.
•    Customer reviews and testimonials. Post a couple of these on your busiest pages, give them a personality by including a name and country e.g.: John & Susan, USA, Jan 2012.
•    Let people keep in touch with you if they want to. Facebook is one way to do this, a newsletter or Twitter is another.
•    Talk to your customers; tell them stories through a blog.

The trick to making all these things work for you is to keep regular. This is probably the biggest challenge for busy tourism operators, keeping it all going when you get busy. If you can't schedule time to do it yourself, get someone else to do it for you. Your online marketing needs to be regular and at the top of your priority list, not something to do when every other job is done.

If you haven't got all of the above items on your site already, set some time aside now and give some of these a try. Success with online marketing is all about making small regular improvements, not one giant leap to the Promised Land.

                                                               

A great example of a site doing most of these things right and getting regular online bookings are our friends Chris & Paul Hopkins from Mussel Bed B&B.