The Role of Digital Marketing in Tourism

The tourism industry comprises all those people, activities, and organizations such as hotels, restaurants, and tour guides that are engaged in providing services for people who are on vacations, visits, and travels. Prior the digital marketing, the people's responsibility to deliver on these services was crucial to business success; yet, with the launch of the internet, newer methods have evolved to marketing these different services to the target audiences. The tourism industry, particularly and as a whole, has been disrupted with the fast development of the internet. The online tourism purchase services have become as secure and handy as a click of a button compared to many other businesses across the world. Hence, for competing and succeeding online, the most relevant digital marketing activities to be considered in the tourism industry should embrace:

Quality Website

Designing and developing attractive websites are the accountability that falls on marketing experts. Also, they have to come up with ideas and tactics to entice customers to visit the website, increase the time spent by users to navigate through the pages and content; and encourage them to return to the websites frequently. The websites function as digital destinations for the audiences in which a business can outline their brand's experience. It is essential to maintain the website content short and to the point, also to ensure visible USP's.

The website should consist of all the services offered by a business and list them down clearly, along with the relevant information. Furthermore, it should illustrate high-resolution images for various offered services such as hotel facilities, rooms, spa, restaurants, etc. that enable users to make an informed decision for purchase. Users are more likely to read a webpage as compartmentalized pieces of information by swiping their eyes across the lines and then continue down the page, and in between pass over much text. Therefore, the best strategy would be dividing long articles into sections to allow users to skim and scan down through the page. Also, it is fundamental to ensure that there is an appropriate and reasonable spacing between the various elements of content on the website such as images, texts, and buttons to allow for more pleasant reading experience and give time to focus on the separate parts of a webpage to avoid getting overwhelmed by the other content elements.

In order to avoid disrupting the current experience of the users, several websites open the price lists, menus, and packages in a new window. The website must be created in a way that permits users to complete their purchasing process without the need for assistance. It is a necessity to keep the websites updated frequently while considering the changing customers' needs and preferences. Additionally, to prevent an increase in the bounce rate, the navigation tab should have a clear option for deals and packages. The excellent website represents the quality of a business that stands for, and hence it should be created and maintained, keeping in mind the functionality and dynamics of the industry. That has been seeing as a primary objective for businesses that are mainly present online such as the tourism industry.

Strong Social Media Presence

The most pertinent social media platforms for a tourism business include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. The presence on these platforms is not only about marketing and advertising the latest packages and services; it is much more than that. Since the users don't get the services daily, the business should become part of those users' conversations that they have on these social media platforms through aiming to post content that adds value to the audiences' lives and helps to improve the engagement rate. For example, uploading a simple video of travel hacks, it has confirmed to be one of the most successful digital marketing campaigns. Moreover, the brand shouldn't consider all these platforms as one; yet, each of them comes with its own set of USP's.

Additionally, these social media platforms have been used as marketing research tools that help marketers to know about their customers and prospects in ways and means that were not possible previously.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO has a significant role in influencing the traffic on the website. Therefore, businesses should pay evenly balanced consideration to their SEO activities for both on-page and off-page. The first action towards effective SEO would be through the use of 'Keyword Planner' to realize the most related keywords for the tourism industry. However, these keywords should be carefully chosen while Google, which is the leading and most used search engine, recognizes synonyms. Hence, the attention should be given to generate quality backlinks rather than just increasing their quantities. Besides, using long-tailed keywords, for example, 'best vacation package London,' directs to more conversions rather than short-tailed keywords.

Email Marketing

Using email marketing generates the occasion of promoting to prospectively attracted guests to arrive at the right time at the minimum cost since it allows them to be aware of the latest promotions by the hotels, exclusive deals on tourism packages, restaurants offers, clubs membership, and so much more. Also, transactional emails are sent to customers to keep them updated about the status of their bookings and payments, and it's an excellent tactic to maintain the relationship going with them post the completion of a transaction. Furthermore, sending personalized mailers to customers to offer them special prices on services for their birthdays and anniversaries. Then, the results of such activities should be measured, which creates a basis for decisions on future marketing activities.

Content

Content is the king! It is the core of digital marketing. The sound quality content gets the audiences engaged with the brand and adds value to their everyday lives. There is no one particular recipe for a brand to engage with its audience on social media; however, leveraging on the 80/20 rule could successfully play a big part in the brand social media strategy. In other words, by applying 20% of the content to promote the brand and giving over 80% to content that attracts the audience and engages them in conversations. In the tourism business, to get noticed and to engage the users with the brand, it is recommended to use videos and infographics as interactive content types that deliver on this purpose.

Mobile-Friendly

Among the 7 billion people in the world, around 4 billion of them own a mobile phone, most of which are smartphones. Therefore, the website, app, updates on social media, emails, SEO, or any other aspect of digital marketing should be mobile-friendly, which is a prerequisite in today's times.

As stated earlier, digital marketing is all about using various internet technologies to approach the different tribes of audiences and engage with them. Also, it has shuffled industries and altered business tactics to reach out to customers and prospects. Moreover, digital marketing has disrupted and transformed the tourism business way to reach out to its consumers; therefore, for any tourism business to be successful digitally, the above six points that were touched on play a very crucial role.