A new study has revealed that 34% of the travelers visit search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing for considering vacation destination alternatives and various travel options. This is followed by the websites of specific countries with 23% of the tourists browsing through them for seeking more information. The third preference is given to online travel agencies sharing 22% of tourist enquiries.

Information Sources for Tourists

Preference and Share

Increasing number of tourists believe that internet is the best source of authentic information. Easy usability, anytime availability and sheer volume of information are pulling more tourists towards internet.

Online travel planning

Most of the tourists use internet for complete travel planning from reservations to bookings and shopping. Percentage of tourists preferring online reservations has grown more than 37% since the year 2000.  As people become more and more comfortable with the internet technology, the incidents of online search are destined to shoot up faster than ever. Increasing number of travel and tourism operators are putting up their online presence with interactive websites. All this has been conducive to propel more tourists out of their houses confidently armed with relevant information.

Leisure travelers thronging internet

The percentage of tourists resorting to internet and search engines is very high among leisure travelers.  About 66% of leisure travelers now use internet to plan some or the other aspect of their travel. It is a great jump from 35% in the year 2000. The number of leisure travelers seeking online reservations is reported at 56%.

However, search patterns and preferences of leisure travelers differ while selecting an airline or accommodation. Tourists searching for these travel services prefer to visit the websites of online travel agencies (42% and 31% for airlines and accommodation, respectively). About 41% of travelers are giving more importance to the websites of reputed airlines (41%), whereas such brand-specific behavior is not observed while selecting accommodation facilities. Only 21% of tourists intentionally visited reputed lodging and hotel websites. About 13% of travelers visited Meta search engines that compare fares for selecting an airline.

These statistics fortifies the fact that internet is indispensible, rather a preferred medium for searching information about travel and tourism. More and more tourists are going online for their travel and tourism needs. It is imperative for the travel and tourism industry participants to enhance their online presence and fetch more tourist traffic to their websites.

Business trips and related tourism, which is an important segment of travel industry has shown a certain decline since the last year. Following data supports this fact.

• Globally, domestic business trips declined by 3.2% in 2009 while international business arrivals plunged by 7.2%
• Spending by domestic business travelers fell by 6.2% while spending by international business travelers plunged 14.6% in 2009
• Germany, United States and United Kingdom accounted for 41% of the decline in international business departures.
• The Middle East was the only region to experience moderate growth (4.6%) in business arrivals in 2009, mainly in Saudi Arabia.

However, the blame of decline in business trips is generally fixed on the advent of electronic media in business arena. Video conferences, teleconferences, video calls and online chats have vanished the distance between the people and merged the globe more smoothly as a single marketing platform that is approachable anytime from anywhere. Also, electronic media has proved effectiveness in instant communication that is turning to be the key differentiator in business success. This has curtailed the business travelling need to the bare minimum.

How can internet marketing help?

This is the most proper time to give the electronic media the dose of its own medicine. Internet technology that has applied brakes on business related travel can be successfully utilized to put life back into it and compel more businessmen to go touring.

Reach out to maximum business clients: Internet marketing can reach a large number of prospects without causing a much dent in your marketing and advertising budget. Once your target client is reached, it becomes easy to undertake various tools that will help you to understand the business travelers’ pulse and preferences.

Explain advantages: You can explain the advantages of holding a conference at a venue. Emphasis may be laid upon the facilities and business related infrastructure available at the venue, personal interaction, network buildup, mass approach, etc.

Offer discounts: To pull businessmen out of their cubicles and make them travel across, emails can be sent to offer discounts in travel, accommodation, dining and other hospitality gestures. Banner ads are effective in attracting attention to the offers.

Offer memberships: Extend memberships of your agency and hotels to the business traveler. This may entice them to undertake travelling to avail membership benefits. Special benefits may be offered to business travelers if they travel with family and without business motive. Co-relating business trip with other tourism and travel types will benefit the industry and boost the number of business trips. Internet marketing can certainly accelerate the process.

1. Increased competition,                            and                                        2. Retaining loyal customers

Increased competition

As in any sector, increased number of players is creating increased competition among various segments of tourism and hospitality industry. To gain upper hand in the competition, players are offering attractive schemes and prices to the customers. This has opened various options for the customers and they are indeed trying to make the best of the money they spend. This is causing attrition of the loyal customers and they are willing to shift from old service providers to the new ones who are providing better options at the same or even less prices. The medium and small players may have to cut down on its profits in order to get the chunk of customers.

Retaining loyal customers

Increased competition has had its effect on the retention of old and loyal customers of hotel and tourism industry. It has become difficult for the medium and small operators to retain old customers. It is more difficult for them as their brand promotion and advertising budgets are often restricted and these will not guarantee effective return on investments. Though, retaining loyal customers require less effort than fetching new customers, it is equally easy to lose old customers if no proper strategies are implemented in this regard.

The solution is right here

Internet marketing is the solution that will address both of the problems, increased competition and retaining loyalty. Aggressive internet marketing strategies run with the help of experts can take the client ahead of other competitors.

Emails and newsletters are the best cost effective options to keep in touch with the old customers and keep them informed about various offers and schemes run by the client. These are also effective in reaching prospective clients and attracting them with the offers.

Internet is fast being utilized by the tourists as a medium to seek more information even before stepping out of the house. Prominent presence on the net by internet marketing and reaching out to the customers by newsletters is the solution.

This is the genre of tourist who may need consulting at any given time and at unusual places. And here is where the interactive travel counseling takes birth. Internet and mobiles are the two powerful and effective medium that can be a handy tool for interactive travel consulting.

Travel and tourism service sector still need to evolve in this aspect of tourism. Most of the agencies and tour operators often end up in drawing the tour schedule and arranging for stay and food. However, actual help may be needed in dire straits when no other source of information and guidance is available.

• Travel and tourism sector must consider setting up toll free numbers that can be reached from anywhere in the world and at any time irrespective of the time and zone a tourist is in. Providing around the clock direct contact with the agency from where the tourist started, that too in his / her native language will ease many troubles of the tourist roaming thousands of miles away.

• Making customized tourist plans and information available for internet access; and / or providing it on any portable medium like CDs and flash drives shall be very handy. Tourists can inform the agency in advance about their likely area of operation and seek maximum information about the same.

• Tourism must also collect the tourists who are willing to share their travelling experiences. Their information about the common problems faced at various areas they have recently visited may prove to be very useful interactive travel consulting source. Availability of contact numbers of previous visitors to the places where a tourist is planning to visit may be useful in seeking information in the need of the hour.

• Tour operators must also plan to setup consultation centers for the incoming tourists. Locals who had visited various places previously shall be made available to guide foreign tourists in solving problems and providing crucial information that common tour operators fail to give.

As more and more tourists are willing to trade the unbeaten path, interactive travel consulting is what is going to help them immensely. Tourism industry must gear up to for efficient interactive tourism consulting in near future.

A couple of things went right for Facebook at the same time – First it got a much needed facelift – Second it was splashed all across the TV channels that it was banned Pakistan and Bangladesh for hurting the national sentiments – Now that’s called the perfect recipe for a ‘Top kill’ PR campaign. Google would pay billions to be in FB’s shoes at this time…

Remember Starbucks – the maverick marketing team that changed the way cappuccino cups can be used as billboards… Lets get a glimpse of Starbuck-facebook tango –

So, now you know why the book has a new face…Its the new billboard. If Coffee can be sold here, then why not Ski rentals? Take a look for yourself…That’s economics for you and we know that it works, no matter how many people are after your ass…

You have been a perfect husband, a good father and a decent provider for your family. In real life you have helped people, but still when you die, you are sent directly to hell. You ask God why? And he shows you the extent of damage and deaths that were done through your affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a premier automated internet business that is carried out by many reputed bloggers and reviewers. But most of the times, when people venture into affiliate marketing; they conveniently tend to ignore the ethics that is required to support it.

Before venturing into affiliate marketing there is a set of questions that you need to ask yourself.

• Do the people, who on your trust would click on the link, would genuinely receive value to their money?
• Do you know the depth of the product? Have you tested the product on yourself?
• Would you give the suggestive medicine that you are marketing to your own children/family?
• Would you feel happy seeing your testimony on the landing page?
• Are you really sure of the product? Is there is any chance of it being harmful or a scam?

If any of the above questions represent a “no”, than you are doing unethical affiliate marketing. Ethics and business are cohesive factors for achieving success levels. If you have attained success due to unethical affiliate marketing, you would eventually fail; primarily due to two reasons, karma and loss of your brand name. The entire platform of trade is executed on the internet on just one word, and i.e. “trust”. If people who have been following you on your blogs and have been crediting your website as a good piece of work, then you are eventually demeaning yourself by being associated with unethical marketing.

Medicines are one of the prime examples that are being used in affiliate marketing in an unethical way. Drugs that have more side effects than curing the patient are being marketed aggressing by respected bloggers.  These drugs play with the consumer emotionally by promising them instant weight loss or overnight acne cures. Some drugs cause adverse side effects like seizures, nausea and loss of consciousness and in some cases even deaths.

People have debated that if every sales person would try the product they sell, than there would be no salespersons. Well if their assumption is true that there should be official salespersons for guns and dope as well. There is no harm in affiliate marketing as long as you are ethically comfortable with the product. You would not like to get associated with murderers and scam artists in real life, than why affiliate yourself to such products online. Work ethically for your affiliate marketing, and you will have a sure shot success as your product would be genuine and would definitely help your consumer, thus increasing your sales and reputation.

In the end I can only tell this “Ensure ethical marketing and save yourself from going to hell.”

When a survey was taken for researching on B2B success, it was analyzed that 50% of them never blogged. Social media like Twitter and Facebook was not touched by 42%, and about 25% did not utilize Linkedln. Many of these B2B marketers did use of Adwords and other marketing and SEO related resources.

B2B marketers are somehow loosing the ploy of optimizing the web for generation of leads and enhancing their presence for prospective clients. The reason why most B2B marketers are struggling to find success is because of their one track ideology of revenue generation. 40% of B2B marketers have indicated generating sales opportunities as a major strategy, while 39% of survey participants were keen on traditional lead generation. Somehow B2B marketers are comparing their success with B2C marketers but are failing to gain the right momentum in online marketing.

It has been evaluated that B2B marketers are encountering problems while incorporating change in online marketing strategies. The difference between successful B2B marketers and their failing compatriot is the amount of involvement in implementation. In the survey the failing patterns of B2B marketers were evaluated and it was analyzed that 41% of B2B marketers felt that their need ended on generation of leads. Over 58% of B2B marketers met their sales team just only once during a month. Also, surprisingly there was 8% segmented B2B marketers who never met their online sales teams yet expected results.

Already there are many businesses who are trying to engage their consumers and potential customers by setting up fan pages on Facebook. The advertising on Facebook seems to be the next new big ‘IN’ thing.

But honestly are Facebook advertisements really worth all the hype they have created?
Here you can find both positive and negative arguments and enough data to support both the views. So instead of condemning one or the other, the best approach for a business would be to use both for targeting different specifics.

When to use Google and when to use Facebook advertisements?
If click-through is really important to your website, and you can see that more people are likely to reach your site by search engines or your business belongs to a certain niche, going for a Google ad campaign would be a better option. Facebook advertisements have not been successful for pulling in the traffic as yet. Also, many people have observed the irrelevancy factor in the ad placing of Facebook e.g. an advertisement to date singles in an area was shown on many married peoples profiles. This is sheer waste of the advertising money.