The infographic below gives a simplistic view of the rapid growth of mobile data computing and usage- across all the major devices. The shift towards Tablet, M2M and Smartphones can be clearly seen …

The infographic below gives a simplistic view of the rapid growth of mobile data computing – both online & offline. It can be seen that Asia is projected to become a hotbed of mobile information exchange and marketing…

Let’s get to some influential numbers…

• A recent eMarketer survey of the US online video landscape predicts that the volume of US video audience will climb up to 190 million by 2012 – That is approximately 88% of the entire online audience
• A much older poll by Prospectiv (2006) estimated that almost 85% of US travelers utilized internet for research
• Online Video Ads are now consumed and trusted in almost equal measure as the TV Ads
• Even Wall Street Journal is backing up its words that online Video is fast becoming the most effective online format for marketing
• A number of other reliable polls and surveys are in consensus that “Streaming video delivers nearly three times higher brand awareness and message association, and more than 100% higher purchase intent and online ad awareness than non-rich media ads.”

Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011

A recent jump in the viewership and registration for the Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011 drives the point home. The inclusion of the speaker’s videos on the Afri-Tech website (www.afri-tech.com) saw a jump of more than 65% in the viewership & a spike of more than 30% in the registrations.

Reasons for success

Democracy is the doorway to freedom, but unregulated democracy is chaos –and that sums up the ‘freedom of expression’ on the web. Content repurposing, unlimited duplication, mechanical content simulation – In one word ‘Spam’ is still the second nature of the web and text based content is the most abused of all the formats. While realizing the challenge of ‘authenticating the authentic content’, Google had pushed the paddle on the ‘universal search’ mechanism somewhere in 2008. This was aimed at serving the needs of the right content in the right way. The most promising part of the universal search pattern is that all the content formats have the level playing field – So, if you have an optimized video for your resort in Bermuda, then it has the same statistical probability to rank up in the search engine results as does a well researched article on the same report.

That speaks volumes about the credibility and craving for online videos in general – both from a search engine’s angle as well as a customer’s view.

The challenge for the travel houses has been to ‘spread the word out’ about their Niche travel packages – consistently and on target. Digital marketing tools and methodologies provide a perfect foil for this emerging and lucrative segment. Space travels, cultural tours, wine tours to Coffee plantation tours, architectural wonder travel to Amazon forest tours – are just some of the flavors of niche tourism. A sustained online marketing campaign is capable of creating unprecedented visibility for these travel treasure troves.

So, what is the right thought process for a small niche tour operator to get the travelers through the door…

• Association begins on the net but the challenge is to transcend it to the physical domain. Establishment of trust is critical to the process of customer identification and acquisition.
• Prospect or customer identification is always preceded by understanding the preferences of a traveler which is gauged only through a sustained engagement of customers
• Market intelligence is a valuable commodity for both the marketer and the business owner, but it needs to be collected at the right time and from the right pool of customers. Customer collaboration ensures cost-free market intelligence. Identification of social communities and adding value to this community by way of industry news, informative white papers, and case studies makes easier market acceptance for the brand or service. In addition, this also helps in creating long lasting brand ambassadors.
• Customer pool is waiting to be tapped within the different social networking pockets. It’s not the customer pocket, but the customer psychology that needs to be gauged – before they can be categorized as prospective clients
• Identification is just the beginning – Prospect conversion results from a sustained process of meaningful interaction with the customer. The nurturing of customer relationship is one of the most abstained and neglected aspects of online marketing, and one which is the major differentiator between a brand and a great brand.

Internet and its tools of collaboration have created an environment of constructive feedback which not only engenders creativity but also a pro-consumer market environment. Travel and hospitality segment is no exception, with global net connectivity and social networking platforms bringing the consumers closer to the corporate strategy exercises. The combined outreach potential of the electronic and digital media channels is being tapped with increasing vigor by even the smallest of tour operators. This enables the niche players to get their foot in the door – by directly reaching travelers who bank on the web for planning their dream trip.

Keeping aside the undisputed benefits of video proliferation over the targeted networks, the major obstacle for online marketers is consistent creation of quality videos and further engaging the potential customers with the video. As many marketing division would secretly reveal that it is indeed a demanding task to consistently churn out high-engagement videos. Sears Holding (K-Mart), while understanding the twin importance of quality video marketing as well as the engagement of the customer community, adopted a unique and unorthodox approach towards video based persuasion – By launching BillionPoints.

What is BillionPoints.com?

This is a KMart-Customer managed site which accepts 45 seconds videos describing the best way to spend the 1 billion cuctomer points. This site came into existence after Sears decided to publish consumer generated videos and aimed at promoting its ‘Shop your way rewards program’.  “The contest is a fun way to engage our more than 17 million members while also giving them the opportunity to help others,” says Scott Freidheim, executive vice president, operating and support businesses. That’s one of the most effective examples of customer engagement in the online video arena. The online video that receives the highest number of votes will be adjudged the official winner in Fall 2010. While the winner keeps the 50%, the rest of it goes to various charities selected by the winner.

“Rebuilding Together is thrilled to be one of Sears’ chosen charities for this exciting, national campaign,” said Gary A. Officer, President and CEO of Rebuilding Together. “This campaign highlights the great philanthropic philosophy Sears Holdings embraces through countless employee-volunteer hours and millions of dollars it donates each year to important causes, such as Rebuilding Together.   This is a great way for Americans to get involved, win a great prize, and support their favorite cause simultaneously.”

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…