Focus on a niche.

Posted: September 23rd, 2010

Airlines and hotels often struggle with social media because their services aren’t noteworthy.  They are generally just a means to an end.  Airlines get you from point A to point B.  Most hotels give you a place to sleep when you’re away from home.

If you decided to focus your hotel on a particular group of people you might get more bookings from referrals.  You could focus on the 18-25 market and keep it low cost.  That’d be called a backpacker hostel and if you look closely you’ll see that most of those are full.

Airlines like Virgin, Jet Blue and Southwest are all focusing on the experience.  They’re not trying to cater to all traveller-types.

Word of mouth travels fast in small communities.  People like businesses that cater especially to them and we share things that we like.  If your business is attempting to be everything to everyone, maybe its time to focus.  Dedicate your hotel to families, singles, couples or business travellers.  Learn what they like and focus on giving it to them.

You could even get more specific and open a hotel for runners, for kiteboarders or for any of the many other niche interests.

Who are you focusing on?

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Tourism Operators understand passion

Posted: August 17th, 2010

No one started a river-rafting company with a 5-year plan for listing on the stock exchange.

Equestrian guides don’t wake up at 6am in the morning to feed the horses because shareholders expect to see a return on investment.  Rafting guides don’t live in trailers near remote rivers because they’re in it for the money.   Scuba diving, sky diving, eco-tours and every other tourism business you can imagine probably started the same way.

The people behind tourism made lifestyle choices around their passion.  Their businesses grew through that enthusiasm and a natural demand for their services.  Cycles and trends sometimes cause natural demand to waiver.  Then passionate people are forced deeper into business to find new customers.

Marketing can be challenging when you’re already busy trying to run a business and don’t have the budget.  To many, social media sounds like a silver bullet because its free.  Never forget that online tools just trade advertising expenses for somebody’s time and skill in knowing how to use them.  Nothing is free.

How can you use social media to help your customers buy more of what you’re selling?

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Communities form around Passion

Posted: August 11th, 2010

To help understand how we Think! about tourism campaigns, I want to share a some information about a little town called Hood River. If you’ve been in one of our strategy sessions you can stop reading because you already know this story.

Hood River is a small town on the bank of the Columbia River in Oregon in the United States.  Anyone who has been to Hood River will tell you that it is one of the windiest places on earth.  Everyone in tourism marketing has skeletons that they don’t want people to know and for Hood River its wind. Its unbearably windy, unless you like wind.

In the 1970s, Hood River became a mecca for windsurfing.  Windsurfers love wind.  Presumably, a handful of early-adopters figured out that Hood River is windy. Word of mouth quickly traveled to other windsurfers and all of a sudden a windsurfing community was born.

Some of those windsurfers stuck around after summer and needed something to do in the Winter.  Mt Hood is just nearby and skiing seems like a logical option.  When Spring arrives and the snow melts people turn to kayaking and mountain biking.. You start to see a natural overlap.  No one lives in isolation.  Some people who once windsurfed took up kiteboarding when it emerged.

Ideas flow fast within a community of passion.  Influencers are closest to that passion and they influence others.  Communities of different passions overlap. Passion is a shortcut to increasing tourism through word-of-mouth.

What passions do you have in your community?  What are you passionate about?

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Word of mouth, passion and communities.

Posted: August 11th, 2010

Positive word-of-mouth is really important for marketing. It’s important to realize that Word of mouth happens within communities. To understand social marketing we need to examine what bonds communities within our target markets.

Communities used to form almost entirely around geography. We were limited by how far we could yell and how far we could walk.  Information was passed on to others around the camp fire.  Air travel and hyper-communication have accelerated how quickly a message can travel and how far it will carry.

When we’re socializing, we  talk about things we are interested in and in doing so we like to offer advice and appear knowledgeable.  This happens within our immediate surroundings, when we’re traveling or online.  The more passionate someone is, the more they will talk about a topic.

People can talk more frequently thanks to social media. Our conversations go much further. People talk most often and most convincingly about topics that they are passionate and knowledgeable about.

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