Chatbots for travel industry are vital because travellers are constantly increasing their information needs. Apart from the growing demand for more meaningful travel experiences, they also want travel destinations and businesses to meet the demand for communication and engagement—across all media and platforms. These communication and engagement needs include the whole spectrum; from traditional email marketing to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. But the latest trend in technology is happening elsewhere. Research shows that more … [Read more...]
How to do travel marketing on Snapchat?
Many of our travel research and marketing clients are starting to ask if they should be on Snapchat We are seeing a rapid rise in Snapchat usage and, not just in the youth sectors. With the rise, comes unique marketing opportunities to engage with yes, mostly Gen Z and Gen Y travellers, but an increasing number of 'older' travellers who are showing signs of taking up Snapchat. According to research from MoffettNathanson, Snapchat has already started to buck the stereotype. The firm found that the fastest-growing cohort of Snapchat users is … [Read more...]
Top 5 Mobile Marketing Trends in Travel Research
The search landscape is moving fast. In particular, mobile search and mobile usage by travellers - both business and leisure. We have seen great emerging trends this year and it presents a great opportunity for those willing to truly connect with their potential customers on the path to purchase via mobile. Travellers have become very demanding of their content and information as Google tells us there are millions of searches for hotels and travel-related experiences. Not only that, we have seen travellers and consumers in general take to … [Read more...]
Building Digital Assets For Tourism Businesses And Destinations
The last year (2014) has been a rocky road for those in the industry who have put all their social media eggs in the Facebook basket. Many tourism businesses and destinations saw a dramatic drop in their organic Facebook reach last year. This impacted many. This meant that fans were not seeing posts. Then it became official that this was is a deliberate move as part of Facebook’s revenue-generating strategy by making businesses pay more for fans, exposure to fans, and the opportunity to engage with fans. As a result, less than 4% of fans … [Read more...]
How to Engage with Booming Tech-Savvy Indian Travellers
One of the great side benefits of participating in Australia Business Week in India earlier this month was the chance for some ‘ethnographic’ observations of this exciting source market. One of the most noticeable observations we have made has been around the Indian travellers market’s tech-savviness. A jointly-published report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB (Indian Market Research Bureau) International stated that India was expected to surpass the US as the second-largest internet user base globally, behind … [Read more...]
The Travel Path To Purchase – Dreaming
Parks Canada has just announced that it will be putting Wifi into Canada’s National Parks. This has provoked a flurry of debate. Surely the point of a National Park is to enjoy wilderness and undisturbed by emails or the need to connect? After all, we now recognise Nature-Deficit Disorder as a condition and JWT identifies Mindful Living as a key trend. SHARING SPURS DREAMING But I’m going to disagree - this is a fantastic initiative. Sharing has a strong role in driving conversion across the Path to Purchase. Over the years I’ve worked … [Read more...]
Get More Local Customers With Google Maps
MyTravelResearch.com was lucky enough to be invited to Google as one of their Sydney City Experts to the Google Sydney MapUp where the shared goal of the room became to add as many businesses on Google Maps as we could. I guess Google is asking us to help them do the work. But there is definitely a mutual benefit for us all especially for local destinations that could get more local customers through Google Maps. … [Read more...]
Digital Marketing For Those Who Don’t Do Digital Marketing
At MyTravelResearch.com we do a lot of stakeholder research – and a lot of industry workshops. One of the things we hear a lot from small tourism businesses is that they hate spending time on marketing (especially digital marketing) when they could be doing ‘real’ work and that customers prefer face-to-face contact rather than digital connection anyway. … [Read more...]
Google Semantic Search for The Travel and Tourism Industry (Part 1)
The way we all work with Google both as a business and a user changed forever toward the end of 2013 with the introduction of Google Semantic Search. It is not an algorithm update, but an entire overhaul. It is important that we understand the significance of the change and the impact of this semantic search for tourism and the way we have known it up until now. … [Read more...]