Perceptive readers of this blog will notice that I tend to draw on a lot of history - and especially military history - analogies. (So as you can imagine I am loving doing all the work on our culture and heritage blogs right now – and watching with great interest all the coverage for the Anzac Day Centenary) My piece on tourism strategy about asking the right questions, and the lessons from World War II drew on Margaret Macmillan’s great book ‘The War that Ended Peace” to see the lessons for strategy in tourism businesses. As I noted then, … [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...]
Why Tourism Marketing IS Your Real Job
A few weeks back I wrote a short piece about why the changes to Google’s semantic search mean that digital tourism marketing is now enjoyable even if you don’t like marketing. In it, I mentioned the prevalence of the view in the tourism industry that somehow marketing is not our ‘real work’. Marketing is seen as a chore and as somehow less important than the business of delivering the experience. … [Read more...]
How The Mantra Group Increases Occupancy Rates, Visitation Levels And Customer Satisfaction
In this article, MyTravelResearch.com spent some time with Ken Minnikin, the Head of Marketing for the Mantra Group. Ken was extremely generous with his knowledge and shares many of the tactics the Mantra Group uses to grow and strengthen the brands of Peppers, Mantra and Breakfree in a domestic market where decline in visitation is common. There is plenty in our interview that you can apply to your business whether you are large operator or a small B & B. 5 Key Take-outs from Ken include: Research underpins all business … [Read more...]
Turkish Treatment: Lessons In Service And Marketing
Australia’s Tourism Industry Could Learn From Turkey The response to Bronwyn’s recent piece on the joys of domestic travel has made me realise how useful it is to have a point of comparison. It gives us some perspective. Last year I spent 5 weeks in Turkey on an (ahem) detailed research trip to make that comparison. It’s a useful comparison because, according to the very useful Economist World in Figures app, Turkey actually sits quite close to Australia in the world tourism rankings on inbound benefits. It’s derived from more visitors … [Read more...]