Throughout the pandemic, many tour operators and experience providers have been severely hit, both emotionally and financially. With things starting to open up again across the world, many are worried about how they can attract customers on limited budgets. 

Well today, to help the many operators in this situation, I am announcing something that no other marketing agency in our sector offers. TMA now provides a free WordPress website for your tourism business with every marketing package we offer… even our entry level package.

The Benefits of a WordPress Website for Tour Operators

While we are offering these websites for free, they do not use some second-rate template. 

On the contrary, the template we use provides a fantastic platform to better showcase your tours and activities, your brand, and your team, as well as providing a better platform for SEO. 

Not only that, it can either integrate with many widgets from existing reservation systems or you can use the website’s own internal booking and availability calendar for seamless sales.

We have seen many reservation and booking systems offer free websites, but you do not own them. If you decide to move to a new booking platform, you can’t take the site with you. We always want tour providers to maintain control over their businesses and to have more say in their own success.

With our solution, you fully own the website and we are happy to show you how everything works, giving you even more control over the aesthetics and functionality of your own business (if you’d like to learn).

And even if you decide to leave TMA — for whatever reason — the website is yours to keep. While you are with us, we can host, maintain, and provide support on an ongoing basis. If you ever leave, we can continue to host your site for a fee or you can choose to take your site and hosting elsewhere. It’s all in your control!

Example Websites

Why are we offering a free website?

On top of the financial situation many tour operators face due to the pandemic, we have noticed a troubling trend with many operators’ websites. We have had many operators come to us for help with marketing, but their websites are in such a sorry state that they are unfit to use as a platform from which to market tours and activities. 

We refuse to spend any operator’s hard earned cash on marketing if their website is not up to the task. However, many operators do not have the means to rebuild their site, so they are left in a state of limbo. They’re unable to effectively attract customers with the site they have and cannot capture the bookings they are looking for to increase their revenue.

Our ethos has always been to help the tours and activities industry grow, helping as many operators as possible. Today’s announcement is an extension of this ethos.

We have all been left devastated with the covid pandemic and we are all looking for ways to dust ourselves off and fight for the sector we love. With this shift in our marketing options, it is, in some small way, our way to offer additional help.

If you want more details or are interested in this offer, please do get in touch and we will be happy to help.

The post A Free Tour Operator Website Offering You Full Control appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

The team at TMA is extremely excited to announce the launch of our new website!

This new website better highlights how we can help tour and activity providers market themselves more effectively. We also showcase many new case studies that highlight our successes, even during a global pandemic. So much has changed for us over the last few years, and this new site better represents who we are and what we are capable of. 

Complete Transparency

We have always been upfront and transparent with the operators we help, and today we are taking this one step further. Our new website now details the packages we offer and all our prices. Compared with many other agencies, we charge very competitive rates while providing a comprehensive list of services.

Success Stories

Our new success stories section better highlights some of the operators we have helped. We made a conscious decision to mostly highlight recent successes so that you can see how effective the Tourism Marketing Agency can be — even during the devastating effects of the last 18 months. Our recent success is a credit to the hard work and expertise of the team here at TMA. More stories to come shortly.

And to all the operators that stood by us during these uncertain times, we all thank you for your belief in us. It truly means a lot.

The Digital Tourism Show

With the new website comes a better platform to showcase The Digital Tourism Show, the podcast series created and run by our founder, Chris Torres. Up-to-date with all episodes, you can now filter these episodes to find the topic that best suits your needs. We also have a site search function that will help you find what you need.

New Content to Inspire and Educate

As some of you will already know, Chris has made it his personal mission to educate the tours and activities sector in all-things branding and marketing, often with free access to meaningful content, advice, and guides. Our new website will serve as the platform for lots of new articles, videos, and advice that Chris and the team at TMA are working on. Expect a huge library of content and research to be uploaded in the coming weeks and months.

If you have any questions or would like to become part of our family here at TMA, please do get in touch.

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SMS messaging in both marketing and sales is often overlooked in favour of methods like email marketing, but in the post Covid world, SMS may become more popular for its immediate consumer interaction and help both them and the operator in the ‘touch-less society’ we have all been facing.

In this episode Chris chats with Daniel Pino of TourOpp Go on how SMS messaging can help grow your tour business and some of the methods this medium can be used.

The post Using SMS to Grow Your Tour Business appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

In this episode, we speak with Jennifer Hong of Levantr, who’s aim is to help traveller better plan their trips. We discuss the consumer journey and how Levantr fits into the all important planning/dreaming stage while generating revenue for travel providers.

About Jen

Jen is a Go-to-Market and Customer Experience specialist with over 9 years of strategy experience at tech enterprises, most recently at Uber. She has also helped startups launch new products and scale their operations efficiently. She founded Levantr, which launched in March 2021, to free travelers from spreadsheets, word docs, and long email threads. Levantr is a tool that enables cohesive communication and collaboration throughout planning. Think Pinterest meets Trello for Levantr. But her vision for Levantr goes way beyond the initial tool. She believes that by leveraging the “tool first, community next, then marketplace” strategy, Levantr can offer much more cost-effective opportunities to get exposure for travel providers and allow them to build more genuine relationships with consumers.

She plans on benefiting all players in the travel ecosystem – hotels, tour operators, travel bloggers, etc.- and helping the industry recover faster.

Having attended an American international school with 48 ethnicities at a young age, Jen believes that global mindset and traveling allow us to be less prejudiced and more empathetic. Her long-term mission is to inspire more people to travel farther, explore the unknown, and grow from shared experiences with old & new friends. She’s also dedicated to building a global and remote team (even after the pandemic) and has been featured on The Offbeat Life podcast as a digital entrepreneur.

The post Travel Planning for Consumers appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Joshua works at the University of Edinburgh where he leads on the application of data-driven innovation for the tourism, travel and festival sectors as part of the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal. He previously worked at The Data Lab where he was responsible for programmes to improve data science skills across Scotland. He joined from Nesta where he established the £10m Longitude Prize, featured on BBC Horizon’s 50th Anniversary Episode.

Joshua has also worked as in Bosnia and Herzegovina working with international organizations such as The Public International Law and Policy Group to design projects related to constitutional reform, tourism and reconciliation. Joshua started his career in local government as a participant in the sector’s National Graduate Development Programme, working at the London Borough of Newham transformation projects across a range of service areas including education, social care, housing, and crime reduction.

Joshua will lead a session to explore how Scotland’s tourism sector can get started in using data technologies and methods to address the sectors most pressing current challenges.

The post How Data, Big or Small, Can Help Grow your Tourism Business appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Watch a recording of the first ever live version of The Digital Tourism Show, hosted by Chris Torres. Chris answers questions concerning marketing during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, Facebook advertising, email marketing, business development and growth, as well as covering other topics.

The post COVID Marketing, Facebook Ads, Marketing, Growth appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Kyle Long from UnTour Food Tours who’s business provides tours in China and we will be discussing how his business has been affected by the coronavirus and the launch of No Appetite for Ignorance – an initiative to help engage the public and raise awareness of the xenophobia and racist attitudes against Chinese and asian-owned business.

The post How UnTour Food Tour Have Been Affected by Coronavirus appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Chris Atkin, the CEO of Rezdy, discusses the effects of Online Travel Agents (OTAs) in the tour and activity industry and the future of reservation systems and Rezdy itself.

The post The Effects of OTAs in the Tour Industry and the Future of Reservation Systems appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

The Glasgow Chapter is growing every month and we are extremely pleased to announce that we have climbed to 6^th place in the global travel massive rankings, putting us just below New York and above Dublin, San Francisco, Edinburgh, and Bangkok. We’re putting our success down to the dedication of our members who attend every month and the quality of our quest speakers — and September’s speakers were two of the best yet: we listened to (and questioned) Wes Beard from Total Chatbots and David Bulloch from Travelport!

Debunking Myths About Chatbots — Wes Beard from Total Chatbots

The first speaker of the evening was Wes Beard, the Sales Director at Total Chatbots — a chatbot specialist company based in Clockwise Offices on Renfrew Street. It was fantastic to get Wes in to talk to us about chatbots as it’s an undeniably relevant topic for the tourism industry and it was extremely useful for our members to be able to ask practical questions and receive practical answers.

Wes gave a presentation with the intention of debunking the myths about chatbots, and the first thing he did was recognise that many people have had frustrating experiences with ‘bad’ chatbots, and he explained that good chatbots really do exist and that they are extremely useful. Wes went on to explain why chatbots are such a powerful tool for modern businesses:

• They’re available 24/7
• They don’t take days off work
• They can manage several conversations at the same time
• They maintain brand consistency
• They can integrate across multiple channels (website, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc)

Wes explained many of the key principles of good chatbot design, which included understanding your customers’ objectives (and your own business objectives), designing good conversation flow, creating good A.I, using good data, and imbuing your chatbot’s language with plenty of on-brand personality. Wes also explained the recent stats that showed chat and text-based interactions were on the same current level as social media and that they are predicted to overtake social media within the next two years.

He also gave us recent stats that illustrated how receptive younger audiences are to chatbots — how they actually prefer the medium to having a conversation over the phone. Wes explained how businesses can use chatbots as a marketing tool and he made this especially relevant to the tourism sector. It was great having Wes in to talk to us, and we’re sure that by the end of his presentation everyone was significantly more convinced about the application and usefulness of chatbots.

Connecting and Promoting your Products Through Global Travel Agencies — David Bulloch from Travelport

The second speaker of the evening was David Bulloch from Travelport, who had come in to take part in an informal Q&A with Chris Torres, our Travel Massive chapter leader and the founder of TMA. Chris asked David a range of questions about Travelport’s extensive collection of tourism-centric tools and services. Travelport is a huge company — the biggest we’ve had here at Travel Massive Glasgow, so it was great for our members to get a little more insight into how the big players work.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Travelport, it might interest you to know that they work with 400 airlines, 650K hotels, and 37K car hire companies. We suggest checking out their website (link above). Travelport works across every aspect of travel, but usually for larger companies who need bespoke tools and services. A large part of their work involves connecting mutually supporting services — which involves identifying what kinds of services customers need at different points into their holiday-planning process. If someone has booked flights, what other services are they still looking for? Car rental? Accommodation? Day tours? At what point in the customer’s buyer journey should you put these other travel services in front of them? It’s these kinds of concerns that David addressed in the Q&A. 

David answered many of Chris’s questions and some astute questions from the Travel Massive audience. We covered the various tools and ideas Travelport uses and we also delved into the world of destination marketing. In relation to tourism marketing, David mirrored Sumner Redstone’s old adage that ‘Content is King’ — an idea that has fully permeated the SEO industry. There was far too much to cover with David in such a short period, so the Q&A felt a little more like a teaser into the illustrious world of high-end travel technologies. Perhaps we can tempt David back in the future and go into a little more depth about a specific topic.

November’s Travel Massive Glasgow Event

Unfortunately, Chris Torres and Jess Gregory are away at Arival’s big Orlando in-destination tourism event at the end of October, so we aren’t meeting in October. That means that the next big meet-up for Travel Massive Glasgow is in November. We are meeting at the Radisson Red on Finneston Quay where we’ll hear from Lee McGregor from Mitchell MacGregor Public Relations and Matt Smith from Primal Adventures. Register for November’s event here.  We’re looking forward to November, but please don’t wait until then to get in touch if you have any questions — either about Travel Massive or about TMA working with you to improve your digital marketing potential. 

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Travel Massive Glasgow’s September Event appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

In 2023 every business needs to be a tech business. The internet has changed the way consumers interact with a brand for good. The market dictates new rules of availability.

People expect 24/7/365 service and you either offer it to them or get off the pot.

Your online presence is a double-edged sword. On one side, you’ll get more opportunities to get leads and sales, which is nice. 

On the other, you’ll have to worry about a website, digital ads, social media presence, and everything else that goes with selling tours online.

Luckily, not every technology comes with an additional layer of chores to muscle through. 

Case in point? Online booking systems!

What’s an online booking system?

Let’s imagine you were running a tour operator business 10 years ago. Your clients called the desk manager to book a trip. Then the manager made her notes, booked the flight, reserved the rooms, and so on and so forth. You probably had a minimum of three people and a ton of pen & paper involved in the process.

A booking system does the same thing, minus the hustle.

Your clients, after logging into your site, check for available tours, book them for preferred dates, pay, and proceed to mind their own business after but a handful of mouse clicks. Then the software automatically processes the payment and reserves the right tour for the right people all on its own.

Needless to say, booking systems streamline the process while cutting a few corners and saving you your hard-earned dollars along the way.

To sum things up, a booking system:

• allows the choice of date for booking
• allows the choice of time for booking
• lists additional services your clients can choose from
• processes payments
• includes a variety of additional features like analytics, mobile payments, 3rd party API integrations, etc.

In short, booking systems provide a bridge between your offers and the various ways you can sell them, such as your website, online travel agents and offline channels.

Booking system examples

There are many booking systems on the market. Most of them specialize in one industry to deliver superior quality rather than being a Jack-of-all-trades.

For example, Regiondo and FareHarbor specialize in the tours and activities sector. Hence, they provide niche features such as customizing your tickets, uploading barcodes and instantly integrate with tour sales channels like Viator and GetYourGuide.

Still, you have companies like Checkfront who serve a variety of industries in addition to tours and activities, such as rentals and accommodation providers.

TicketingHub is also another great platform to consider, and have even created a handy guide on How to Create a Top-Notch Booking Website.

These are just some examples of booking systems but there are hundreds of other providers to choose from.

Benefits of an online booking system

For starters, a booking system is a cost-effective solution compared to creating a custom system to accept payments online that updates your availability in real time. You can get started with online sales for as little as £40 a month, depending on the provider and level of service you choose. In contrast, developing your own solution can cost thousands upfront. 

Maintenance costs are off the map as well as your booking software takes care of technical and security updates. So you’ll have one less headache to worry about.  

Then there’s the payment processing aspect. Most booking solutions offer an instant service meaning you’ll have more money, faster.

Lastly, there is the analytics reports. You’ll get automatic reports about your sales and availabilities, letting you make better decisions and save hours every week.

Put simply, booking systems pack a wallop when it comes to cutting a few corners and saving much needed time and resources.

Disadvantages of an online booking system

While there are many positive aspects of implementing a booking system, there is also one major drawback.

A booking system is not as flexible as a custom-built solution. So if you need special functions that are not offered by anyone on the market, you might want to consider developing your own.

Still, providers like Regiondo give you the ability to customize almost every aspect, including how your tickets and online shop look like, integrating your colors, logo, and branding.

How do booking systems work?

Think of a booking system as a bridge between your business offers and the various sales channels and resources at your disposal. 

The technology empowers you to manage your distribution from a single, centralized location using smart API integrations. 

Additionally, a booking system can keep track of your employee availability and resources such as the number of bikes, boats, or segways you have in real time. 

The system is added on top of your existing website, enabling you to accept payments online, manage your bookings calendar and connect your offers to various sales channels, among other functionality.

Is an online booking system right for you?

Here’s a simple checklist of questions to ask yourself before considering an investment in an online booking system:

• Can your customers check your availability without picking up the phone?
• Do you experience double bookings on a regular basis?
• Are all of your offers in check and is there a dedicated person responsible for swapping the cost of certain deals everywhere from the website to social media posts in case something changes?
• Is your flow of customers a constant or is your business slow on some days while not having the room to take a breath in others?
• Do you know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to customer acquisition?

A booking platform can and will help you with all of these issues.

That said, you’ll still need to pick the best tool for the job. 

The trick is to know what you are looking for from a booking platform. Here’s how to decide:

• Consult with your team, ask them what they want or need to improve their routine.
• Create a list of features you are looking to see.
• Browse through different provider websites to get a better idea of what’s available.

This is how you can make a better decision. And if you need further guidance, you can check out this post on the 10 Things to Consider when Choosing an Online Booking System.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post How Online Booking Systems Work appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.