In modern times, every tour begins with a search on the internet! your travel and trade business must have a Digital Marketing plan for your travel agency to survive and stay ahead of the competition.
Tourists search the travel agency website for hotels (to find good deals), detailed itineraries, flight tickets, taxi bookings, or even the best restaurants in the city.
This is why it is essential you have to be active on the internet as a travel service provider so that travellers like can find you easily.
This article is for you if you are one of these businesses and want to grow your business with Digital Marketing.
Read this blog completely to strategize an effective organic Digital marketing strategy for a travel company.
The Importance of Digital Marketing in the Travel & Tourism Industry
Make sure about the comfort & convenience of your audience
Let us first understand this from the fundamentals. Everyone (even you and me) prioritizes convenience, and comfort while ensuring that we don’t miss out on anything while travelling.
Hence, people search a lot on the web before planning a tour. Be it an itinerary, places to visit, budget, or commute, they keep notes of the slightest of things that will be part of their tour.
All such details are easily available on the web! Through Google, travel aggregator websites, and even individual websites. This makes it important for you as a travel business/service provider to get into the digital marketing space and leverage it to reach out to your potential customers.
People are searching for you on the internet. You may not see it because you are not visible to them. Your competitors might be getting plenty of customers online.
In this modern day and age, when mobile and the internet is an unalienable part of our lives, any business that is dependent upon travel and tourism must have an online presence.
Increased Mobile Device and Internet users
Wider accessibility of the internet and increased mobile device users have made it easy to explore, choose and make online bookings.
Gone are the days when travellers first used to travel to places and then make their bookings then and there. It was a cumbersome process with a lack of options and convenience.
Bookings via the Internet are a better option as it enables the end user to explore and compare a wide range of options that match his preference and budget.
With the help of mobile marketing or digital marketing, you can reach out to more people while they are planning their tour. The better you present your offerings and services to them online, the more likely they will be convinced to book a tour with you.
6-Step Digital Marketing Strategies for Travel Companies
Make your business stand out by using a dynamic website
A dynamic website could be a good start. It will act as an online address of your travel company/hotel/restaurant. If you are a travel agency that offers tour packages, or taxi services, you can display your tour itineraries, inclusions, exclusions, and online booking facility.
If you are a restaurant, your restaurant’s interiors, ambience, and dishes will matter a lot. You can showcase each one of them very well on a website. You can also make it easy for your guests to reach out to you by embedding a map link on the website.
If you are a hotel, showcase exclusive deals on your website which are more tempting than tour aggregator websites.
While advertising online, it is imperative to have a fast website loading speed. If you do not have a website yet, we highly recommend one.
WordPress is a great CMS and comes with plenty of good features and functionality. A WordPress website can load fast, it is easy to build a website on WordPress.
And, the plethora of designs and themes available makes it a preferred choice for businesses. Iconic websites such as Microsoft News, Tech Crunch, and Nueva Digital are all built on WordPress.
Create content that engages, informs, and converts your audience
When a user comes to your website, he is certainly looking for something that could resolve his query. This user will likely scan the webpage in a span of seconds.
Only if he is able to find something relevant to him; he will stay. Otherwise, he will bounce back. This emphasizes the need for quality content on your website.
In fact across all your online presence, be it social media, website, landing page, email newsletters, etc. Nothing can justify how important good, informative web content is.
The content you post across your online channels should be unique i.e. it should not be copied from any other source and not generated by AI.
You can curate content by taking inspiration from different sources but not copy content. Secondly, the content should resolve the queries of a user. If you are a hotel, you must have all informative web content that could be relevant for a person looking for a hotel.
Never miss a detail, have FAQs on your website covering all aspects of your business. It will not just help the user gain information easily but will also help the user gain trust in you.
Download helpful content strategy tips for travel & trade businesses
Make it easy for your audience to plan their trip with an online booking system
An online booking functionality on a travel agency website makes life easy for the user and for the business. Online booking functionality gives ease comfort and convenience to the tourist/traveller.
One can simply go through your website, and read about your services, inclusions, exclusions, terms & conditions, etc. If satisfied, he can make bookings as per his plan. You will get his query details and can process them accordingly.
You can integrate multiple payment options, chat messengers, call options, and email for seamless bookings and communication.
Make sure that you get feedback about his travel booking experience with you. His review will help you optimize the process for the better.
Utilize The power of high-quality video content for social media engagement
Try to be as real as possible! Video content and creative content formats across social media work wonders. Attractive reels, feed posts, etc are admired by people from all around the world.
It influences choices and can really help you gain traction, and engagement by frequent travellers. For eg., Hot balloon rides in Cappadocia, Turkey, luxury heritage tourism of the Taj Mahal, Desert Safari in UAE, and European tours look really tempting in videos across social media channels.
One of the best ones we have been following for some time is LehLadakh, a travel company that provides tour packages for one of the highest mountain ranges in the world The Himalayas. Their Instagram Video content is really tempting and we really love it.
The crux is that create high-quality video content for your offerings. For a hotel, the interiors, ambience, luxury, and comfort could be the areas to cover.
For a taxi business, the fleet of vehicles, and customer video reviews can be relevant. In the same vein, for a travel agency, the destinations, and highlights could be the areas to cover through video content.
Utilize Social Media Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Travel Business
Social Media Marketing is another great way to create your brand visibility online. Content formats such as Guides, videos, and infographics are really helpful and engaging.
Conduct contests and offer special deals and packages to the winners. People will love it! people follow & interact with such content a lot. Trust us, social media can be a game-changer opportunity for your travel business.
In the same likes, do promote your travel service business through digital ads. Facebook & Instagram Ads, and YouTube Ads are excellent advertising platforms to reach out to your target audience easily. Drive traffic to your website. Use Meta Pixel to tag your visitors.
Once you have pixeled your audience, you will be able to show them retargeting ads. Social media strategy for a travel agency is a great way of promoting in modern times.
Utilise Search Engine Optimization on your Travel website for long-term success
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a method to increase your website ranking on Google Search Results Page for a specific set of keywords. For example, if someone searches for ‘Taj Mahal Tour Packages’, it is likely that the user is looking for a website that offers tour packages. Here the specificity is the Taj Mahal. Hence, Google will explore its Index and will present the most relevant site at the top of the search results. SEO is a set of activities that makes our website the most appropriate for a user’s search query.
Getting a website ranked on the Google Search Engine Results Page is a long process. There are several aspects to optimize it. Compressed images, fast loading time, quality content, website structure, sitemaps, etc are some of them. Google considers all such elements before ranking a website high.
A lot of people think ‘why invest in SEO when you can just invest in ads and get the ball rolling? We agree with this stance as well. But, what’s noticeable here is that as soon as your ad budget is exhausted, your business will no more be visible to users. Whereas with continued SEO efforts, your website will consistently rank high on the SERP.
Final Thoughts
Digital Marketing has become crucial for business growth. It is and will continue to help countless businesses around the globe. Travel and tourism are one of the largest industries that are growing with the help of Digital Marketing.
We at ‘Nueva Digital – a Digital Marketing Agency for travel businesses’ have helped more than 50 businesses with building and managing their online presence. Feel free to reach out to us
