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L-4/87,Sector - M,Aliganj,Lucknow
UP(226021), India
Editor’s note: In case you missed this post last year, we’re bringing it back and adding some fresh content too.
I’ve heard there are people who believe that “getting there is half the fun.” But to me, everything that happens between my decision to leave my house and my lying on a beach chair with a fruity drink in my hand is just stress-inducing static and delayed gratification.
To reduce the friction I’m likely to experience when I embark on a trip, I rely on the advice and assistance that travel experts provide online. And, judging from the sheer number of content creators who operate in this space, I’m not the only one.
With so many touchpoints to engage with, so many ways to facilitate and enhance the customer’s journey, and so many pain points your business can help them overcome, content marketing in the travel and hospitality field offers tremendous opportunities to build trust, create memorable moments, and add unique value for intrepid world explorers, road-weary business travelers, and everyone in between.
Software projects often face challenges such as tight deadlines, evolving requirements, and technical complexities, requiring careful planning and agile adaptation to overcome obstacles and deliver successful outcomes.
According to Andrew Davis, bestselling author of Town Inc. and host of the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Lab at Content Marketing World 2018, travel is one of the only industries where the place you do business matters just as much as the business you do.
Unlike the experience in industries where the digital universe has flattened the world and opened new opportunities, growth in travel and tourism depends on your business’s ability to get people out of their homes (and away from their computers) and into the physical places in which you operate.
When it comes to content, Andrew advises, focus less on what you offer as a business and more on compelling people to want to visit your location. “You’ve got to increase demand for the particular destination you serve, first and foremost,” he says.
Andrew also points out how timing and seasonality play a much bigger role in travel and tourism marketing compared to other industries. For example, while consumer product goods and other retail marketers have a consistent, primary boom time (i.e., the end-of-year holidays), travel destinations often need to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts around smaller and more location-dependent events, which can occur at any time throughout the year (think of Indio, California, which has its boom time every April during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, or a mountain resort that gets a surge in visitors during ski season).
Furthermore, every touchpoint in travel experiences is highly subject to disruption from unpredictable factors, like fluctuations in fuel prices, current travel trends, and even natural disasters. These influences can vastly impact pricing and profitability from year to year – and exponentially complicate your content marketing strategy.
From huge hotel chains to boutique B&Bs, and from tour providers to beach equipment rental providers, it seems everyone has travel information to share online. And it’s not always clear whose is the most accurate, trustworthy, or useful. Tourism and hospitality marketers need to go the extra mile when it comes to creating content that distinguishes the experiences they offer and earns bookings, not just “lookings.”
“Travel businesses don’t do enough to leverage the things that make their destinations truly unique,” says Andrew.
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