I spoke at a VisitRochester travel trade event earlier this year. I was asked to give attendees information on the travel trade and how to increase business from the international market. I distilled it down to the following 10 terms that I believe define the trends for this year and the near future. Let me know what terms you would add to the list.
- Disrupt Many of the traditional ways of doing business in the tourism industry have faced huge shifts in the last few years. Airbnb, mobile booking and Trip Advisor are a few examples. Who would have ever thought that average people renting out space in their homes would appeal to a traveler? As an attraction, all these disruptive business models give you another outlet for selling tickets and making money. Airbnb hosts can become big ambassadors for you – perhaps they will stock your brochure and mention your attraction when accepting bookings. I know that some wineries even offer discount tasting coupons to some vacation rental hosts to distribute. Trip Advisor has become a behemoth of tourism marketing over the past few years. Their acquisition of Viator means that customers can now purchase tickets directly from the TripAdvisor review site. That ability for a seamless transaction helps attractions to increase pre-purchases.
- Data It has never been easier to learn about your visitors. Google analytics can tell you who has visited your website. Getting guests to sign up for future emails based on their interests helps you segment your customers and learn more about what they like. Survey monkey is an easy and free tool to help gather data as well. Do your frontline staff capture zip codes as guests check in? That is important and collecting it consistently will help you spot trends. I still believe in walking around the museum each day, speaking to guests and asking where they are from. Quantitative information is key, and when you can sprinkle some comments from real guests along with that, your data will provide a holistic picture of who your guests are and where they are from.
- Education is an important trend because staying ahead of the competition requires knowing what the future holds. Some of the best places to get information are:
- skift.com. A global overview, but still lots of good information for attractions
- Linkedin groups- there are many tourism related groups where you can view content or post questions
- Google alerts – I set up daily google alerts for topics like ‘New York State Tourism’ and ‘Chinese tourism in the U.S.’ Then I get links for articles that contain those terms.
- U.S. Travel – This organization has free information available on its research page
- Groupstoday.com is a great place to look for information on the group industry, as well as some great educational blog posts.
- Benchmark. It is important to have peers in the industry who you can call and ask for their advice and opinions. I have a group of attraction friends in the Northeast and beyond who I email periodically. I ask how their business is and I give them information on how I am doing. If your business is flat, but everyone else is down, then you can report that to your supervisor. STAR reports share information between hotels, but since there is not a formal program like that for attractions, work on setting up your own.
- Social This would not be much of a ‘trend’ article if it didn’t mention social media. The good thing about the tourism industry and attractions in particular is that we are visually interesting and that lends itself to sharing on various social media sites. The bad news is that there is only 24 hours in a day so you have to be strategic with the social media you use. That’s where your data collection will come in handy. If you find the majority of your guests use Instagram and Pinterest, don’t waste your time posting on Twitter.
My next post will have the remaining Top 10 trends for 2016. Let me know what you think!