We really like the phrase "your online vacation store" to define an online travel agency because it leads us to think of the simplicity and efficiency of a competitive online store in Romania. Because we need to take the step towards digitization both on the side of more competitive offers and on the side of making the booking process more efficient (and "easier"), we want the booking experience to be at least as relaxing as the holiday in self.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we're all online more than we want to be. From purchasing new shoes to ordering food, from virtually connecting with distant relatives to visiting them, from vacation plans to booked plane tickets. Everything is now simple, handy and fast.
Online consumer behavior has formed and changed in record time. The way we make vacation plans and reservations has changed in the last 10 years fantastically, and tourists now know that the substantial discount is on a prudent early booking or a very lucky last minute. Want more options, want more offers? Look for early bookings (or "early booking").
But how do you get in front of your tourists (or potential tourists)? How do they get to see your products, services or packages and how do they get to book them? The answer is quite simple: through successful online campaigns.
What is a promotional campaign and how can it be successful?
The promotional campaign is the visible part of your marketing plan. It is the result of planning, carefully created products and competitive prices, now in front of the tourist. It's the way you reach the target audience and manage to inform them about the launch of a product or service, about the latest seasonal discounts and about news that might interest them. No one will be able to give you the key to success, and winning variants will appear only after repeated tests.
In the beginning, you first need patience and perseverance, but also the following steps:
- Identify and understand your target audience – Very often, target audience is only talked about when it comes to targeting or actually communicating with customers, but it is very important to identify your target audience and understand them still from the moment you select offers for your online holiday shop
- Build an engaging landing page – Make sure your tourists land on a clear and persuasive landing page that will make them book with you right away. Find the balance between information and creativity, between too few options and too many offers.
- Use relevant and high quality images – Be sure to only use images that can be used commercially and only purchase images from sources you can point to if requested.
- Promotes a fair price/quality ratio – Don't forget, another travel agency can be "opened" in the adjacent tab in the browser. It is so easy to "visit" 4 online travel agencies at the same time that you need to be sure that your prices are documented and well created.
- Create valuable content (educational, interactive and maybe a little funny) – Relate to your tourists through the texts you write. Don't write for search engines, write for people looking for a vacation and write like you're talking to them.
- Design a simple and memorable slogan – Creativity can help you differentiate yourself or at least be more visible during the campaign. Competition pushes the limits of all of our creativity and sometimes we forget to be simple and clear. The balance will not be easy, but you can very easily test several variants for your campaigns, and the automated systems will automatically select the messages that "convert" the best.
- Adjust costs generously – Online communication is an investment, not an expense. This mostly follows the rules of investing: the more informed and willing you are to invest, the higher the "return" will be. Try to overcome the barriers you may have at the beginning and get used to investing in digital, and the long-term average costs will be much more bearable.
- Constantly analyze data – Use Google Analytics to see what's happening with your campaign and draw conclusions about changes you could make for better conversions.
- Interact and respond promptly to requests – A request for an offer that you did not respond to in time is already answered by the competition. It's so easy to send RFPs to multiple agencies that what doesn't get answered in a few hours may not get answered at all...
But why campaign in tourism?
If you use an online holiday shop, you already know that the number of offers is exorbitant, and the truth is that tourists get lost in the multitude of possibilities.
Talk to them about the launch of new charters, the most spectacular beaches, the most popular entertainment locations, the most amazing landscapes or exclusive experiences. It's so easy to create fantastic content when promoting HOLIDAYS!
In general, the public loves to be informed, but they also watch for special offer periods to make a purchase. To encourage online bookings, we recommend designing a strategy based on the most popular campaigns, easily recognized by tourists: Online Tourism Fair, Haloween, Black Friday, Valentine's Day, Dragobete, March, Winter Holidays, Easter, Pentecost, May 1, etc.
In addition to the above, you can run loyalty campaigns in parallel. Encourage your audience to join a loyalty club for travel enthusiasts just to stay up to date with the latest news and get extra discounts.
And most importantly, always stay connected with your tourists because the most successful campaigns will be inspired by the dialogue with them!
Boost to conversions!