Relevance, Relevance, Relevance

So you are planning to launch a blog for your tourism business or destination. Or perhaps you are looking at producing podcasts for your destination. Lately, you have been reading and hearing about Web 2.0 (or even 3.0), Wikinomics, Facebook, Flickr and a myriad new and not so new web services that some claim you must use if you want to remain competitive in today’s global tourism marketplace.

Relax. You may not need to do anything beyond your see and read static or semi-static website. Before you even consider more Web related expenses go back to your business plan and your overall strategy in order to decide if the new web vehicles are for you. Remember your target market. If your customers are mostly busy adults and 50+ semi-retired people, they may not be interested in Social Media whatsoever or may not use it often enough to justify an investment

If you decide that these tools can be of great help to achieve your business objectives, then go ahead. But remember that the key success factor on the Internet is relevance. If you launch a blog, make sure the blog is relevant to your potential users. Make sure they know where to find it and make absolutely sure that the blog is maintained and updated as often as it makes sense. If you accept comments from your blog visitors (always a good idea to hear from your customers and potential guests) make sure comments are authorized before posting because you want to guard against spammers and you don’t want untoward or offensive material on the blog.

Social Media. Can you make use of it? Of course you can, but it’s also a two way street. If you wanted to form a Facebook group (or similar online community like your own Ning) about your attraction or destination wherein you would invite guests and potential guests to join, first make sure that this is something they would be interested in. If they were interested, a Facebook group could be very beneficial to your organization (be it a hotel, attraction or destination). Your Facebook group friends could provide valuable guest insight and become great promoters of your business. The difference between this approach and Tripadvisor, for example, is that you would be able to control who belongs to the group thereby preventing negative content that can hurt you (though disgruntled guests might still post negative reviews on Tripadvisor).

Jaime