Get them while they're young. Targeting Hispanic backpackers and Web 2.0

Yesterday I went to visit my client Richard McCarron of Global Backpackers Village and the Moose Network, two tourism businesses that target and cater young people around the world. Our meeting's purpose was to discuss online marketing options to promote their offerings to Mexican and other Hispanic young travellers. In addition to featuring Global Backpackers Village and the Moose Network on our Toronto en Español website we talked about doing some Tourism 2.0 and social media marketing (e.g. BlogdeCanada.com and Canadamigos.com ). I will write another post on this topic later.
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Young people in Latin America as a market segment are quite different from families or couples. While they are also very family oriented and will not hesitate to travel with their parents and even grand parents, hundreds of thousands of them in Latin America also travel with one or more friends. Many get to know Europe as many other young people do, i.e. backpacking. I for one visited Europe for the first time after high school as young Mexican kid on a semi-camping trip on a bus with a bunch of young people from several countries. That was one of the best vacations I ever took because of the people I met on the trip (i.e. young women). In a region where the median age is under 30 years old - in Mexico the median age is 25.3 years of age (see The Washington Post's Voices of Culture)- there is a huge opportunity for tourism businesses like Global Backpackers and the Moose Network. Furthermore, it is a huge opportunity for the entire Canadian Tourism industry. As Richard mentioned during our conversation, we must get them young. Many of these young people (from all over the world) come to Canada as young backpackers with limited budgets. But when they have a great experience, they remember and once they move to a higher stage in life with more disposable income they return with their partners or with their families. I have met many Mexicans who came to Canada when they were young some as teen agers attending summer camps and later in life as adults they came back on vacation with their families (I know of one gentleman who moved to Canada based on his experience at summer camp).

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Where do you find these young people? As Richard and I talked about, you find them online. (I am of course biased, but independent studies show the facts and young Spaniards and Latin Americans are also avid online users just as their North American counterparts). In 2007 (according to the Mexican Internet Association) 44% of Mexican Web users are between the ages of 20 and 35. Furthermore 55% of all Mexican online users fall between the ages of 12 and 24. Learning how to reach these online users and joining their conversations will be increasingly important in marketing tourism products and services in the very near future. As for Richard, Global Backpackers Village and the Moose Network I will be working with him to reach not only Mexican young travellers but also those in South America and Spain.

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Jaime Horwitz MBA
www.canadaenespanol.ca

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How to get exposure for your tourism business or destination using RSS feeds.

Few days ago I explained how you can stay informed using RSS feeds. Now I want to write about how you can get more exposure (and ultimately more customers/guests/clients) for your Canadian Tourism business using RSS feeds.
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First you need content to RSS, so start blogging. It does not have to be all time consuming to blog about your business and destination. Say you have a Bed & Breakfast. Launch your blog and anywhere from one to five times a week (as much as you can but at least once a week) post an entry on your blog. You can use platforms like Blogger or Wordpress that are very easy to use. Add pictures or videos if you want. What do you blog about? It does not have to be about your specific offering all the time. Be creative, perhaps a brief story about the goings on in your town or a comment on something you read in the paper related to your business. It does not always need to be a "selling" proposition. I always like to use Terri's Bay of Fundy's blog as a good example. Terri always has little bits of interesting or fun information. Visit her blog for ideas as to what to do with yours. Another blog that you may look at as an example is the Romany Rest B&B blog from PEI. Once you have a blog make sure to have RSS links. Visit Feedburner to learn about adding the RSS links to your blog.
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IMPORTANT: If you cannot maintain the blog with fresh content at least once a week or once every ten days, in my opinion, you should not have a blog. Once people find your blog, if they like it, they will return to it and/or subscribe via an RSS feed. If content is not fresh and current you will lose your potential customer because your blog will reflect on your offline business or attraction in some measure.

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DMO's in Canada are still behind in the area of Blogs and Web 2.0 initiatives. There may be many reasons for this, but it is better not to have blogs if the content is not looked after and the blog is not maintained. For example, Niagara Falls Tourism launched a great redesign of their site a few months ago that includes video and a blog. However as of this writing the last entry on that blog is from August 29, 2007! It would be better to take down the blog until they have someone adding content on a regular basis. Perhaps the DMO's should consider creating a new position, that of resident blogger, who could be in-house or off-site, full-time or part-time /freelance bloggers.

Even though most destination marketing organizations do not have blogs, there are two DMOs Canada that are doing a great job in the area of Web 2.0 such as blogs and podcasts. Hello BC has implemented a blog area where travellers themselves can blog. Tourism BC's Hello BC website makes sure that the blog has content continuously by also having members of their staff contribute to the blog. There may not necessarily be new content every day, but there is enough continuity that one may want to check it out every now and then. It of course allows people to subsribe to an RSS feed making it easier to know when new content has been added. Hello BC's blog is more of a compendium where many people may add an entry as a Traveller's tip as oppose to what you see in most blogs where the point of view is usually from one of a few persons, but it works (similar to posts or comments one might see on TripAdvisor).

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The other DMO making good use of Web 2.0 tools is Tourism Montreal with its Play-Montreal Podcasts blog to which one can subscribe via RSS. The podcasts are audio pieces that complement the written blog entries. A visitor may choose to read or listen or both. It's quite informative. My only comment is that the tone of the blog and the podcasts is a bit to serious (and institutional). But nonetheless, it is a great step by the folks of Tourism Montreal to get closer to potential visitors to that fabulous city.

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The next step in your Bloggin, RSS Feed, Web 2.0 marketing path would be to participate in social networks. But that's a topic for a future post. Stay tuned (subscribe to this blog's RSS feed to stay in touch).

Cheers, Jaime

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What is an RSS Feed and how can it help your Canadian Tourism business?

There is an awful lot of information out there in cyberspace about the Web 2.0 and its implications for tourism around the world. Web 2.0 refers to the interactive capabilities of the Internet to connect people with people, people with businesses and businesses with businesses. One small, but important element of this Web 2.0 environment is the RSS Feed. RSS stands for really simple syndication. An article on Wikipedia defines it as "RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts."
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Given our time constraints many of us want to find ways to be more productive and be more efficient. Many of us want or need to stay abreast of news and information that can help in our careers or businesses. RSS feeds are a great way to do this efficiently. First you need an RSS reader. I use Google Reader for its ease of use. All you need is to sign up (you will need to get a Google account which is easy to get). Once you have your Google Reader account then you can begin to add RSS Feeds to this Reader Webpage. I subscribe to over 60 RSS Feeds that I scan every morning for news or helpful articles.

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My Google Reader homepage. Newest blog posts or news (from newspaper feeds, for example) are featured in the centre of the page. On the left side is a list of all blogs, newspapers and other orgs' feeds I subscribe to with the number of new entries in parenthesis.

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Subscribing to feeds is also easy. For example if you want to subscribe to this blog, you just click on the link at the bottom that says "Subscribe to the Canadian Tourism Blog" or the one on the left of this page with the RSS icon. Once you click you will be taken to another webpage that looks like the following:

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All you need to do is copy the URL (internet address), go back to your Google Reader page click on the Add Subscription link, paste the URL and click on Add. Et voilá, you will be subscribed. Everytime you logon to your reader you will see if there are new entries on this blog. The RSS feeder is really only helpful if you want to subscribe and keep track of many blogs, newspapers or other organizations that use RSS, since the beauty of the technology is that you can have all of these in one place.

RSS feeds not only can be added to and RSS reader but now they can be added to many websites such as Facebook and other social networks like Canadamigos Network (www.canadamigos.com)

Next post: How can you make use of an RSS feed to market your product or service?

Cheers,

Jaime

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Will TIAC Reach Out to smaller tourism operators during Tourism Week in 2008?

During the 2007 Tourism Week (last June) TIAC published a supplement in the Globe and Mail that tried to support the Business of Tourism in Canada and failed. A large ¼ page add was placed on behalf of the border Duty Free Stores on the front page of the supplement with a message that Canadians should travel south and save. The major focus of the supplement was heavy on the efforts surrounding the passport issue (a good cause but overdone).

The supplement also had advertisements that were promoting travel in Canada, and ended up as a bit of fish and a bit of fowl, neither a good promotional piece, nor a good advocacy effort. It confused more than educated. I encourage TIAC to rethink their promotion of Tourism Week to reflect more on what there is to see and do in Canada, and encourage Canadians to see Canada first as well as support smaller Tourism businesses and operators in their local communities.

The TIAC website states that “Tourism week provides a focal point for activities organized by provincial and territorial tourism industry associations, provincial and territorial marketing organizations, destination marketing organizations, individual businesses and other partners”.

Lets make some changes and TIAC may attract more grass roots tourism businesses and operators to join the association.