How to Travel 2.0 your website!
Travel 2.0, as term and trend is closely aligned to the Web 2.0 terminology, whatever it can mean to someone! Since travel and tourism are considered the biggest industry worldwide, the travel 2.0 phenomenon is forcing the tourism leaders to adopt technologies, trends and opportunities trying to get the attention and further the preference of the 2.0 traveler.
So are you a web developer or web designer who wants to develop a travel or tourism website or portal? How do you do it? Is a reliable, fast loading, impressive website enough? My opinion is, no it is not. You need something more, some final touches, some additional effort.
Upon this, we can go through some suggestions that will give to your online presence the real competitive advantage.
1) Provide feedback functionality
Your website should provide feedback capabilities. Web 2.0 citizens are energetic. They yearn for interaction. If you have a hotel website, for example, provide room rate evaluation or facilities feedback. Give the visitor the opportunity to tell his own story, if he had fun or not, if he praises you or if he hates you. In addition, thank him for his feedback. This will not only affect your relationship with the specific visitor but will also promote you to the next ones. Potential travelers don't care about your exaggerated descriptions and fancy wording. They care about real stories, what the people that have used your facilities have to say. So, just give them the chance to say it.
2) Use a .travel domain name
Why to use a .com when you can use a .travel? Well, you will wonder what is the difference, it is just another domain name like all the others. No, it is not so simple. First advantage of .travel is credibility and recognition. By using a .travel domain name you instantly prove your recognition among the travel and tourism industry. This is because a main requirement for obtaining a .travel domain is to upload relevant content in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, another significant advantage of the specific domain is the search engine friendliness! .Travel performs very well in the specific task. Just imagine how many searches are done using the “travel” keyword and then think the advantage of having it in your domain name!
3) Enable Content Sharing
Enable content sharing on your website. Travelers are probably the biggest content producers in the world. They travel, they take photos of the visited places, they make videos of their fun moments, they are writing reviews about what they have seen and at the end they share it on the web. Like it or not your visitors will record you and they will publish you. So why don't you give them the opportunity to share this content with you? This way you can use real and convincing content from actual people instead of trying to write marketing fairy tales that, at last, no one will give attention to. Even if it is not easy for you to host videos, photos or reviews on your own web site you can just share the links to the respective sources like youtube, flickr or blogs.
4) Create a community
Communities are a vital part of the current and future culture of Internet. Use them for your own benefit. Organize your visitors to online communities. This way you can create buzz for you, you can find fans, audience and followers completely for free. Use existing technologies to extent your website to incorporate a community. You can extent it by adding a forum where potential, current and past visitors can share experiences, thoughts and tips, like places to visit or must see of the surrounding area. Additionally you can create a Facebook group or page and attract fans. Let the travelers do the marketing for you!
5) SEO it!
In order to get to you, they will firstly need to find you! So, give the necessary attention and put reasonable effort for the search engine optimizations. If you even have the budget, get a consultant. In this business sector, an investment on an SEO strategy plan will have its return. The most popular way for travelers to find their next trip destination is by searching on the Internet and the stats here speak by themselves. The top 10 results (the ones on the first page) get approximately the 80% of the traffic. 90 % of the people that perform a search abandon the search after the 3 first pages. So, you definitely need to be there!
6) Emphasize your product
Tourists primary traveling purpose is not to seek for nice facilities. They travel to see new places! So do not use your website to describe and promote your infrastructure. Have the main theme of the website to be focused around the place. Emphasize on your environment. Adjust colors and design to create a place atmosphere. Is your country a sunny place? Make the visitor to feel it. Is it a green paradise or a cultural birthplace? Show it! Promote your theme. If your resort, for example, is a famous destination for divers then it is better to use a diver's image at the home page that a bed and two pillows. Differentiate yourself!
7) Promote yourself!
Write or show something about you beyond your website. As mentioned before users can generate content for you in various places in the web. Complete this web identity by adding your personal touch. Upload videos in YouTube, images in Flickr, participate in travel and tourism forums. Write an article about you in WikiTravel. Complement your website with a blog, giving a chance to the community to interact with you. Follow your audience attitude and be also energetic. Give and take, speak and listen, interact!
As you can realize, the creation of a website for the traveling sector with real business value is not just a matter of traditional web design and web development standards and principles. A nice looking and functional web site is the heart and the beginning of an e-commerce strategy but it not enough on its own. You need to move further. If you have a web agency, you are obliged to give additional value to your customer. Consider the above as initial thoughts extent them and develop your own online e-travel paradigm.