| Getting
your share of the overseas market
According to the latest statistics, 2004 is set to be a record
year for UK tourism. VisitBritain is predicting 26.34 million international
visitors by the end of the year. Are you getting your fair share
of this market?
Even if you
don’t have the cash for all-expenses-paid trips
overseas to drum up some business, you can benefit from lucrative
overseas markets. In fact there’s never been a better time
to do so. The market is buoyant and overseas visitors are looking
for new experiences. The Britain brand is flourishing and is as
relevant to hidden tourism gems as it is to the jewels. Here are
a few tips to help your overseas marketing:
Overseas
marketing is undoubtedly more expensive than promoting to customers
on
your doorstep so you need to have a more long-sighted
approach. Don’t even consider investing in overseas markets
without a robust marketing plan. You can learn more about developing
a marketing plan by taking part in one of our free
online marketing workshops.
Your
website is one of the main ways overseas visitors will find
you. How much information do you have on your site for them? Remember
overseas visitors will need a different level and type of information
to domestic visitors who may be more familiar with your product.
Adding some material that has been translated into the main languages
your visitors are likely speak makes a huge difference, especially
if you want to attract people from emerging markets like China
and Russia. Having translated information on your website is a
major USP. Ideally your whole site should be optimised for overseas
visitors with different gateways (look at the way www.visitbritain.com does this) for each language. The lower cost option is to simply
translate the parts of your site that overseas visitors are most
likely to be interested in and provide it as a downloadable .pdf
or on a specific section of your site.
It’s
worth also including some translations of key words in your metatags
(that help the search engines find your site)
so your site can be found by foreign search engines.
VisitBritain are
the experts in overseas’ marketing and
now also have a range of free and low cost marketing opportunities
for small businesses and those with limited budgets. They’ve
just launched a new publication, “Marketing Opportunities
for Smaller Tourism Businesses” which can be downloaded by
clicking here.
VisitBritain’s
tourism industry
website includes
updated information on market profiles as well as market news
and the opportunity to subscribe to their free marketing newsletter.
Have
a look too at the information
about how the Britain
brand has been developed so you can see
how to dovetail your marketing into it and benefit from VisitBritain’s
extensive overseas’ promotions.
The Regional
Tourist Boards and Destination Marketing Organisations generally
work with VisitBritain on overseas marketing activities.
It’s always worth finding out what markets they are focusing
on so you can either piggyback on their activities or at least
get ready to greet the visitors they’re pulling in from overseas.
It usually pays to work through either VisitBritain or your Regional
Tourist Board for overseas marketing as a go-it-alone approach
is expensive and less likely to have an impact. If you already
have visitors from overseas, make sure the tourist boards know
the markets you specialise in and if you have any particular expertise
because you might be able to help support their campaign or host
familiarisation visits.
One of the
cheapest ways to benefit from overseas visitors is to target
them once they’re here. This isn’t such a
good approach for accommodation providers but attractions, destinations
and transport operators can promote their facilities through magazines
distributed to visitors who have already arrived in the country.
Many of these are published by Morris Visitor Publications who
have recently also bought “Where”. For details of magazines
such as the London Guide, Best of Britain and In London see www.morriseurope.com.
Working
with influencers is cheap and effective. These are the people that
can act almost like a third party sales force for you – organisations
and individuals who come into direct contact with visitors and
who might be able to persuade them on your behalf. Influencers
include Blue Badge Guides, Tourist Information Centres, Concierges
and of course the press and guide book editors. It takes time to
make sure they all know and appreciate your facilities but it costs
very little and most people react best to word of mouth recommendations
and third party endorsements so don’t neglect the influencers!
We’ll be organising a Tourism Network Meeting focusing on
the topic of “Marketing through Influencers” so watch
out for more details shortly.
Finally, don’t
forget the travel trade. The internet is influential but many
visitors still make their bookings through
the trade. The travel trade acts as an intermediary between the
public and tourism products and has multiple purchasing power.
It can be difficult and expensive to directly influence independent
visitors, so working with the travel trade is a useful way to develop
visitor numbers.
The travel
trade includes retail travel agents, tour operators, handling
agents, incoming tour operators and ground handlers (the
latter three all make arrangements for overseas’ visitors
once they have arrived in the UK), coach operators, group travel
organisers, short break operators, incentive houses, and corporate
hospitality organisers and conference organisers. Incoming operators
(including ground handlers and handling agents) know their market
well. They are based in the UK but promote to overseas visitors
so are another useful route to market .
A list of incoming ground handlers, coach and tour operators based
in the UK operating in various overseas markets can be found on
the British Incoming Tour Operators Association website: www.bitoa.co.uk
Susan
Briggs
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