What We Learned From... Tourism Websites

Here at Vital Hike, we have quite a few clients working in the tourism industry, including rental cottages, tour operators, campervan hires, hotels & more. So today, we thought we’d give you a little taster on what we’ve learned from working on Tourism websites!

We’ve tried to keep it tourism specific, but a lot of the tips are adaptable for different industries…

Why do tourism businesses need a website?

Whether you’re a family-run bed & breakfast, a luxury Scottish tour operator, or an independent hotel, trust us, you need a website. Websites used to be nothing more than an online poster for your business, but they’re much more powerful now. Websites are the first port of call for potential customers. If someone in America is looking for accommodation in rural Scotland, their main source of information will be the internet. The drawback for them is a lot of small businesses still aren’t online, so they’re limited to the businesses that ARE online.

"I think I'll browse for top Scottish Cottages!"

We mentioned in an earlier blog that more than half of mobile users now exclusively use their mobiles to browse online. If you’re in the tourism industry and AREN’T online, that’s a huge customer base you’re cutting off.

Websites tell customers who you are. You aren’t just “Faceless Accommodation Business”, you’re “Highland Cottages, run by Steve and Emma in Loch Lomond”. The beauty of a website is you aren’t limited to ten words or less; you can have as many webpages as you like to lay out who you are, what you do and what’s in it for the customers. And aside from all that, websites can be used to make bookings, purchase your products and generally interact with customers. Statistic Brain found that internet travel booking has grown by a whopping 73% since 2007, so tourism businesses need websites ASAP!

Once you get your website, how do you go about designing it? Well…

7 Things We Learned About Tourism Websites

1. It needs to be visual

There’s no use going on and on about the great views from your hotel, people want pictures! Authentic photos of your surroundings can really add value; just take a look at the website we designed for the Scottish Clay Shooting Centre. It’s filled with pictures of genuine customers enjoying the experience, dressed up in the safety gear and working with the instructor.

These images outline what goes on at the Scottish Clay Shooting Centre, getting the message across better than reams of text. Frankly, the website just wouldn’t be as personal and open if it was filled with stock photos of guns and clay pigeons.

A more global example of visual power is Tourism Australia, who have dominated Instagram with this strategy alone! They have over 500,000 followers, more than any other tourism brand in the world, and all because they get their customers to submit photos. They encourage people who have visited Australia to send in their shots, and then choose the best 5 each day. The sneaky Aussies are getting the customers to do the work for them!

2. You need to build up your content

Think about what your customers want; what are they always asking you about?

Are you getting asked for transport recommendations? Then stick a ‘Transport’ page on your website, and talk about local transport in your area!

Are your customers asking about your prices? You need a ‘Price’ page outlining your fees.

Listen to your customers and you’ll soon be bursting with ideas for content!

Now don’t fear. When I ‘say write up a ‘Transport’ page’, I don’t mean a 1000 word essay on the pros and cons of the bus system! Just talk through it like you would face-to-face with a customer, and stick in anything you think might help, e.g. the local bus is reliable and stops just down the road every ten minutes.

Check out our blog about writing web content for more detailed info. 

3. Pricing Information

This falls under content, but is a big enough issue on its own that we felt it deserved its own section!

A lot of people in the tourism industry think they need to hide their prices, but this is a dangerous line of thought. There is a common misconception that pricing on websites is too blunt, but it's time to shake that off.

Reasons we've heard for concealing prices:

• You have to hide your prices from competitors so they can't undercut you!
  Unfortunately, if someone is determined to uncover your prices, they will find a way. 
• You look more upmarket if you don't mention the costs
  Sure, that might be true, but what if you look too 'upmarket' for all your customers? Everyone might assume you're too expensive, so you end up scaring people away!
• Our prices are higher than other businesses, so people will take the cheaper option!
  Tough. If your prices are higher for a legitimate reason, then you have to start believing in your business. Don't be ashamed that you can't charge pennies for a service worth much more. It's time to own it, and focus on the benefits you offer your customers. 

At the end of the day, forcing people to phone you just to find out how much you charge per night is asking a lot, especially if it turns out that they can't afford you! Nobody wants their time wasted.

Especially not people who have been scouring the internet for holiday cottages all day; they're likely to be getting impatient... And it's worth remembering that most people choose tourism companies based on cost, so it's a key bit of information for them; they need to know if you're within their budget.

However, we have worked with tourism businesses that create a bespoke service for each customer, so they can’t just state a price. Fortunately, there is a way around this… 

For example, Drumscot is a client of ours that create private guided tours of Scotland. They handle everything including accommodation, transport, guides and activities such as distillery tours, so there are a lot of variables affecting costs! In order to work around this and give customers an idea of their prices, we created a ‘Sample Tours’ page for the Drumscot website, where the business has provided detailed information on previous tours along with a guide price. This manages to give customers some idea of what their tour might cost so they will know immediately if they can afford it!

For more in-depth information on whether or not to show prices on your tourism website, check out the following blog; Should You Put Your Prices On Your Website.  In future articles, we'll debate the pros and cons of pricing in other industries. 

4. Make it easy for customers to book with you

First up, how do they do it? Make it clear if they need to phone, email, fill out a form, or do something else entirely. There are so many options that it might not always be obvious!

Once you’ve led the customer to the booking method, guide them through it. The main focus at the booking stage should be making it very straightforward; no curve balls! If customers have to phone you, make it clear beforehand what information you will need from them so they can prepare. The same could be said of an email service; tell the customer what information you’ll need beforehand, don’t just cross your fingers and hope they get it right… That never turns out well.

When designing your booking form, one thing we’ve found particularly useful is to include a general enquiries section. This is where customers can stick things like medical issues, questions they might have about your services, and generally air any concerns. The goal with this option is to make it very easy for the potential customer to navigate the form. If they’re left wondering why you don’t have a section about wheelchair access, then they might assume you don’t offer it. However, if there’s a little section for them to stick in any questions, then it suggests you’re keen to help with any issues they might have!

Take a look at the ‘Other Information’ section at the bottom of the Drumgolf enquiry form as an example.

Adding in a little option like this is very simple, but it requires thought to realise it might be necessary. In order to help your customers, just try putting yourself in their position; what might they need to know at each stage? What might they need to let you know?

5. You need to provide useful information for customers

You may only provide accommodation services, but don’t be tight lipped about what people can do outside your doors. This is about customer service and going the extra mile. It may seem obvious to you that there’s a canoe centre across the street from your rental cottage, but potential customers scanning your website might have no idea.

Draw their attention to it with an ‘Activities’ page. Really, you’re making people aware of the benefits of staying with you, which is the number one rule in marketing: focus on the benefits to the customer. Again, you don’t have to write an essay on canoeing! A synopsis of what the canoe centre offers is enough, along with any other information you think would be useful.

You have to act a bit like a tour guide for your local area, but putting this effort in now means your website will reap the rewards for years. In terms of online marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO), the more you talk about, the more results you should pop up for in Google. You won’t just be appearing for people who search “Scottish cottage”, but also for people who type something like “Canoeing Scotland accommodation”. You wouldn’t be anywhere near the canoe search results before. This means your website could potentially see more visitors!

Motorhome Escapes have provided an extensive guide to Edinburgh on their blog, covering everything from tourist spots, to where to park your motorhome when you’re shopping in Edinburgh!

This guide is full of valuable content because it mentions lots of keywords related to locations, tourist attractions like Edinburgh Castle, and links to customer reviews.  People are using these keywords when searching for holiday options, meaning the Motorhome Escape blog should pop up for a wide variety of searches, increasing their website audience.

6. Enquiry Forms

You may have scrolled right past enquiry forms before, but they are a very useful tool on a website. Firstly, they are a lot quicker and simpler than other forms of communication. A phone call can sometimes feel like too much effort when you’re in the middle of an intense internet holiday search. And an email involves having to write out your question properly. With enquiry forms, you just enter your details and your question, e.g. “how much is breakfast?”

Secondly, we can see what page of your website someone sent the enquiry form from. This tells us the customer didn’t get all the information they wanted from this specific page. Luckily for you, instead of just leaving, they have filled out the enquiry form, so you can now edit the offending page to plug the leak! We might need to alter the content a bit, or make it easier to read with subtitles and bullet points.

7. Start blogging

As you’ve seen earlier with Motorhome Escapes, blogging can be another useful tool. You can get your personality and enthusiasm across for your business, without having to structure it for a specific page. For example, on a ‘Pricing’ page, you’re really only going to talk about prices, not upcoming redecorations!

Blogs are a great way of communicating with customers and keeping them updated on a casual basis. The content you write for your website will largely go untouched after it’s up to a certain standard, but you can post blog articles as often as you fancy!  

Picture a restaurant business with a very minimalist website design. They might want to tell customers about all the work going into their upcoming Christmas menu, but there is just no place for it on the website. A blog would be a great option for them, because they could talk at length without worrying about the website aesthetic.

With a blog, you could write about a tourist attraction, upcoming events, new staff, what customers have been enjoying and so much more.

If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘why should I do all this on my website? I’m not making money from writing about local transport!’, just remember…

Online transactions are demand-driven; “you either give people what they want or watch as they abandon your site for the competitions”.

-          Jakob Nielsen, dubbed “the guru of websiteusability”

New York Times

And that concludes our blog on what we’ve learned from working on tourism websites! We hope you’ve found some of it useful, and have been inspired to make some helpful additions to your own website. 

As usual, feel free to leave a comment or drop us an email if you have any queries – it never hurts to ask! We plan on returning to this topic at a later date, as there was just too much to squeeze in here, and we’re also hoping to talk about what we’ve learned from other types of business websites!

Stay tuned folks!

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