Starting & Managing a Tourism Website Effectively

Since 1995, Frog Internet has listened to, talked with and worked alongside thousands and thousands of small to large British Columbia, Canada tourism businesses. Below is a summary of the many "rights and wrongs" performed by tourism businesses everyday when starting and managing their websites.

Here is the problem. Many businesses believe that www.BBKanada.com/accommodations/3862.htm or www.BCRentals.com/tourim_business are personal websites with a Domain Name. This is not true. The above URLs are not personal websites but are more commonly referred to as, cloned piggy-back template web pages which are built, as part of, a larger existing travel planning website and are acquired when signing up for advertising.

HINT: Many bad habits are developed with using a cloned piggy-back template web page as your main website. One habit to avoid is relying on what appears in the "Subject Line" of your e-mail for tracking advertising. (Far more efficient to acquire Website Hosting Services with reports and graphs to track advertising directed to your tourism website).

Email manipulation is a common trait with cloned websites and is a very POOR way to track business as not all websites play games with the "Subject Line". Reputable travel planning websites actually want to promote your individual tourism websites as your website markets you the best online. 

HINT: Cloned piggy-back template web pages are not, generally, permitted to advertise on other reputable travel planning websites as it is a web page on a competing travel planning website.  

You are what you make yourself out to be online. A website is the face of your business on the Internet. Yet, so many small businesses put very little effort and resources into building a professional looking tourism website that will operate effectively on the Internet. And many large tourism businesses overbuild their websites with gadgets and whistles.

A rule to follow when building a website is to build your website to the level of Search Engines not technology! A website MUST compete effectively with hundreds of other websites to be successful on the Internet and not get lost or bogged down in cyber space. Just having a website on the Internet is not nearly enough anymore - to be successful in today's global market takes effort and expertise and research on your part. 

A tourism website needs to be visually attractive, structurally sound, include good text copy and built to be Search Engine friendly. A friend of a friend who is a graphic designer and builds websites on the side for a few hundred bucks, usually builds problems and soon requires more money to fix. Who you decide to entrust your business with to build your website is crucial. Many times saving a few bucks in website design results in a far larger lost in revenues on the Internet to your competitors due to poor design and functionality? Everyone these days claims to be a web designer... be careful - and ask yourself,, "Is what they are going to build me work or just look pretty?" 

Tourism people building tourism websites would be the ideal choice for building a tourism website. Makes sense, since a tourism web designer would know the industry very well and what technology works best. FROG Internet Website Designers are, very much, the type of people you would want building your website.  

Ask yourself these questions: Is my website easy to look at? Is it built to be visible on the Search Engines? Should I acquire Search Engine Optimization marketing services? What websites do I effectively advertise on? How are people going to find my website when they search the Internet? How does it compare to my competitor's websites visually? How easy is it to navigate my website? Am I prepared to maintain my website and keep it current? Do I want to control my expenses properly by tracking my results with Website Hosting Reports?  

Too many businesses spend blindly online when it comes to advertising. Too many tourism businesses track advertising by what is in the "Subject Line" of an email or by asking the visitor when they arrive where they found them or, sadly enough, just by guessing. Why the headache, when a simple solution to tracking advertising is right in front of your eyes - setting up your website with a proper Hosting Package which would list all the websites you advertise on and how many people are sent to your personal business website every month from your advertising websites. Makes budgeting advertising simple eh!

There are a few ways to advertise on the Internet effectively. Many successful website businesses, both small and large, utilize both marketing techniques in their Internet Marketing Plan.  

ADVERTISE ON TRAVEL PLANNING WEBSITES: The most popular way is to advertise your personal website on large travel planning websites which send people to your website to book. These are very effective in some cases as they market your best marketing tool - your website! But... there are hundreds of travel planning websites on the Internet marketing accommodations like yours. Which ones to advertise on is the trick. 

We are absolutely amazed how many people copy each other when it comes to advertising and, yet, see no reason to researching the advertising website themselves. The blind following the blind. A good example in some communities are the local Chamber of Commerce websites which are notoriously poor in generating business on the Internet, yet most businesses pay hundreds of dollars and join regardless. Wow ... eh?

FROG Internet has access to hundreds of  "Website Referral Reports" from all over B.C., Canada... and we can tell you right now there are a ton of popular travel planning websites airing TV commercials, looking pretty, funded by governments that perform very poorly on the Internet when it comes to generating traffic for your website resulting in revenues. Why is this so? Well, we call it tourismopoly. You see, unfortunately, not every person from around the globe that are preparing to visit B.C. Canada watch Global TV and CBC and read the Province newspaper... but 32 million people a month use Search Engines to plan trips.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE YOUR OWN PERSONAL WEBSITE: Image your own website positioning on the first page of Google for keyword search terms like "Vancouver Island Fishing Charters" or " Gulf Islands B&Bs" or Ucluelet Hotels Motels", "Prince Rupert Whale Watching" or "Queen Charlotte Islands", etc. It is possible and effective. Search Engine Optimization markets your website to Search Engines for a variety of different keywords and keyword phrases. A marketing technique enabling your website to position on the top pages of many Search Engines making it easy for travelers to find you online. Find Out More.