Social media like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and others are obviously a huge trend for all industries these days.
But social media can be especially useful to tourism businesses. Hotels, restaurants, tour guides, retail outfitters, golf courses and resorts can all benefit from getting messages out to potential customers - whether they have reservations yet or not.
A tourism forum in Colorado discussed how ski-industry related businesses can use social media marketing in ‘Tourism-related businesses turn to social media for marketing:’
“For our mountain community businesses, that means using social media to get out messages about snow depths, road conditions, news, events, activities and sales. Be promotional, speakers said, but not so promotional that readers are constantly bombarded with sales pitches. Develop a voice, but not an entirely corporate voice. Integrate the social media networks with existing Web sites and e-mail.
Build loyalty. That seems like a no-brainer as we’re all familiar with the Mary Jane fanatics in our own back yard. The most interesting message from that discussion was an encouragement not to be afraid of user-generated content. Let your guests, clients and customers have their say on your Web sites and blogs.
The final message from the symposium was that travel and tourism through the summer likely will be closer to home. That’s good news for Colorado high country areas that are less than a day’s drive from anywhere in this state and our immediate neighbors.”
Your tourism area doesn’t have to be driven by snow - any region where tourism and travel is affected by Mother Nature and the seasons could benefit from using social media to provide relevant and timely updates to visitors.
To read the complete article, click here.
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Just loving this blog…and have clients which would truly benefit from insights to travel tourism, and social media for marketing.
Developing a voice, use social media. I really like this post. Building loyalty is essential in building your social media market. Success only happens if the energy put into the efforts is sincere. At determined2.com Interactivity that promotes successful pursuit of life goals. People helping people. One of the goals is Travel & Leisure, family ideas of travel and entertainment. Reaching out to social media for marketing, people talking to people.
Good blog posting. Social media is such a great tool for any business but especially for tourism businesses. Potential customers are using it now up to the tourism industry to engage!
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Loving this blog. Very eye-opening and can’t wait to see some new entries!