Hello

iVisitor Guide is a new way of marketing your business to a huge audience of online consumers who need help with their travel planning - and it brings you more business.

The current economic climate is a challenge for all of us - we have to make our marketing spend more effective and go further, keep a closer eye on our competition, raise our service standards and look after our customers even better than before.

I've preloaded this blog with various information and articles so if this is your first visit please check the Blog Archive for other postings. Please feel free to add comments to any articles, ask questions, refer the site to any friends or colleagues who might be interested.

Thanks for dropping by and remember iVisitor Guide is a new way of marketing your business to a huge audience of online consumers who need help with their travel planning - and it brings you more business.

Visitor Attractions Need Customers Too!

Why should a Visitor Attraction have an iVisitor Guide - after all they just give free promotion to other businesses don't they? Or will they increase the chances of that Visitor Attraction getting more bookings?

Well let's think about what sort of customers a Visitor Attraction might want:

- Single people, couples or families?

- People who live locally, who are prepared to travel from outside the area or both?

I won't get deep into demographics because the basic point is that Visitor Attractions probably want all of the above yet it is almost 100% certain that their website does nothing to help consumers plan their trip! If I was considering travelling from outside of the region and I was bringing my family I would want to know things like:

1. Is there something else we can do whilst we are there? I like gardens but my wife likes art galleries - can we do both? Is there a softplay area nearby for the kids?

2. Is there someone who can recommend a great local gastropub so I can enjoy a quality lunch? Or how about somewhere to eat that will welcome my 3 young children and look after the whole family?

3. If I wanted to stay over where can I find details of local good quality hotels, B&Bs etc?

One of the iVisitor Guide clients is Ness Botanic Gardens and they really go the extra mile to make sure that consumers can make the most of their stay. Kevin Reid [the man in charge at Ness] commissioned us to create a guide that showed other local Visitor Attractions, a range of accommodation providers and a selection of great places to eat. Kevin knows that if he is not providing this information then the client is potentially not going to turn up at all. Think about it! If I have an interest in going to Ness Botanic Gardens and they are capable of helping me plan the entire trip then I am going to be much more likely to do so.

These are not unusual requirements. We all recognise that when we are trying to plan any sort of trip that it often takes far too long to find the information we need and we end up travelling unprepared. We miss out on the really nice lunch, stay somewhere drab and out of the way, spend our time in the area not knowing what else could occupy our time and give us a much better experience.

iVisitor Guide can also provide you with the statistics that tell you really important things like:

- which other Visitor Attractions are of most interest

- which Accommodation Providers get the most enquiries

- which Restaurants get the most hits

Armed with this information the Visitor Attraction manager now knows exactly which local businesses they should be cultivating better relationships with.

In particular the statisitcs that can be gained from the iVisitor Guide for Ness Botanic Gardens illustrates that Accommodation Providers received over 48% of all hits. This alone is a clear indication that a great many of the potential visitors to Ness Botanic Gardens are travelling in from outside of the area and they'll need help with ideas on where to stay, places to eat and other things they can do to help make the most of their stay. By having an iVisitor Guide on their site Ness are making sure that their prospective visitors don't have to go to any other website to get this information, are building brand loyalty from a very early stage and greatly increasing their chances of getting those consumers to visit.

Why would any Visitor Attraction not want to help their clients in this way?

iVisitor Guide Improves Your Google Ranking

A major preoccupation for Tourism Providers is making sure that their business can be found ahead of the competition when consumers search online. This has never been more important given that "78 percent of people in the UK search for information about their holiday online while 63 percent book part of their main holiday online*.”

When consumers do searches they will increasingly find an iVisitor Guide website on Google that not only promotes the Tourism Provider it also, uniquely, gives the consumers lots of ideas and reasons why they should visit or stay at that business. There is a real value to the Tourism Provider in having this element of the service. Google is a highly competitive space and for a Tourism Provider to have an ally, one that totally promotes their business whilst helping to squeeze out competitors is a major benefit.

Google has clear global dominance in online search and it was vital that we could create the iVisitor Guide network of sites in a way that would make them as search engine friendly as possible. Getting to the top of the listings on Google though is complicated by the sheer number of other businesses competing for the same consumers and online space.

All iVisitor Guide sites are designed to be fully search engine optimized and achieve very good Google rankings on behalf of the Tourism Providers that we promote. Currently we are enabling top 20 results for all clients with some businesses achieving first page rankings. These results are achieved without any investment in search marketing, Google advertising or PPC.

The iVisitor Guide online content distribution model greatly enhances the probability of an individual business or cluster being discovered by online consumers. This in turn leads to increased web traffic, more enquiries and more bookings.

* Eyefortravel, 10 May, 2007

iVisitor Guide - the Tatton Pilot

The Tatton Cluster Development Pilot ran between 1st June 2008 and 31st May 2009. The project involved 11 different businesses based in or near Tatton Park, Knutsford that represented a cross section of Tourism Providers – Accommodation, Attraction, Food & Drink and Retail. The pilot project involved creating an online cluster development tool that would enable these businesses to cross-promote and provide better visitor information to consumers.

The technology to be deployed had to be based on Visit Chester & Cheshire’s [VCC] DMS yet repurposed to enable the widest possible distribution of the core data across new online distribution channels. Central to this project was the idea that VCC could step beyond the point where its content was only used on a very small number of websites. We need to make this valuable content available for other websites to use.

The pilot introduced the concept of an online visitor information service that Tourism Providers could tailor precisely around the needs of their own business. In addition to developing individual online visitor guides for each of the pilot businesses the project also created a template driven cluster site that promoted the region that included all the participant Tourism Providers.

The pilot findings include the following highlights:

• Tourism Provider marketing exposure increased by 239%

• Product Details Displayed increased by 116%

• Unique Visitors increased by 28%

In addition we have seen improvements in Google rankings, gained new market intelligence and enabled the widespread distribution of core DMS data. Traditional barriers to cluster development have been overcome and the technology to enable online cluster development is now proven, for the benefit of business today.

Check through other articles on this blog to gain further insight into how iVisitor Guide can help you - whether you are a Destination Management Organisation or a Tourism Provider looking to get more business!

iVisitorGuide...for Tourist Boards

The iVisitorGuide service provides a range of web entry levels - from DMS data rich ‘out of the box’ websites, through to larger scale consumer focussed template-driven websites incorporating online booking options, content and copywriting, video, data capture, search engine optimisation and secure hosting.

In effect iVisitorGuide sends personalised tourism content to a network of Tourism Providers who promote the service via their own website. The Tourist Board benefits through showing more of its products to more consumers. Consumers benefit from gaining easy access to highly relevant visitor information. Tourism Providers benefit because their business gets much wider online marketing exposure and they are satisfying consumer demand for better information.

The development of the iVisitorGuide service has been influenced by what we believe consumers need backed up by the latest research on humanising the Internet experience.

‘To improve, the industry must humanize the digital travel experience - putting human benefits ahead of technology. Humanized digital travel experiences are useful, usable, and desirable. They deliver basic value, take content available to all and make it meaningful to one traveler, and tap into travelers' emotions. Humanized digital travel experiences are created by aligning organizations to be customer-centric, gathering and using relevant customer insight, and adopting an outside-in, emotional perspective versus the industry's usual inside-out, clinical approach’.

iVisitorGuide also provides intelligence on consumer behaviour. It becomes a tool for Tourist Boards to understand the nature of demand and referral within the various strands of a complex visitor economy.

Critically though, iVisitorGuide is a network and a platform. It is a network of tourism providers who agree to cross promote for mutual benefit and it is a platform upon which core DMS data is distributed to the widest possible audience.

iVisitor Guide...for Tourism Providers

Recent research published by both Forrester and Frommers indicates that c40% of consumers are dissatisfied with the quantity and quality of visitor information found on tourism websites. If YOU don't tell consumers enough about your location and all that can be enjoyed locally then who will? You don't need to lose a potential customer for this reason anymore.

iVisitor Guide provides this service for you in conjuction with your regional tourist board in a seemless, automated, cost effective and hassle free manner. iVisitor Guide gives detailed visitor information to the online consumer enabling them to make more informed choices, aiding their planning and revealing much more about what is on offer. By giving consumers many more reasons and incentives to visit iVisitor Guide will attract new customers to your business.

We tailor all of our guides around the needs of the Tourism Provider and their understanding of their own target markets and by doing this we encourage more people to arrive sooner, stay longer, do more things and spend more money.

iVisitor Guide complements and adds value to existing Tourism Provider websites rather than replacing them. We work with the Tourism Provider to create a visitor guide that really helps to sell the business as a place to stay, attraction to visit, restaurant to enjoy etc.

Examples of our bespoke guides include:

Ness Botanic Gardens
Tatton Park
Chester Grosvenor and Spa
Beeston Castle

iVisitor Guide is also a business support tool for tourism providers. It addresses a very significant market failure, where businesses left to their own devices do not have the means, knowledge or time to meet their visitor information needs. Better information pre and during visit will help to lengthen stay and maximise spend.

iVisitor Guide...for Consumers

iVisitor Guide is an online guide for visitors...full of very useful information that will help them make the most of their stay.

iVisitor Guide reaches consumers directly at the point where they have most interest – on Tourism Providers own websites. For example when a consumer is searching online for accommodation in Cheshire we want the Cheshire-based accommodation providers to give those consumers instant access to the visitor information they need to help convince them to make the booking. Likewise, if the primary interest is in visiting an attraction we want to give the consumer instant access to detailed information on where to stay, places to eat etc so they can plan their trip much more effectively.

Tourism Providers that believe in the high quality of the service they provide recognise how much iVisitor Guide helps consumers and we are proud to count some of the best businesses in the northwest amongst our clients. Leading accommodation providers such as:
The Chester Grosvenor and Spa
Grosvenor Pulford Hotel
Alderley Edge Hotel
Park Royal Warrington
Harrop Fold Farm B&B
Churton Heath Farm B&B
Cottons Hotel & Spa
Alexandra Court Hotel
Buckingham House
The Courtyard Helsby
Paddington House Hotel
Inglewood Manor
Lavender Lodge

iVisitor Guide websites are optimised for all leading search engines and regularly receive high Google rankings in the natural listings. It could well be that consumers will find an iVisitor Guide for a hotel or an attraction before they will find the Tourism Provider’s own website. This of course is no bad thing because the iVisitor Guide site always totally endorses your business as a great place to visit so to have an iVisitor Guide for your business on page 1 of Google can only be good for business.

Increase your marketing exposure

The following diagram illustrates how we can take the data for one business [e.g. Tatton Park] and distribute via the iVisitor Guide network. This unique online distribution model greatly enhances the probability of Tatton Park being discovered by online consumers searching for ideas on things to do etc.





iVisitor Guide is proof of a strategy that is based on the Long Tail. The Long Tail was first proposed in an article written by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine which described the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon who sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities. “Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.”

This Long Tail strategy, where the combined total generated by many small outlets (or niche sites) actually outperforms the main channel, is potentially a highly effective and powerful marketing tool. Even though we are barely past the pilot stage we already have the evidence that the iVisitorGuide network is an extremely efficient way of getting greatly increased online marketing exposure for the region’s Tourism Providers.

On the recent successful iVisitor Guide pilot the average increase in online marketing exposure for the participant tourism providers was 244%.

If you'd like to benefit from a massive increase in marketing exposure please contact me to find out more.

iVisitor Guide - Make More Of Your Stay!

iVisitor Guide provides detailed planning and destination information for visitors, to help them become better informed about what’s on offer in your area, and inspire them to do much more. For everything you need to know about things to do, places to visit as well as events to enjoy, local restaurants and finding somewhere to stay.

We like to bring people together – people who are looking for something to do with businesses who have something great to offer. We can generate new enquiries, convert prospects into new clients and help you to build lasting relationships with your existing customers.

iVisitor Guide provides you with compelling visitor information for your destination and your audience. You can rely upon the quality of the online content we provide because we get it straight from your regional tourist board and we deliver it on the UK’s leading tourism technology platform.