Hi gang,
So I have recently been hired by a upper end tourism company to direct traffic to there website. They have some great content but have put very littl effort into there social media presence. I asked if they were interested in boosting there presence and they told me they get basicly no leads from there.
So Iām wondering, has anyone had a good experience directing traffic to this industry?
Anyone got any tips for me?
āLove yāall famā
Tourism is kind of vague. I can tell you I kind of specialize in a few specific aspects of tourism.
Step one. Get multilogin.
Get or make gmail accounts.
Start making google+accounts as well as TripAdvisor.
Step 3, use Pinterest and twitter to your advantage.
You can get a lot of traffic with those two.
From what I know about the tourism industry, maximum traffic will more often than not come from SEO & organic methods, at least in the long run. Your social media strategy should support that. I manage some resort/hotel properties, and thatās how it works for me at least.
Apart from TripAdvisor reviews/ratings and Pinterest that @wortime mentioned, I think Instagram will also work for mostly any niche in tourism especially if you have premium pics/videos and a premium looking website. You can do follow/unfollow if your client is okay with it. If not, focus on your hashtag strategy and get shoutouts to increase your reach. Put up loads & loads of stories - itās easier to get featured on location/hashtag stories than it is to get on the explore page.
Itās vague because they do a little bit of everything. So the discriptionnqould be to big.
@ wartime will I have problems with TripAdvisor acounts and google + accounts that only right one review and all to the same business ?
And @lazerlight thanks I will follow your suggestion and focus on getting tons of stories.
The better the description, the better help youāll get or OUR answers will be too vague.
If done improperly, yes you will have problems. You can buy Google or Trip Advisor reviews as well.
Ok, so what they do is organize luxury trips both for other tour companies and to individuals. Sometimes they only book you a hotel and give you suggestion od what to do then get your tickets and guides or transport other times make a full experience.
By full experience I mean they plan a full trip of one or two weeks that includes every aspect of the trip (food, transport, local guides, tickets, locations, talks from archeologist or people that study the field, activities like kayaking or surfing.
They have experienced for all kind of people, relaxing ones, honeymoons, active ones, academic ones, etc. And they personalize the experience as much as they can. basically sending you tons of itineraries for someone to walk you through and help you choose something that fits you.
Love your mantra āI will NOT Google stuff for you for freeā
I will do my own research and see if I can make a valid contribution to the community since there is no info about TripAdvisor on the forum.
Thanks and any tips are much appreciated
Many people on this forum will not like my answers hereā¦
Instagram is great, but I can tell you from personal experience that itās only a minor piece of the puzzle for an operation like you mentioned.
Iāve been very absent from the community because Iāve been starting my own business somewhat along the lines of what youāve mentioned.
I dont deal with archeologists though.
The reality is that you need social signals and reviews from multiple social media sites.
You need to rank on trust pilot, trip advisor, google+, get mentioned on Twitter, shared on Facebook, blogged and reblogged on tumbler, wordpress etc. you need good SEO and backlinks. The site needs to be crawled and indexed by as many search engines as possible. Get listed with the white and yellow pages (many people probably donāt even remember what that is, but they have a high page authority and indexing and are trusted by older people). Make sure you have POSITIVE reviews on all the other major sites like Yelp (donāt bother with ads there) etc
Get listed on local tourism boards. That part is not cheap either. Then you have to attend events and network. Guerilla marketing can work depending on time and budget.
Start a concierge program. That is, hit the street and start talking to hotel concierges and grease their palms ( give them money for every person that purchases a tour), and talk with cab drivers, bus lines, Uber drivers etc. make friends with local AirBnB owners so that they leave a āfun things to doā in each unit that has the companies tours in it ( note that youāll probably need to pay them a commission as well). Talk to event coordinators from businesses and attend their meetings. Be charming as fuck fam.
For a lot of things, youāll need to set up an affiliate program. That way you donāt need to spend as much time figuring out who to tip or pay commission to, as well as where your efforts need to be focused or whatās paying off. Get travel influencers involved with an influencer campaign.
Your gonna need ads. Lots of them. Minimum $1k a month on Google alone.
Basically there is no shortcut that you can take in order to drive business. Itās a lot to do and itās a tall order. You have to master a lot of little things as well as outsource a lot of time consuming things in order to drive sales.
There, I said it. There is no one magic bullet. There is no single Instagram account or mother - slave setup that is going to make it successful or more successful.
Source: Am currently balls deep in it and grinding it out daily. So far my net profits are well over 50% per tour booked. SEO is still a bitch since we currently only offer 2 tours, and our competitors focus on 1.
As far as Trip advisor? Your gonna have to google my friend. Or setup a ton of accounts yourself, master getting people to review, pay TripAdvisor itself for ads and for the advanced setup/listing, or buy reviews or even set up your own review āfarmā.
Good luck!
Actually this is a fantastic answer. 
Anyone who wishes to be grounded in reality and is not in the in the āIām drinking the Thunderbird-of-easy-moneyā phase of business, either online or b+m, should take time to read and absorb this. Especially the on-the- ground stuff.
In my experience that is what REALLY makes or breaks it. You canāt just throw up a nice pic on IG and expect shit to break your way in the T industry, or just about any big-boy industry you want to succeed in.
I was involved in an operation in a city that dealt with a whole symphony of people that all had to be greased, cajoled, buddied up through the whole chain leading to the customer/tourist. Valets, concierge, biz owners, promoters, doormen, club owners, transportation enterprises, and the list goes on. Doing THAT work and being charming-as-fuck was what made bottles pop. Each one had to be treated differentlyā¦and most of emā werenāt on IG (lol).
Now I didnāt go as full-bore online like Wor is but EVERYTHING heās talking about leads to the REAL success.
Mind you the road to REAL success is: Taking advantage of each of those contacts and opportunities. They open up possibilities (if youāre not close minded and have the perception of at least a pug) that will lead you down paths you wouldnāt have considered or even realized were there. Then you execute.
But you gotta do the work and THAT will make MORE work. Real world in-the-flesh work. I know scary right? He just gave you a fantastic primer.
So tossing up a pic in the olā IG machine and expecting everyone to buy a package to visit your All-Nude All-Inclusive Beach Party on Margarita Island just aināt gonna work. Thatās what these businesses thinkā¦but you know better. 
This isnāt meant to be a downer. Just like Worās postā¦itās meant to be a ringing bell of reality to HELP you. A reinforcement that the things heās laying out here for you are the real keys.
I know itās a bitch to look at that and go āFuck man! I gotta do work. Wor is full of shit! That wasnāt what I learned in that WSO I downloaded!ā But thatās reality.
You can do it āfamā. 
Now go out there and be charming-as-fuck and get that beach $. 