Branding Your Tour Business: What You Need to Know to be Successful

Branding Your Tour Business: What You Need to Know to be Successful

Branding in the tourism industry is an important component of any business, but how to brand a destination or tour activity could be hit-or-miss. These guidelines can help you find out and incorporate the options and tactics for brand elements that your business can use. 

Consider How Your Destination Marketing Organization is Selling Your Destination

  • Evaluate the various advertisements and promotional products that are created by the destination marketing organization (DMO) for your area. These marketing materials will provide you with insight as to how they are branding your region and will show you the type of travelers who are most interested in coming to your destination.
  • Make sure that your own marketing products are in line with the brand being created by the DMO. For example, if the local DMO is branding your destination as a great place to enjoy the outdoors and experience a new adventure, then tailor your efforts into your company branding for tour company as an adventure opportunity. The DMO has marketing power and will attract customers who are most interested in extreme travel opportunities, so you will be ahead of the game if you are in line with their branding messages.

Work with Hoteliers in the Region to Identify the Right Target Audience

  • Do research with local hotels in order to get an idea of who your brand should target. The first thing you need to identify is the demographics of travelers in the area. For instance, if you believe that you should be marketing to Millennials but then you discover that most travelers to local hotels are retirees, then you will want to change your overall tourism destination branding process.
  • Talk to the people who staff the concierge desk. Ask them what are the most common questions that they receive from their guests. Talk with the concierge about what activities in the area people are most interested in. If you don’t offer some of those activities, consider how you might be able to incorporate some options into your catalog that are in higher demand.
  • Browse the websites of the various hotels in your area. Look at the pictures and videos that they use in order to promote their products. Chances are, the majority of hotels in your area will be marketing to the same target audience. You should also strive to capture that same audience, since that represents the largest amount of travelers in your region. Use their websites for inspiration, and try to incorporate some of the same features into your website.
  • Partner with local hotels in order to allow them to book your tours utilizing your channel manager that features real-time availability. Since you are targeting the same audience, this will help enhance your overall tourism destination branding strategy.

Part of your destination branding and marketing for your tour and activity company is promoting your products and offerings online. Having a clean, responsive and user-friendly website is critical, and it’s absolutely essential that you develop a presence on all of the most popular social networking platforms. To learn more about staying relevant online, download our online marketing ebook today.

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