Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

Should You Accept Credit Cards for Your Tours & Activities

Stephen Joyce — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:53:45 +0000

Prerequisites: You’re looking at various ways your customers could pay you.

Estimated Time for Completion: 20 min reading time

Details: There is no doubt that credit cards are a major part of e-commerce. The question is whether or not you should or need to accept credit cards with your tourism related business. There are a number of pros and cons to accepting payment by credit card, whether or not you choose to accept payment by credit card will depend on your comfort level with the terms of accepting credit card payments. Here are some pros and cons of accepting credit cards:

PROS

Impulse purchases – Customers can pay right away. This works particularly well if you are able to deliver a real-time response with a ticket or voucher. The impulse purchase is also particularly good for on-location purchases or purchases that are relatively low value ($200 or less).
Security & Credibility – Customers have come to recognize that credit card payments come with many customer protection mechanisms. Although this may not be an advantage to you as a merchant, the increase in security means that customers are generally more willing to pay via credit card because of the consumer protections that are in place.
Currency Conversion – This may not seem like an advantage, but the burden of currency exchange is carried by the customer in credit card purchases. This means that you can charge in your base currency and the customer is responsible for the conversion amount.
Upselling & Upgrades – Customers paying with credit cards are more likely to upgrade their purchases because they are able to spread the re-payment out over a longer period of time.
Faster payment – In most cases, you are able to get access to your funds quicker then other methods. For example a foreign check may take 30 days to clear your bank whereas the funds from a credit card purchase may be available within 24 or 48 hours.

CONS

Credit Cards are Not Cheap – Despite what many merchant providers will tell you, accepting credit cards is not cheap. Travel, especially, is considered a high risk category because of the time between the sale of the ticket and redemption of the service. This increased risk means that many travel companies, even if you are a small tour or activity operator, has to pay 3-5% per transaction. On top of the transaction fees, you can expect to pay a per transaction fee (usually $.10 – $.25) and monthly statement fees ($10 – $50). You will need to take these costs into account when you price your products both for off-line and on-line sales.
Protection for Consumers but Not Merchants – When there is a dispute between a consumer and a merchant, the card companies tend to favor the consumer. In most cases, with a charge back, for example, you (as the merchant) must prove that you delivered the service or product and back up your claim with documentation. This guilty until proven innocent approach to charge backs can be a real challenge for small businesses, especially if you rely on pre-payments for the purposes of securing services for your customers.
Deposits & Rolling Reserves – It can be very difficult for travel companies and tour operators to secure merchant accounts without large deposits or rolling reserves, sometimes in excess of 30% of transactions. I know of one tour operator who was approved for a merchant account but with a $30,000 deposit. I don’t about you but most small businesses don’t have $30,000 in cash lying around to drop into a trust account.
Increase Security Requirements – There are a lot of things that come along with having a merchant account including PCI compliance and secure certificates. These increased security requirements can cost anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars depending on your volume of transactions. If, for example, you handle over a $1 Million in e-commerce transactions, you must undergo a much more stringent PCI compliance process which costs $10-$15,000 annually. If you don’t undergo these processes and your data is compromised, you are subject to fines amounting to the tens of thousands of dollars.

So now that I’ve put the fear of God into you, the good news is that there are hundreds of thousands of other small businesses out there that accept credit card payments. I recommend that you talk to your colleagues in the industry and find out who they use for processing. Each country has its own rules and although there are dozens of sites on the web that can provide you application forms, it is the experience of fellow business people that mean the most. If you are a member of Chamber of Commerce, business association, or industry association, find out if they have a partnership with a merchant processor. Quite often you will receive preferred rates through an association membership then if you just walk in and ask for a merchant account.

Outcome: You should be better informed about the pros and cons of accepting credit cards for your tourism business.

Recommended Merchant Providers:

References:

Creating Videos that Inspire & Sell

Stephen Joyce — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:35:45 +0000

Prerequisites: You have decided to make video part of your tourism business, you’ve learned the basics of shooting video for the web, and now you’re ready to make better videos.

Estimated Time for Completion: 20 min reading time

Details: So now that you’ve got the basic video requirements down, you’ve got a place to host your sites, and you understand the basics of shooting video for the web, the next question is… how do you make your videos more compelling and actually generate revenue from them. To be clear however, we are not referring to making money from the videos themselves but using the videos to enhance the sales process and increase your bottom line. As with anything that you do as a small business, you need to make sure that everything that you do has a positive impact on your bottom line. So, here are some basic recommendations on make more compelling videos for your tourism business:

1. As seen on T.V. – I’m not suggesting that you create an infommercial or one of those cheesy ads on late night television, but the basics are the same. You are offering a service that will satisfy the customer’s need for whatever it is that you offer. For example, if you are an adventure operator you might satisfy the customer’s need for an adrenaline rush, or if you are a haunted tour operator you might offer the best “scare your pants off” tour. Figure out what is that you do and how it fulfills your customers’ needs and then tell a story. Remember this simple guideline:

Provide the problem – Want some adventure but don’t know where to look?
Provide the answer – We provide incredible adventures.
Offer the benefits – Hotel pickup, best price, gourmet meals.
Call to action – Book on-line at yourdomain.com.

2. Video Testimonials – If your tour or activity doesn’t lend itself well to being captured on video or the content is just too broad to make a short then consider doing video testimonials of your customers. Make sure to ask their permission first or make it part of your terms and conditions. There is no need to use full names, but a simple introduction such as the following is the most effective.

“This is Jane from Vancouver. Jane has just finished the Kayak Tour of the Islands. So Jane, what did you think of the tour?”

Keep the testimonial short and sweet, perhaps one or two questions at most and keep it conversational. No one wants a highly scripted testimonial.

3. Guide or Staff Interviews – No one knows your business as well as you and your staff. Why not do short interviews with your staff about what they do and what they would consider their favorite aspects of their job. This is a great way to get your staff involved in the marketing of the business and also adds credibility to the business. Your potential customers get to meet their guide before they get to the location. Again, keep these interviews short and conversational.

4. Interviews with Locals - Chances are you encounter many other people on your tour that contribute to your tour but are not part of your company. What a great way to engage with other local businesses and get them promoting your business. For example, if there is a great Sushi restaurant that you bring your guests to, why not do a quick interview with the owner? Get them talking about their business in the context of your tour. The business will thank you for the coverage, you can brand it as your own video, and it adds value to the customer because now they get to experience an insider’s view of the tour.

Outcome: You should be ready to start making more interesting and compelling videos for your tour or activity business. Hopefully, you’ll get a sense for what works and what doesn’t. Remember that it takes time to make video one of your business habits. If you are diligent and keep working at it, you will so develop a library of videos that can be used in a variety of marketing initiatives.

Photo credit goes to my all time favorite “As Seen on T.V.” product, The Clapper.

Best Sites to Host Your Tour & Activity Videos

Stephen Joyce — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:05:15 +0000

Prerequisites: You should have a few videos ready for uploading to a video sharing and hosting site.

Estimated Time for Completion: 20 min reading time, 15 min. execution

Details: There are a number of video hosting and sharing sites on the Internet. Which one, though, is the best for hosting your tour and activity videos? That depends on how you want to share your videos and how much control you want over where your potential customers see your video. Here are my top five recommended video hosting sites:

Youtube

Youtube is by far the 10,000 lb. gorilla of video hosting sites. Videos that posted on Youtube are almost immediately indexed by Google and generally rank highly in Google universal search for keywords if the videos are well described and have relevant keywords. The video embedding is also very easy and flexible. Recently, Youtube has enabled in-line urls (so you can link back to your site within the description), annotation so you can add notes and comments to the video, and HD support. Although Youtube is still limited to 10 minute videos, this should be more than enough for the limited attention span of most on-line video viewers.

Vimeo

Vimeo describes itself “as a a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. We provide the best tools and highest quality video in the universe.” The key here is that Vimeo provides HD quality video with no time limits. Vimeo is particularly good for videos that are more than 10 minutes in length. The embedded player and in-line commenting are also really nice features. Vimeo also offers a very simple password protection feature that allows you to share private videos with customers. In terms of style and interface, Vimeo is the best by far.

Viddler

Viddler is a little bit of Youtube and Vimeo mixed together. The main site is very Youtube like, certainly more so than Vimeo’s more stylized design and layout. Viddler promotes their sharing capabilities and their syndication by RSS, however, both Vimeo and Youtube also provide these services. Viddler does have a podcast and iTunes integration that sounds interesting as well as in-line commenting and time-line tagging. Although Viddler was ahead of the pack in this regard, Youtube and Vimeo both support these features now.

Flickr

You probably didn’t realize that Flickr supports video. Well they do but this service is only available to Flickr Pro members. The Flickr videos are also limited to 90 seconds or 150 MB in length so you need to be on task with your production and editing. There is also very few sharing options and embedding is not available. I presume these are all attempts to keep users on the Flickr site or viewing your photo-stream. This may be a good option for you if you want to consolidate your photos and videos in one place but you need to be aware of the obvious limitations of the video hosting side of Flickr.

Facebook

As with photos, Facebook is becoming one of the largest video hosting sites. This is great if you want to share your videos with friends and family but not so great if you want to use your videos as a referral tool for your own site. You can upload videos to Facebook fan pages but the tagging and descriptions on Facebook are not quite as good as Youtube, Vimeo or Viddler. For sharing videos with your fans, friends, and family in a dedicated social network, Facebook is probably the best way to go. For standard video hosting with RSS syndication and embedding, you’re better off using one of the other video hosting services.

In summary, if you are looking to use your videos as an SEO tool, embed your videos across multiple sites but are not concerned about quality, then Youtube is probably your best bet. For longer high quality videos, Vimeo is the clear choice, and for social networking Facebook is a solid option. Given all the options, if you don’t have time to manage multiple video hosting accounts, then I would recommend sticking with Youtube for now.

Outcome: Once you have completed this daily action you should have a good idea understanding of the different video hosting services that are available and which hosting site to use for your tour or activity business.

References:

When travelling means one last chance to live

danielebeccari — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:35:25 +0000

For the last week or so I have been communicating with my friend Daniele Beccari from isango! He and his family are going through a terrible medical ordeal and he has reached out to his friends and colleagues for help in spreading the word and raising money to help cover the immense costs. I cannot imagine the hardship Daniele and his family are going through, but anything I can do as a friend and colleague to help I will. Please take a moment and consider the distances you would travel to save a loved one.

Guest Author, Daniele Beccari – I never thought that travel would one day be presented to me as an urgent, life-saving measure.

As for many, travel has been around me at every step of my life. I was born in Italy, studied also in the US and France, lived in Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo. I’ve also worked in London, Nice, or Boston. I have travelled for fun, discovery, business, friends, education, love, career, family and even just for the sake of travelling.

But today travel has come as the last chance to live for a person I love: another traveller, my brother-in-law Taro.

Taro has also travelled extensively to learn about the world and people.

He is a dreamer, and he never gave up his dream of living out his passion – to travel and see the world and write. He is a good guy. He likes cats. He likes stories of medieval warriors and battles. He likes gelato and ramen. He likes the Beatles and Sakamoto. He has a blog under a secret name. He cares for his family. He takes great pictures.

Taro is only 38 years old, and, six months ago, he was told that he only had a short time left to live. One of the first things that he told his family: “I just want to see Paris again… and maybe the Pyramids of Egypt”.

Doctors have tried everything possible to slow down his disease, but his condition has worsened day after day. He is now unable to move from his bed. He needs an urgent liver transplant for a rare, non-alcoholic form of cirrhosis. Chances to receive a transplant in Japan, in time, are less than zero.

With no suitable living donors in the family, we have embarked on a virtual world tour, calling all possible countries and hospitals to find an alternative. After months of research, we had only one (and legal) option left on the list: travelling, to receive a transplant in the US.

Full cost: north of $600,000 – mandatory advance deposit.

Two families’ combined savings: $150,000.

Taro’s life expectancy now: a few weeks.

Most families in Taro’s country give up and accept their fates. Some try harder.

And we tried this: if all the people we met while travelling could donate a small amount and spread the word…with a lot of small donations, we could pay for Taro’s trip of hope. We never travelled just to see stones; we always travelled to see people, and we knew that those people and memories had to be out there, somewhere.

With the Internet (e-mail, Facebook, Twitter) we found many of our fellow travellers, and we asked for help. We felt overwhelmed with the response that we received. Names that we have known 20 years ago have responded – people from 21 different countries. They exist, they remember our travelling together, and they donated. Now they are spreading the word to their families, their communities, and their cities. Collectively, they have donated more than $100,000 in only 7 days.

But we are running out of time, and we need more help now.

If you are a traveller, it’s almost certain that our paths have crossed, somewhere – that we could have met in a café or in a cathedral, in a canyon or in a lounge. You could certainly be one of our travel friends.

Please, if you also are a traveller, we are asking you to donate a small amount for Taro’s trip of hope.

Time is running out, please donate now.

Give him a chance to travel to his life.

Give him a chance to see Paris again.

To give Taro a fighting chance at life, please visit www.savetaro.com

Online Video & Podcasting Secrets for Destinations

ryanbifulco — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:44:06 +0000

Guest Author, Ryan Bifulco, TravelSpike.com – Destinations are always looking for ways to market and promote themselves. Every Destination offers something unique to visitors and locals alike, and a short video is one of the best ways to showcase what you have to the world. Many DMOs still seem to think that online video and podcasts are for kids, but times have changed and the stats below back that up.

According to PhoCusWright, 90% of U.S. online travelers have been influenced by fellow travelers posting blogs, online videos, travel podcasts and reviews. 80% of Baby Boomers are ONLINE and have shown a 59% increase on social networking sites year over year. Podcasts and blog followers have increased 67% among Baby Boomers; while the younger Gen Y has had no growth at all (Accenture). 24% of users over the age of 70 have watched an online video in the last week! (TNS Compete Data).

With such high statistics, social media programs need to be taken seriously and you must evaluate where your brand stands in the Travel 2.0 environment.

In this article, you’ll learn how to maximize your video and podcast efforts. Marketing in the digital age is about leveraging new technologies and social trends to increase exposure. It’s about educating the mass market and niche audiences in new ways. Video marketing is a new, emerging platform that continues to evolve every day. Video isn’t just about television anymore. It can be extended across the digital universe into many distribution formats, including syndication.

A DMO is in a great position to produce its own tourist informational videos, plus the DMO can work with its local partners to promote these videos.

Here are some tips to help any DMO catch up with the new media train:

Shoot short 1 or 2 minute video clips that provide a nice overview of the destination. Most users do not have time to watch a 30 minute video as they plan their trip.
Consider shooting your top tourist attractions or sights. This is no time to feel guilty about playing favorites as your 2 minute video should be a highlight reel or sizzle reel of the best things to do in your city, state, province or country.
Post quality videos from local restaurants, hotels, attractions and events on the official DMO or Destination YouTube Channel. Shoot a video from a local fair or festival. Interview the hottest chefs in the city.
Cross promote your YouTube efforts in your monthly email newsletter and on your website. Also post links to your YouTube channel from Twitter, Facebook and other blogs or social networking outlets.
While YouTube is certainly the leader with online video, there are hundreds of other video sites, directories, search engines and libraries where you need to distribute your videos. Some of the sites to look out for include: MySpace Videos, Yahoo Videos, Odeo & DailyMotion.
Reach out to travel podcasters like Erik Hastings & journeyPod to see if they might be interested in having the DMO on their show to talk about seasonal happenings.
Create your own video or audio podcast! Purchasing a very affordable FLIP Meno video recorder or a Sony Hi-MD audio recorder are two excellent ways to get started. Turn your event calendar and press releases into podcasts and syndicate with major podcast libraries and RSS directories like iTunes and Odeo.
Start your own social network and invite partners and members of the DMO to join and post travel deals, events, product launches, parties and more with fellow travelers. Ning.com is a FREE social network optimizer allowing you to customize your own space and share it with the audience you choose.

Get some ideas from other Destinations:

The Colorado Tourism Office had produced several short videos but they were only being used on their own website. Travel Spike turned the videos into podcasts and RSS feeds to distribute to the hundreds of podcast sites, libraries, search engines and directories. Podcasts relating to skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing were promoted in the fall, while podcasts focused on biking, whitewater rafting and wildlife in Colorado were pushed early spring. All of these efforts can help your overall digital brand and your search engine rankings.
The St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches VCB‘s new digital strategy generated over 2 million Web 2.0 Hits using some of these techniques.
The West Hollywood Marketing and Visitors Bureau produced seven local walking tour podcasts covering things like their famous Sunset Strip and their Red Carpet Parties during The Oscars.
The Indianapolis CVB was one of the first to produce a video podcast that gives visitors a glimpse into the city.

As one of the most trusted resources for information about a city, a DMO has a great deal of expertise about the destination that can be maximized with today’s vast media landscape. Get on the new media train today!

Ryan Bifulco is the Founder & CEO of Travel Spike which offers DMOs and other travel companies social media marketing, digital public relations and online advertising solutions. Ryan can be reached at ryanb@travelspike.com or 770-433-2930.

Photo Credit: B_Uncie

Taking Better Tour & Activity Videos

Stephen Joyce — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:04:52 +0000

Prerequisites: You should have a digital video camera of your choice to use for business purposes.

Estimated Time for Completion: Reading time of 20 mins.

Details: I am not a videographer, professional camera person, or a film-maker. Chances are, neither are you. But, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to make interesting, compelling, and even exciting videos about your tours, activities, or company. With the costs of cameras and editing software now within the reach of almost everyone, the ability to take and edit video is well within the capabilities of most business people. Here are some helpful tips to make the most of your video experience:

1. Know your camera – Every video camera is different and has strengths and weaknesses. Before you start shooting tour videos, be sure to test your camera in a variety of different shooting conditions and see how your camera responds. Here are some good test scenarios:

Noisy party or busy environment to test sound pick-up on the camera microphone.
Quiet environment to test the sound level for whisper or low volume conversation (particularly important for birding, animal watching, hunting, or other quiet video environments).
Bright outdoor condition with water background.
Cloudy outdoor condition with canopy or shade.
Indoor lighting conditions (if appropriate).

2. Create a shooting template – This is also known as a script but serves as a basis for how you plan on shooting your videos each time you do a tour. Remember, these are not highly directed epic videos, but rather souvenir videos for your customers. A good standard format for your template would be:

Arriving at the tour or activity.
Getting ready (gearing up or strapping in).
Doing the activity (biggest portion)
The review (“So what did you think?”)

Keep it light, casual, and friendly. Remember, this isn’t going to work for everybody, so don’t waste your time (and your customers’) if it doesn’t fit with your business.

3. Get a tripod – Yes, you will thank yourself. There is nothing worse then watching the shaky hand videos. Trust me, unless you are running the Blaire Witch tour, I recommend you get yourself a Gorillapod flexible tripod so you can attach your camera to a tree or rock or whatever and take some stable shots. I bought one recently and it has since become my primary tripod.

4. Know the three primary moves – Zoom, Pan, and Hold. Experiment with all three and get a feel for when to use them in your particular shooting script. Here is a quick definition of each move:

Zoom – Move it close to the object. If from a distance, zooming in on a subject will require additional stability. Use gradual zooming versus quick zooming in and out. This move can be combined with the other two moves to result in a Pan/Zoom Out, or a Zoom and Hold.
Pan – Move from one side to another usually in a horizontal manner. This is best done at the same rate that a person would turn their help in order to emulate the most realistic panning motion. Move too quickly and you risk losing or blurring the details. This is a particularly good move for showing an expansive landscape.
Hold – Yes, the lack of movement is in fact a movement. Holding is important because it allows the viewer to settle their attention on a subject. Hold shots for at least ten seconds if possible. Shorter holds can be jarring if they are frequent.

5. Lighting, Lighting, Lighting – Be aware of the shooting environment, especially with regards to the lighting. For outdoor shoots, make sure the Sun is behind you. If you are shooting against a water background, avoid looking down on the water in order to minimize the glare from the Sun against the water.

For more great tips, I recommend you check out the following excellent video websites:

Outcome: If you are successful at completing this daily action, you will have the basic tools to start taking better videos of your tours and customers. Your customers will appreciate the videos you take and your potential customers will get a better sense of what you offer and what they might experience if they use your services.

Photo Credit: Nadine Ballantyne

Making Video Part of Your Tourism Business

Stephen Joyce — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:39:03 +0000

Prerequisites: You should have a digital video camera of your choice to use for business purposes.

Estimated Time for Completion: Reading time of 20 mins.

Details: Video technology has changed dramatically over the last few years. Why on recently for example, I pulled out my Sony DVD video camera to shock of my friends. The camera, which was state of the art only a few years ago is now practically obsolete, especially since cheap HD cameras are readily available at relatively low cost. The benefit to you as a tour operator is that adding video to your tourism business is now a relatively inexpensive endeavor. Video can add valuable content for your customers in making a booking decision. Afterall, if you can show some of the experience you intend to provide, then your customers will have more faith in you as a service provider.

Here are some great tips to help you decide how to integrate videos into your tourism business:

1. Where does video fit it into your business? All tours and activities are different, therefore, it is unlikely that every tour or activity is going to be recorded in the same way. A zip-lining activity for example is generally short and intense and lends itself well to a short video snippet. A multi-day cultural tour of Italy may need to be recorded differently. Before you jump in and add to your marketing strategy, decide on what kind of videos will work best for your customers, how you are going to record the videos, and how much work you need to put into editing the videos.

2. Focus on people – Make sure your terms and conditions include a video release that allows you to take videos of your customers on tour. This is important in order to protect your customers’ privacy and to ensure you don’t get yourself into hot water later. When you record video, be sure to focus on people rather than scenery. Remember that this is video for the web so it will most likely be viewed in a small Youtube style interface. Sprawling landscapes just don’t translate well.

3. Keep the videos short – Stay on topic and focus on capture “the moment”. A 1 min. interview with a guest after an experience can act as a video testimonial for your web site. If appropriate, try and create many short videos rather than one long video. Ten videos with your brand are better than one video with your brand.

4. Skip the fancy title screen – Just get right to the good stuff. The title screen with music is fluff and doesn’t add anything to the video, especially if the video is short and to the point. Introduce yourself and the context of the video at the beginning of the video. You can add more details in the description of the video once you upload it to your video hosting site (more on that later).

5. Upload Videos to Web A.S.A.P. – If you keep your videos simple and to the point with little editing, then you should have no problem uploading the videos to your favorite hosting site at the end of each day. Just like your tour photos, the video uploading should become part of your daily routine.

Consider if you offer two tours a day, three days a week, for twenty-six weeks a year. Now imagine making a two minute video for each tour. In one season, you would have 156 videos posted. Each video would have a description of your tour or activity, keywords associated to your tour and brand, and your brand name associated with it.

Outcome: If you are successful at completing this daily action, you will have a plan in place to add video to your tourism business.

Using Your Tour Photos to Generate Conversions

Stephen Joyce — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:03:24 +0000

Prerequisites: Photos already posted on the web, preferably on a well ranked photo sharing website or on your own website.

Estimated Time for Completion: Reading time of 20 minutes.

Details: Let’s face it, photos are great, but conversions are better. So how do you use your photos to increase the likelihood that a viewer is going to visit your site and book your tour. There are several key factors that will determine how successful your photos will be at inspiring a viewer enough to actually visit your site and book with you.

First of all, your photo, no matter how incredible it is, will not drive traffic on it’s own. Nor will it actually convert anyone into a customer. What the photo will do is it will, in combination with your inspirational text and all the other parts of your conversion strategy to provide a compelling package for the customer. Here are few tips on making sure you make the most of each and every photo you upload to the Web:

1. Format for the Web – Most people are going to be looking at your photo on their monitor. Although they may print your photo for off-line perusal, the chances of this are pretty low. Keep your photos in a lower sized jpeg format (i.e. 500 pixels wide).

2. Rename your photo files – Generally speaking, when you upload your photos to a site like Flickr or Facebook, the uploader will use the file name of the photo as the starting title of the photo. Save yourself the extra step and rename your default digital camera image file name (eg. “DSC00199278.jpg”) to something like “boat-cruise-amsterdam-spring-2009.jpg”. Not only is the auto-title going to make more sense, but your photo will also be much easier to search in Google’s image search.

3. Make your photo titles meaningful – As with the previous recommendation, make sure your photo titles are meaningful and relevant to the photo. The more descriptive the better, but remember that you may be limited in space, so be concise. “Boat Cruise Amsterdam in Spring” has lots of keywords and is understandable to the person doing the search.

4. Enter rich descriptions – Photos may be worth a thousand words, but until search engines can interpret your photo into text, you’re going to have to come up with the descriptions yourself. You certainly don’t need to write a story for each photo, but make sure that the description is relevant to the photo and describes the photo well enough that someone searching can anticipate the photo before actually seeing it. The better the description, the more keywords, the more likely your photo will be indexed well by the search engines.

5. Include your brand whenever possible – In the description or in the photo itself, be sure to include your company name. If you expect your potential customers to find you, you need to give them an idea of how to find you. Remember that many photo sharing sites are not meant to be marketing vehicles. It just happens that they are becoming great ways to increase awareness of a brand or destination. If you know how to watermark your photos, I recommend that you add a watermark with your brand or url on the actual photo. This serves as a deterrent to others thinking of using your photos without permission and also helps to spread your brand if they do.

6. Tag your photos with relevant keywords – Most photo sharing sites allow you to add tags to your photos in order to assist with searching. Make sure you use relevant keywords that are both meaningful for the customer and relevant to the content of the photo. For example, if the photo is of a customer zip-lining in Whistler, BC, then include:

The specific location name (i.e. Whistler)
The region (i.e. B.C. or British Columbia)
The activity (i.e. Zip-lining)
Your company name
The time of year (i.e. summer)
Other relevant words like adventure, adrenaline, rope crossing, day activity, etc.

7. Link to your photos – Share links to your specific photos on your own website, blog, twitter, or Facebook page. Chances are that your other sites will also be indexed by Google or the other search engines and the link backs to your photo will help them identify new assets to add to their search index. Many of the sharing sites also allow you to pull your latest photos via RSS. This is particularly useful if you want to display your most recent photos on your website without having to double up on data entry. Remember though, that the descriptions you enter on your photo sharing site will be the ones sent via RSS and displayed on your other sites. So be descriptive.

Outcome: If you are successful at completing this daily action, you will have a better understanding of how to optimize your photos to increase traffic and conversions on your website.

Hosting and Sharing Your Tour Photos On-line

Stephen Joyce — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:42:08 +0000

Prerequisites: Some photos that you are ready to host on-line or post publicly for display.

Estimated Time for Completion: 30 minutes – 1 hour

Details: Taking photos of your tours is one thing, actually having them on-line so that they can be shared with your customers and future guests is another thing. As I discussed in the previous article “Best Online Photo Editors for you Tourism Business“, there are a variety of on-line (and off-line) photo editors that can automatically post your images to a variety of photo hosting and sharing websites. Like on-line photo editors, there are a variety of photo sharing sites out there, but they are not equal. Even though some of them are functionally really nice, the real benefit of using one of the big sites is the search engine benefit and sheer audience size. Let’s take a look at a few of the photo sharing sites I would consider the leaders in the space.

Facebook

What? But Facebook is a social network, it’s not a photo sharing website. Of course you are right, Facebook is a social network and wasn’t intentionally designed to be a photo sharing site, however, it has become the largest photo sharing website on the Internet exceeding even Flickr. Part of the reason for this success has been the fact that photos are a part of the social nature of the site. The benefit of using Facebook for hosting your photos is that it is easy to update your fans or friends that you’ve posted a new photo. Now that Facebook has relaxed some its privacy settings, your photo album is also publicly available to search via the major search engines. In this case, for example, the Dazzled by Twilight Fan Page photos are freely searchable on the web.

Flickr

As far as pure play photo sharing sites go, Flickr is by far the undisputed leader. Flickr’s use of copyright protection features, groups, and distribution via the Flickr API make it easy to use and even easier to share your photos while maintaining a central repository of your photos. The image above shows a photo set for Kensington Tours, an adventure tour operator that provides private guided tours to South America and Africa. They have done a marvelous job of taking some fantastic photos of their tours and by grouping them together in photo sets have organized them in a way that makes sense to the user. Looking at these photos is really inspirational and, because they have been uploaded by Kensington Tours, makes me associate the images with their brand. This is key in building credibility and demonstrating expertise to a potential customer. Flickr is also very well indexed by the major search engines, so photos that are well titled and described will show up in potential search engine results.

Picasa Web

Picasa Web is an on-line extension to the free desktop photo editor called Picasa. The Picasa photo editor and organizer is a really nicely designed tool that can be installed on your MAC and PC and connects directly to your Picasa Web Albums. Because Picasa is owned by Google, there is some nice integration with Google’s account management system so you don’t need to sign up for another account on another website. The interface is very simplistic (Google style) but very functional, allowing you to edit descriptions, titles, etc. Photos that are well titled and describe also show up very well in both the regular and image searches on Google.

Although there are more, I suggest you review these three photo sharing sites first. You can find additional recommendations by visiting the resources noted below. Regardless of which photo sharing site you choose to use for your business, make sure that you title your images well, describe them in detail using keywords that are relevant to the image, and change your file names to something human readable. We will discuss this in more detail later, but for now just know that search engines cannot tag your images for you based on the content, you need to do that for them.

Some other useful resources for comparing photo sharing sites:

Outcome: If you are successful at completing this daily action, you will have some photos uploaded on the photo sharing site of your choice.

Best On-line Photo Editors for Your Tourism Business

Stephen Joyce — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:34:09 +0000

Prerequisites: You should have some photos ready to edit. I also recommend you have descriptions and titles ready for your test photos as well.

Estimated Time for Completion: 1-2 hours

Details: Thanks to improvements in Flash technology and increased access to broadband Internet access, there are now a growing list of on-line photo editor that can support high resolution photos from today’s digital cameras. The benefit of these tools is that they don’t require you to download any software and many, but not all, are integrated directly with photo sharing sites like Flickr or PhotoBucket, making uploading and tagging your photos for marketing purposes much easier. I’ve reviewed a variety of sites and prepared a list of the photo editing sites I think are the best for tour operators who plan on doing minor edits to their tour or activity photos.

Aviary Phoenix is a very well developed on-line photo editor. It’s interface is very reminiscent of Adobe Photoshop and it has many of the same sophisticated layering and filtering tools. The Phoenix user community is very large and quite supportive. You can also move your creations between Aviary apps quite easily providing for extra editing capabilities.

Price: Free
Website: http://www.aviary.com

flauntR is developed by FotoDesk which is a European company. This tool is useful for those operators who don’t speak English because it supports a number of other languages. flautR is also part of a larger suite of on-line tools and allows you to move images between applications for additional editing.

Price: Free
Website: http://www.flauntr.com

Photoshop.com has both a free and premium model and integrates nicely with PhotoShop Elements, a consumer version of the popular PhotoShop application. The on-line editor is very close (in functionality) to the desktop version and makes the transition easy for those who are used to a desktop app. The application also includes your own photo sharing site on the photoshop.com domain.

Price: Free
Website: http://www.photoshop.com

Picnik.com is a really nice and simple editor with some pretty powerful features. The benefit of Picnick is that it is already tightly integrated with Flickr.com and allows you to upload, edit, and share in one easy process. Although this is similar to Photoshop.com, Flickr has much greater reach (from a sharing standpoint) then does Photoshop.com.

Price: Free
Website: http://www.picnik.com

Splashup has some some editing capabilities and will allow you to basic as well as more advanced editing. Although it is not integrated directly with sharing sites, it does allow you to share your photos out to the various sharing sites, so it makes pushing out your photos a little easier.

Price: Free
Website: http://www.splashup.com

In the end, I only chose to talk about photo editors that are based on Flash and have some sharing capabilities. There are many others out there that are based on HTML or Flash but do not allow for easy social sharing. Regardless of which one you choose, all of them have fairly good editing capabilities. I would recommend that you try them all and get a feel for which one works best for you.

Outcome: If you are successful at completing this daily action, you will know what photo editors to look for and where to go to try them.