New … and Old Marketing

Over the last month, I have had so many zooms meetings.

50 plus with Wholesalers and Agents all over the world with ATEC, replacing a conference that was held in Brisbane last year. They represented thousands or Agents all around the world.

48 Chinese Wholesalers, again also representing thousands of Agents all over China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. This replaced a 9 day trip to China and Taiwan last year.

Other Tourism operators have also had online meetings into USA, Europe and the Rest of the World, being proactive to not only maintain relationships, but ready to develop new ones, ready for when International travel can open again.

There are a number of Take-a-Ways I can share.

1. Information

Agents and wholesalers, on behalf of the agents they service, had a huge barrier to sell product, especially regional Australia – information. There are plenty of images of major travel icons, Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast and Uluru. Amazing local activities, especially on travel trails, are over looked as they are difficult to book, but also how do they get information from the billions of web pages across the internet.

My discussions was to market an experience that a traveller would do. Not shot gun all activities in a region, it is an experience of accommodation and activities a group would travel. Possibly the FIT self drive market could do “extra” activities and those special addons, the small tour market would want to focus on a trail or journey, as it makes it easier to promote the actual experience that consumers will purchase.

• Package experiences

As an accommodation provider, the natural promotion was to just sell the quality and attributes of our accommodation. How we are 4 ½ Star, self contained apartments in 2 acres of heritage gardens, right across the road from the award winning Port Arthur World Heritage site.

While that was positive, someone from a second tier city in China or regional Finland will not travel to Australia, or specifically Tasmania, unless its part of the experience the traveller may gain from their total travel. We have to move on from the thought that our accommodation or our activity in itself is critical for their travel and they need to come to see us, if not their trip will be wasted.

I needed to get over ego’s – as do everyone else in Tourism. We are in businesses to serve the purchaser and consumer, we don’t pay to stay at our accommodation or use our activity. So we need to really understand the avatar, the person who potentially will pay money for our product or service and help them to reduce any barriers to spend money.

One barrier is to bring together those experiences that would make up the travel expectations that the avatar would add together, to make up their trip. Look at journies and trails, especially true for non “book and flop” locations in regional areas. It is far easier to sell that journey, than individual accommodation and activities.

• Commission is not bad

Discussion with many accommodation locations and activities is that commission for Agents and Wholesalers is a cost. That those pesky agents are just taking our income that we would be generating in summer.

If you don’t have a relationship with the Agent or wholesaler and see them as an advertising medium, they are probably right. Everyone wants to sell high season, it’s the easiest, as the demand is high, but its not when you make your profit. It’s how you handle the shoulder and low season’s will determine the level of profit of your business.

I sold a major tourism business to a major Australian wide company. I had occupancy rates of over 80 percent over the year in my 7 regional Tasmania locations. Within 2 years their rates were under 50%. That is because they concentrated only on the low hanging fruit of the high season, high rates – but only for a short period.

Our profit was 3 times what the new company had done, even though we had 10 times the level of Agent commissions. It’s the revenue over the year, with every sale that you gain in the shoulder and low season that would have been empty, or space in a activity, you can give them 3-4 nights in the high season. 

So its having a positive relationship, not seeing Agents just as a advertising medium, but as real partners in developing your businesses. When you can have a positive relationship that can create a win for the Agent with inventory, a win for the client with great experiences, you will have a a win for more profit.

• Who uses Agents anymore?

The International market still uses agents, especially for hard to book regional locations. The online booking engines find it difficult to book a total experience, they are designed to book single locations and some single activities.

Regional areas are in a similar situation, unlike their larger city cousins, in general they are not single desinations, they are part of a number of experiences and accommodation, all coming together as a single travel trip.

Like going to a restaurant. You don’t want to just get a menu for a starter, order and pay for that. Then get another menue for main course – order and pay for that, then sweets, chees and even drinks – all ordered and paid separately.  The purchaser just wants to by the meal or the trip and working with a Agent will reduce the barrier to purchase.

This will sell more product and help for regional dispersal.

So just some thoughts as I get all the information down on the huge opportunities for my business over the past couple of weeks. Thanks to Tourism Australia and Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) for that opportunity – good people to be involved if you want to take advantage of the International markets.

Tony Park