Episode 5 – Tripadvisor and regional collabs

Untangling Tourism Tech Episode 5, with Fabienne Wintle and Liz Ward. Times match the video. We removed filler words and fixed mis-heard names.

[00:01] Morning, Liz. Good morning, Fabi. Welcome to Untangling Tourism Tech podcast, podcast number five, episode number five. What are we talking about today? A few things have been coming up lately that I think could be really good to untangle. Firstly is let’s revisit Tripadvisor, where it’s at. It’s been a staple in our tourism distribution conversations with tourism operators for well over a decade now, but where is it at now? What’s happening? I think that also leads me to think about the ongoing, never-going-away importance of online reputation and what we can be doing better with our online reviews. What’s the new way of thinking about online reviews? And then the third thing I want to raise and discuss with you is about those regions who feel like they’re overlooked and forgotten regions in their overall destination marketing. What they can do to be able to get a higher profile and sort of take charge of their destiny within their destination. So yeah, so why don’t you kick it off? Tell us about what you were mentioning to me the other week about Tripadvisor awards.

[01:15] Well, Tripadvisor last week released their famous Travellers’ Choice Award, so famous for not emailing the participants that they may have received an award. That’s what’s been on the grapevine for the last few years with Tripadvisor, you know, operators have been saying, “I’m not getting the emails,” and “What? I’ve got an award?” So if you haven’t received anything, check your Tripadvisor, because you may well have received the Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice 2024 award. And while, you know, Tripadvisor is not as big in people’s minds as it could have been when we started Tourism Tribe, it’s still huge. And whether you’ve received an award or your operators in your region have received an award, there’s definitely things you can do to milk it. So I thought I’d share a few things.

[02:10] You are on the Tourism Tribe email list, you would have received my email last week with lots of screenshots of what to do. First and foremost, go to Tripadvisor and find all the logos that they’ve designed for you that you can use. So you have nice transparent ones you can put on your hero image on your website, for example. What I would do then is link that logo, if people click to it, to a media release that you would have written on your blog post about you being the recipient of the award. And super easy to write a media release because Tripadvisor also, in their arsenal, gives you a link to a template for one. So probably will take you five minutes all up if you’ve got the login to your website to write your media release, run it through ChatGPT, post it on your blog post and link your logo.

[03:01] Another good thing, Liz, we see doing is operators putting their logo, well, the Tripadvisor award logo, in their signature. So update your signature, you know, make it… I don’t think you’re allowed to change the colour of the logo, obviously, but if you change something in your signature, so if people you send emails to all the time see a change of colour maybe in your name, they might pay attention to the logo. Sorry, you could come up with special offers to celebrate as well. Obviously post on social media, but be aware that at this time of the year, everyone will be posting their logo, you know, that they’re travel award recipients. So maybe do a reel or something a bit different, print it, hold it, just stand out from the rest of the crowd. And then if you are a tourism organisation and you’ve had recipients in your region, congratulate them, you know, online, print out the list of recipients and put it in a nice frame at your visitor centre, make a fuss of it, really.

[04:06] They’re great tips, Fab, that’s so good. And I think it’s really great to remember, even if you feel like Tripadvisor is kind of yesterday’s platform, it is still the second largest travel website, second most visited travel website behind Booking.com in the world. So it’s still really important overall in the consumer’s travel decision-making journey. It may not specifically be the ideal review platform for you, but check out if you haven’t claimed your listing in Tripadvisor. You might be there because a guest of yours may have created a review and therefore triggered off a listing for you. So if you haven’t done that in a while, gone to Tripadvisor and done some research, have a look to see if you’re there, make a decision as to whether you would like to create a listing and manage that listing properly so you’ve got control of it and can update the images and the description, respond to the reviews as a manager, and do some research in your destination as well. See who else is listed there and what people are saying about them and how they’re reviewing those other businesses and experiences in your region. Re-familiarise yourself with Tripadvisor.

[05:23] And if you’re short on time, just send ChatGPT to read all your competitors’ review and get it to do a recommendation of what you could be doing that’s missing on yours. But we’ll be talking about this next week, Liz, won’t we? We’re running a webinar.

[05:42] That’s right. So our next Quick Win webinar is titled Milking Reviews, and it’s aimed at getting you to think a bit differently about your reviews and see them as an asset that you can work with within your content marketing to be able to help that conversion, that lead-to-sales pathway, and where you can be using them and how you can be maximising those reviews along with other things as well. But we just want a fresh perspective. Let’s look at this differently. They’re not going anywhere. Our online reputation is the most important asset within our online marketing assets, so, and our business, for ourselves. We have to look after these. We have to nurture them. But let’s see how we can maximise the benefit of them as well. So if you can join us live for that Quick Win webinar next week, fantastic. But don’t worry if you’ve missed it because it’s recorded and sitting in the past events of the tourismtribe.com website for you to go and have a listen to.

[06:46] Excellent. Now what was the other thing you mentioned in the hinterlands?

[06:50] Yeah, I’ve been in region a lot lately running workshops and coaching programs, which has been fantastic down the east coast of Australia. And it’s come up, every place I’ve been, this has come up. And it’s the old lament and challenge of people who are operating tourism businesses not in the focal point or the hero location of their destination. For example, they could be in the hinterland and all of the kind of hero imagery and focus of the destination marketing is pointing at the coast. So they feel quite left out. Or it could be an outer suburb of the city that is beautiful and offers so much to tourists, but they’re not really considered a hotspot for tourists. So once again, they don’t get profiled so heavily in the destination marketing. And even their local market back in the city might overlook them and take them for granted. So it’s this feeling of being left out, not being focused on enough in the destination marketing.

[07:59] So I’ve been speaking with these groups of operators and sometimes in one-on-one coaching about what they can do to really take control of their own destiny rather than being at the mercy of the people who are doing the marketing at a local LGA level or state level or even at Tourism Australia. What can they do themselves? And that really comes down to two sort of things. One is about strategy and getting a joint vision with other operators who are in the same situation in that area and saying, well, what profile do we want to have? How do we link in with the branding that is there? And what do we want to see happen with tourism in our area? So really formulating that local tourism network and setting some vision for the area and getting some good collaborators together who can bring other operators along. You know, it’s not that annoying, let’s just say, operator who doesn’t necessarily win the hearts and minds of the other operators, but who are those visionary operators who really do pull people together, get those people together to set the vision and bring the other people along.

[09:12] But then in a practical sense, what can everybody do? And at a minimum, every operator in that location needs to be a really strong advocate for their location. They cannot crow hard enough. They have to be really, really proud of where they work and live and put plenty of content out about that. So they live, for example, live in this beautiful hinterland area. What are those majestic moments that are happening with the beauty of that area or life or nature or local markets or best coffee shops or, you know, what are the things going on?

[09:49] Don’t underestimate the power of that local advocacy and using that content on your socials and blog posts and commenting about other businesses and services in the area, using your specific hashtags for that location, as well as the broader destination hashtags so that you’re in that same content set by hashtags. But be really strong advocates. Be proud of what you’re doing and what everybody else is doing in that location. And really create a lot of content about it to work together to be able to get those stories out. Don’t sit back and wait for the government to send somebody along and say, “Hey, I’m from the government, I’m here to help you.” Take charge, get in front and do your own little marketing group to be able to be on brand and support the vision that you’ve got for that location to make it really pop and get its own voice and profile.

[10:50] Wow, how great. I see a lot of things in smaller regions that could be done that maybe are not being done enough. One tip would be, you know, when you follow a page as a page on Facebook, you actually see a wall of other pages that you follow. So go and comment on people’s posts. So if they’re getting exposure with your business name, you’ll support them, but you’ll also gain visibility to all the other customers that see the other person you’re supporting. Let’s put it on your roster once a week to go and do that.

[11:24] Yeah. And if you, once a day, if you spent five minutes a day commenting on your colleagues’ posts and liking them on Instagram and Facebook, that would make such a difference. And follow all of those accounts, as you said, Fab. Sort of build that local network in social media. That’s the minimum everyone can do. And then the other thing that’s great to do is with your own websites is to get your recommended experiences and services up on the website for the local region. So really uncover those, you know, really best experiences in your local area and do great imagery on them. Great copy, help with the SEO and findability of your location on Google.

[12:11] Perfect. Oh, that was an episode full of great tips about online reputation and supporting one another, especially in smaller regions. So thanks, Liz. I better… Awesome. Go get them. And we’ll talk to you in the next episode. Amazing. See you soon, everybody. Bye.