Vermont is quite the tourist destination for most of the year: The summers are gorgeous, the fall foliage is spectacular, and the winter skiing & riding are superb. Much of Vermont really does look like a picture postcard. Tourism here is big business. Big. Business. I see a lot of websites for tourist destinations, and some of them are even smart enough to have online booking. But if there’s one question a tourist destination website needs to answer for prospective customers, it’s this: why should I choose you? Assuming you’ve already got your act together on the more conventional business fronts, let’s talk about how blogging can help.
To really answer the question of “why should I choose you?” a blog can be immensely helpful. Customers see that actual people are behind the website, and that they’re earnestly communicating. Your site becomes more than just a brochure on the web. It becomes a dynamic point of contact between you and your customers.
Blogs are great for making event announcements, for filling people in on what the locals are doing up to, and for writing about what makes your place so special. As a toursim blogger, you want to make your destination seem inviting and real to people: blog about how the gardens are doing, that you saw a hummingbird today, that you’ve met such nice people from someplace and they asked you take a picture of all them together and wasn’t that nice? Blog about the food you’re serving your guests and the compliments you get on your cooking. Blog about a local competition in which yadda yadda yadda happened. Fill in the blanks.
As with retail bloggers using digital cameras or even high-quality cameraphones to create live updates on incoming hot new products, tourism bloggers would be wise to adopt a similar tactic. When customers know that the picture of the hollyhocks is one you took just that morning, your place will seem real to them, and it will be more inviting. Travelers are wary of static online brochures that haven’t been updated. How do they know they can trust that what they see reflects reality? Prove it to them with frequent blog updates and pictures.
Another thing you can do is feed emails you get from customers praising your destination, your service, and so forth back to the blog. You write a post that says, “Here’s an email we got from so-and-so who was here a couple weeks ago…” and you copy & paste from email to blog entry screen. Instant customer testimonial.
Tourism blogs need some of the same things a retail blog needs, such as:
- Hours of operation.
- All contact information.
- Driving directions.
- Pictures of the location.
The reason for this, is because even if you already have an existing website, your blog may or may not be a separate web address (depending on how you implement it). Because people are likely going to find you through your blog via search, your blog will probably become your most frequent landing page. As such, it’s got to fulfill many of the same functions your “real” home page already does. You also want to put links to seasonal rates and all policies.
In blogging about your tourist destination, be sure to take advantage of the commenting functionality that is part of blogging. You can answer customers’ questions and show them how responsive to their needs you are before they even arrive. Other people will see that you are, literally, taking care of business in a way that has an immediate impact unlike a static non-blogging website ever could.
