For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform
What would help you market your tours more using TourCMS tools?
TourCMS can be used for all sorts of different purposes. Some use it to bring some control to an office, some to control availability, others to take online bookings and act as a website CMS. If you find TourCMS useful there is no right or wrong way to be using it even if you are not using all the features.
What we at TourCMS tend to be spending more and more time on though is helping you market your tours / activities / accommodations. Mainly this is through the provision of tools that you can use yourself.
e.g.
* Track Google PPC advertising (and other PPC advertising)
* Put your products on a 3rd party website (i.e. one of your own partners)
* Put your products on leading travel websites (e.g. Adprecision / Adnet)
* Travel agent login (Via TourCMS Marketplace login)
* XML API that you can give to your partners / agents etc
However many of these tools remain unused by quite a number of you.
We would love to know how we can help you to make use of these tools as we *know* that correctly applied they generate bookings or make current marketing more efficient (by telling you what isn't working)
Would you like more training either on the principles of direct digital marketing or on the TourCMS tools themselves? Are you struggling to find agents / affiliates / partners who might be interested to work with you? Does it all sound too complex?
Please do comment below and tell us what you actually want us to help with
Thank you
Views: 1
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on -
Just to follow this up, recently announced that the Adprecision system is live now
http://community.tourcms.com/forum/topics/feature-your-toursactivities
Your tours/activities on the Independent and London Evening Standard travel sections....
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Permalink Reply by Warren Garber on -
Hi Alex.
For my point - I'm very pleased with the initiatives that you are taking. Since joining with TourCMS around 6 months ago as part out our new website strategy, I am now beginning to see measurable online benefit. Additionally the tie-up with Adprecision / Adnet allows us access to media we probably couldn't afford or access if trying as a single venture.
To be honest - we don't use TourCMS to anything like it's full potential. That's more a culture / change and training issue at our end. As you know, my main focus is currently integration of the booking engine into our own site. We still receive a good number of bookings from existing clients, private groups etc and we don't enter all these into the back-end management system. But as I say - that's not because there's any problem with TourCMS, in fact just the opposite.
With respect to the MarketPlace, I am trying to develop relationships with other MP partners. Regrettably, it's not as easy as it sounds. There are a number of partners that don't have working websites and others that appear to have no intention of xml/api integration. So what is the point of them being there? I will send you some emails under separate cover that show this.
Assuming that you have a number of accounts such as me - but maybe less troublesome ;-) I would like to see more emphasis along the lines of the Adprecision initiative, where you can go to say, Viator for instance, with an offering of volume and technology that any typical small independent wouldn't usually achieve alone.
And for the record, yes - we here at Peace of Angkor are ever so pleased to see our listings in two UK newspapers! Great job.
Cheers
Warren
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on
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Hi Warren
We do try to weed out the partners who don't have active websites etc - or look spammy. However many are actually people just trying it out to see what it is about.
This is why we introduced the "recommended partners" section - these are marketplace partners who we think are great and who also have taken steps to integrate with TourCMS in some way or other. i.e. by connecting to them it will help your business
There are some great partners who are not in the recommended section because, as of yet, they are not integrated. Most of them are keeping an eye on what we are doing with TourCMS and I am sure will integrate if it suits their business model - and once we have sufficient suppliers that match what they want to offer.
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Permalink Reply by Actief in Tsjechie on -
Hi Alex,
With us it is mainly lack of time at the moment. But we definitely are going to use all the tools!
Regards, Luit
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on
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Hi Luit
Simple question - if we offered you a service to help you do all of this (but we charged for it) would you pay?
Thanks. Alex
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Permalink Reply by Actief in Tsjechie on
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Hello Alex,
Good question. In our case it would be quite hard: we are personally approachting our partners in the Czech Republic at the moment and try to pursuade them to put our widgets on their home pages.
For the Advertisement market we woud first have to do lots of translations!
Regards, Luit
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