As a tourist, part of your excitement comes from exploring the area, learning about the culture, and experiencing new adventures.

As a local tour guide, you know that you need to utilize social media as a necessary tool. Marketing your business using every means possible is vital and in turn, will help increase your guided tours and attractions business.

Nowadays, businesses in the tours, attractions and tourism industry deal with competition from not only local competition but also companies located around the world.

With social media’s ever expanding reach, your tourism business has 2 choices.

As a business owner, it can be intimidating to see all of the successful campaigns already going from your major competitors. It can also be tempting to copy them and try to capture lightning in a bottle twice. Unfortunately, this can often be a losing proposition for businesses when developing a strategy.

Unfortunately, no matter what industry you work in, it’s impossible to make everyone happy. With today’s technology however, it’s easier to have a small situation blown out of proportion and plastered all over social media sites.

No business is immune from negative reviews. It’s frustrating, yes, but how you respond to them can make a big difference in how other customers – and potential customers – perceive your company.

Sometimes, even the simple act of reading and responding to a negative review can change a customer’s “I’m never coming back here!” to a lifelong customer. While rare, with the right response, anything is possible.

Did you know 77 percent of the American population has at least one social media profile? Around the world, over 2.34 billion people use social media, and this number is expected to continue growing. Therefore, it comes as no surprise social media is one of the most effective marketing platforms for virtually all types of businesses. 

Consumers are dropping their once universal habit of conducting local searches by typing the words “near me” in the browser. They now expect searches to automatically produce results near them. It’s time to update your SEO strategy so you capture more local searches.

Today’s consumers engage with companies through many different channels, including physical stores, apps, social media, television commercials, websites, catalogues, and more. For any online content, they could be viewing from a computer, tablet or phone. Omni-channel marketing seeks to provide customers with a seamless and integrated experience, no matter which channel or device they are using. In order to achieve this, everything across these channels should be consistent and complementary.

To post or not to post. That is the question – at least when it comes to your Instagram account. 

The travel industry has long been an early adopter of digital technology, having helped travelers find and book trips online as soon as it was possible to do so. Technology has changed dramatically since the first days of online booking, though, and travel companies must continue to incorporate new advancements into their marketing strategies if they want to remain competitive within the industry – the latest being machine learning and artificial intelligence.

No matter how common or convenient it is to complain about them, Millennials are vital to the success of almost every retailer. The Millennial Generation now spends a collective $600 billion a year and are the largest living generation. The digital natives are now in their high spending years between 18-35 and if retailers want to connect, they must increase their digital investments.