Does Your Tourism Marketing Suck? Travel Trade Show Marketing Tips with Tourism Tim Warren

TimSells4U October 6, 2012 10 Comments

^{If you don’t have enough prospects or clients… chances are your marketing needs help. Here’s 3 travel marketing tips guaranteed to increase sales and arrivals, simple, fast and easy.}

Just back from San Francisco and the OneWorld Travel Mart trade show. After seeing how poorly over 50% of the exhibitors marketed themselves at the show, I decided I need to be the “Professor of Harsh Reality”. What this means is:

• I am not going to sugarcoat the truth.

• I will be diplomatically blunt.

• I will tell it like it

• I will share tips and tools I absolutely know have improved sales and profits for others.

If you want to stop struggling… read on.

It cost a lot of money and time to attend and market at a travel trade show. That’s why it was shocking to me to see so many exhibitors with a terrible booth and even worse “boothmanship”.

Now show management needs to work on attendance at the show…

But if your travel marketing sucks, especially at trade shows (or your website), more attendees ( or more traffic) does not equal more prospects and sales.

You Have Less Then 10 Seconds to Capture a Travel Prospect’s Attention

You only have 5 to 10 seconds to capture a prospect’s attention as they walk by your booth. If you don’t they are gone… usually forever. If these 3 points below weren’t crystal clear and fast, why would they spend any time at your booth?

1: What you do?

2: Where you do it?

3: Why they should consider you and your trips (destination, lodge, service, etc.)?

Guess what?  It’s the same with your travel website.

You have about 7 seconds to communicate the same. This is why most tourism websites are dead on arrival. That’s why so many travel websites yield few leads or sales. Prospect lose. You lose. Your community loses. The tourism industry loses. This sucks!

I saw a ton of people sitting in chairs behind tables with signage so unclear I had little idea what they did… Check out the video. See for yourself

The results? Exhibitors did not get as many leads as they could have. Few made any actual sales…

$25,000 in Travel Bookings at the Show

Now some got many leads and at least one tour operator (my brother Kevin) sold over $25,000 in trips.

What accounted for the difference?

There are 10 key points for effective travel trade show (or any travel) marketing.

Here Are 3 Travel Trade Show Marketing Tips You Cannot Afford to be Without…

1: Have a tradeshow stand with a big headline banner that says what you do, not necessarily your business name. This should be a very concise descriptive headline with at least 8-inch tall letters that address the 3 points above about your booth and company.

2: Use “Credibility Icons” in conspicuous locations. Before a travel shopper becomes a customer they must feel comfortable that you are a reliable, experienced and safe choice. This tip works awesome!

3: Let your clients sell for you by using lots of testimonials. Print is great, but video and audio really rock to convert shoppers into buyers guaranteed. “Word of mouth” is the #1 most trusted form of advertising. Use this (and the other 7 key points for effective travel marketing from my course) and you’ll sell more trips quicker and easier then ever before.

You can stop wasting your money and time and improve your tourism marketing at tradeshows, your website and more. Check out my Tourism Marketing Success Online Program today. It will help you increase prospects, sales and arrivals simple, fast and easy … or your money back.

Thanks for  watching, “Liking”, +1, Sharing and Re-tweeting this post today. I appreciate it. As we all grow our business, everybody wins!

What is your #1 Travel Trade Show Marketing Question or Suggestion?

Post Them in the Comments Window Below