Vacation Labs Blog @vacationlabs-blog - Tumblr Blog

How are travelers buying your tours & activities?

With the advent of new technologies, the journey of a consumer from a casual onlooker to a confirmed buyer is changing rapidly. Google in its recent report has tried to analyse this journey by understanding the influence of different marketing channels (such as email, display ads etc.) on the consumer’s path to purchase.

The data has been collected for 11 industries such as Travel, Retail, Finance, Health etc. and mapped to 7 countries – Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK and USA. The one industry important to us and to you as a tour operator is ‘Travel’.

How different marketing channels influence a consumer’s buying decision?

The buying life-cycle of a consumer (across industries) has been broadly split into 4 phases – awareness, consideration, intent and decision.

During this entire cycle, a consumer is influenced by various marketing channels like email, social media and direct visits to your website. These channels have different degree of influence on the consumer at different points in his or her buying life cycle.

The marketing channels can be broadly divided into two main categories:

Assisting channels help in building awareness, consideration and intent earlier in the consumer's journey thereby introducing your brand and product to your customer.

Last interaction channels act as the last point of contact prior to a purchase thereby helping the consumer make the decision and take the plunge to finally buy the product.

We will specifically focus on how different marketing channels impact the consumer buying behaviour at different points in his or her buying life cycle. The chart below depicts the role played by various channels on the travel industry in the US market.

The above chart throws up some interesting observations on travel buying pattern:

'Social' plays the most important part in awareness. The key takeaway being that social media is the most relevant marketing channel for the discovery of your brand and your tours & activities.

Email plays an important role in the consideration phase. Once your tours are discovered by your potential buyer, emails can be a great way to build up the “curiosity” and place your product in his consideration set.

The greatest impact of a ‘last interaction’ channel in the US travel market is of ‘direct’ - when the consumer comes directly to you or your website. In this case, your website or your store plays the role of “last mile” interaction which can make or break the decision to book. This highlights the importance of a great website and an equally strong booking experience for your consumers.

Note that the influence of a particular channel varies across different industries and different countries. For example in the Brazilian travel market, the influence of the ‘social’ channel is just 2.2 and the greatest assisting channel is email. However, even in this case also, the greatest impact of a ‘last interaction’ channel is of ‘direct’.

For a tour operator, the key takeaway is that no marketing channel is more or less important than the other. All of them play an important role depending on the point at which a consumer is in his or her buying cycle. In order to build a successful marketing engine, you need to have them all in your kitty and you must know how and when to use them.

#tours and activities #tour operators #Travel marketing

5 simple ways to master Pinterest marketing for tours & activities

In our last post, we talked about the importance of Pinterest marketing for tour & activity operators. We discussed how Pinterest can help you boost your website traffic, improve your SEO and gain invaluable consumer insights.

And now that you are convinced about Pinterest, a lot of “what next” questions must be springing up in your head - How do I start? How do I build an audience? What are the best practices?

Well, don’t worry! This article will address all your questions and maybe more.

So here we go – 5 simple ways to harness the “Pinterest" potential:

1. Set it up right

Before you start scrambling for some ultra-innovative Pinterest strategies, make sure that your account has been set up properly. Things to keep in mind:

Your Pinterest profile is complete – an interesting and relevant business description, a good quality photo of your business, your physical location and so on. For a detailed step-by-step guide for setting up your profile, refer our previous article.

Your website is verified. Just like Twitter, Pinterest allows you to verify your brand through your website. For a verified account, Pinterest places a grey checkmark on the header along with your URL. Not only will this lend credibility to your account, it will also ensure that your website is properly highlighted.

Search privacy setting is switched off. See the image below – you have to select “No”. This will make sure that your account is indexed and shows up in search results.

2. ….and cover your basics

In order to increase the discoverability of your Pinterest boards and your website, make sure you have these basics covered:

People use Pinterest search to locate relevant content. Further, Pinterest boards also show up in Google searches. So it’s very important to use relevant keywords in the name and description of your boards. Use Google’s keyword tool to get ideas for popular and relevant keywords.

Pinterest has its own set of Broad Categories that allow users to browse through the content. Your boards should match the most relevant category.

Hashtags are another great way to make your pins searchable on Pinterest. You should always include some specific hashtags with your posts.

And finally, always include a back link to your website when you create a pin. This will ensure that users are directed to your website when they click on your pin. The best way to do this is to create pins using “Add from a website” option.

3. Use Pinterest marketing tools

We talked about Pinterest widgets in our previous article. Widgets are great for marketing your brand, encouraging engagement and building awareness.

There are number of widgets that you can use. The most common ones are the “Pin it” button and the “Follow” button. “Pin it” button allows your visitors to pin your website content on their personal boards (think “Share” in Facebook) and “Follow” allows users to follow your Pinterest account (think “Like” in Facebook). You should place “Pin it” buttons with all relevant content on your website.

A special category of pins called “Place pins” should be of particular interest to tour operators. Designed specifically for travel, “Place pins” allow you to create maps with your boards. A common way to use “Place pins” is to create destination tour guides. Using “Place pins” is also a great way to beautifully showcase your itinerary.

Here is an example of how Wanderlust uses “Place pins” to showcase travel destinations across Europe.

Another example where REI Adventures has innovatively used “Place pins” to highlight memorable points in their 13-day Mont Blanc trek.

4. Build your audience on Pinterest

An important objective of social media marketing is to increase the size of your audience. Pinterest is no different. You should strive to increase your followers on Pinterest and here are some tips for doing the same:

Pinterest can be a great way to build your brand authority. Suppose you operate an adventure travel business and you want to build a following of adventure enthusiasts. You can start by posting relevant content that adventure enthusiasts would find valuable and informative. Focus on properly organizing (cataloging) your content through boards. Since a Pinterest users can also follow a board (unlike Facebook), proper cataloging is a must. Make sure that you create different boards for different interest groups.

Market your tours through Pinterest boards. A good way to do this is to create a separate board for each tour. Here is an example of how TourIreland.com is innovatively marketing its tours through Pinterest boards.

Participate and be active. This is true for any social media platform. You will have to keep your Pinterest account active. Post relevant content, engage with your audience and collaborate with other pinners through Group Boards.

5. Use Pinterest analytics to frame your content strategy

Track and learn! Use Pinterest analytics to find out how many people are Pinning from your website, seeing your pins, and clicking on your content. Get an insight into what people like, which pins get shared the most, who interacts with them and so on. Tailor your own boards and website accordingly.

#pinterest #tours and activities #tour operators

Pinterest for Tour Operators: Why you should start now?

Pinterest, the latest buzz in the world of Social Media, has quickly crept up to become the 3rd most popular social media platform. It’s second only to Facebook in terms of website referrals. So if you thought that Pinterest was merely a place for wedding planning and dessert recipes, it’s time for you to wake up and smell the coffee!

Selling tours & activities is all about visuals (photos and videos). Being a visual-heavy social media platform, Pinterest is an ideal marketing channel for your products. It will help you boost your website traffic, supplement your SEO efforts and offer invaluable consumer insights. In short, Pinterest is your latest marketing genie! And a pretty powerful one too!

This post will assume that you are well versed with Pinterest basics - you are familiar with the Pinterest lingo of “Pins”, “Boards”, “Repins” and so on. If you are not, you can get started here. We would also recommend using Pinterest for a few days in a personal capacity before signing up for a business account.

For an introduction to “Pinterest for Business” and a step-by-step visual guide for setting up your account, please refer our previous post here.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where the utility and best practices are fairly well established, Pinterest marketing is still in its infancy. So let’s take a look at the top 3 reasons why a tour operator should start using Pinterest:

1. A tool to boost your website traffic

Let’s not confuse this with SEO (which we will address in our next point). Pinterest can be a great platform to drive traffic directly to your website. As per Social Media Traffic Trends by Sharehaolic, Pinterest is second only to Facebook in terms of overall referrals, accounting for 4.8% of total visits. This is higher than the combined share of Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Google+ and YouTube!

And to top it all, Pinterest delivers a highly targeted traffic to your website. As per a study by Shopify, Pinterest users purchase more often and in greater quantities than any other social network. Although this study and the corresponding data is for the ecommerce retail industry, the relative performance of Pinterest vis-à-vis other Social Media platforms can be extrapolated to the tours and activities business.

2. A shot-in-the-arm for your SEO

Since Pinterest boards are now indexed by Google, they give you an alternative (and a powerful) way to appear in organic search results. You can also do specific keyword targeting by adding keywords to your boards.

And then, social signal is always a factor. The strength of your social signal now plays an important role in almost all the search engine algorithms. Pinterest, being the third most popular social media platform, is simply too big to ignore.

A study by searchmetrics to determine the correlation of SEO factors & search rankings found that social signals and backlinks are the two most important rank determinants. Interestingly, Pinterest is right there on top with Google+ and Facebook.

It is widely believed that post the Hummingbird update, Google has massively revamped its infrastructure for processing social signals.

One important thing to note here is that Pinterest will not be your magic wand for an overnight SEO success. It should simply supplement your SEO strategy and definitely not replace it.

A common misconception with Pinterest is that pinning and repinning of your content will help you generate huge number of back links thus giving you an exponential SEO boost. This is not the case. Pinterest links are “nofollow”, which implies that they do not have any link juice (SEO jargon for links that do not contribute to your page rank).

3. A tool to gain customer insights

Travel is one of the most popular topics on Pinterest. Pinterest recently revealed that it has 660 million pins in its travel category – way more than the number of reviews on TripAdvisor. People are using Pinterest to plan their holidays, explore destinations and activities. A common theme is to share images of places where they want to go and things that they want to do. For a tour operator, this is an invaluable piece of information – not just for product innovation but also as a source of potential leads.

Consider an example - a tour operator in Cape Town wants to add some new innovative day trips in his catalog. After some research, he finds out that there are many Pinterest boards dedicated to photography in Cape Town and these boards have a decent number of followers. Voila! He has his new product idea – a photography tour in Cape Town.

Apart from the reasons that we just discussed, there are many other utilities of Pinterest as well. But the key point here is (1) Pinterest is the third most popular social media platform and second in terms of referrals, (2) it’s a visual-heavy social media platform - ideal for selling tours and activities and (3) travel is one of the most popular topics on Pinterest. You simply cannot afford to ignore it!

In our next post, we will talk about the best practices for using Pinterest for Business.

#pinterest #tour operators #tours and activities

Getting started with Pinterest for Business

Pinterest is the latest buzz in the world of social media and has quickly crept up to become the third most popular social media platform. We strongly believe that every tour & activity operator should seriously consider using Pinterest as a platform to promote their business.

In this post, our aim is to get your started with Pinterest – (1) guide you through the process of setting up your business account and (2) familiarize you with some cool marketing tools that Pinterest for Business offers.

Setting up your business account – a step-by-step guide

There are two ways to setup a business account on Pinterest. You can either create a brand new account or convert your personal account into a business account.

Step 1: Go to the home page for Pinterest for Business and click on "Joins as a business".

Step 2: Fill out your basic details and accept the terms of the agreement and then proceed to ‘Create Account’. You will be sent an email from Pinterest to confirm your account.

Step 3: Click on the name of your business in the top right corner and go to settings. Here you can add/edit information by going to the relevant sections.

Step 4: Start by clicking on ‘Edit Profile’. Enter your website name if you haven't already and click on ‘Verify Website’.

Step 5: Follow the simple on-screen instructions and complete the verification. Once your website is verified, you can use the Analytics tool.

Step 6: Next you should add a ‘Pin it’ button to your website. Create one for yourself by clicking here.

And you are done!

Getting familiar with some key tools

Widgets are excellent marketing tools for your website. You can add a ‘pin it’ button, ‘follow button’, ‘profile widget’ and more to your website or your blog. This will allow visitors to share your content.

Rich pins is a multifaceted feature that allows you to add more details about your particular pin. There are different types of rich pins like article pins, place pins, recipe pins, movie pins and product pins. Of particular interest to a tour operator is the "place pins". They allow pinners to create pinned maps of places of interest and gives a user a lot of information about a particular place.

You can use promoted pins, to promote a particular pin to a target audience. This is obviously a paid feature!

Finally, Pinterest gives you access to a host of analytics data.You can track your activity - find out how many people are Pinning from your website, seeing your Pins, and clicking your content. Get an insight into what people like and tailor your boards and website accordingly.

#pinterest #tours and activities #tour operators

Google Places for Tour Operators: 5 ways to optimize your listing

In our previous post, we discussed the importance of local search for in-destination tour operators. For the sake of completeness, let’s briefly revisit some key points again:

A local search is one where a user either explicitly enters the location into the search query (Scuba Diving in Goa, Italian Restaurant in Patong, Phuket) or the Search Engine returns the results by implicitly picking up the location.

Travelers are increasingly relying on local searches to explore in-destination tours and activities. These are the most important queries that a tour operator should target to win.

And we discussed how a listing on Google Places can help you rank high for such local search queries. However, we ended with a word of caution – simply creating a listing will not guarantee you a position on the places list.

Perplexed? Don’t be! The trick is to optimize (yet again!) your places listing. Here are 5 ways in which you can optimize your Google Places listing, not just for a higher position in the search engine result pages (SERPs), but also for improving your overall conversion rate.

1. Make sure that your listing is complete and adheres to all the quality guidelines

The first step is to ensure completeness of your listing. Google clearly recommends that your listing should be complete and accurate. While creating your listing, you will come across many optional fields. Do not ignore them. Most important ones (although optional) are – website URL, email address, hours of operation and a well written description of your business.

Apart from the details that are explicitly asked, you also have the option of including additional information that is relevant to your business. For example, a cycling tour operator can include the following information – availability of cycling gear, type or brand of bikes, availability of hotel pickup/drop option, age restriction and so on.

Here is a step-by-step guide (with screenshots) for setting up your Google Places listing.

The next step is to ensure that your listing adheres to the quality guidelines laid down by Google. These are fairly straightforward guidelines and, if you are running a genuine business, should not be very difficult to adhere to.

Quality and completeness will not only improve the odds of your listing being displayed by Google, it will also increase the chances of a potential customer choosing you over your competition.

2. Pick your business categories intelligently

When creating or editing your listing, Google will ask you to pick your business categories. Google uses the category information (along with many other things) to decide when and how to show your listing.

So pick your categories intelligently. 3 things to keep in mind:

The categories you pick should accurately describe your business

You should include all possible categories for your business

Pick categories that people are actually searching for. Use Google Keyword Tool.

You can also use this elegant tool by Mike Blumenthal to help you pick your business categories. Google’s own set of guidelines for picking categories are here.

3. Make your listing content rich - include high quality photos and videos

As per a survey by BrightLocal, 60% of consumers give more consideration to local results that have photos. Further, a study by Google and Ipsos MediaCT reveals that a staggering 45% of leisure travelers were prompted to book as a result of watching online video. Therefore, you must beef up your places listing with high quality photos and videos. Make sure that these photos and videos are original and communicate your offering (your tours and activities) appropriately and accurately.

4. Build up reviews for your business

Once your account is set up, start collecting reviews from your travelers. Reviews play an important role in deciding your rank in places listing. And more than the “quantity” of reviews, it’s the “quality” that matters. An interesting excerpt from Google’s official blog:

A recent article by the New York Times related a disturbing story. By treating your customers badly, one merchant told the paper, you can generate complaints and negative reviews that translate to more links to your site; which, in turn, make it more prominent in search engines. The main premise of the article was that being bad on the web can be good for business.

We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.

While quality of reviews is completely contingent on your operations, you can increase the quantity by following the techniques mentioned in this post.

5. Merge your account with Google+, increase your +1s and use Google marketing tools

There is a lot more that you can and you should do with your Google Places account. For starters, merge your places listing with your Google+ local page. This will allow you to integrate social features into your places listing – engage with your customers, add them to your circle, share frequent updates and so on.

Google is currently in the process of auto merging Google+ social functionality into Google Places listing so that both “social” and “location” features are available through a unified dashboard. However, this is still being rolled out and the unified dashboard is not available in many geographies. If your account has not yet been upgraded, you will have to use the Google+ widget to upgrade the page manually. You can check how to proceed here.

You should strive to increase the +1s for your Google+ page. Higher number of +1s will “indirectly” lead to a better page rank and hence better SEO. Further, a more direct linkage -- Google using +1's as a signal in the ranking algorithm and giving a preference in the SERPs is also widely debated.

Additionally, Google Places allows you to market your tours through customized promotions and offers. These offers are distributed across the Google network and come with various targeting options based on location and interests. So bring out that marketing guru in you and start uploading promotions and offers.

Intelligent and active management of your Google Places (and Google+ local) account should be at the heart of your digital marketing effort. If you have already been using Google Places extensively, we would love to hear your experience. Feel free to put in your comment.

#tours and activities #google places #google local #google plus

Travel Marketing: The power of digital and social media

Around last Christmas, WestJet had a special surprise in store for its passengers travelling from Hamilton and Toronto to Calgary. While it was business as usual for the passengers as they came in to the airport, the first surprise awaited them at the boarding gates - virtual Santa on life-size screens, asking them what they wanted for Christmas. Playing along, most of the passengers responded with their wish list. Android tablet, big screen TV, mobile phone and even a pair of underwear!

At Calgary, as the passengers waited for their baggage to arrive, the gifts (the one they had wished for) started rolling out of the baggage carousel! Just watch this video to see the reactions of the passengers as they saw their gifts arrive. Squeals of delight and amazement, shouts of “No Way!” interspersed with a lot of laughter and few tears as well!

So what was the impact?

The YouTube video went viral and has, till date, garnered over 35 million (yes, you read that right!) views in more than 200 countries. If that was not enough, it generated huge publicity as every major media house ran a story on the campaign, trended on Twitter for many days and was widely shared and talked about on the Social Media. These are the tangibles. Now consider the intangibles – no amount of traditional advertising can buy you the amount of goodwill that was generated by this campaign.

What about the cost? While WestJet has not disclosed the figure, it does not require you to be a marketing and advertising guru to figure out that the overall cost of the campaign would have been a fraction of what they would have spent on a traditional TV commercial.

So in the end, WestJet did an amazing job of reaching out to a large number of people and delivering the right message, in an extremely cost-effective manner – hallmark of a great digital marketing campaign. It was indeed a marketing miracle!

#travel marketing #social media #you tube

Tour Operators, have you gone local yet?

“Local searches” are perhaps the most important search queries that any local business (including in-destination tour operators) should compete to win.

Why are these search queries so important for a tour operator? And what's a quick way to start ranking for these queries?

Before we start answering these questions, let’s define the term “local search” or “location based search”. These are searches where a user either explicitly enters the location into the search query (Scuba Diving in Goa, Italian Restaurant in Patong, Phuket) or the Search Engine returns the results by implicitly picking up the location.

Here is an example of a local search. Below are some screenshots of such queries on a mobile device using Google Local and Google search:

Why is local search important for a tour operator?

Let’s just browse through some numbers:

One out of every five searches on Google is a local search?

The latest travel study released by Google, The 2013 Traveler, says – “Once at a destination, 58% of leisure travelers rely on online sources to evaluate local activities”.

Over 50% of travelers use their mobile devices to find and search for things to do in destination while on vacation.

Bottom line – travelers are increasingly relying on local searches to explore in-destination tours and activities. The numbers above clearly indicate that local search queries are the most important queries that a tour operator should target to win (that is, rank high on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages). If you manage to secure one of the top positions for relevant local search queries, chances are, that it will be your single biggest source of leads, enquiries and bookings.

Another important aspect is that the conversion rates for local searches are staggeringly high. When a user searches for a specific activity at a specific location, the intention is, in general, to make a purchase. Sample this - in case of restaurants, conversion rate has been found to be as high as 60%!

What’s a super quick way to win these local search queries?

Google Places. If you haven’t already done so, go ahead and create your business listing on Google Places. If your place is already listed, you will have to claim your listing. For local searches, Google shows the list of businesses/places (listed on Google Places) that match the search criteria. And the good news is that this list is shown at the top – usually after 2-3 organic results and, at times, even before all the organic results. On mobile, they usually take precedence over everything else.

Technically, this is not SEO and should definitely not replace your overall SEO strategy. But it will serve your purpose, at least for local search queries. A listing on Google Places will ensure that your business shows up across the web - Google Search, Maps, Google+, and mobile devices. Do not underestimate the importance of Google Maps. Interestingly, Google Maps account for 70% of mobile usage during travel!

So now that you have figured out a way to crack those local search queries, you must be itching to get started. Well, it’s not that simple! Keep in mind that your local competition is also be vying for that top spot. So, just like SEO, you will have to put in some effort behind your places profile. More on this in our next post.

#tours and activities #google places #google local

The Grill after the Grilling

And what a grilling year 2013 was for all of us at Vacation Labs.... With the heat right up our behinds this year, we hardly even noticed how the year flew by. Some days we worked for 48 hours straight! (and in the process realized how bad it is for productivity), discovered some pretty painful bugs (Javascript Date, I'm looking at you) and spent nail biting months re-factoring code without any new features.

To say that it was an intense year is an understatement. We needed a break. It was time to let our hair down, have a few beers and just chill out..Pun intended ;)

So, in the spirit of the season, we decided to have a grill over at Vacation Labs HQ. And had a ball of fun while we were at it.

Being the self-learning obsessed geeks that we are, we decided to go DIY on this one. It can be amazing how a bunch of engineers (even if they’ve pursued an MBA after engineering) can be enterprising enough to experiment with a barbeque grill.

Who cares if no-one has ever used a grill, we could always Google right? (A reliable birdy tells me Google is now a verb). But we quickly realized that Google was certainly not going to heat up our coal.

Huffing and puffing wasn't going to do the trick either, so we applied our mind and caught hold of the nearest table fan we could find and tried our luck there.

But it seemed like 2013 had some more surprises in store. This one was making us sweat. Quite literally..:(

Finally we put in a prayer or two and just went with it. Some frantic moves later, the grill finally behaved!

The silver lining was that the delay in lighting up the grill meant that our in-house masterchef- loving geek had ample time to prep some tasty delights. In the amount of time it took to light up the grill, he managed to whip up quite the list of goodies.

The food started flowing..Fish, Chicken, Prawns, Paneer, Mushrooms, and other assorted veggies. Gobbled up as quickly as they came off the grill :O 6 dishes in all! It was indeed a fattening Christmas. Santa would be proud.

Good food is definitely a great conversation starter (Did I mention the alcohol??). With the Indian elections just round the corner, the discussion invariably meandered towards politics. And the way we were at it, we could put prime time news anchors to shame.

In all that frenzy, our resident infant was having a ball at the no adult zone. A bag full of en exotic concoction of veggie salads & salty snacks would testify!

In the true spirit of 2013. We took some selfies too. But we’re too sober to put it up for public consumption :)

Here's to a great year and an even wonderful 2014.

PS: This blog is a joint contribution of our resident script writers - Ashwin Sawal and Chinmoy Debnath.

5 tips to make the most of your TripAdvisor listing

In our previous post, we discussed the importance of TripAdvisor listing for tour and activity operators. In this one, we will talk about techniques that will help you make the most of your listing.

To get started, you will have to create a listing on TripAdvisor here. You will see options to register as a Hotel, a Vacation Rental, a Restaurant or an Attraction. Choose Attraction and proceed. After that, it’s a fairly self-explanatory registration process that eventually creates your business listing on TripAdvisor.

With the basic setup done and content uploaded you are now ready to start rolling. Follow these 5 simple tips to effectively utilize your TripAdvisor account:

1) Move towards an organized review collection mechanism

The best way to collect reviews is to ask! And the best way to ask is to send a nicely worded email after a traveler has experienced your tour/activity. Do not forget to include the TripAdvisor link in your email so that it is easy for your customers to follow the link and write a review. Ideally, you should automate this entire process so that you never miss out on sending these emails or miss out on customers in your emails.

You should also use TripAdvisor’s review widgets. By putting these widgets on your website, you encourage (and make it super convenient for) your customers to write reviews. TripAdvisor also gives you the option of embedding a review form in your post-trip emails, but you will have to pay for this feature.

2) Engage with your reviewers

TripAdvisor allows you to reply back to your reviewers. Make the most of it. And how should you respond? For starters, make use of these response guidelines laid down by TripAdvisor. Responding to a positive review is a fairly straightforward task (although you must respond). But when dealing with a negative review, you have to be extremely careful. Check out how this operator has tactfully managed a poor review.

3) Monitor your reviews

The world is not perfect. Although TripAdvisor has set up a very strong review moderation process to weed out fraudulent reviews, some inappropriate reviews might still sneak through. As the business owner, the onus is on you to constantly monitor your reviews and immediately report any inappropriate content to TripAdvisor. Go through these review guidelines and report any review that does not meet these guidelines.

4) Strict NO to fake reviews

NEVER resort to fake or paid positive reviews. TripAdvisor clearly states that:

Reviews of accommodations, attractions and restaurants should only be written by TripAdvisor members that have had a customer service experience that they want to share with the community

There are many Companies that specialize in submitting fake reviews to boost your standing. Stay away from them! Keep in mind that TripAdvisor has put in place a strong mechanism to remove this “Organized Boosting” and if it’s determined that your business has indulged in such a practice, TripAdvisor will not only reduce your popularity index by several pages, it will also place a “large red penalty notice” along with your listing. Nothing will hurt you more.

5) Use TripAdvisor’s free online marketing tools

TripAdvisor offers you a number of free online marketing tools. We have already talked about the review widgets. Some other useful tools and widgets are:

App for Facebook Page - share your ratings and reviews with your Facebook fans

What's Nearby? Widget - show nearby businesses that may be of interest to your customers.

TripAdvisor Badges - showcase your awards, certificate of excellence, endorsements on your website.

Review Snippet Widget - display your TripAdvisor ratings and recent review snippets on your website.

Rave Review Widget - create a scrolling showcase for your most recent excellent review.

Check out the full list here. And check out some examples of their usage below:

#trip advisor #tours and activities

Are you listed on TripAdvisor yet? You now have your New Year’s resolution!

First things first - why should a tour or an activity operator be listed on TripAdvisor? Isn't it meant for Hotels?

True. We all know that TripAdvisor is an undisputed platform for listing and reviews of Hotels. However, what many of us still don’t know is the fact that TripAdvisor is well on its way to achieve a similar standing for tours and activities as well.

A recent article in Skift talks about TripAdvisor’s plan to become an in-destination travel concierge – not just help travelers pick hotels for their stay but also help them with “things to do” during their stay. No wonder then, that in the last 24 months, TripAdvisor has tied up with the three largest aggregators of tours and activities around the globe – Get Your Guide, Viator and Expedia.

If you still have doubts, consider this - TripAdvisor currently has 360+ tours and activities (along with 7,000+ reviews) listed for Phuket alone.

So if you thought TripAdvisor was only for Hotels, think again!

So why exactly should you be listed on TripAdvisor?

Because user generated content is the most important marketing tool in your arsenal

In our last post, we discussed that 93% of travelers worldwide say that their booking decisions are impacted by online reviews. This in itself is a big enough reason to be listed on TripAdvisor. But wait, there is more!

Reviews also serve as an important feedback channel (perhaps the most important one). In all likelihood, a public forum like TripAdvisor will yield much more candid feedback from your customers than your own closed-door channels. Your travelers can also upload photos, make recommendations, give specific travel tips, and so on. What better way to generate awesome content for your tours than to have happy customers do it for you.

A word of caution though – the keyword here is “happy”. User generated content can be a double-edged sword. So if you are not sure about the quality of your operations yet, you are better off staying away from TripAdvisor for now.

…and then it helps your business get discovered

With over 260 million visitors per month, of which 60+ million are unique, TripAdvisor is by far the largest travel website in the world. And it’s not just limited to hotels. Consider any high-volume search term related to in-destination tours and activities and you will invariably find TripAdvisor right up there in the top 3 results.

So if you are not yet listed on TripAdvisor, you now know what your New Year’s resolution should be! But before that, do read our next post which will help you get started with TripAdvisor.

#tours and activities #trip advisor #travel reviews

Top 10 questions travelers ask before booking a tour

What are the top 10 questions travelers ask before they book a tour with you? Most of you will be able to answer this in your sleep! So we are not going to tell you something that you already know. What we will do, instead, is suggest ways in which these questions could be used to structure great content for your website.

The idea is, that addressing these questions upfront (on your website) will invariably lead to an increased conversion rate. It will also help you improve your search engine rankings by beefing up your content. And, it will save you some valuable time. So let’s jump straight into these questions:

1) What is the entire experience like? Are there any photos and videos of the tour?

Remember, you are selling an experience. So don’t simply list your tour timetable! Describe the experience associated with it. For example, consider these 2 descriptions of a similar tour (a Jeep Safari across the Spiti Valley) -

the first one described as an experience

...and this one, well, not described as an experience.

Ask yourself, who would you rather book with?

A picture paints a thousand words! A study by Google and Ipsos MediaCT reveals that a staggering 45% of leisure travelers were prompted to book as a result of watching online video. Therefore, original and well-shot photos and videos must be a central part of your website. If your budget allows you to, commission a professional to shoot for you.

2) What is the exact itinerary of the tour?

Describing an itinerary is an art. While you have to be specific, detailing out every single event and their sequence, you have to ensure that your itinerary makes for an interesting (and exciting) read. Again, focus on describing the experience.

For example, if your itinerary includes a sightseeing tour, instead of a single line like - “after breakfast, proceed for a sightseeing tour”, talk more about the sights that the traveler will actually see. Although you don’t have to write a novel, you can still make it detailed. Travelers generally love to read detailed content. Here is an example of a well written itinerary.

3) What have others said about this tour?

As per TripAdvisor’s TripBarometer, 93% of travelers worldwide say that their booking decisions are impacted by online reviews. Need we say more? Ask your past customers to write reviews and testimonials and showcase them along with your tour. A good starting point is to move towards an organized (and digitized) feedback collection mechanism.

4) How much does the tour cost? Are there any hidden charges?

Be honest and upfront about your pricing. Try to avoid hidden charges and always mention your all-inclusive pricing. This will not just ensure that your leads are of higher quality, but will also build a degree of trust and showcase your credibility.

Also, clearly lay down everything that is included in the tour and everything that is not included in the tour. A good way is to include a dedicated section on inclusions and exclusions for each tour.

5) Is the pricing reasonable? Are there any less expensive options available?

In all likelihood, your visitor will be price conscious and will do his or her research. So if yours is not the least expensive alternative, clearly explain why. Think of it as making a sales pitch to your customer – highlighting your USP and explaining why your tours command a premium. On the other hand, if pricing is your USP, then make that your sales pitch.

6) Am I booking with a credible operator?

When travelers book a tour, they venture into an unknown territory. They don’t know the operator and have little or no idea about the destination. A critical concern on their mind is - how credible is the operator?

Go all out in showcasing your credibility. If you have endorsements from trade associations and/or Government bodies, highlight them in a big visible way on your home page.

7) Will I be safe? What are the safety measures taken by the operator?

If you are offering tours (or activities) that involve a certain degree of physical risk, you have to be very specific about the nature of the risk and the measures that are taken to ensure utmost safety of the travelers/participants. Talk about your team’s experience, expertise, certifications, safety infrastructure of your facility, your track record, and so on.

Here is a good example of how a paragliding operator has addressed the concerns on both credibility and safety through a dedicated “why fly with us” section.

8) What if I want to cancel my trip? What are the cancellation and refund policies?

It’s always on a traveler’s mind whether he or she is booking a flight, a hotel or a tour. What if I have to cancel? Clearly lay down your cancellation and refund policy without any ambiguity.

9) How do I book and pay?

Finally, with all the questions answered and concerns addressed, once the traveler is ready to book, your aim should be to make the booking process absolutely seamless. The ideal way to do this is through an automated booking process - user picks a departure date, fills in the necessary details, pays online and gets an instant confirmation.

If the nature of your operation is such that you cannot confirm a booking instantly, then put in place a system that makes the whole process of enquiry, confirmation and payment hassle free for the traveler.

Don’t ask your travelers to transfer money into your bank account. It is simply painful! Instead, give them easier payment options by integrating with a secure payment gateway.

10) And then I have 100 more questions! How do I get those answered?

So far, we have discussed generic questions that are applicable to more or less all kinds of tours and activities. On top of that, travelers may have many more questions that are specific to your tour. A good way to address these questions is to place a dedicated FAQ section for all your tours.

#tours and activities #travel websites #travel content

How we converted an MBA to a kickass developer

From being yet another engineer+MBA to a kickass developer. Ashwin has truly come a long way.

Here's the story of how Ashwin's passion, hard work, & perseverance took him through our Software Apprenticeship programme. We're really proud to have supported his journey and have him on our team.

Reproduced verbatim from Ashwin's blog:

I joined Vacation Labs in the last week of November 2012. I started a software internship coming fresh out of, you heard me, an MBA (chuckles!). Yes I followed the herd and went in to do an MBA after a B.E. CSE (Isn’t it obvious. Everyone’s doing it...)

But my real passion for what I wanted to work on began when I started looking at investments specifically in startups. Now startups are BIG in “the valley”, and the startup scene is just about heating up in India, with Bangalore in the lead. So that’s when the third eye somewhere in my head opened up and I decided, this was it.

Ha! That was easy. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to do stuff. Write code...

But how do I get there??

Most startups have limited resources. Which means they prefer people who will immediately fill a position and be productive from the get go.

And I didn’t know zilch!

How do I crack this! I approached a few startups and described my predicament. I was hungry, I was passionate, but nobody wanted me...:(

Around this time I heard about Vacation Labs, an interesting start-up based out of Goa. I looked up the team, and a few desperate e-mails here and there (masked brilliantly with some MBA bullshitting :)), and I managed to get myself an internship, which was unpaid for the first month, and if I could manage it right, a small stipend for the next 3 months...

Hey what the hell.. I get to learn stuff right. Smooth sailing! I’ll be through this like a ninja!

Well not really....

My arse was on fire in the internship! Quite literally. I hadn’t written code in two years. I was out of touch with programming concepts, with Maths, I had pretty much forgotten all concepts about web technology (blame that on that stout boring lecturer who made the subject so drab!).

Most importantly, I HAD TO DO IT..There was no giving up. I was pushed through a steep curve, I questioned myself and wondered sometimes if I would ever do it. But I never gave up. Giving up was never an option (Why? Because that all knowing third eye told me so..Seriously??? You had to ask...)

I worked harder than I’d ever known. What I couldn’t make up with my lack of talent, I tried my best with just hard work. It was tough man..Words cannot describe it..Sometimes I saw office more than I saw home, for weeks.

I faced some terrible lows during the internship. Sometimes the pressure got to me. I would stonewall against random software issues spending hours, sometimes days to solve a simple problem.

But that paled in comparison to when it finally pieced together. To put my effort into perspective, I was able to pick up at least six different technologies and complete 2 client projects, all this in the course of 3 months!

Every project I completed made me look back in disbelief at what I’d achieved. My progress and transformation was the best high I’ve ever got.

Now I’m here, a full time developer at Vacation Labs, and a firm believer, that there is no substitute for hard work, and sheer perseverance.

To all the others out there like me who struggled for months on end to find the “right” job. 3 words make all the difference

NEVER GIVE UP

The reason its difficult to find the right job is, BECAUSE its the right job. The reason IT IS the right job is, BECAUSE it challenges you.

You push your own limits. You question yourself and eventually learn that, YOU CAN DO IT.

If I had to go back in time and make a choice, for an easier job, I’d take this job all over again.

Why? Because my all knowing third eye told me so ;)

#software #internship #apprentice

AngularJS - How to get a directive and controller to "talk"

We've been building Single Page Apps" (SPAs) with AngularJS over the last few months and have been blown away with what it enables us to achieve. Our front-end code was a stinking pile of jQuery DOM manipulation, ad-hoc data attributes, and Handlebars templates earlier. With the super-heroics of AngularJS is has now transformed to a well laid out, comprehensible, & maintainable stack of client-side MVC code.

But this transformation happened after we wrapped our head around the AngularJS way of doing things. And on that steep learning curve, one of the areas which made us scratch our heads was how to get controllers & directives to "talk to each other". So here's a quick guide of what we've learnt so far. Hope this helps others climbing the AngularJS hillock.

Shared objects

The simplest way to get a "two-way communication" between a controller and a directive is to set-up a shared object between the two via an '=' scope binding. The controller & the directive, both, can set-up watchers on the shared object to be notified of changes to it, and can thus use it as a way to communicate with each other.

Services

Another way to get controllers & directives to talk to each other is via services. However, the biggest difference is that services are singleton objects within a module -- ALL instances of controllers and directives injecting the said service will share the SAME single object.

Services make a good use-case for sharing app-wide data with all the instances of a directive. For example, if you need to display monetary/currency amounts at multiple places throughout your app, with the currency & precision being a configurable setting (via another form, which is part of the same SPA), a SettingsService would be an ideal choice.

In the sample code below, ALL instances of the currencyDisplay directive "talk" to the SettingsController "via the" SettingsService. In other words, ALL instances of the currencyDisplay directive share ONE SINGLE object with the SettingsController, i.e. the SettingsService.

Ampersand bindings

You've probably used these little beasts extensively with ng-change & ng-click without much thought. Basically these enable the directive to "notify" the controller by executing a piece of JS (generally a function) in the context of the controller's scope.

A possible use-case is where the look & feel of a directive needs to be consistent across multiple instances of the directive, whereas the response to certain external stimuli (eg, clicking the "next" button, clicking the "save" button, etc) needs to be different.

For example, we've used this technique extensively for an in-place editor that we built for internal use. Notice that the directive copies the value of the model passed to it into new_model and uses that as an ng-model for the input box. The controller updates the value of the model only if the remote AJAX call succeeds. This prevents the on-screen UI from changing if the value has not actually changed in the backend.

Keep in mind that you can't pass arguments to an ampersand-binding like you would with a normal function call. This is because an ampersand-binding is NOT a regular function, it's a function which wraps the expression that is passed to it. This enables you to pass bare expressions to the binding without necessarily declaring a function.

For example you can do something like:

And invoke the onChange binding like:

scope.onChange({'new_amount' : amount_from_directive});

Events

The advantage of using events over shared objects is that events let you communicate across scopes. Using scope.$broadcast() the directive can communicate "upward" in the scope hierarchy. Any controller "above" the directive's scope can listen to the event and, thus receive notifications from the directive. On the other hand, any controller can use scope.$emit() and push notifications to a directive "lower down" in the scope hierarchy.

We ended up using events to get controllers & directives to talk to each other while implementing keyboard shortcuts for an SPA. jQuery's keypress event is bound to a particular DOM element, which means that if a keypress happens when the focus is within the DOM element, the event handler will be fired. If you require keyboard shortcuts to work throughout your app (irrespective of where the focus is), you need to register the jQuery event handler either with body or with a container div high-up in the DOM hierarchy. This can easily be done via a custom directive. However, the controller which needs to react to the keyboard shortcut could be anywhere in the scope hierarchy. How does the directive "notify" an interested controller about the keypress? A possible solution is by using events, as demonstrated below.

Notice, how both the controller are listening to the same event and performing different operations whenever the event occurs.

An alternative solution could be via creating a KeyboardShortcutQueueService which is injected into the directive and all "interested" controllers. The directive would place a keypress event into the KeyBoardShortcutQueue, which all controllers could setup watchers on.

That's it folks! A quick overview of how to get directives and controller to communicate in AngularJS. Hope this is helpful for someone.

#programming #javascript #angularjs

48 Hours. 4 Coders. 1 Awesome Web-app. The Ruby Hackathon Roundup.

Last month we hosted a Ruby Hackathon over the weekend. We had a truckload of applications from college students, working professionals, college professors (!), and one application from Gujarat! We weren't geared to host such a big & diverse crowd.

So, we stuck to the plan and and picked 4 bright college kids, who had programmed in C/C++/Java earlier, but were otherwise completely new to Ruby.

And here's what they built: ShareMyCab

We're extremely proud of what all of us achieved here. A bunch of college students, completely new to Ruby, put together a working app that actually solves a consumer problem. In less than 48 hours!

About ShareMyCab

Most hackathons build something academic, like an API client for X in language Y (where X is one of Twitter, Facebook, Imgur, etc. and Y is one of Clojure, Erlang, Go, etc.) We didn't want to do that. We wanted to take a shot at solving an actual problem -- something which could possibly get used in the real world. (And obviously something that we could finish in 48 hours).

With our experience of flying in & out of Goa, Hyderabad, & Bangalore), ShareMyCab was just the thing that we needed. A way to discover other travellers landing at around the same time & taking a cab to around the same place as you. So that you can hook-up and split the cab fare. Save money and meet interesting people.

The 48 Hours

Here's a lowdown on what happened during the 48 hours...

Day 1

Six intense 40 min sessions around Ruby, following by programming exercises.

Discussing the ShareMyCab app and all its moving parts.

Dividing the work up into four chunks, one for each participant:

Ruby class to model a trip & take care of DB persistence

Functions to take a trip object, figure out matching trips, and send out notification emails to users

Plumbing between the form, the trip model, and the trip-matching code (the controller)

Autocomplete for the drop-location built in Ruby on top of the Google Places API

Code, eat, sleep (repeat)

Did we mention dinner over a movie? ( Pirates of the Silicon Valley)

Day 2

Traditional Goan breakfast from Bhonsle Cafe (bhaji-pao from Bhonsle Cafe)

Frantic coding till lunch-time

Assembling all the moving parts

Live-editing the bugs on a projector screen

Spontaneous applause & cheer when the app finally started working!

Post processing

Last week, we spent a day cleaning up the code & UI, removing some SQL injection bugs & hard-coded passwords from the code, and pushing it to Heroku.

In fact, the Friday before that, one of the participants came down to our office to fix a pending bug in his code. Talk about being code-kicked!

And voila, you have ShareMyCab Built by 4 complete newbies in Ruby under 48 hours.

The technology stack

Ruby, Sinatra, Postgres, jQuery, HTML, CSS, Javascript. Code on Github. Deployed on Heroku.

Hat-tip

A hat-tip to our friends over at Beard Design for designing the mockups for ShareMyCab. You guys rock!

A big thank you to Bhagyesh, Vandita, & Ashwin for all the running around in making the event happen.

And kudos to Tanay, Ankit, Rajdeep, & Shanker for braving the 48 hours and building something awesome. Way to go!

#ruby #hackathon

![](http://media.tumblr.com/ae85261eb1f4798d2842132fe6e1c690/tumblr_inline_mkxi2nRxvI1qz4rgp.png) Brilliant creative by [AdRoll.com](http://www.adroll.com) — a re-targeting platform for online ads. It gets the message across AND demonstrates their product! PS: I had visited their website to research something on Facebook re-targeting.

#quickie #online-marketing

An Unpluggd Demo - Quantified!

Getting Shit Done! | Create infographics

If you're interested, the data for the graphs was pulled directly out of our git repository using [this shell script](https://gist.github.com/saurabhnanda/5345025)

#unpluggd

Spotted this awesome comeback from MakeMyTrip. Context: Cleartrip's obvious and tad [unoriginal dig at MakeMyTrip on April Fool's Day](http://blog.cleartrip.com/2013/04/01/goodbye-white-space/)

@mkshitij @cleartrip Oh we loved it,usually once we acquire smaller companies,we like them to keep a similar UI as ours #clutterflutter

April 1, 2013

Now, why didn't they respond with a "public release" on their blog on 1st April itself? Would've been hilarious!

#random

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Vacation Labs Blog