Comprehensive digital marketing strategies for the tourism industry

Standing out in today’s saturated tourism marketplace as a tour and activities business requires more than simply sticking with what’s worked in the past. In the post-COVID era we now find ourselves in, tourists value their experiences more than ever before, putting significant effort into ensuring that every aspect of their adventure is planned to perfection.

That means, it’s on you to ensure that your offerings are attractive to discerning consumers, providing clear value, easy accessibility, and a unique value proposition (UVP in business speak). 

With 790 million tourists traveling internationally in the first 7 months of 2024 alone, there’s no shortage of potential customers in the market—it simply comes down to making sure they’re aware of what you’re providing.

Tag along as we break down what goes into building a robust digital marketing strategy in today’s tourism industry.

Understanding the modern tourist’s journey

With modern tourists becoming increasingly committed to planning the perfect experience, they’re now more likely to engage in an extended decision-making process before committing to their bookings. For businesses, evaluating each stage of this journey can reveal unique patterns of behavior and influence. 

A sound understanding of these nuances is crucial in order to capture the attention of potential customers and convert interest into action.

Travel bookings often involve a complex purchasing path

Unlike impulse-driven purchases, travel-related bookings typically involve considerable research, planning, and comparison. In fact, many bookers will spend weeks or even months exploring destinations, accommodations, and activities, while considering tourism blogs, review sites, using AI platforms, and family and friends in the process. 

Each step in the decision-making process—from dreaming about a trip to finalizing bookings—is influenced by dynamic factors like budget constraints, seasonal trends, and promotional offers.

Where to start

So what does this mean as far as where to begin and which digital platforms to utilize?

Well, your first focus should be on building a user-friendly website that’s optimized for both desktop and mobile. Your website is like the home base for all your marketing efforts, so make sure it’s easy to navigate, includes clear calls-to-action (like booking buttons), and showcases the best of your tours with stunning visuals and engaging content. 

If optimizing your website on your own is out of the question, explore FareHarbor Sites, custom-built, high-converting websites and expert SEO packages.

Once your site’s in good shape, it’s time to explore the places where tourists are hanging out the most. Social media-wise, Instagram offers a chance to share jaw-dropping photos and quick reels, while Facebook is great for community-building and event promotion. If you’re aiming for  the younger, adventure-seeking crowd, TikTok is perfect for short, engaging videos that showcase your tours in a fun way. 

The key is to start small and build your presence gradually, using each channel to connect with potential customers in different ways.

 

Key digital marketing techniques for tourism

Travelers are more frequently turning to online platforms for inspiration and planning, which has turned the digital space into a critical battleground for attracting and retaining customers. Here, wielding a data-driven and proactive approach can put you in a good position to stand out, while those simply following the crowd often fall to the wayside.

Website SEO

First up: SEO—that all-important technique that can make or break your digital marketing strategy.

Start here by sprinkling keywords that match what bookers are searching for, like “best hiking tours in Colorado” or “affordable wine tastings in Napa.” Pair that with killer content, like blog posts or FAQs, that show off your expertise and answer common user questions. And don’t forget the basics: fast-loading pages, mobile-friendly design, and snappy meta descriptions. These little tweaks make it easier for search engines—and AI—to understand your site and recommend it when someone’s planning their next adventure.

Ready to boost your SEO on your own? Learn how to effectively optimize your tour or activity website for SEO. 

Now, here’s the cool part: when your website ranks well on Google, modern AI tools that pull tourism info from the web are more likely to recommend you too. Think about it—when someone asks an AI generator for a tour operator in your area, it’s gonna look for sources that are already top-notch in search results. Strong SEO helps your business get discovered not just by people typing into Google, but also by those asking for recommendations from their favorite virtual assistant.

Social Media Videos

Meanwhile, over on social media, videos are basically your golden ticket to grabbing the attention of wanderlust-filled users.

Platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are perfect for showing off the vibe of your trips in just a few seconds. Use these videos to highlight those “wow” moments that make your tours unforgettable—like scenic viewpoints, cultural experiences, or even behind-the-scenes glimpses of your awesome guides in action. Bonus points if you add upbeat music and fun captions to keep things engaging and shareable.

It’s not just about pretty views though—social videos also help you connect directly with potential tourists. Use them to answer FAQs, introduce your team, or share travel tips that position you as the go-to expert in your area. SEO also applies to social media content, so using your caption to identify your experiences is key. And don’t be shy about user-generated content—ask your happy customers to share their clips and tag your account.

Affiliate Marketing

And what about affiliate marketing? This can be another powerful tool in your digital marketing toolbox.

Partnering with affiliates is like having your own digital hype squad boosting your tours to new audiences. This often means teaming up with online travel agencies (OTAs) like Viator or GetYourGuide or local affiliates specialized in your area. OTAs are there to promote your tours to their engaged customer bases, saving you the hassle of finding all those tourists on your own. The best part? You only pay them a commission when someone books through their site.

Through FareHarbor Distribution Network, you can seamlessly work with your chosen affiliates, and reap the rewards of additional revenue.

Bloggers, influencers, and travel websites can be big here as well. These affiliates share your tours with their audiences, often through blogs, YouTube videos, or social media shoutouts, earning a commission for every referral that turns into a sale. It’s like word-of-mouth marketing on steroids, helping you reach a different segment of bookers who might not have found you otherwise.

Programmatic advertising

Then there’s programmatic advertising.

These are like the autopilot of digital ads—they use algorithms to buy and place ads across the web, targeting the right people at the right time. Instead of manually purchasing ad space, you set your goals, budget, and audience criteria, and the system does the heavy lifting. 

For example, imagine targeting someone who just Googled “best safari tours in Kenya” with a well-placed ad for your exclusive wildlife experiences. Or maybe someone visited your site but didn’t book—programmatic retargeting can serve them a reminder ad showcasing your most popular tours.

Simply put: instead of guessing where to place your ads, you let technology do the work. This means your ads could pop up in a tourist’s Instagram feed, on a travel blog they’re reading, or even while they’re checking the weather for their next vacation spot. It’s all automatic and super-efficient, so you’re not wasting time or money showing ads to people who aren’t into what you’re offering. 

 

What goes into creating a strong tourism marketing strategy?

Today’s tour operators know that their objective isn’t to simply sell a product or service, but rather to provide tourists with an unforgettable experience. This mindset serves both businesses and customers alike, ensuring that bookers are satisfied with their purchases and increasing the likelihood that they’ll return to the company in the future.

Make sure your goals are ‘SMART’

If you’re one of those lucky tour operators who has a dedicated marketing team at your disposal—congratulations! Your job just got a whole lot easier. But, at the same time, it’s essential that you clearly communicate your objectives to these staff members to ensure all their efforts are contributing to your broader business goals.

 

Here, keeping your objectives ‘SMART’ can save you a whole lot of trouble down the line.

 

• Specific: Goals should be clear and well-defined, leaving no room for ambiguity to provide a precise focus on what needs to be achieved. For example, you might aim to increase website traffic from international tourists by optimizing SEO for location-based keywords.
• Measurable: Always include specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow you to track progress and gauge success, such as click-through rates, booking conversions, and website visits. A measurable objective could look something like: Achieve a 20% increase in organic website traffic from domestic visitors within the next three months.
• Attainable: Make sure that your goals are challenging, but still achievable given available resources and market conditions. Unrealistic objectives can lead to frustration and wasted effort. For instance, you may strive to partner with five travel influencers to generate content about your resort, focusing on European tourists, within the next quarter.
• Realistic: It’s vital that your goals always align with your current business situation, market potential, and team capacity, as overly ambitious objectives can overextend available resources. A reasonable goal for an airline company specializing in tropical destinations could be to increase off-season bookings by 10% through targeted email campaigns to previous customers.
• Time-bound: Lastly, don’t forget to establish a clear deadline for goals to promote urgency and progress tracking. Without a timeline, efforts can become unfocused. For example, a company might aim to generate 1,000 downloads of their travel app within the next 6 months through app store optimization and social media campaigns.

By following the SMART framework, you can create structured and actionable goals that not only drive performance, but also provide clear insights into success metrics.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

Carrying out a ‘strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats’ (SWOT) analysis can also be an essential step in developing an effective tourism marketing strategy. This assessment can provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your current position in the marketplace, as well as helping evaluate where you’re succeeding and areas in which you can improve.

• Strengths: Internal attributes or resources that offer an advantage, such as unique attractions, strong brand recognition, or excellent customer service. For instance, if your tour specializes in unique experiences, offering exclusive access to private, off-the-beaten-path destinations would be a key strength.
• Weaknesses: Internal limitations or areas for improvement, like inadequate infrastructure or lack of funding. For example, if your online strategy isn’t ‘clicking,’ a limited online presence or outdated booking platform could be holding you back.
• Opportunities: External factors that can be leveraged for growth, such as emerging tourism trends, unexplored markets, or favorable government policies. ‘Green’ tours, for example, might tap into rising demand for eco-tourism to launch sustainable packages and attract environmentally conscious bookers.
• Threats: External challenges that could impact success, including economic downturns, competition, or environmental issues. Given all the recent technological innovation, growing competition from self-guided tour apps and budget travel platforms might be a threat to your existing market share.

 

Advanced tactics for tour operators

As tourism marketing evolves, so do the strategies and tools required to succeed. Advanced tactics, such as leveraging economic impact reports and monitoring optimization metrics, empower you to connect with your audiences on a deeper level. 

Let’s examine how these strategies can provide you with a leg up on the competition:

Leverage economic impact reports for deeper insights

Successful tour operators frequently reference economic impact reports to help gauge audience spending patterns and the financial contributions of tourism to a destination. These reports analyze metrics, such as visitor expenditures on accommodations, attractions, and transportation, offering detailed insights into where and how tourists allocate their budgets. 

Impact reports often uncover critical financial nuances, such as the ripple effects of tourism spending on local economies and employment as well. For tour operators, these insights reveal opportunities to position their experiences as not only enjoyable, but also beneficial to the local community.

Monitor optimization metrics and adjust as necessary

To keep your digital marketing on point, it’s important to keep an eye on optimization metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and click-through rates (CTR). If you notice certain ads or pages aren’t pulling in the clicks or bookings you expected, don’t just let it slide—take a look at what’s not working. Sometimes, it can be something as simple as the timing of your posts needing a little tweaking.

Engagement rates, including likes, shares, comments, and clicks, should also be evaluated regularly. High engagement on social media posts or email campaigns indicates that the content is compelling and aligns with user interests, while low engagement signals a need for adjustments. Keep in mind that engagement will look different depending on the platform being used—the median engagement rate for tourism companies on Instagram is 0.47%, whereas it’s only 0.09% on Facebook.

 

Building relatable guest personas

In tourism, knowing who your guests are—and what drives their decisions—can make all the difference. Building relatable guest personas is a strategic way to understand and segment your audience, creating a vivid picture of their goals, habits, and preferences. 

From adventurous millennials to budget-conscious families, these personas can bridge the gap between a booker’s needs and your brand’s offerings.

How to build engaging guest personas

Developing fictional characters, or buyer personas, is a marketing method that helps you understand and target your audience more effectively—and it can be fun!

These personas are detailed profiles that encapsulate the preferences and behaviors of different customer segments based on market research and data analysis. 

For instance, a persona might represent ‘Eco-conscious Emma,’ a 30-something professional seeking sustainable tour experiences, or ‘Family-oriented Frank,’ a father looking for kid-friendly vacation packages.

By creating such personas, you can visualize your audience as real individuals, enabling you to craft marketing content that resonates on a personal level.

How to use these personas for tailored campaigns

The use of personas also guides targeted marketing strategies by helping you identify the most effective channels, themes, and promotions to reach specific audience segments. 

If ‘Eco-conscious Emma’ values sustainability, for instance, campaigns might highlight eco-lodges, community-based tours, and carbon-offset transportation options. Similarly, to engage ‘Family-oriented Frank,’ you could focus on family discounts or kid-friendly itineraries.

The application of guest personas extends to choosing the right communication channels and tones for each segment as well. For example, digital ads targeting tech-savvy millennials may emphasize app-exclusive deals or instant booking options, while campaigns for retirees could highlight leisurely group tours through more traditional channels like direct mail or Facebook. 

 

Using digital marketing to meet tourists where they are

While the tour marketing arena is dynamic and constantly evolving, businesses that anticipate and plan for these changes are often well-positioned to succeed in this increasingly competitive space. 

Serving 20,000+ organizations across the globe, FareHarbor is acutely aware of what it takes to stand out in today’s tourism industry and we’ve tailored our platform accordingly! 

Our 700 global employees are always on standby, day or night, to help you get the most out of your investment and ensure that your digital marketing approach remains as effective as possible. Highly customizable and extremely scalable to boot, FareHarbor can be tailored to fit your organization’s unique requirements and grow alongside you as your needs evolve.

Experience the power of FareHarbor for yourself by signing up for a free demo today!