Hospitality Customer Service and Tourism Marketing Success with Tourism TIm Warren

TimSells4U June 8, 2013 6 Comments

Why Hospitality Customer Service is The Foundation to Your Tourism Marketing Success

Tourism Tim Warren & Sabrina Braham

My wife Sabrina and I were having lunch last month in the popular tourist town of Ubud, Bali during the off-season. Hospitality businesses were desperate for customers.  We were the only two customers in the entire restaurant and we couldn’t get any service.  Four staff sitting around talking to each other.  I had to wave to them multiple times to get some basic service…

What’s really sad is this hospitality business had invested a ton of money in their prime location, facility, equipment, decorations, and hiring a bunch of staff. But clearly had failed to train and motivate the staff.  Although the food was okay, the terrible customer service left a bad taste in our mouth.

Can You Relate?   

How do you feel when you have bad service at a hotel, on a tour, on the phone from a service business?  Does it make you want to do business with them again? Would you recommend that business to your friends and associates? 

What if that Ubud restaurant was yours? You would be flushing your tourism business dream down the toilet.

Wake Up Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Professionals!

We are in a service business. Hospitality Customer service is the foundation of the travel and tourism business.  The inconvenient truth is way too many hospitality businesses do not invest in their customer services staff training on an ongoing basis.  Now with social media and review sites, good and bad customer service can be shared around the world – fast.

Does Your Hospitality Customer Service Suck? Watch This Video and Find Out…

One of the books I recommended all travel, tourism and hospitality professional read is “Selling the Invisible” by Harry Beckwith.  Harry gets to the heart of the connection between customer service and travel marketing.  He says, (and I have “Timified” the language a bit), “Before you send off a press release or create an ad, if your service sucks, fix it!

I get e-mails and blog comments from tourism stakeholders like you daily looking for ideas and help to improve their tourism marketing.  Yes business development and sales is critical.  But so is excellent customer service. And when actively combine social media marketing with a commitment to excellence in customer service, magic happens.

One of Your Best Tourism Marketing Investments

Customer reviews and opinions are the new foundation of tourism marketing.

According to a recent Nielsen study, 92% of global consumers trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising. Followed by 70% indicating they trust messages on online consumer reviews (i.e. TripAdvisor, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, AirBnB, etc.) as the second most trusted source.

The voice of travel consumers is the #1 & #2 influence when it comes to the most trusted forms of travel advertising.

So if great customer service creates positive “Word of Mouth Advertising” and consumer trust helps convert travel shoppers into buyer, how do you know what your clients, guests and travelers are saying about you?

You ask. And when they think you are excellent, you share it in all your tourism marketing.

Let me give the best method to use this strategy to grow your sales, booking and arrivals.

What Are Your Guests Saying About You?

One of my current consulting clients, Hamanasi Adventure and Dive Resort in Belize was the Travelers’ Choice® 2013 Winner for best Small Hotels AND Best Service in all of Central America.  This award and consumer trust is well earned because of their commitment to excellence service.  So it’s no surprise that Tripadvisor and referrals from former guests are one of the their best (and most profitable) sources of new clients.

 Combining customer service with tourism social media marketing works great! But you need to know what they are going to say about you and your service,before they share it with the world. Let me show you how.

Another client, sisters Eng & Buay who own LJ Biz provide soft adventure and cultural tours in Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar since 2004. They have awesome destinations, great tours, service and pricing. And they really needed to improve sales.  Eng bought my Tourism Marketing Success Online Program, put the program to work and inquiries and sales began to improve.

Before I started working with them, they were ranked 69 of 198 attractions, and #41 of 69 Sightseeing tours in Bangkok. Direct sales to consumer where not great. Leads from Tripadvisor (and other social media); practically non-existent. 

 SO here’s what we did that radically increased their ranking and sales.

 Simple Tourism Social Media Marketing System That Grows Sales

 We actively worked together and put in place my simple system to find out how client felt about their company and then got our happy clients to do our “selling for us”.  

 Not only in Tripadvisor, but all their tourism marketing, especially their website.

The current profitable results in 6 months are exciting!

• Ranked #8 of 240 activities (a 862% improvement)
• Ranked #5 of 66 Sightseeing Tours in Bangkok (a 820% improvement)
• Weekly Inquiries up 1200%
• Direct bookings up over 200%

What LJ Biz, Hamanasi Adventure and Dive Resort and top the most successful tourism marketers worldwide are doing to grow their business, you can too.

When you properly combine excellent customer service and positive reviews (Social Proof) with your tourism marketing, you will be smiling all the way to the bank.        

How to Increase Your travel Sales Quick and Easy Too

If you really want me to learn these simple secrets to RADICALLY improve your prospects, sales conversions and visitors, let me know. I will help.  Here are 10 things different ways you can tell me what you want and help me too on my blog post, videos, websites, on and off-line trainings:

1. “Like”
2. Google +1
3. Tweet
4. Leave a Comment or question below
5. Give me an excellent testimonial in my Linkedin, Google+ or Facebook Profile Fanpage
6. Share my website Travel Business Success.com to let me know you want this proven strategy too.
7. Buy my Tourism Marketing Success Online Program ( your satisfaction 100% guaranteed)
   
8. Refer an associate to me or my material for help
   
9. Hire me for consulting
10. Have me do a training for your tourism conference (Live or virtual)

 This will let me know you really want to learn how to increase your sales using my Tourism Social Media Sales Secrets© too. You also help your peers and me by sharing your reviews and opinions (social proof) about me, which is a reflection of my commitment to be in service to you. Thank you.

Please share in the “Leave a Comment” below. Then I can help you and fellow tourism stakeholders worldwide. Everybody wins.