How to Recover from Tourism Disasters, Tourism Marketing TV
It was a warm summer day on Feb. 22, 2011. Up until that day, for over 10 years, Phil and Sandi Cooke enjoyed a great lifestyle travel business showing visitors the incredible New Zealand mountains and countryside by 4×4. Guests loved their trips and Phil and Sandi made a good full time living doing what they loved.
The problem is that Phil and Sandi’s business is near CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, which had a major earthquake this year.
Although there was substantial loss of life in Christchurch, damage to large hotels, many business and residences, there are also many tourism operations that were not damaged.
The media unfortunately only focused on the badly impacted areas, and in doing so, effectively cut off tourist afraid to visit Christchurch. Visitors stopped completely.
So a bad situation has become even worse. Watch this Tourism Video Now.
That’s why Phil and Sandi sent me a “call for help” email asking for my suggestions and subscribers like you, on how they can recover from this tourism disaster.
Right now or in the past, many of you, your tourism businesses and destinations have been negatively effected by wars, political instability, drug wars, crime, epidemic, corruption and …
How about recession?
None of us is immune to tourism downturns and disasters like New Zealand, Japan, Thailand or …
So what do you recommend Phil and Sandi Cooke do?
What would you do (or do you do now) if this were your situation?
Please share your #1 suggestion below in the comment box.
Join me in helping Phil, Sandi and fellow tourism professionals worldwide. In this episode of Tourism Marketing TV video, I share quick tips and solutions to help you survive and thrive in the wake of tourism disasters.
And even if you are not dealing with disaster now, I bet many of the suggestions I give you will help your travel business be even stronger in today’s uncertain world.
To your success, Tourism Tim
PS My brother Kevin’s adventure travel business in Mexico has to deal with an ongoing bloody drug war with 1000’s of drug dealers being murdered every year. In spite of this, his business and Mexico tourism are doing OK. And in some areas even better because of more aggressive marketing and PR investments, building better relationships with travel agents.
PPS Let’s help Phil and Sandi Cooke, please post your suggestion on how they can increase their sales and revenues @ Travel Business Success.com below the video in the comments box. I will collect them and share them with Phil, Sandi and you so we can all survive and thrive in the wake of tourism turbulence.
I would look at what you have as assets, in your case the vehicles and how they can be used in a different way during the recovery period. Offer tours of the affected areas or offer the vehicles to journalists for use on follow up stories. Mainly look at what people are looking for and see if you can use the assets for the short term until tourists start returning.
Great ideas Andrew.
Thanks!
Tim,
I sincerely appreciate that you are bringing a story like this to light, and asking others in your travel network to respond. I live in Mississippi, and although we weren’t in the area when the hurricane hit, the Gulf Coast was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. It was devastating, to say the least. And now there is flooding that is going to hurt lots of families and businesses.
One way to respond might be to document, with video, interviews, pictures and text, the many human interest stories that are a result of this emergency.
That documentation could turn into a web site (with lots of advertising for the local businesses), drawing attention to the area’s people and needs. It could also, if well done, turn into a downloadable photojournalist book that could be sold for years to come.
I would contact the travel editors and small business editors of major newspapers in the USA and ask for coverage of what you are doing. But, before doing that, you need to have a web site in place, so that when folks visit they find something.
Maybe choose one or two key small business projects to support through all of this effort, and publicize that. Show pictures of who will be supported, and how that support will be used.
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/hurrican-katrina-help/
That was one idea I saw.
I would also seek to create a wikipedia page on the earthquake, and if there is already a page on wikipedia, I think they should create a web site, images, info, etc., and get their link added to the wikipedia page. It would get traffic and exposure to their site and cause.
There is probably an entire small business travel niche for responding to and recovering from natural disasters waiting to be developed from their experience.
If they contact me, I will be glad to put an entire page up on my site about their travel business, and they can write and share whatever they want, and I will link back to them. It is a start.
Regards,
Ray Harbaugh
Wow. Great ideas and generous offer Ray.
I think those are very innovative ideas. I hope you do it. Please let me know if you or anyone takes you up on that offer.
Keep the great ideas coming and thanks for watching and “liking” Tourism Marketing TV”.
Best, Tourism Tim
Just read a great article in the May 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review about Zhang Mei and her Wild China tour company.
It is a excellent example on how they survived, then thrived after 9/11 and SARS by becoming more of tourism business leader.
She recommends having a emergency plan in place, a team dedicated to customer service, diversified niche markets, and strong marketing.
IN fact during the recent recession, as competitors re-trenched and scaled back on marketing, she doubled down and is plowing 50% of profits into her travel business marketing and IT.
This is a very smart move because the economy will recover and she will radically strengthen her tourism marketing position while her competitors fall further back.
We are all in this together. Keep your ideas, questions and needs coming so we can work on helping out.
With natural disasters come relief efforts from many organizations across the globe. I would suggest to Phil and Sandi to target local and global volunteer organizations such as Habitat for Humanity that sponsor volunteer programs to help affected areas.
Try and link in to their programs by offering side escapes to those volunteers helping out and donate a portion of the proceeds to relief efforts. It will serve a dual purpose of both allowing visitors to decompress and see the countryside while they are helping as well as being a source of funding for the relief efforts.
Take care,
Marcelo
Awesome Marcelo;
Creative marketing, business building and “giving back”all at the same time.
Every tourism professional should be giving back in some way to their community, staff or have some cause they support. We are all in the global adventure together.
One of the non-profits organizations I support is Kiva.org They provide micro-loans and mentoring to start up and small business in 3rd world countries. I focus on helping women owned businesses and tourism. 🙂
My suggestion is to address the travellers unstated fear of being in Christchurch by including in your package/offer an airport pickup and transfer to a countryside hotel.
Our friendly team will meet you at the airport and whisk you away to the countryside in our comfortable 4X4. You will be staying…..
Gives the impression that they will not be in the earthquake affected area at all.
Totally agree Laura. And to make sure visitors even show up, I would make sure that safety and security is communicated conspiciously in their website.
SHould be on New Zealand Tourism boards site too. Just checked and there’s nothing mentioned about the earthquake and how they are helping potential visitors.
Your point Laura on “unstated fear” is spot on. All prospective visitors, no matter if it’s Christchurch, Thailand, or New York, always have some sort of unstated fears, reservations or uncertainty about their travel choice they are considering. THese fears inhibits or disable converting prospect into new sales or arrivals.
That’s why I am such a big advocate of using testimonials from happy clients to address these doubts and fears so you can increase sales and profits.
maybe directly contact with those individuals or companies that have supported your company in the past and let them know you are still up and running.
also, maybe there is a way you can tie your product in with relief efforts. people can book your tour and at the same time help with relief efforts.
Great point on re-connecting with old clients and alliances.
THis is really something we as tourism professionals should be doing always. Tourism and tourism marketing is all about relationships, in good times and bad.
Hi Tim
Not sure if this is appropriate for their business but we have managed to grow well by changing the focus of our business during the downturn and the earthquake from the inbound to the domestic market. I guess it is possible that there is a large domestic market in and around Christchurch that would like a break from the city and who can’t or prefer not to drive themselves such as mature travellers(seniors). Just a thought. Cheers Miles
Great suggestion Miles. How many of us overlook our own local market?
Everyone needs recreation and stress relief, especially after dealing with a disaster. Offering quick getaways for locals is great.
Phil and Sandi can take a look to see if our program can help them generate more business. If they can offer direct booking savings or discounts to our members they can get ‘no cost’ listed links at TheTopTravelClub.com.
We have also launched a fundraising campaign for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal under the banner… the ABC’s of Fundraising for the CEA…. Aussies for Kiwis… Brits for Kiwis….Canucks for Kiwis… you can find the info and links on our front page… tell the world not to forget about this beautiful city… cheers.
Now that is taking real action and stepping help to help. Good work Tony.
Working with and getting help from both non profits and for profits is good business all the time. And during a crisis, even more important.
Thanks Tony!
We have had dificult times and it is becoming hard to survive in tourism business in Pakistan but because of the Internet we still survive.
We book hotels for every one now, for volunteers busness people and some courageous tourists as well 🙂
Additionally we have diversified our self by offering tours outside Pakistan like Sri Lanka Dubai & Europe.
During tough times, you either adapt, learn and grow. Or you do the same old thing and slowly fade away.
Better to learn from and help each other, diversify your product, created win/win relations, create a strong internet presences and build a website that sells, as a part of normal tourism business and marketing. This is what allowed my brother and me to actually grow our eco-tourism lodge after 9/11 and increase sales during the recent recession.
You can do. I am glad to help as I can with my videos, articles and just connecting our tourism community.
To your success, Tourism Tim