The role of the Professional Tourist Associations in attracting new tourists online

Cyprus with the two Hotel Associations, Pasyxe (www.cyprushotelassociation.org) and Stek (www.acte.com.cy )is another tourist destination where the two Associations have no presence concerning online Sales & Marketing. Their static websites which promote the activities and objectives are definitely not adequate for the development of any online strategy.

The financial dependence of the members of theAssociations upon the big Tour Operators “scares” their Governing Boards to take “courageous” decisions towards making serious steps online in order to seduce the end user.

Cost is not a matter, and the Associations know that. The websites that are officially managed by
the Associations should be the ones that inspire travel and I bring as an example the exquisite websites of the Hoteliers Association of Barcelona, Spain, www.barcelonahotels.es, the website of the Association of Small Hotels of Playa del Carmen in Mexico, www.hotelesplayadelcarmen.com , the Hoteliers Association of Costa Daurada in Catalonia, www.costadaurada.travel , the website of the Hoteliers Association in Bermuda, www.experiencebermuda.com and the so called “Association ofTurkish Cypriot Hoteliers” , www.northcyprus.net that also has a decent presence on the web.

The breakdown into regional Associations, as it happens in Pafos, gives the capability to upsell the hotels and tourist products locally. This up-selling should already be upgraded since the formation of the Regional Boards of Tourism, but unfortunately this does not happen yet. Taking as an example the Pafos Hoteliers Association, www.pafoshoteliers.com , we very quickly realise that the site is Palaeolithic. It has been built 9 years ago and is based on ancient technologies and is almost impossible to make a booking in any of the hotels listed on their online booking system.

The site is organically positioned due to its content and comes up in the first page in Google with the keywords “Hotels in Pafos”. For this reason the site receives more than 70,000 unique visitors a year (approximately 192 per day) out of which 70% are from the United Kingdom. Translating this into real money we find that the site loses approximately 2000 bookings a year of an average of 6 overnights which means 24,000 bed nights. Calculating that each overnight spends 50,00 Euro per person per day (considering collateral expenses not only accommodation of “cheap web attracted customers”) then we find out that 1,200,000 Euros do not fall into the cash registries of the Tourist Enterprises from direct customers only in Pafos the
last year.

At the Limassol Hoteliers Association (www.limassol-hotels.com) thesituation cannot be described as anything else but as an online tragedy, since they still list hotels which have been converted into offices and apartments for some years now.

The question now is, what is the role of the Professional Associations in the new era of tourism and how could they be a player in a time of crisis?. The internet offers a unique opportunity of disintermediation of online sales on both hotels and airlines and many destinations have proven it. Can we prove it as well? Where are the listeners in the boards of the associations? Have they realised that the “we know it all era” is over?

I would like to call the 2 Cypriot associations to open their wings in the new internet era and fly with the fair winds towards the end user and put their small but very important brick on the online wall against crisis.