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.

From attracting to seducing, the internet has changed tourism as well

The Internet has become the means of attraction of tourists for many “inexistent” Tourist Destinations worldwide. Places like New Zealand, Slovakia, Montenegro or regions such as Murcia or Extremadura in Spain almost did not “exist” before the Internet Revolution. They took very seriously their online potential and invested time and money on their online actions and strategies. Here below I try to will give you a different approach with 3 different methods of how Destinations could or do use the power and the potential of the internet to seduce visitors.

1. T.U.I: Traditional Uncovered Influence.

In T.U.I mode the destination gives to Thomas Cook, Thomson-Tui, American Express Travel or whoever other Big Tour Operator, lets say 3,5 million Euros each in form of “marketing expenses” and seeks ROI. This money is used by the tour operators to “market” the destination and of course to market it online since 50% of the sales of the big tour operators are now made online and almost 98% of total sales are confirmed using online tools. Thomsons-Tui for example last week was promoting Tunisia on their UK site and defiantly they were not doing it for free. If Cyprus for example is an expensive destination and Turkey or Tunisia are not so expensive then obviously the tour operator will prefer to promote an easy to sell destination than a hard one, since we are in S.H.I.T, (Stupid Hospitality Industry Turbulence) caused by real estate speculation

2. D.I.Y.O: Do It Yourself Online:

D.I.Y.O is a rather new way of attracting visitors. As all other D.I.Y methods, this requires new skills, new way of thinking, new strategy, new planning and especially lots of courage and faith in what you are doing. It works the same way as D.I.Y for plumbing. If you do not have enough confidence in what you are doing or if your skills are not yet well developed then you may end up with the house flooded. In politics flooding is dangerous, voters can punish you severely, just look what happens in the UK. Ministers fall over their chairs one after the other, but anyway that is in the UK, those things do not happen in the southern areas of the ex British Empire.

3. N.E.T: Neo-technological Effective Tourism:

N.E.T has 3 legs: The Destination, The Suppliers and The Customer all working in a team.

1. The Destination: a.k.a the Tourism Board: With N.E.T the Destination belongs to all and not all to the Destination. It needs to have proven flexibility, credibility and ability, not proven incapability. It needs to give answers online and not orders from-the-line. It needs to share valuable content and in an easy, indexable, universal and accessible environment and not hide content behind bureaucratic monsters and technological myths. In N.E.T “mood” the Destination to has a regulatory role and not a regular role.

2. The Suppliers Travel Professionals : In a N.E.T environment the airlines have online services and not online barriers, the taxis are booked online together with public transport and not “hitched hiked”, the hotels have online price parity and not online price asperity, the incoming agents are destination experts and not the destination desperates, in N.E.T suppliers practice online customer care do not customer scare.

3. The Customer: a.k.a the One who Pays Our Salaries.: The Customer is not only the receiver anymore but also the transmitter. He/She determines online how he/she wants to receive the service, he/she feels the value from home on the PC screen and he/she Pay Palls it. He/She is not scared to share and shout it loud. How does he/she does all that? By Blogging and not Blocking, by Commenting and not Complaining , by Face-booking and not Face-hiding, by Twittering and not Twisting , being on Youtube and not on Our Tube, by Trip Advising and not Trip Forgetting, by being Seduced online and not Ignored even online.

The article was originally published on the Cypriot Newspaper
Financial Mirror on Wednesday 1^st July 2009.

Libra Holidays pays older debts

Hoteliers in Cyprus have finally received payments for the year 2008. Debts Libra Holidays created in 2008 are now, after a year, being paid by the new owners of Libra.

In spring 2008 Vasilis and Aimon, two directors , from the central offices of Libra in the UK were touring Cyprus agreeing with hoteliers the final debts for the season 2008. Various hoteliers have got their money (if not all a big percentage at least) and some of those hoteliers have cancelled commitment contacts for the current season (2009) since they are afraid of a second big time bankruptcy of Allbury Travel Group. The market in Cyprus has lost all the confidence in the company run by Andreas Drakou and his partners. The financial whole created in 2007 is still too big despite that court cases were won in Cyprus. Specifically a hotelier was very surprised to see that after winning the court case the court clearing agent went to the offices of Libra Holidays in Limassol but came back with empty hands since Libra was basically a ghost company without any assets, not even the office furniture belong t them.

If you are a hotelier I would suggest you contact Vasilis and / or Aimon at +44 871 226 7838 at Libra Holidays C/o Castle House 21 Station Road New Barnet Hertfordshire EN5 1PH or email at admin@allburytravelgroup.com and try to get your money for the year 2008 and think about accepting bookings from them. In my opinion the only bookings you could accept is pre-paid bookings before customer arrival.

Quality Tourist Facilities in Cyprus

Open publication - Free publishing - More polis camping

Panic in the Cyprus Tourism Industry

For the last two week we have been hearing different and many complaints about the way Cyprus Tourism is facing the financial crisis.

1. The government blames the hoteliers for not lowering prices after the state spent 52 million Euros in measures of Tourism Support.

Well 52 million is peanuts Mr. Minister. You should be ashamed mentioning them. Make numbers and see how much is per bed and these measures are indirect. Not one cent on improving quality, only seeking mass tourism with price reductions. So I suggest you stay away from the microphones.

2. The Hotel associations calling the Minister of Finance ignorant and asking him to rectify his declarations.

Dear Colleagues, please be sensible and look back to your declarations some months ago when you have been applauding the government for the “support” they offered, oh well it was before the euro elections.

3. The consumers associations complain that prices of coffees and beers are more expensive in Cyprus than in Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Good morning gentlemen, it seems that the you have never travelled abroad, or when you do travel you do not pay for your coffees and beers. I forgot the Cypriot consumer does pay your coffees and beers.

4. This shit has hit the fan in unemployment. Hotels are laying off their staff since bookings are more than 35% down.

Hello guys, wake up, bookings could be much better if in winter instead of crying you were upgrading your services and especially your ONLINE services. Mr. Google, Mr. Digg, Mr. Blogg, Mr. Social Media and many others do not know that you even exist, so twenty million travellers that use the services of those gentlemen IGNORE YOU.

I sugest we all stop complaining and start acting. In the meantime the demand on “Karpaz” , “Magusa”, “Girne” etc is sky – high, so I would ask you to act yesterday, ACT do not REACT. The previously mentioned destinations are very well known to the gentlemen mentioned above and to their users.

ACT for tourism Sake, ACT because we will end like the show and clothing industry in Cyprus in the early nineties.

We need clean roads, we need clean and accessible beaches, we need clean archaeological areas, we need nice museums, we need friendly personnel, we need to finish Larnaca Airport, we need to regulate Taxis and get real public transport, we need recycling factories, we need to work a lot and most of the things we need to do are FREE, they cost no money.

Cyprus is the second biggest market after the UK for Cyprus Tourism

I would like to thank Sigma TV that last night brought to the screens of the Cypriots what this company (Avantless) has been saying since the 11th of April 2009.

The amazing thing is that none of the Hotel Associations or anyone sitting around the discussion table last night (Thursday 11th June) during the show called 60 minutes is an active user of the internet, none of the people who was there last night can imagine that the internet has just begun to act in the world of tourism and that is the internet today is about people and not about Information and computers.

Both hotel associations (which I deeply respect) have made any efforts to sell their hotel members online in an effective, up to date and especially profitable manner. I do not blame neither the presidents nor the managers of the associations, I just think that they need to be more informed and defiantly be more flexible when it comes to take online decisions.

Practicing Customer Scare April 11th 2009 read the full article here.