Fiji Hotel Chain Provides an Alternative to Packaged Tourism – Travel
Fiji Hotel Chain Provides an Alternative to Packaged Tourism
Elain Barrett-Power
The owners of Fijis largest budget accommodation chain have decided to counter the burgeoning bus and package tour trade by refocusing on the independent traveler.
With more and more visitors being booked onto pre-arranged itineraries straight off the plane in Nadi, Cathay Hotels Fiji Limited has made a conscious choice to do things a lot differently. Theyre betting on the market niche of those who prefer to make their own decisions about where to go and what to do.
Guests at their flagship property, Tubakula Beach Bungalows on the Coral Coast, an hour south of the international airport, have cooking facilities built into their units, relieving them of the need to purchase pricy resort meals. In keeping with the laid-back atmosphere, there are no TVs, telephones, or mini-bars in the rooms, although these are readily available in the main building, where theres also an inexpensive restaurant serving tasty local-style food.
The lagoon in front of Tubakula has been identified as a suitable nursery site for corals, and re-planting has begun. According to Cathay Hotels Fiji general manager Elain Barrett-Power, "Tubakula Beach Bungalows has long had a policy of minimal interference with the natural marine and coastal environment and does not offer tourist-oriented watersports in the lagoon; this means that the corals will be able to re-generate undisturbed."
At the Saweni Beach Apartment Hotel, north of Nadi Airport, the 12 one-bedroom apartments have been fully renovated with new beds and modern kitchens. This quiet property will appeal to mature travelers or couples and families in search of a peaceful retreat. As at Tubakula, starting prices are in the US$50 range, and theres a 10 percent discount on stays of a week or more.
Close to Saweni, the Cathay Hotel in Fijis second city Lautoka is a good alternative to the tourist ghettos of nearby Nadi. Lautokas bustling market is wonderfully picturesque, and there are countless eating and drinking options around town. Rugby players from all over Fiji come to compete at Churchill Park behind the hotel, and to prepare themselves for careers in international sports. Hotel guests can watch the action from the hotels lounge bar, and maybe meet a few of the future superstars, many of whom will be staying at the hotel. Rooms at the Cathay are budget priced.
In Fijis capital, Suva, Cathay Hotels Fiji operates the venerable South Seas Private Hotel near Albert Park. The floors of this backpacker institution have recently been sanded and polished to reveal the original Oregon pine timber flooring imported in the 1930s. Colorful canvas awnings are being fitted across the front of the building to provide additional shade and add ambience of this historic property. According to Barrett-Power, "South Seas has long catered to independent travellers looking for the real South Pacific, and we continue to resist the trend towards the package and coach tour circuit." As usual, South Seas guests have access to full cooking facilities, and the gamut of accommodations ranges from low budget dorms to simple but spotless rooms with fan.
About The Author
Cathay Hotels Fiji is a locally-owned company which operates the Cathay Hotel, Saweni Beach Apartment Hotel, Tubakula Beach Bungalows, Travel Inn, and South Seas Private Hotel. Their rates are non-commissionable and sold direct to the travelling public. They offer you clean, comfortable, and unpretentious accommodation, friendly staff, terrific locations, and excellent value-for-money rates. Visitors preferring more upmarket or full-service hotels will not find their properties suitable. Detailed information on all properties, including discounts and special offers, is available on their website http://www.fiji4less.com and in Moon Handbooks Fiji http://www.southpacific.org/fiji.html
cathay@connect.com.fj
Marketing Tourism Online, Part Two: Attracting Visitors to your Website – Marketing
Marketing Tourism Online, Part Two: Attracting Visitors to your Website
Bryan Wilson
This is part two of an article series which will introduce some basic strategies, considerations, elements, and techniques for marketing tourism products online. We plan to update and refine these articles as situations change and when we have new knowledge to present. If you have comments or questions, or you are interested in Leave Homes travel marketing consulting services, please visit www.leave-home.com or contact the author directly. You can also request to be notified when a new article in the series is available.
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Your site does no good if nobody visits. Put your website address on everything you produce that goes in the hands and in front of the eyes of your customers, distributors, and other audiences: in your email messages; on your brochures; on your letterhead; on handouts at presentations; on company vehicles; etc. Mention the address when you are speaking with potential customers and in audio communications.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Optimize your website for indexing by search engines, and above all, get other sites to link to yours. Most of the popular search engines, including Google, base their rankings on key word and phrase relatedness to the search and the popularity of your site as measured by the number and popularity of the sites that link to it. Youll usually need to be in the top 20-30 results for the most important related search terms to really benefit.
The other major determinant in search engine ranking is the amount of content on the site that matches or approximates the search terms...so, a site with more content is likely to be ranked higher.
Make sure search engine "spiders" or "robots" can crawl through your pages follow links to all the pages on your site. If your site is built entirely in Flash or another multimedia plug-in offfer a plain HTML version!, or generates most pages dynamically, you will need to take special steps to ensure that your site can be indexed.
Get your site listed and linked in portal websites covering tourism sectors, destinations, and lifestyles related to your offerings--generally, for free. Trade links with related sites. These activities not only help with search engine rankings, but will be a source of visitors by themselves.
There are many factors that affect rankings, and they are weighted differently by each engine. Despite these differences, you will be on the right path if your site has plenty of content that contains the search words or phrases your customers will use, if you include key search words and phrases in the page text and in the TITLE tags in your HTML pages, and if you can get a few dozen pages on related sites to link to your site. It can help to bold or italicize some of the main key phrases in the text of your web page and to put them in heading tags , etc.
Generally, you do not need to bother resubmitting your site to the major search engines once you have done this for the first time. They will continue indexing changes to your site as they are made. Check your site access logs--youll see that their robots keep returning to your site! It may not be worth your time or resources to keep returning to some of the minor engines that are slower to update without your involvement, unless they are important to a target market! The major ones are used worldwide and have multiple language versions.
Consider buying pay-per-click advertisements in popular search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Youll never pay more than you specify per click and per day, and these can be very effective while you are still working to build a search engine ranking that puts your website on the first page!
BEYOND SEARCH ENGINES
Include tools on your site for visitors to tell others about your website, products and destinations! Consider using electronic postcard tools or offering subscriptions to free email newsletters which should, of course, contain links to your site!. The topics of email newsletters and multimedia tools will be covered in subsequent articles in this series.
Consider writing articles for submission to Web article banks, sites which offer free articles for use in websites, email newsletters, and other communications You may be reading this article via an article bank submission!. In return for use of your article, you receive a listing of your name and company and a link to your website. This can also be a good way to establish yourself or your organization as an "expert" in your field or tourism domain.
Also consider frequenting relevant Usenet discussion lists e.g., rec.travel.japan and Web-based bulletin boards, or joining email discussion groups, to offer advice in your area of expertise or about your destinations. Dont spam and do follow their rules of "netiquette", or online behavior. Do include your Web address and a short business description with your "signature" at the bottom of your responses. Not only will you attract visitors to your site, but youll learn about the concerns and interests of potential customers. You can incorporate questions paraphrase or attribute and your answers into an FAQ Frequently Asked Questions section on your website!
Paid Web banner advertising can be cost-effective if properly targeted and timed, and if the message is right. The same holds true for ads in print and other media but these are outside the scope of this article.
IN CONCLUSION
There are many techniques for attracting visitors to your website. Make sure you cover the technical basics like search engine optimization, but dont focus on technical tricks or spam methods--you may be removed from search engines and turn away potential customers. Offer quality content, find online partners to share links, and be a bold online networker!
The next article in this series presents guidelines for the creation and use of websites.
Seattle, USA; August 2004
About The Author
Bryan Wilson is a travel marketing consultant and partner in Leave Home Productions. Leave Home Productions provides marketing services and tools to tourism-related businesses and organizations. Our clients benefit from strategies, tools, and creative concepts developed to clarify their needs, make use of their resources, and help them achieve their goals. We specialize in promotions, online communication, distribution and the creation of multimedia and Internet tools. Leave Home also supports marketing with traditional media formats and personal communication. We work to develop solutions that support healthy growth for our clients business and sustainable tourism for the host communities and environments.
Leave Home, tourism marketing consultants
http://www.leave-home.com
bryan@leave-home.com
Marketing Tourism Online, Part One: The Basics – Marketing
Marketing Tourism Online, Part One: The Basics
Bryan Wilson
This is part one of an article series which will introduce some basic strategies, considerations, elements, and techniques for marketing tourism products online. We plan to update and refine these articles as situations change and when we have new knowledge to present. If you have comments or questions, or you are interested in Leave Homes travel marketing consulting services, please visit www.Leave-Home.com or contact the author directly. You can also request to be notified when a new article in the series is available.
OPPORTUNITIES AND ROOM TO IMPROVE
While most tourism organizations are by now familiar with the Internet, far fewer have really gained an understanding of the technologies, new resources, new communication opportunities, and the requirements that they represent. These tips and explanations should prove a useful introduction.
While new technologies provide new opportunities, they dont change the basics of marketing: people, product, price, promotion, and distribution. Know your target markets, understand their purchase decision processes, and offer them the right product, at the right time, for the right price--and correct your course continually.
SHAPING THE PURCHASE DECISION PROCESS AND THE TOURISM EXPERIENCE
Your online communication with customers can be used to shape outcomes in the following circumstances and stages, in relation to a potential tourists purchase decision and tourism experience. Good communication can:
Build awareness of a product or destination, and reshape existing perceptions;
Generate interest;
Provide information to turn interest into desire;
Transact the actual purchase or series of purchases;
Provide reassurance of a good purchase and offer preparatory information for the actual tourism experience;
Continue to provide information, shape perception, and improve the experience during the tourists journey;
Aid and deepen memories after the tourism experience;
Build upon your relationship to your customer, to add value for both you and the tourist; and
Encourage referrals and generate repeat business.
There are different goals to achieve and appropriate methods of communication for each of these circumstances. Adding further complexity is the fact that different people family members, friends, co-workers, etc. may be involved and have varying importance at different stages of one purchase decision!
IN CONCLUSION
Despite these complexities, there are some basic guidelines which will help you communicate and market effectively online. The next in this series of articles presents advice for attracting visitors to your website.
Seattle, USA; August 2004
About The Author
Bryan Wilson is a travel marketing consultant and partner in Leave Home Productions. Leave Home Productions provides marketing services and tools to tourism-related businesses and organizations. Our clients benefit from strategies, tools, and creative concepts developed to clarify their needs, make use of their resources, and help them achieve their goals. We specialize in promotions, online communication, distribution and the creation of multimedia and Internet tools. Leave Home also supports marketing with traditional media formats and personal communication. We work to develop solutions that support healthy growth for our clients business and sustainable tourism for the host communities and environments.
Leave Home, tourism marketing consultants
http://www.leave-home.com
bryan@leave-home.com