Helping small tour operators and niche agents with travel ecommerce
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Looking for opinions on writing/obtaining web copy
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Started this discussion. Last reply by Nicola Grimshaw Jul 16.
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Profile
- Do you have a website?
- http://www.luxuryworldwideholidays.co.uk
- Tell us more about yourself:
- I'm the owner/manager of a small travel agency dealing, predominantly, with luxury travel.
- Describe your travel products:
- Anything luxury! Also in the process of setting up niche websites within the luxury market such as tours, weddings & honeymoons.
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Greetings from Advent Journeys , India.
In your own continuous pursuit of excellence and distinction you will place the highest demands on your ground operator or destination management company as your partner for all land based travel services.You will want the best in quaility and reliablity , in service , efficiency & ingenuity and perhaps most important, in competitive pricing.
We take this opportunity to introduce ourselves as a complete tourism management company, involved in Promoting tourism in the Indian subcontinent.We are based with our head quarter at JAIPUR & branch offices in Delhi , Agra , Bharatpur – INDIA , Florida - USA, & LONDON-UK .
We can Guarantee you the best & cheapest prices for any trip to India or any hotel room rates .
Company is primarily in inbound luxury tours , and is currently operating a wide range of tours e.g. Cultural Tours, Adventure
Tours, Wildlife tours,Fair & Festivals, Buddhist Tours, Trekking trips, Yoga & meditation trips, Ayurvedic trips and much More.
We are interested in becoming a Tour supplier in India for your big company.Presently we are the preffered supplier for near about 1500 travel agencies in USA through onlineagency ( level field) & "International world of vacations"- www.iwvnet.com .
We would very much appreciate if you could forward us your querries throuh email , phone or Fax , so that we may send you our best deals ansd more info abbout our services so that you can judge the difference.
We also ensure your other benifits in inbound tourism at a very high degree of honesty & transparency.
Thank you & in anticipation of positive & favourable response.
Trust above is clear
Hope to meet you soon.
Sincerely yours,
Bhupendra Sharma
Advent Journeys
IN INDIA
61 ,Shivaji Nagar,Civil Lines
Jaipur -302006 Rajasthan
India
Ph No. 0091-141-2223907
Mobile No. 0091-9414024011
http://www.adventjourneys.com
IN UK
Advent Journeys
140, Ashley Cresent,
Battersea, London SW115QZ
Phone : +44-2030516303
IN USA
279 104th Avenue
Treasure Island
FL 33706
(USA)
US/Canada TOLL FREE - 1-800-871-0345
The site seems to have gone all quiet!!! Anyway I wanted yr advice. I have been soaking up the sales blurb on Keyword Elite. Of course the vendor says this is the best thing since sliced bread but I must say it seems to be pretty good. (Your opinion??) Also how do "adwords" things work?
Cheers
Tom
Appreciate a bit of advice. Aside from other things we are putting together we are setting up a "white label" site which is a general travel site (Flight bookings, hotels hire cars) This is one where THEY take the money and we get our commission which in this case is our requested markup. What percentage markup is sensible on a) flights b) Hotels
These are just normal flights not low cost.
Thanks again for all your advice
Tom
That is really useful - I really appreciate the advice. You are absolutely right re the web site - it is still in the early stages and we are developing sample itineraries with indicative costs as we speak! We will also be adding an area where clients and agents alike can download fact sheets on accommodation, guides to areas/regions and other basic information per country. As you say, it's never ending!
Anyway, thanks again for your help - if there's anything I can help you with in return, just shout.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Charlotte
I would definitely recommend trying ppc - I have never used any other method of marketing. I've not used it more recently as I have built up my client bank from there and now I no longer need to advertise :-) although I will be doing to start up the tours website (and also weddings & honeymoons). I know it is becoming much more difficult than it once was, but you have an advantage over me in that you specialise in one area (although of course I have more keywords to choose from - I have over 50,000 although they are not all unique...). Now Google are very focused on having quality content on your site. I've looked at your site and it's good, far, far, better than mine, although I would recommend having different pages with more content for each hotel and there are also lots more things you could do - I'm afraid it's never ending!
I would highly recommend reading Brad Hill's 'Building your Business with Google for Dummies' which is a brilliant starting point; but I guess the best piece of advice I could give is try to get into the mind of your customer. What are they likely to search for? What questions do they ask when they call?
Also, do you use analytics? It's important to see where your customers are coming from and how they 'convert' into enquiries - that way you can use and improve what you are doing well and learn from what is not working so well.
From the point of view of a customer (and I know it's difficult for a specialist tour operator) I would like to see an idea of prices and sample itineraries - you can easily cover yourself by saying everything is tailormade and therefore subject to availability.
Another thing I might suggest is a blog - I have the perfect template for you which I found some time ago... I've not got quite into it myself, yet, but Andrea's is www.luxurytreksandtours.com - which I think is quite a good example.
If you want to drop me an email so we can discuss further, my address is nicola@luxuryworldwideholidays.co.uk or my number is 01282 693393.
Kind regards
Nicola
That all sounds great. Richard Russell is the "boss" (formerly manager of Definitive Africa) and will gladly speak to yourself and/or Andrea when you're up and running. He's a member on here too if you want to contact him.
Thanks v much for the offer of some SEO advice - it is an alien concept to me - steep learning curve!
Hope your year-end has gone well and best of luck with your new venture.
Best wishes,
Charlotte
Sorry I didn't respond yesterday - was hectic becuase of end of month!
Although I like to maintain my independence and will book whatever I belive is in the best interest of the customer, I much prefer to deal with small operators :-) It's nice to see you are based in the North, too. Your products would particularly appeal to our target audience for www.luxuryworldwidetours.co.uk; Andrea Wren who will be operating the site when we fully launch it lives in Manchester. I'll 'introduce' you when she gets back from New York - I bet the first thing she will ask is if you do educationals... She is also a journalist in her spare time!
Before we could do any business I would have to get you approved by the Freedom Travel Group, although I'm sure that won't be a problem as you are ATOL bonded.
I'm also happy to talk to you about SEO as I have turned into a real geek over the last couple of years!
Kind regards
Nicola
Nice to "meet" you on here - membership is growing!
Just by way of introduction, we are a small specialist Tour Op specialising in all things Africa. We deal with independent agents and offer excellent commission. I can happily put you in touch with a couple of agents who use us for all their Africa products should you want to check us out. Just thought I'd say "Hi" and feel free to contact us if you ever wish too.
Best wishes,
Charlotte
PS - your knowledge of SEO and Internet marketing way exceeds mine, so I may be coming to you for advice on that in the future!