In 2012 I helped my wife to launch her little travel agency in a mid-sized city in southern Brazil. Obviously eCommerce was already in place at the time, but we truly believed more in the physical high-level service for specific niches by that time. She didn’t want to focus on the digital.
Today, my wife is not there anymore, but the agency is. Did it grow? I have to say no.
Did they invest in Ecommerce afterward? Nope!
Are they willing to? I don’t know, but this exactly my point here. I’m not here to talk about that agency itself.
So, why am I telling you this?
It’s been 4 years since we moved from Brazil to Spain and my wife left the agency. During the pandemic period, we were discussing what she would do if she was still running that business.
What would we do differently?
It’s clear that considering the situation with the whole tourism industry – added to my expertise in eBusiness – as a husband, a daddy and a lover, I would definitely recommend her to go for eCommerce once and for all.
Why eCommerce is allied with the tourism industry?
It’s easy to answer that question. All we have to do is take a look at the numbers and its advantages.
According to the latest study of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), more the 50% os the total number of global tourists have European countries as destinations (France, Spain, Italy, UK and Turkey are the top 5 most visited ones), and this number will keep increasing by 1,9% yearly until 2030.
We all know that Coronavirus has decreased these indicators, but I’m leaning to believe that this is temporary and that once everything turns back to the new normal, people will still travel and enjoy new experiences.
Also, as the tourism industry grows, the eCommerce industry also grows. The European growth expectation for 2020 is 13%. This is 1% higher than the previous forecast, due to Coronavirus.
Some countries simply doubled their online sales during the pandemic.
So, if the tourism industry is trending to grow and eCommerce sales do not seem to slow down, why not add useful to nice?
How tourism players may benefit from eCommerce?
1 – Start small and scale up without heavy investments
If you are a travel agency facing high physical costs and lowering profits, the eCommerce allows you to increase them without the necessity of expanding your space or hiring people. You can start with one or two resources and simple digital infrastructure.
Also, implement digital marketing, try new products and ideas can be very affordable and effective, and your digital infrastructure can easily be improved according to your scalability.
2 – Extend your market reach 24/7
If half of the world is connected to the internet, why keep digging in a tiny geographical area? Have an online sales infrastructure means that you have more the 4 billion people to sell to.
Besides that, most of the time you don’t even need to spend your time talking with your customers. To go even further, your customers can purchase from you any time of the day, whenever it’s more convenient for them.
Also, if you are like me, I don’t want to wait for the next day, take my car and waste my precious time displacing me to a physical place to collect information and perhaps even don’t like it. People want it now and quickly.
3 – Discovery
When you have an online presence, it becomes a lot easier for your target customers to find you and know your products and services.
If you are good at explaining and showing what you are selling, you can definitely sell the same products several times with only one single speech. Enhance your customer experience.
4 – Marketplaces
Increase your sales performance by connecting your products with other platforms or bringing other products to yours.
There is out there a lot of online marketplace with several sellers and vendors offering products listings, in exchange for some fees. Read: commission. By the way, you can use a Marketplace to sell your products by having your own website.
Marketplaces help sellers and customers to find anything and in the same conditions, helping with visibility, management and even SEO.
5 – Payment and Safety
When you have a good online infrastructure or sell through marketplaces, there a lot of advantages in terms of payment and safety.
For your customers, you can provide a lot of different payment options, which will surely increase your sales conversion. For you, there is a lot of safety layers that payment services can assure.
If you participate in the tourism industry, whether as a hoster, operator, consolidator or agency, and still don’t take advantage of online platforms to make transactions and increase your sales, my advice is that you start looking for more information about how you can develop your digital ecosystem now.
As a matter of fact, have in mind that a native digital consumer generation is coming and a lot of studies predict that the eCommerce industry is entering its Golden Age in the next 10 years.
Don’t stay there just waiting for a new client to enter by your office’s front door.