| A former editor in the UK once said to me Granada
might be one of the most beautiful cities you've seen but who
wants to go to Honduras?
I said well, perhaps a lot of people if they knew about Granada.
I told her Bocas del Toro was fantastic, we should do it. She
said what's there? I said absolutely nothing. She said can't
you find somewhere to write about people actually like to visit?
How does a country or a region get to be a successful tourism
destination in the first place? Central America, which has enormous
untapped potential has not done too well within the confines
of traditional travel marketing. The traditional travel marketing
model is designed to sustain momentum in destinations that are
already established, it defines success in terms of visitor
numbers and generated revenue. The yardstick of success is the
density of the sort of things lots of visitors need - lots of
hotels, services, restaurants, infrastructure...conference facilities,
wheelchair access, air-conditioning, electricity, shops. Highly
developed is good, undeveloped is bad. Places are ranked up
and down that scale, compared to first world destinations, judged
by criteria which - in the case of Central America - are completely
inappropriate, and found lacking. The hotels aren't so big,
the service not so good, the sand not so white, etc. The shops
are better in Paris, the roads are better in LA, there's more
jetskiing in Barbados!
Once a country has a lot of stuff, there's a sort of promotional
momentum. Once you're in, you're in. Disneyworld, Cancun, Ibiza,
Marbella, Hawaii - successful tourist destinations, commanding
a lot of editorial coverage. When you're out, you're out. Siberia,
Paraguay, Surinam, Chad, Guinea Bissau - fascinating places
but not hugely successful tourist destinations.
Central America has bent itself all out of shape competing
by pushing and promoting its amenities and facilities and downplaying
its natural resources, even destroying them - in an attempt
to tailor development to suit the success criteria of the old
marketing model. The ill-fated Papagayo mass tourism project
in Costa Rica - the classic ecotourism destination - is a good
example.
Advertising hasn't so far created a picture of the region
that is representative. How can it? Only a small percentage
of hotels per country have been capable of paying to advertise
in media that gives them high level international market penetration.
When Honduras is represented by one ad and the Yucatan by twenty,
the reader inevitably thinks the Yucatan has more to offer generally,
not just in terms of hotels. Advertising highlights a specific
business then, to diminishing degrees, the immediate surroundings,
day trip destinations and perhaps, space and money allowing,
a little something about the country in general.
This way hotels become the attractions and the rest of the
region fades into a murky confusion of intangibles - too beautiful
for words, too complex to imagine, too diverse to mention .
For want of better information people get the impression it
is probably dangerous.
What sets the countries of Central America apart is what they
don't have. The pluses are the very things that the old marketing
calls negatives - the lack of infrastructure, the lack of people,
the remoteness, the vast areas of nothing but forest, nothing
but mangroves, the miles of empty beaches, the rustic ecolodges
with no phones.
To fulfill tourism potential it is necessary to turn the old
travel marketing concepts upside down, inside out, back to front.
To promote tourism businesses yes, but in context, to make people
see beyond them to the region, the countries, the lifestyles
and resources, to educate, interest and capture a new market.
To establish new value criteria, evaluate destinations in terms
of the quality of experience they offer and to underline the
fact that it is the natural resources of the region that are
its primary strength. To promote commercial and non-commercial
attractions to millions of people around the world at very little
expense.
And that's all possible on the Internet. It is hard for people
involved in the Internet to talk about it without sounding like
Amway salesmen. The Internet really is changing the way we live
and the way we work in ways no one could have dreamed possible
just five years ago. It is a revolution comparable to the invention
of the printing press. It makes the telephone look like two
tin cans joined by a piece of string - actually that's essentially
what mine is during the rainy season. It's the fastest growing
communication media ever. The World Wide Web grew a staggering
1758% in 1994 alone and doubles in size roughly every three
months.
The Internet is a network of computers that allows more than
53 million people from China to Chile and Australia to Italy
to access webpages - like magazine pages - filled with curry
recipes, jokes, Latin American literature, descriptions of who
wore what at the Oscars, tours of the White House, the Tokyo
yellow pages, business reports, island real estate, secret scientology
documents, lists of missing persons and medical breakthroughs.
They can shop for chocolate, for cars, for books and CDs,
for cheap flights and exotic holidays. They can join a live
on-line chat session with people living on the other side of
the world, or on the other side of the street. They can ask
questions or post announcements and information on any of the
thousands of bulletin boards and news groups which exist to
bring together people with common interests.
Its a central sorting office for information generated by
scientists, researchers, analysts, writers, conservationists
from 152 countries. It's a tool whereby small projects in distant
places can be amalgamated into forces to be reckoned with. It
is an immeasurably large educational resource, a virtual classroom
for schools and universities around the world.
It's estimated that at the current rate of growth, by the
end of the century there will be more than 100 million Internet
users around the world. With new technology like high-speed
cable modems, secure data transfer and others too numerous and
too incredible to mention, that estimate could look ridiculously
low as we approach the millennium.
There are users who look for information and services that
provide it. There are already over 10 million US businesses
listed in the World Wide Web yellow pages. There are approximately
22,000 travel websites representing small hotels, major wholesalers,
International airlines and dive boats.
All businesses use the Internet in one of three ways:
1. As an online storefront: Literally a smorgasbord - display
of products and services which Internet users can purchase electronically
by typing into an online order form and sending the information
by email. Some very functional, some exciting
2. For presence. Generally an online show of strength. Don't
exclude us. We're on the cutting edge too! Often showy, incorporating
a masterful display of 3D effects and animation
3. Promotional content: image development, complementary information,
soft sell. Roughly equivalent to advertorial.
Internet users use the Internet in the following way:
90% browse and explore
55% collect information on products and services
Around 16% shop online. This figure is expected to rocket once
online credit card transactions are made secure.
According to ActivMedia, the most popular sites are high content
online magazines and newspapers. The most successful websites
in terms of dollar turnover are real estate and then travel
services.
Although we didn't know this last January when we set out
to create the Green Arrow Guide by sheer luck, we created a
web presence that combines both online magazine and travel shop.
As journalists we saw the Internet as a medium for producing
features on the parts of Central America people don't generally
hear about - Granada and Bocas del Toro for a start, whitewater
rafting in El Salvador, ostrich farms in Costa Rica, cloud forest
hiking in Honduras.
As frequent travelers, we saw the need for easily accessible
practical information on tours, hotels, rental cars, local airlines
and ferries and flights in and out of the region - tips, advice
and the wherewithal to do the things we were writing about.
We launched the travelshop, literally an online travel agency
through which some of the best tourism operators in, and involved
in, the region are able to promote their services, publish their
brochures and handle inquiries direct via email.
As an online magazine, the Green Arrow provides access to
a market that could appreciate what the region has to offer.
According to Neilson Media there are currently 53 million people
with Internet access, of which 37 million are 16 or over and
located in the US and Canada. The average user is male (66%)
in his early 30s, professional (50% managerial) and educated.
64% have at least one college degree. Average income is $66,000
in the US, slightly lower in Europe, with 25% in the $80,000
and upwards bracket. 38% travel frequently for work and pleasure
and use the Internet to plan their trips. 14% (2.5 million people)
purchased products over the Internet in the first 3 months of
this year.
Advertising on the Internet is very cheap. Green Arrow receives
in total around 170,000 accesses each month - a figure that's
growing by 30% - and charges from $50 for a full page to $100
for an online brochure. At the top end of the scale, a front
cover ad on the World Wide Web's top magazine Hotwired, accessed
250,000 times a day, costs AT&T $15,000 and at the bottom, you
can get a six line classified on a travel index for as little
as $15. Anyone can do it.
And fair: The Web offers opportunity for competition on the
"specialty" axis instead of the price axis. Which basically
means that if someone wants information on hotels in Guatemala
City, the search engine will return a list of all Guatemala
City's advertising hotels from a $5 room B&B to the Camino Real
in no particular order.
Small to mid-range businesses have never had the financial
freedom for this kind of exposure and degree of market penetration
and, not surprisingly, make up the bulk of the new businesses
on the web. If you consider that 80% of Central America's low
impact resorts, hotels and ecolodges now have the capacity to
advertise to international target markets for the first time,
the potential impact of the Internet could be enormous.
Once on the Internet, a remote ecotourism project can communicate
with its clients, wholesalers, suppliers around the world with
the ease of a US city hotel. Its information can be available
around the world, around the clock. Tourists can make inquiries
and book direct from Japan, Italy, Canada for the cost of a
local call. Of course some remote ecotourism projects don't
even have electricity and so we handle the inquiries and forward
them by carrier pigeon.
So cheap, so easy, the Internet has already become a hugely
popular medium for travel transactions. As a one site source
of information, the Green Arrow is used as a shortcut by corporate
and student travel organizations and apparently this is a strong
trend.
A recent survey of corporate travel decision makers by Air
Travel Card showed 52 percent use E-mail for their employees
to exchange information and travel itineraries with their travel
agencies. In addition to E-mail connections to agencies, corporate
travel decision- makers are beginning to use other forms of
online services to help manage their companies' travel programs.
Fourteen percent said they use the Internet to obtain travel
related information - particularly information about new destinations
and services. Forty-five percent of all respondents said in
the future, they expect their companies will purchase travel
via online services. Sixty-seven percent of those respondents
expect to be using on line travel purchasing in the next one
to two years.
On the quick and efficient front the Internet gives a business
increased generation of sales leads, easy entry into new markets
(especially geographically remote markets) and speeds up the
marketing process by the elimination of delays between the different
steps of the planning, selling, booking process.
As well as being a medium for brisk snappy business, Internet
advertising is conducive to friendly, rambling, human connections
- to developing customer relationships. Quoting from a report
by Cuneo, 1995: "This potential for customer interaction facilitates
relationship marketing and customer support to a greater degree
than ever before possible with traditional media." We receive
around 1000 inquiries a month through our online travel advisory.
Some people will start with a vague inquiry and after five or
ten emails - just one last thing - is the room southfacing?
Are there two hammocks on the balcony? How long is it going
to take me to drive from Belize City to the cayes? they've tracked
down the information they need to book a vacation that is exactly
right for them.
The ability for interaction really works well for destinations
about which there are still lingering doubts and geographical
uncertainties.
The Internet allows you to decide and define how your business
is marketed. Within your webpage, you have the space to go into
more depth about what your company offers. You don't dissipate
the impact by trying to represent a wide range of services or
have to focus on your adventure services for example to the
detriment of your honeymoon packages.
Your company can be listed under as many keywords as applicable:
A travel wholesaler in the States who offers ecotourism and
adventure in Costa Rica, Honduras and Belize will be listed
under each country and interest so that someone looking for
ecotourism in Belize will find them as easily as someone looking
for adventure in Honduras.
Thirdly, you can literally create a web, running hypertext
links between your information and other websites on the Internet
that provide supplementary or related information.
Green Arrow is linked to environmental sites like Planeta
Platica, to educational sites like AmeriSpan Unlimited and the
Discovery Channel's School, to Latin American literature sites,
to Central American newspapers and a major site on the Mundo
Maya.
But we try to provide as much travel information as we can
within the site. Thanks to the contribution of journalists from
around the region, some ministries of tourism, conservation
organizations and the readers themselves, the Green Arrow has
produced and collated information divided into sections on each
Central American country as well as special interest areas from
the Mayan world to sportfishing, ecotourism and property. With
over 700 pages of editorial it is now the single largest source
of Central American travel information on the World Wide Web-
a one-stop travel planner and travel shop. It is a place where
people can get a general picture of the region.
By using hypertext links within our site advertisers can link
to the editorial. An ad for a hotel located next to a Costa
Rican national park will be connected by hypertext links to
information on that park, the national park system and over
200 pages on other attractions in Costa Rica. It will be linked
to the in- country flight schedules. The hotel description is
supplemented by a promotion of the general destination and information
on how to get there.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Internet travel marketing
in Central America is the ability to reunite ecotourism and
the conservation and environmental protection on which it is
dependent. Ecotourism after all is all about enjoying and exploring
natural resources rather than the small hotels that are built
next to them and its time it was promoted that way.
Maybe the promotion of tourism in a region whose ecosystems
are already threatened is not ideal, but the responsible development
of sustainable ecotourism is one of the better options available.
By knitting together ecotourism and conservation in travel promotion,
tourists not only have a chance to learn something about the
rainforests they plan to visit which helps them understand and
appreciate them more when they get there, but they become aware
of the threats these areas face, the efforts that are being
made to protect them and ways they can help. By capturing interest
we can turn all casual tourists into militant conservationists!
Just joking, but travel marketing on the Internet can be a
means for disseminating a lot of information and for organizations
involved in conservation to get a message across to a market
they could never normally reach.
Of course you can just access the Internet, find an ad for
a nice all inclusive beach resort, book it and get on with something
else, but the information is there for those who are looking
to learn. Through the Green Arrow we hope to give people enough
information to open their eyes to the range of travel options
throughout the region, to enthuse them and to encourage them
to consider new destinations and options, to make them curious.
Central American travel can be the ultimate learning experience
and now on the World Wide Web its an educational journey that
can begin at home.
The name web is apt. Advertisers can run a few links here
and there and then sit like a spiders at the websites and see
what gets drawn in. For example: Someone interested in Latin
American newspapers online might click the Yucatan daily, click
for their Mayan world coverage, click from that to the Green
Arrow Guide to the Mayan World, click from that to general Green
Arrow Honduras information and click from our information on
the Bay Islands to an ad for a Bay Islands hotel. They could
feasibly make their reservation on the spot.
Of course, hypertext links also work in reverse. For example
you can access a site advertising a nature lodge, click on a
link to a locally produced handicrafts stall, go from there
to a site describing how Indonesians make their funeral boats,
Indonesian cookery, Indian curries, Goa, a virtual tour of the
Taj mahal and before you know it you've been online for five
hours and you're lost in cyberspace. It's no surprise Internet
users spend 90% of their time browsing.
But the links and connections are what makes the Internet
such a perfect vehicle for promoting travel. The process of
moving about from site to site in the Internet parallels the
actual business of traveling - surprises, choices, new horizons,
opportunities, a clash of cultures, an overload of sensory and
intellectual delights, an education and the relief of coming
home again.
Central American tourism is not about single resort destinations.
The Internet is the medium for not only giving tourism businesses
more exposure than ever before, but for uniting and promoting
all the diverse components travel in the region can involve.
It is an opportunity to advertise in context. By supporting
this cohesion and pooling resources, we can create a picture
of a whole that's more than the sum of its hotels. Everybody
benefits from the new information based form of travel marketing
that the Internet facilitates.
I hope that I have given you at least some idea of the very
real synergy that is operating here. The Internet is the new
frontier in communications. Central America is the new frontier
in tourism. The potential is enormous and the time to grasp
this opportunity is now. |
