Marketing Ecotourism on the Internet
by Ron Mader

The following essay is based on a presentation made at the 8th Annual World Congress for Adventure Travel and Ecotourism, held in Quito, Ecuador in October 1998. I have not changed my comments about the specific websites. Consider this a "snapshot" from late 1998. For a more current evaluation of internet strategies, please review the new online resource guide, Mastering the Web

During the October 1998 forum, I discussed internet strategies for travel companies and environmental groups. I also reviewed major websites, underlining what works and what should be improved. A Powerpoint presentation (available for the Mac) accompanies the following text, which will be included in the proceedings of the congress, available from the Adventure Travel Society, 6551 So. Revere Parkway, Suite 160, Englewood, CO 80111; web: http://www.adventuretravel.com

Biography

That said, I would like to offer a few anecdotes and observations.

For the past five years, I've hosted the Planeta.com website (http://www.planeta.com). Each month the site has grown in popularity. The document counter currently records more than 80,000 document hits per month. Again, all well and good, but I measure the site's impact primarily via email.

I know first-hand how promotion of destinations and services on the web works - or could work.

Travelers tell me they want the names of recommended local guides and hotels. Tourism agencies in the United States express their interest in expanding their business and promoting environmental travel in Latin America. Likewise, I hear from companies in Latin America that would like to promote their services abroad. Finally, I receive requests all the time from students who want to learn Spanish, so they can better understand this region.

In short, I get feedback all the time from travelers, environmentalists and journalists who use this medium to plan their trips, make reservations, search for in-depth features, background and contacts. Those promoting adventure tourism or ecotourism services and who do not use the internet are at a serious disadvantage.

That said, what we must explore and master is how the web differs from other media. Contrasting from television or radio, the internet promotes not a one-to-many but a many-to-many conversation. A tourism business can place its brochure online, but travelers who are disappointed with your service can also make their voices heard via usenet channels, chat groups and thousands of pages devoted to consumer travel issues.

Let's explore some of the basics, beginning with web promotion.

While individuals may have an email account, they often refuse to respond. No answers, no feedback, no acknowledgment a message has been received. The irony of this is delicious. How can you do business if you don't answer potential customers. Once the manager of an insurance company asked me how quickly he needed to respond to email. "Treat it as a phone call," I said, adding, "How long would you wait before you had your receptionist return a telephone call?" "That day," he said - surprised at his own answer, because he had been leaving - and continues to leave - email unanswered for months at a time.

When people are preparing to travel they want to know what kind of tours, accommodations, services are available. The internet provides seemingly direct contact to services that are off the beaten track. If travelers can prepare the trip ahead of time, they will use the internet to make reservations, or at least to get the phone numbers and contact info that they will use after arriving at their destination of choice.

Unfortunately, the businesses don't seem to grasp the needs of this growing customer base. When businesses do respond, the info they send usually does not answer the pressing questions: What does this cost? Can I make a reservation? What kind of tours do you offer? If it's an environmental tour, how does it benefit local conservation efforts? It seems as if I could on both hands the number of times someone from the tourism industry actually responded to a simple query. I'm usually overwhelmed with a 30-page tract prepared for travel agents that outlines each of the potential trips the company offers or could offer if there is the demand. Travel agencies may say they don't have time to answer individual requests, but if I call them up, I can get specific answers on the phone. Why are email queries different?

Sometimes when the other party has a website, I'll get a one line message to check out the site. Visiting the site, if I don't see the answers to my questions, I have a choice - either resend my original query or just ignore this business. I usually choose the later. If the business cannot provide a timely and informative response, can they be counted on for their services?

For example, last year in the research of my book, Mexico: Adventures in Nature, I asked a hotel near Cancun that was touting its environmental programs if they could be more specific. "Look at our website." I did and after five minutes, I couldn't find any details about how this hotel is "eco friendly." I rarely ask the same question twice. The hotel is not in my guidebook. Likewise, a travel agency in Oaxaca said it offered trips to the coffee farms. Please send me info! "Look at our website." I tried but the site was so graphics-heavy, I just got bored after ten minutes of waiting for all of the images to load, so I abandoned this effort and surfed to another website. Such poor website design is responsible for the criticism of the web as the "World Wide Wait."

The adventure should be the journey, not the quest for information used to plan the trip.

Improving communications

Part of the problem is that those working in the travel industry know how to create one document - a glib public relations effort. It sells an image, but little else. As travelers and writers seek out more in-depth information, this process must change.

Worse, I find that many of these agencies like to send documents as attachments to email. That would be fine if I could read the materials, but often they are the cutting edge of word processing technologies (using Word 6.0, 7.0, etc. when I am content with my Word 5.0). The result of the technical mismatch is that they send documents that come across my screen as gibberish. The solution is easy. Find out if the person wants an attachment and if so, if they can read the documents you want to send.

There is no reason why a file can't be sent via simple email, not even using a fancy attachment. If you have a business, create a simple fact sheet that you can send to those asking basic questions. Who are you? What are you offering? Do your trips run year-round? Create a series of fact sheets that answer the most frequently asked questions and take the time to respond to each query individually, adding the information from these fact sheets when it's appropriate.

If you must send an attachment to a lot of people, use the least complicated format - a simple ASCII file. If you have a website, by all means send a guide of where visitors can find specific information (individual URLs) without having to hunt for it.

Government Agencies

Organization of American States (OAS) - http://www.oas.org/
Tourism Secretariat of Mexico (SECTUR) - http://mexico-travel.com/
Uruguay Tourism Ministry - http://www.turismo.gub.uy/index.html
Ecuadoran Tourism Ministry - http://www.cetur.org

While conducting and sponsoring a great deal of research - both into sustainable development and tourism promotion, the OAS website has placed little of this information online. Nor does it let readers know what projects are currently underway. The SECTUR website seems to have everything, except that the site is poorly organized and information is scattered. Related documents are not linked in any discernible fashion. Uruguay has added content to its site only this year. Ecuador's CETUR has a colorful home page and some basic info to tourism sites, including the country's national parks. But there is nothing in-depth here, nor will you find the ministry's press releases or reports. Other vacuous sites in dire need of in-depth reports and reader-friendly content include USAID and the World Bank.

Private Businesses

Sanborns Insurance - http://www.hiline.net/sanborns/ or http://www.sanbornsinsurance.com
Bahia Tours - http://www.aventuras.com/bahia-tours/
Ecotourism Nicaragua - http://www.eco-nica.com/
Tread Lightly - http:///www.treadlightly.com/

Texas-based Sanborns is not an adventure tourism or ecotourism provider. It sells autombile insurance. But it's a good example of a commercial site plagued with serious problems. The site could be fine, except that it has not been updated in a year. The contact page is hard to find and worse, the email addresses listed no longer function. But wait... I've been looking an outdated page which their former Internet host has not taken offline. The new version is better, but for a novice user, it's impossible to tell which site to use. A good lesson here is to let people know when and if you change the address of your website.

Bahia Tours, on the other hand, offers a graphics-rich (without being too slow) and well-organized online brochure for its tours throughout Central America. Another good site in Ecotourism Nicaragua. Run by Tom Fletcher, this is one of the sponsors of my website. Tom asked for some feedback as he was developing his site and I suggested that he let readers know what the company does not offer, in this case, day tours. Anticipate responses and provide the appropriate information. Also, since his company is titled "ecotourism," the site should include basic information on how he assists local conservation programs.

Environmental Groups

The Nature Conservancy - http://www.tnc.org
The Ecotourism Society - http://www.ecotourism.org
Ecotravel Center (Conservation International) - http://www.ecotour.org

Earlier this year I participated in an online conference titled Ethics in Tourism and I wrote an essay, criticizing environmental groups for the lack of quality materials online (http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/jan98/eit/2_mader.html). Such criticism is offered in a constructive manner. After being rather harsh about the Ecotourism Society for its has limited public access to materials, this group has increased the number of reports on its website. Other groups are hampered by bureaucracy and perhaps lack of initiative. For example, Conservation International has a great number of environmental projects throughout the world, yet its website contains only a few blurbs. There are no progress reports and no evaluations of programs it's already funded. Follwing suit, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) aspires only to brochure-quality propaganda. On the TNC site, there are no local contacts nor information on current projects. The only contact information provides assumes that you want to join this organization. Shouldn't these be the groups that lead the way and offer readers in-depth research on environmental issues, particularly the projects they have funded?

Individual Efforts

Marcus Endicott's Infotec/Green Travel - http://www.green-travel.com and http://www.earthsystems.org/list/green-travel/
Scott Walker/Ecotourism Fieldbook - http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2310/
Alexis Aguilar and Derek Parent/Friends of Celaque National Park - http://www.generation.net/~derekp/celaque.html

Individuals, not government agencies or environmental groups, are well ahead of the curve and provide good content for those interested in particular regions or ecotourism in general. Marcus Endicott has created the foremost listserver and website focusing on the topic of green travel, a forum open to anyone interested in this field and a must-read for anyone interested in ecotourism with internet access. Scott Walker and the cyber team of Alexis Aguilar and Derek Parent have focused their energies on particular places. Scott's page about El Cielo, the northernmost cloud forest in Mexico has promoted both research and travel in Tamaulipas. Likewise, Aguilar and Parent's Celaque page is one of the few online promotions for rural Honduras and provides background on other pressing issues in Honduras. In terms of content, these efforts are all light years ahead of what the government tourism offices or tour companies provide and provide a good model of how the internet is being well used.

Planeta.com

Home page - http://www.planeta.com
Exploring Ecotourism- http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/etour.html
South America - http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/south/south.html

To be fair, I feel the need to confess some of the inadequacies of my own website in this forum. First, the name "Eco Travels in the Americas" sounds too much like a travel agency, which it is not. The purpose of the site is to provide a clearinghouse of information and a forum to discuss ecotourism. That said, the home page is a long document, perfect for students and researchers but not concise enough for impatient web surfers. On the plus side, the site does use a minimum of graphics and those used are rather small - meaning the site is fast loading. My chief complaint is that there are the frequent errors in web site links, as other websites die or simply change the addresses of their URLs. As an individual effort, I can make changes rather quickly, but if I don't know that there is a problem with a given link, a problem may stay online for months before being corrected.

Build from the ground up and stay within your budget

A common mistake of development funds and international conservation groups is the construction of large visitor's centers. Fine, if they are self-supporting, but many rural projects can't afford the maintenance and end-up boarded up or as impromptu bodegas. The alternatives are simple - if you want to provide an introduction to local ecology and responsible tourism, place the information at the local bus station, a restaurant or if a sheltered kiosk.

Be open to tour groups and individuals

The key word is inclusivity. The tourism industry caters to the packaged tours. While there are many good tourism providers, don't ignore the independent traveler, who will be the first to spread the word about the project's attractions or problems. Unfortunately, official tourism studies depend on statistics, which are more easily uncovered for packaged tours than individual expeditions.

Develop communications savvy

For the project to succeed, communications must be clear within the community itself and within the national and international spheres. Make sure that operations are as transparent as possible so you can avoid local conflicts. Simultaneously, connections must be made with outside contacts. Post updates on the internet, develop a simple newsletter or do both! Be inclusive, rather than exclusive in developing your contacts. In short, focus on both Online and Offline strategies.

Build a website

Regardless of whether you have or are planning a website, take a moment to consider what the goals of the site are. What kind of information do you have at hand that could share with the public? Who is your target market? What language do they speak? Be sure to explain how both independent travelers and small group tours can visit your destination. Also, for environmental groups, make a point of welcoming travel agents, who are a vital link in the chain of promotion.

Achieving ecotourism is not so much hitting a stationary target, but taking part in a dynamic process. Rather than fretting about the definition, more attention needs to be spent on the application of ecotourism. We all acknowledge that communication must be improved, among conservationists and tourism leaders within both regional and international spheres. I believe that ecotourism is not just a niche or a fad, but a model of where all tourism must progress. This should be our conversation - how do we get there from here?

I can't say whether it's because we're heading toward the end of the 20th century, or because global communication - especially via the internet - has expanded exponentially in the last generation, or whether environmental awareness has matured, but rigid divisions among groups are blurring and boundaries are dissolving. What is emerging tends toward a union of common interests. Via the net, we relate to each other by affinity rather than vicinity. And if we do travel - to the ends of the world or across town - we are seeking and demanding information key to making our journey a successful one.

Copyright Ron Mader. Permission granted to cite this article and/or to create links to its home on the web (http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/tour/web.html). For any other usage, please contact the author.

Note: For the updated version of this document, please go to: http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/tour/web.html

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