PRESS RELEASE: Helping Australia’s Tourism Operators get back on their feet with Success Based Marketing

Australia’s beleaguered tourism operators are receiving a much-needed boost with the launch of a new service aimed at helping them market their tours, activities, and attractions without spending up-front money on marketing services.

The initiative is the brainchild of Australian digital agency TourismSolved, which was established last year by a group of tourism industry veterans who felt the existing fee-based agency approach was no longer serving the struggling tours and attractions category.

Dubbed ‘Success Based Marketing,’ TourismSolved’s on-demand service aims to get operators bookings directly from local travellers. This allows operators to bypass the costly distribution systems they typically rely on for bookings, and lets travellers book directly from the operators who provide them service.

“We obviously didn’t foresee the pandemic, but we did recognise early in 2020 that the world of travel was changing,’’ said TourismSolved partner Jeff Lewis.

‘COVID accelerated those changes, eliminating overseas tourism and shutting off bookings from the large aggregators operators had relied on for years,’ added Lewis, who was previously Technical Director at well-known global online travel agent Viator.

‘Local tourists are looking for experiences and they really want them to be unique. They’ve all seen kangaroos and koalas and they’ve also been to many beautiful beaches. To get excited about local travel they need to see the destinations from a new angle – unexpected, surprising and exciting.’

Head of European Markets for TourismsSolved, Andrew Alley, says that’s the space in which local operators can cash in. ‘No one knows the secrets of an area like a local tour operator,’ says Alley. ‘The old days of ‘experience supermarkets’ don’t apply to the new traveller. These days, experiences need to be curated for a different audience, and can be easily marketed directly by operators rather than through expensive third-party relationships.’

So TourismSolved has launched a complete marketing platform to dramatically reduce the cost of the content management and marketing required for a travel business in 2022.

More importantly for the tour and attraction operators who’ve been hit hard financially by the pandemic, the services are available on a commission-basis, with no up-front fees. So these cash-strapped businesses can take advantage of TourismSolved’s expertise without having to pay large fees before they ever get bookings.

There are three parts to the platform all available to the marketer for a share of revenue:

Local Marketing: TourismSolved is one of a few key partners for the new Google Things to do feature, and has expertise in helping operators take advantage of a number of features within Google that can help them capture local bookings – an increasingly large portion of their business.

Content management and marketing: With a team of content experts who have worked in this industry for years and a custom content management system that can help maximize traveller acquisition across Google, Facebook, and other promotional channels.

Website for mobile: The majority of local bookings come via mobile device. So TourismSolved’s ability to deliver mobile-optimized web pages, with integrated booking capabilities and all needed support, will be a boon for operators. Also in order to support the local destinations, Tourism Solved has built a platform that allows a destination like Cairns or Harvey Bay to aggregate their offerings into a package to appeal to these new consumers.

How Success Based Marketing works

Unlike the traditional agency model, where operators pay large fees for marketing services before they are ever delivered, Success Based Marketing is designed so that the operator pays a percentage of the income that is driven through the platform.

It’s a genuine partnership with the industry, effectively delivering a marketing team to the operator at no immediate cost. This ‘get bookings now, pay for them later’ approach will be critical to help in the tourism recovery here in Australia, as the ups and downs of COVID lockdowns have left operators uncertain and struggling to rebuild their businesses.

Interested tourism operators should contact TourismSolved at [email protected]