Guest post by Amber
The Covid-19 crisis is sparing no one; travel websites have been hit particularly hard. It’s not the best time to travel, is it? As a result, travel website traffic is experiencing a significant slump.
Is your online travel service having web traffic problems? How about trying out some of the tips I give in this article to guide your business through Covid-19.
Many travel websites have benefitted from tweaks and more expansive changes during covid. Some strategies implemented to drive traffic to these sites involve using helpful resources like SEO forums, professional traffic providers like webtrafficgeeks, repurposing content, and cultivating a serious social media presence.
Be a Reliable Source of Travel News
People might not travel as much these days. However, once this crisis is over, there will be a race to leave the confines of home. Many travellers are already looking for tips and advice about future travel plans. If you have tried looking for this type of information yourself – away from government sites – you will have seen that much of this information is incomplete or out of date.
Strange as it may seem, many people are still stranded in foreign countries. One example is the student community – leaving home to study abroad and finding themselves locked in their dorms – like Glasgow and Manchester universities in the UK. Of these stranded individuals, a great number will want to know their travel options, especially if they are needed back home.
These people need someone to turn to for advice. And that someone could be you.
Tips and Guides for Target Travellers
If you specialise in certain groups, adventure holidays, hiking holidays, city breaks, cheap flights, you already have a client base.
While these might not be stranded – after all, we’ve been advised not to travel for leisure since the Spring – they are chomping at the bit to get away from home. You can be sure they are browsing for signs that tell them they can stop looking and start booking.
Craft your covid content specifically for your users. You don’t need to become the leading authority on global travel, but you can become the place to go for your target customers.
You’ll want to focus on things like:
- Where to go for shelter, authorisation, or assistance.
- How to access money safely.
- How to navigate local quarantine rules and adhere to protocols.
- How to find out if their jobs are secure should they become stranded.
- How to deal with situations concerning the entire family.
- How to protect kids from the virus.
- What to do if travellers get in trouble with the law.
Those are common concerns your travellers are likely to have. By authoritatively talking about them, you can bring in more traffic and help those who need it most.
Staying Safe During Flights
Even with Covid-19, people need to board flights. Essential travel and even non-essential travel has entered a new phase.
People might be allowed to book a business trip one week and be banned from traveling the next. This also applies to attending distant weddings or visiting sick relatives. And don’t forget those travel corridors that are attracting thousands of holidaymakers at the moment. How can these travellers avoid getting ill on a plane packed with strangers?
Your job is to ensure they have somewhere to go for well-researched and well-written answers.
Offer correct, up-to-date advice via social media, your website, a YouTube channel, forums, emails, and personable chats. This means you’ll have to do your research. The last thing you want to do is post incorrect information.
Explaining boarding and landing processes and ensuring traveler health and safety during flights are worthwhile topics to cover.
Relevant News and Updates
There are so many covid news sources out there, and not all of them are reliable. People tend to bookmark the most trustworthy pages and return to them again and again.
Suppose you can get the latest information published and refresh your content on time. In that case, your news flashes could get you countless social media shares, increasing both social media followers and website traffic.
The frequent official twists and turns that travellers are facing means they are desperate for reliable sources of information relevant to their type of travel.
Make sure you know very early on about new travel laws and developments. If a competitor is publishing false information, call them out, and explain why they are wrong.
Offer updated pages on regulations that haven’t yet been decided, or publish your own traffic light chart of what’s possible, what’s difficult, and what’s not allowed.
If you can offer regularly updated, clear and correct information, you can become the reliable travel news source. When travel bans lift, your visitors will be likely to convert as they will feel safer with you.
Post-Covid Trips
The current crisis might be hampering travel plans and tourism right now, but this will not always be the case.
Eventually, people will be free to travel again. Until that happens, I repeat, your visitors still need information.
The world is changing. Open a Paris guidebook from the year 2010, and half of the restaurants and hotels have changed ownership or closed down. The same applies to pre-, peri-, and post-covid travel information on the web. Make sure you can craft content to suit current and future travel, not yesterday’s.
In this case, your visitors are those already making plans to go on trips after Covid-19. They have promised themselves the holiday of a lifetime to celebrate the end of lockdown or planned a huge get-together with people outside their current tiny bubble.
Some will be health workers rewarding themselves with a little R&R after the pandemic; others will simply be catching up on plans that had to be postponed.
Whatever the reason, their questions and concerns can increase your website traffic.
Useful Resources
Even with these efforts, authoritative content needs time to spread the word and grow. This is why it is best to make simultaneous use of web traffic tools and resources.
Join travel forums to get in touch with potential visitors and drive traffic to your site. The same goes for streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch – a daily or weekly travel news bulletin can really draw in the crowds.
If results are still taking too long, incorporate paid options. Google’s paid ads and Facebook’s pay-per-click services can increase your visitor numbers. However, you will come across extensive competition within your niche. These are two of the most powerful advertising services on the net, and you will have to invest a generous proportion of your marketing budget in them. It might be worth adding other lesser-known ad services like Bing and Twitter to your online advertising options.
For immediate traffic sources, web traffic for sale providers like maxvisits are well worth a visit.
When you want the world to know you are a reliable source of information and you want them to know right now, the decision to buy website traffic is the right one. With a reputable provider, you can order tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors that are targeted for travel interests and of the age group that best applies to your service.
There’s no point inviting teenagers to your retirement cruises. You can even order your visitors according to the country of residence and have them visit over a period that spans anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days.
Boost Your Social Media Efforts
With more people staying inside, many of them are inevitably using social media more than ever before.
Shift your focus to your social media presence – this could end up becoming your biggest converting audience.
Create shorter but very informative and trustworthy posts as often and as regularly as you can. If you have a marketing department or someone who manages your website, make sure someone is allocated to your social media profile. If posting on social media becomes a habit, users will make it a habit to check your account.
Just as with your website, people on social media are looking for consistency and reliability. And just as with your website, that source can be you.
Post funny photos to lift the doom and gloom but keep your posts relevant. Ask travellers to report how easy or tough it was to get from A to B. Get locals in the areas you specialise in to write on news items from their neck of the woods.
Create enticing and engaging social media campaigns and make sure you display sufficient empathy at all times; covid hasn’t only messed up the world’s travel plans.
What makes social media especially important now is how it can show users a better tomorrow. Using high-quality images that depict idyllic vacation spots and peaceful destinations, you’ll soothe their souls and instill a more positive vibe.
Ignite imaginations and give people something to look forward to. And once travel restrictions are lifted, they’ll know where to come. Help your visitors now, and they’ll help you – by converting – in the future.
Helping Each Other
The final tip is for travel sector businesses to reach out to other travel website owners and propose a mutually beneficial arrangement. This arrangement might include sharing knowledge, invitations for guest posts or webinars, and referral traffic.
If your client base is too broad to be able to provide all relevant, up-to-date information, split the load between yourself and a similar company.
If you deal with city trips, contact local travel agents, and get the latest info for each city – not all of us can decipher official foreign-language websites. Medical tourism? Chances are you aren’t doing very well at the moment. Partner with medical centres within current and expected travel corridors and ensure you include essential surgeries in your list of services.
The goal is to throw out your net as far as you can and for your potential partners to do the same. That way, you’ll catch more interest. Just make sure your partners are as reliable and client-friendly as you are.
By creating a coalition of travel website managers and local agencies, particularly those specialising in different countries, activities, and niches, every participant can enjoy every advantage.
Draw up a list of regulations that correspond to your chosen method of operations. Anyone that asks to join or is invited to your group of similarly-minded travel services must adhere to them. In these challenging times, make sure your list includes the pillars of trustworthiness, expertise, and empathy.
Such partnerships represent a give and take arrangement where everyone wins, including the client.
While the travel sector has taken a bashing from the pandemic, this situation won’t last forever. And the future of travel is bright!
