Plenty of work ahead for South African tourism websites

South Africa’s Moneyweb says that the use of online marketing services by South African tourism businesses is falling far short of the potential that e-marketing offers. 

Significant numbers of visitors to the country for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ will make use of the internet to reserve accommodation, transport, tours, etc, and should the local market not begin to provide suitable websites a great deal of business could be lost.

This was the finding of Ian Kruger, Director of BlueRiverStone, a company that recently completed a dipstick research project into South African tourism websites. Says Kruger, “Online inefficiencies will hinder the growth needed to elevate our tourism industry to a similar status as that of our international counterparts.”

The research was sponsored by South African Tourism, First National Bank (FNB), the Travel Enterprise Programme and Quirk eMarketing.  Fiona Buchner, Head of eBusiness for South African Tourism, explains that the research is crucial to assist the industry to identify its current usage of online marketing, to assess how successful the current marketing is, and to plan how to take online marketing further, both with a view to 2010 and beyond.

The 100 websites were assessed against 120 metrics covering things like: finding the website, and its content and functionality.  “Things like accessibility of the site, the content of the site, the experience of using the site, the ability to do actual business online, and so on, were the things we looked at,” explains Kruger.  “In essence, tourism is all about the experience, and how a potential visitor experiences our country starts right at the beginning when he is looking for information about the destination. This is why it is so important that our tourism websites are interesting, useful, and provide for practical interactivity.  If the online experience is frustrating, we may well lose that particular tourist to another popular international destination.”

“Overall the findings show that websites are under-performing in all areas.  Essentially, most sites are functioning as little more than virtual versions of their brochures and marketing material.  This means that the full value of the Internet has yet to be realised, lying more in the functionality, connection and community elements that help build strong relationships with customers,” he says.

Some of the issues highlighted by the research are relatively easy to solve, while others require levels of sophistication that will take far longer to achieve.  Things such as having a web address that closely matches the name of the company, or ensuring that the name of the company can get a top listing on a Google search, are fairly simple improvements that can be made.  Businesses should be following the Search Engine Optimisation approach.

As regards content on sites, firms should avoid repeating marketing brochure content, since users want honest information rather than marketing hype.  Yet, a large proportion of South African tourism websites contain nothing more than brochureware.

Few South African sites offer much functionality – in essence, the sites are geared to provide information about the product or service but not much else.  Airline sites allow for transactions to take place, and this is a goal many more sites should be aiming for.  According to Pieter de Bruin, Head of FNB’s Solutions for Tourism, a joint venture between FNB and a company offering an online booking and payment system is an initiative that will assist the industry with this issue.  “Improving the online marketing of the industry is an important part of the goal of everyone involved in the industry to make South Africa a world-class destination.”

“Of great surprise to us is the fact that only 12% of the sites reviewed contain any content about the 2010 FIFA World Cup™,” continues de Bruin.  “As the National Supporter for this great event, FNB wants to assist South African businesses to benefit wherever possible from it, so we urge tourism businesses to provide content on their sites about the event, about South Africa, and so on, so that people can have some sense of the experience of being in South Africa for it.  And our businesses shouldn’t neglect to offer a similar experience to foreign travelers in terms of 2009, when we will have a number of major world sporting events in South Africa, too.  That year also promises to offer numerous opportunities for local tourist operators.”

Another element of the experience is that a website will hold a user for far longer and create loyalty if it offers connections to various other useful or interesting sites.  This is not widely offered by most South African websites.

A further important pointer for tourism websites is that access to information about rates and charges should not be hidden.  “The greater the number of steps it takes for the user to find out what he is going to be charged, the greater the risk that he will click away from the website and not come back,” Kruger explains.

At the higher levels of sophistication in online marketing, the creation of a community is a goal. This entails users being able to communicate via the site, such as through blogs. Among South African tourism websites, this functionality is almost entirely absent.

“Overall,” concludes Kruger, “the online environment is the most important marketing tool for tourism firms, yet it is still in its infancy.  As an industry, we need to focus on it immediately, so that we can catch up with the levels seen internationally.

Report by The Mole on location in South Africa