We outline some marketing tips to reduce the repercussion of coronavirus on your online sales.

As the Covid-19 has been expanding around the world, sectors such as tourism have seen how the demand for its services has come to a halt. When this happens, brands tend to react by taking hasty and often panicky measures. From a marketing perspective, the main thing is to stay calm and make rational decisions based on creating solid, long-term strategies.

Although these types of events are unpredictable in terms of evolution and scope, there are still certain actions that can be taken to minimize the already notable impact.

Promote inland and domestic tourism.

It is a fact that leisure trips are not an imposition. It is likely that users who have cancelled their trips for fear of the virus are already looking for alternative and safer destinations, and promoting the domestic destination in safe areas can be an option.

How?
Segment your SEM campaigns in the cities or communities closest to your hotel emphasising safety and offering special packages.

Transmit a message of peace of mind and security.

In this scenario, your rates are not the reason for the low bookings, so lowering your online prices will not necessarily stimulate demand. What you need to highlight is how important is the health and safety of your users and how you are complying with all the protocol. Go ahead and spread the word of the measures and protocols you are currently applying.

Keep in mind that if your potential client has not quite decided yet where to book, the confidence you arouse can be decisive for final purchasing decision.

How?
Create a protocol of good practices (cleaning and prevention) with friendly and striking design to convey calm and confidence to potential customers. Once this has been done, spread this information using all your corporate advertising channels (web, social networks, specialised media).

Another way to spread your message is to write articles related to the coronavirus taking care of the SEO positioning, in order to position these pages by including keywords that currently have a high level of search such as “what is the coronavirus”, “coronavirus in Spain” or “coronavirus prevention”… Including a downloadable protocol can be a good extra.

Special packages or exclusive advantages to stimulate demand.

Reward guests who trust your establishment by offering a welcome gift or special service, within the dates that are of interest, can be a good claim when creating your campaigns.

How?
Insert a banner on the home page that highlights the benefits or gifts offered when booking for specific dates. Also, highlight exclusive benefits such as free cancellation or late checkout.

Create the same creativity to carry out retargeting campaigns for Display, SEM and/or social networks, highlighting the benefits you offer.

Offer and promote alternative destinations.

If you have more hotels in other parts of the world outside the so-called danger zones, spend more investment to create campaigns that promote these destinations.

How?
If you decide to go for the above suggestions for your campaigns, make sure you keep an eye on flights information, as cancellations are rising due to “at-risk” countries banning. Ideally, you should focus on creating campaigns aimed at those countries free of risk, without neglecting the evolution of events to adapt your campaigns to new circumstances.

Bend over to CPA for campaigns

If you haven’t implemented it before, it’s a good time to start testing the cost-per-acquisition model or CPA as this is a good marketing strategy when looking for low-cost solutions or to reduce your marketing investment.

How?
Create CPA SEM Campaigns, CPA Display Campaigns and give an extra push to your Affiliate campaigns. Working on a CPA model will avoid spending your budget blindly and the commissions you have arranged with your partners will only have to be paid once the client has checked out from your hotel, and the booking has been validated by you. It is a safe investment, you will only pay for results.

Concentrate your efforts on direct sales.

In our previous post “how to minimize the effects of Brexit“, we already suggested that, in the case of a crisis, the smartest thing to do is to boost direct sales and thus control your brand image, sales and revenue.

How?
Introducing Performance Marketing and how it can help to boost your direct bookings can be a bit more complicated, so you can download this easy-peasy guide with the basic concepts.

If there’s more information or doubts after reading this post, please don’t hesitate and contact us.

Increase the direct bookings of the British market with these simple tips.

Up to now, the United Kingdom has been the primary source of tourists visiting Spain, but after the demise of Thomas Cook and Brexit, logic appears to cast doubt on whether this state of affairs will continue. Although the general mood in the tourism sector is one of relative tranquillity, the annual holiday in Spain has become an important part of British culture, therefore it is important to try to forecast how things may change after these tumultuous events.

So, if you are from the hotel sector, and you want to keep your direct bookings flooding in, then keep in mind the following 4 marketing tips:

Study the behaviour of the market and the levels of demand.

Having a solid understanding of the socio-economic situation of the British market, in addition to a perspective on the demand for your services, is crucial when it comes to planning.
To do this, it can be helpful to consult the daily press to find out the latest news, as well as analyse studies or reports that may shed any light on the British tourist trends, their wishes or preferences, for example.
The objective is to gather as much knowledge as possible, this allows you to create more precise marketing strategies and to identify possible alternatives that you have not yet considered.

Maximise your Customization.

Defining your target buyer is another key to gaining an understanding of both your existing customers and potential customers, this allows you to create the right content and customize your campaigns to the fullest.
At this point, it would be interesting to review your history of British leads in your database to detect any possible behavioural patterns within recent years, such as what information they consume and how.
That way, you can find out what their needs, your campaigns can be better focused and segmented.

Take advantage of key dates to launch more aggressive campaigns.

The British Pound has already begun to decline, affecting the purchasing power of the British.
Therefore, the smartest thing to do is to organize your calendar, marking the most popular holidays in the United Kingdom and design tailored and creative campaigns that offer tempting discounts to your potential audience. A very important aspect to keep in mind is that each campaign should be more aggressive and shorter lived.

Power other countries.

As saying goes, you should never put all your eggs in one basket, so now it is time to expand horizons and strengthen those markets that you may have previously marginalized. The study which other nationalities have visited your website and in what proportion, armed with this knowledge, allocate more resources to those which you believe will give you greater results.

Keep in mind that one of the consequences of the loss of Thomas Cook’s is that tourists have lost confidence in the traditional travel agencies both online and high street, and they are now turning to alternatives such as direct booking, it is essential that you take advantage of this momentum and reinforce it with the advice given above.

So, to minimise any possible impact, the most important factor is to anticipate your market, continue to advance and strengthen direct bookings.

From North to South, East to West, you will always find an Affilired representative in a leading travel trade-show. Here’s a list of where you can meet us, from January to March.

2020 lies ahead as another year full of tourism industry events and trade shows which offer great value to Affilired, offering us the chance to strengthen business relationships and establish new ones. Besides, attending these events is by far the best way of gaining insights into the ever-changing trends of the Travel industry.

It might be hard to keep up to date with where you could meet us (we know your mailbox is already full of emails starting with a “Shall we meet at….”), so to synchronize agendas, we thought it would be handy to just summarise the top events of the coming months. If you are planning to attend any of the following ones, don’t be shy and send us an email to request a meeting with our Sales Department.

JANUARY

Satte Delhi

When? From 6th to 10th January.
Where? India Expo Center & Mart, located in Greater Noida, Delhi NCR, India.
Why? It is the main event of the tourism sector in South Asia with 25 years of history.
Highlights: It has more than 1000 exhibitors from 50 different countries and about 31,000 visitors and industry professionals.

ATF Brunei – The Asean tourism forum.

When? From 12th to 16th January.
Where? Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.
Why? It is the best platform to sell and buy tourist products from ASEAN member countries. In addition, they are celebrating its 40th edition.
Highlights: The 10 ASEAN member states are involved in the event.

Caribbean travel marketplace

When? From 21st to 23rd January.
Where? Baha Mar, Bahamas.
Why? It is the largest marketing fair in the Caribbean.
Highlights: About 28 Caribbean countries, 215 suppliers of the sector and 148 companies will attend.

Fitur Madrid

When? From 22nd to 26th January.
Where? Ifema, Madrid.
Why? It is the largest tourism fair in Spain.
Highlights: 253,000 participants, 142,000 professionals, more than 10,000 exhibitors from 165 different countries are expected.

The New York Times Travel Show 2020

When? From 24th to 26th January.
Where? Jacob K. Javits Center, New York.
Why? It is the largest travel and consumer fair in North America.
Highlights: Attracts more than 35.000 attendees with over 700 exhibitors from more than 175 countries.

FEBRUARY

Connect Travel Marketplace

When? From 19th to 21st February
Where? Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center de Kissimmee, Florida.
Why? In this international tourism fair, the main buyers meet with the most important suppliers in the United States. A good showcase and place to do business in this market.
Highlights: It is specially designed to address the needs of the industry. It promotes international travel by bringing international buyers (3000) and almost 4000 suppliers. Its appointment-show format is the most interesting.

Vitrina Turística ANATO Colombia

When? From 26th to 28th January.
Where? Corporation of fairs, exhibitions and conferences. Anato building.
Why? Because after more than 20 years, it is the most important tourist event in Colombia, perfect to establish new professional relationships and position ourselves in this market.
Highlights: Almost 40,000 participants, about 29,000 professionals from 36 countries, more than 1,400 exhibiting companies and 1000 accredited journalists.

MARCH

ITB Berlin – The world’s leading travel trade show

When? From 4th to 8th March.
Where? Berlin Expo Center City, Messe Berlin.
Why? It is the B2B fair par excellence and the world’s leading travel fair.
Highlights: More than 180 countries, 10,000 exhibitors and 113,000 visitors. It is the fair where supply meets demand.

BTL Lisboa

When? From 11th to 15th March.
Where? Lisbon International Fair.
Why? Portugal is a potential market for us and the BTL is the place to obtain new business contacts.
Highlights: It has more than 70,000 visitors, almost 35,000 professionals and 1,400 exhibitors.

TIANGUIS Mexico

When? From 22nd to 25th March.
Where? Convention and exhibition centre of Yucatán.
Why? It is the most important event in Mexico and an essential business forum to establish contacts in Latin America.
Highlights: This is its 45th edition and more than 700 companies and tourism representatives from 5 continents will be there.

We have analysed how Brexit could affect the direct bookings for Spanish hotels.

2019 was a year, first marred by the shadow of Brexit and then by the fall of Thomas Cook in late September; the uncertainty about the possible consequences of both events have shaken the tourism industry.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, 2019 was a record year for Spain, with 83.7 million international visitors. Despite this overall growth, there was a slight drop of 2% in tourist numbers from the UK, Spain´s main source of tourists. But yet, according to the INE, until October 2019, of all of the foreign tourists who stayed in Spanish hotels the largest group were British, accounting for 26.1% of all overnight stays.

Although it is early days to draw any conclusions about what will happen in 2020, Affilired has analysed how this development could affect the direct bookings for Spanish hotels. Affilired looked at the trends in the British market when comes to booking holidays directly in 2019 and the first month of 2020.*

* Exposed data extracted from the volume of direct bookings made by British tourists from January 1st, 2019 until January 31st, 2020 with a representative sample of 8.000 Spanish hotels.

Countries with the highest number of direct bookings made by British tourists in 2019.

In spite of the slight decrease in tourist numbers from the United Kingdom, Spain remains the country with the most direct hotel bookings, surpassing the previous year by 2.74%. ( 2018)

Spanish regions which have most benefited from the British market bookings.

In 2019, the Balearic Islands led the direct hotel bookings made by British tourists with 44%, the hot spots were Palmanova, Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. The second region was the Canary Islands with 35%, Playa de las Americas, Corralejo and Maspalomas being among the most popular destinations.

The Key period for hoteliers: Early Booking.

Many of the direct bookings are made during the month of January, known to the hotel sector as the “Early Booking”. A period when tourists take advantage of the offers available to book the holidays they will enjoy during Easter, Summer, etc; early booking is especially popular in the United Kingdom.

During the Early Booking campaign, the number of direct hotel bookings increased by 25% more than the annual average, being 47,2% from the United Kingdom.

When comparing the data of the direct bookings made in January 2019 and January 2020, slight changes were detected such as a decrease of 1.3% of the British bookings in Spain.
This drop particularly affected the Canary Islands and Valencian region. On the other hand, the Balearic Islands, Andalusia and Catalonia, have seen their direct bookings increase.

However, according to a report published by the European Travel Commission, the number of British tourists is expected to fall in 2020 by 7%, the most affected areas being the Balearic and Canary Islands.