Ever since a Ukrainian friend mentioned them I regularly drop in on the website of Art Lebedev Studio, Russia’s leading design studio.

Whether it’s their constitution, product design (see Optimus Maximus Keyboard, GLONASS Satnav) or their diversity of work there is always something inspiring to browse. Of particular interest is the process section that accompanies each project.

Their less than common approach (”The only principle we follow is just two words: No bullshit.”) has not hindered success or size. A team of +200 work with the country’s largest corporates including Yandex (largest portal and most popular search engine) and Gazprom (largest company in Russia).

Both sites proudly display Art Lebedev’s logo and link at the bottom of their pages. I like the way these projects sit equally alongside fridge magnets or an identity for a baby club in their portfolio.

The studio founder has clearly succeeded in passing down and maintaining his design ideals and approach to running a company. I’d like to know how they juggle their approach with client’s differing views on online marketing. The only interview I could find points to a negative attitude to SEO and marketing.

Most recently I was drawn to a website design for a luxury hotel, the Felix Zawojski. The site has been crafted with wonderful attention to detail.  Take a look at these sketches and renderings, view panoramas or watch footage of The Great Train Robbery in every room.

The identity creation points to guests feeling as though they belong to a royal family – the website design certainly serves up a luxurious experience. However, you won’t find an online booking facility, e-newsletter sign up or special offers.

Perhaps that lends itself to the exclusivity. Although, with such care taken to educate and pamper the visitor, surely these features would further help retain and convert site prospects?

(“Design Will Save the World” is the studio’s motto)

We manage numerous email marketing campaigns for our clients, either directly or working closely with travel PR and marketing agencies.

As well as consumer targeted emails these also include a number of campaigns reaching out to the media and trade. For the latter we’ve found short stories with images and read on links help set the emails apart from ones with reams of text and uncompressed images.

I’ve talked before about the importance of a subject line to stimulate interest to open the email.

Something we’ve been implementing more of late is A/B testing for subject lines. Two subject lines are created – a subset of the subscriber list receives Subject Line A, another subset receives Subject Line B.

The open rates of both are then monitored for a period of time. The subject line that leads to the most opens is selected as the winner and all remaining recipients receive this subject line.

It’s a simple and quick way to give your content a greater chance of being read. Instead of open rates, one can determine the winning subject line by the highest click through rates.

Or use A/B testing to test different ‘From’ names or email content itself. Make sure you link your email campaigns to whatever analytics software to get the full picture.

Figure 1. x axis - time, y axis - open rates. Subject line A - red and Subject line B - blue

The above diagram demonstrates the benefit of carrying this out. The red subject line was the first one chosen.

After convincing the client to try A/B testing, they created a second subject line, shown in blue.

The second subject line greatly out performed the first in terms of open rate.

Read more about our travel email marketing services and past work.

The topic of “content” comes up time and time again in discussions about online presence. I’m not sure who coined the phrase “content is king,” but I have customers continuing to ask the question: Is Content King in Travel and Tourism?

The answer is, without a doubt, yes – especially for smaller outfits and organisations with limited online presence. Sure, there is plenty of free content out there – and judging by the traffic numbers of sites like Wikitravel and the forums on Lonely Planet, free content is here to stay. But the content on your site is your vehicle to present your message and portray your brand. And if you offer the ability to book online or at least direct customers to contact info, the content might be the last stand between you and a booking. Consider:

• a frustrated mother can’t decipher if your tour offering is suitable for children will decide to book something else. Worse, if it is clearer on your competitor’s site, they might get the sale instead of you.
• a last minute client who doesn’t see your contact information cannot call to see if there is space for an extra booking.
• a referral customer visits your photo gallery and decides not to book because the images don’t reflect the experience his friend described.

The worst part about each of these scenarios is two-fold: 1) you’ll never know that it happened, and 2) the problems were easy to fix.

Here are some easy questions you can ask while browsing your content. Do you like the answers you get back?

• Is it easy to find all the available mediums for contacting you (phone, email, post)?
• Is it easy to see the types of services available, the details on the offering, and availability/cost?
• Are images or video professional and reflect the reality of your offering (In this case, less is more.)
• Do you display important certification information?

The European online travel market alone is expected to reach EUR 67 billion in 2009 (source: eMarketer.com) , never mind the exploding success in the US. Is your online presence sending the message it should? Content is king in travel and tourism, so I hope the answer is yes.

Andy Hayes is a professional travel writer and photographer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He helps small businesses in travel & tourism embrace online technologies. To learn more, visit his website, Sharing Experiences where you can download a free copy of his recent eBook, Preparing for Takeoff: 7 Common Mistakes Businesses Make when Going Online.

We’ve launched a blog for Mahindra Homestays, offering high quality Indian Homestays.

The blog is all about celebrating and discovering India – encouraging travellers to experience something different.

Let us know what you think – we’d love the feedback.

Highlights include:

• Series of Things To Do articles. Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Wayanad, Cochin, Kewzing and Udaipur.
• Monthly photo competition
• Video tours of the Homestays
• Special offers
• Previews of the latest homestays

Along with the design and development we’re also helping with content creation and blog promotion.

Clearly not writing on our blog!

Apologies for that – we’ve been extremely busy and concentrating our energy on a flurry of recent client projects.  This includes a site to promote Eilat in Israel. Visit www.Explore-Eilat.com – see screenshot below.

We’ve also started the process of developing a new Dot Tourism site – it’s in the wireframe stage but will tighten up the integration of our blog with main site.