While there are other websites that cover similar content we felt that those which focus on the visitor attraction sector don’t provide a good user experience. Out of date listings, hard to navigate content and irrelevant advertising were some of the faults we wanted to ensure that daytripfinder.co.uk avoids.

You can find out more about the site and background or take the tour. We’re starting with the South East and have added over 600 attractions and plan to roll out other regions soon. Focusing on one region will allow us to act quickly on feedback.

Reviews will be an important part of the site. Here is an example of a listing for De Le Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.

We have a dedicated special offers page that we plan to develop and source offers from the attractions.

Attractions are able to manage their listing for free. They simply need to register and then claim their listing. So far over 50 attractions are updating their listing. As well as providing a way for attractions to reach new customers this will help keep the attraction information up-to-date and accurate for visitors.

There is lots to do but we’re really excited about the site. I’ll write another post going through the site in a little more detail. One recent update we have recently launched are listing pages for each borough. For example, things to do in Sevenoaks.

Finally, we’d like to introduce Snuffles, our site mascot who will mooch around the pages. He’s a reliable hound with a refined nose, able to sniff out a great day trip. Please send us on any feedback!

Kate Waite is Dot Tourism’s newest recruit and takes on the position of Digital Project manager. Passionate about travel she brings nine years marketing experience to the role with particular expertise in email and search marketing.

If you are looking for an effective way to market your brand, product or destination, running an online competition can offer a great way to bring a flood of new visitors to your site. The notion that it “could be you” is a strong motive for consumers to sign up to your newsletter, become a follower on twitter or even generate content for your site.

Keep it simple

When running a competition the best advice is also the most obvious; keep it simple. This means both for you and the participants. Your audience needs to be able to enter quickly and you will want to be able to administer the competition relatively easily.

There are of course exceptions to this. If your prize has a high value or is unusual then it will attract a higher level of interest and participants will be prepared to work harder for their opportunity to win. Perhaps harder to achieve, making the competition entry method particularly fun or innovative is more likely to engage visitors and remain memorable.

Prizes of caretaker jobs on paradise islands don’t come along too often, it’s important to get the balance right with what you have to work with.

Entry methods

Effective simple methods for entry include becoming a follower on Twitter, commenting on a blog post or entering details onto a short form. You will want to ensure that you can pick and get in touch with the eventual winner easily.

Facebook is an effective platform for running competitions, however under their regulations you must receive permission to do so and the terms of entry must abide by their rules. You aren’t allowed to administer your competition through Facebook (for example select or contact winners) but should use a third party application to gather data. You can however make it a condition of entry to become a fan of your group or page.

We are currently running six weekly competitions through Facebook as part of an online marketing campaign for Countryside 2010 whose website we recently launched. Setting up a tab to administer the competition through, we’ve built the fan base up quickly with only 3% opting to hide news feed updates and over 2,000 page views in the first three weeks.

It’s essential to look at the long term view of using a Facebook page. Posting regular meaningful content will retain fans, while poorly planned or low-quality material will lose fans and subscribers. A good indication of this will be the fan interaction with your posts through likes and comments.

Seeding the competition

There are several dedicated sites and forums which exist as competition portals and will send high volumes of eager entrants to your site. It’s free to submit competition details and links to these sites, they just ask that you respect their community guidelines and provide a reciprocal link when possible.

Quality of traffic

With entrants coming from competition portals there is some question over the quality of traffic being delivered with many entrants having little or no interest in the brand. An opt in for a newsletter on an entry form allows you to filter out interested visitors for future marketing campaigns while building your database at the same time.

Adding the option to recommend a friend in return for an extra entry can also help reach a more targeted audience as entrants are more likely to recommend somebody with a genuine interest in your brand offering.

Other examples

We run a monthly photo competition on the Mahindra Homestays blog. Entrants can enter via the blog, Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. This has proved very popular with the February competition generating 750 votes.

Capital Region USA – A competition played a key part in the success of an online campaign we ran for Capital Region USA partnership. Read the case study

If you are thinking of running a competition but aren’t sure where to start get in touch and we will be happy to offer you some advice.

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)

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.

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.

Ask someone for memorable mascots and they may mention the late Jeeves from Ask Jeeves, before his departure and resulting search engine rebrand.

Or the annoying paperclip from Microsoft Office.  Another is the kangaroo used in the Australia logo.

Emotional engagement or eye candy?

Far too many sites and web applications lack a personality in copy and image selection. I recommend this video presentation at Vitamin to highlight the importance of copy in building a likeable web application.

Evoking positive feelings can be particularly important in web applications where they are intended to be used regularly and often at length by their audience.

Mascots aren’t going to work in all scenarios. They usually work best as animal or human-like creatures – as cute, fun creations.

We created a mascot for a Visit Britain campaign to promote a new B2B online service. The character, Mrs Pink, helped reach the audience in a friendly, innovative way and she is now used on offline material and e-newsletters.

The cute dog is a mascot we intend to use on a new site helping daytrippers find the best visitor attractions. We’d like to give name him, please send on any suggestions!

• Google Advertisers Quick to bid on “XL Airways” – with brand bidding in place, the competition are quick to the mark.
• Similar to http://woot.com but for travel deals: http://Fourtraveldeals.com – Nice idea, looks to be all Expedia (via 37s blog)
• Top 10 email clients used by business & consumer recipients – didn’t expect Hotmail to be so high on b2b
• Travel start up at Techcrunch50 (were there any others?) GoPlanit for generating itineraries
• Missed this, list of 75+ online travel resources from Mashable (2007)
• Delving into the problems with www.italia.it at http://tinyurl.com/5zngoo – dot post about the logo last year http://tinyurl.com/5p37g9
• SkyScanner site review http://tinyurl.com/6rykgr

There has been another round of conversation regarding the changing face of PR in recent weeks.

• Does the Thrill of the Chase Make PR Obsolete? from Steve Rubel, a high profile long time blogger and senior vice presient of Edelman Digital. He laments at the deluge of off base email pitches he receives in a changing PR landscape. He deletes 99.99% of them. I receive on average 10 a day – the vast majority are not relevant to the online area that this blog focuses on. It’s frustrating that the senders do not take the time to do a little bit more research. See also Hotel Blogs rants about PR

• Mike Arrington writes more (from a tech startup angle) on the subject at The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging and the 150+ comments provides views from all sides. He comments that the people writing about startups is much more varied now but the approach to engage them is wide of the mark.

• From a travel PR perspective Neil MacLean has written a guest post on the Travolution Blog. We work both with private and public sector organisations directly and with PR agencies. In our experience, only a very small minority market and carry out services that Neil rightly comments a modern PR agency should; online copywriting, web monitoring, search engine marketing, analytics and basic web development.

• An Econsultancy post this morning from Drama 2.0 Is PR broken?