If you’re a part of a tour business that’s been around for the past couple of decades, you’ve probably seen a major transformation in the way that tourists now select companies as well as in their preferences. Part of that transformation comes as a result of an expanded market in general. Your previous local touring business may currently hold a position as part of the international market due to the influence of the world wide web.
Universal Appeal
An important aspect of being successful on the international or global stage is appeal on a universal level. That means that your site design, as well as your marketing strategies and advertisements, need to be geared towards specific populations in different nations in order to have the most return. To break it down even further, you’ll want to take an approach that allows your touring business to be culturally attuned to the different visitors from around the world to generate the most interest in those populations.
There are multiple ways to tackle this issue, and each way has its merits and disadvantages. You may opt for the approach of pursuing a design that involves using only one site appeal to everyone. On the other hand, you might do something like have a default site page (the local one) and then specific designs for other countries - which is equally time consuming and difficult in its own right. Here are some helpful perspectives to get you on the right track towards maximizing your touring business’ international potential.
One Size Fits All
The success of this format depends on the talent of your web designer as well as the type of product or service that you’re marketing. There are a multitude of designs that will be widely accepted as well. One of the site design techniques you can explore is minimalism, which focuses on having a clear, efficient, and uncluttered theme like its name suggests. Let’s consider a few examples.
Although Google has a number of variants for different websites, its basic search homepage is uniform across most major cultures and nations. It’s a great instance of how minimalism can be rendered successfully. Minimalism arguably allows you to do more for less, but it can backfire if you don’t include all the necessary parts in order for your business to make sense.
There are a lot of preset minimalistic designs out there already as well that you can make use of as templates or even as fuel for your own creative inspirations. Just check out this list that showcases thirty different and unique minimalist designs. Ideally, you’ll want a design that reflects the personality, culture, and distinct appeal of your tours. Therefore, going with an inspired or self-made design may be the best option for this one size fits all strategy.
Appealing to Individual Populations
Understanding the importance of a varied approach to advertising constitutes an especially important part of the tourism business. If you’ve ever been to any other countries around the world, you’ll know that there is usually a set of very different cultural and behavioral norms from your own country. Of course, the extent of this difference depends on the country which you choose to visit, but the difference itself is often large enough to lead to a phenomenon known as culture shock.
This is the basis for why you might want to employ an online marketing and advertising strategy that varies based on the IP of the user and displays material in a way that is culturally informative and acceptable to the user. The last thing you want for your site when it comes to conversion rates is a population of users that struggles and is confused with the formatting. If you’re not convinced about how much of a difference cultural perceptions make, consider the gulf in the format of the two leading universities in the United States and Japan.
For the sake of comparison, this is Harvard’s main page while this is University of Tokyo’s main page. If you want an even clearer comparison you can check out the different pages that University of Tokyo has for its foreign and native visitors. The way that visitors from different cultures prioritize, read, and organize information - despite accessing and using the same medium - is sometimes considerably different.
From a strategic perspective, a tourism business should do all that it can to make itself appealing to its clients. Your site’s visual appeal and the intuitiveness of its interface influences how many clients you will receive. All this evidence points to an approach that radically differs from our first suggestion. Instead of making a universal site to receive all populations, you should aim to make multiple sites that appeal to the specific aesthetic senses of your biggest cultural and national demographics using research and surveys.