Monetisation

Finally, you should consider the exact ways that you will monetise your web traffic in order to make a profit from your website. For most tourism businesses, the main method of monetisation will be selling bookings or other products.

Bookings

The most important monetisation method for tourism businesses is allowing users to easily purchase and manage their bookings. For this to be effective, users must be able to:

• View availability,
• Reserve time slots,
• Make a payment,
• View existing bookings,
• Make alterations to their bookings.

Additionally, your booking platforms should also automate certain processes to save time for your staff, including:

• Email communications,
• Customer relationship management,
• Secure payment processing,
• Calendar management.

As such, it’s important to choose booking platforms which offer support for your existing platforms and tools. Otherwise, a situation may arise where you are forced to invest in other new tools and platforms in order for them to work with your site correctly, which can naturally be costly.

Ecommerce

Other tourism businesses might monetise their web traffic through ecommerce functions, which allow users to purchase physical goods. For example, you might want to sell branded merchandise, souvenirs or local crafts and delicacies. Additionally, if you do not need this functionality immediately, it is worth considering whether or not it’s something you’re likely to need in the future. Developing a new site without ecommerce support, and then finding that you need this can be a costly mistake.

Much like a booking portal, your ecommerce store should allow users to carry out the following actions:

• View availability,
• Reserve stock,
• Make a payment,
• View existing orders,
• Make alterations to their orders,
• Choose from a variety of shipment and delivery options,
• Track shipments,
• Schedule a time slot for click and collect users,
• Carry out returns.

It’s also vitally important that your ecommerce platform integrates correctly with your existing systems, especially if you also sell goods from a physical location. In particular, your ecommerce platform should integrate with:

• Stock control,
• Order fulfilment,
• Customer relationship management,
• Communications tools,
• Payment and accounts management.

Where these functions do not operate correctly, it can create additional work for your staff, as well as leading to unnecessary problems. Again, where possible it is best to choose an ecommerce solution which offers support for your existing systems, rather than needing to update these systems in addition to creating a new website.

Marketing Integrations

Finally, it’s important to consider whether or not you need your website to offer integrations with a range of marketing tools, which can help to improve your site’s profitability. These include tools for:

• Audience tracking,
• Ad retargeting,
• Email lead capture,
• Analytics,
• Embedded social feeds.

As mentioned, many tourism businesses have target customers who are unlikely to make a booking on their first site visit. If your marketing team intends to use any of the above strategies, then it’s important to ensure that your new site is capable of supporting this. Again, with a website builder, you may be limited to proprietary tools, whereas most template sites and custom builds will offer a fuller range of supported platforms.

Similarly, even if you do not need these functions in the immediate term, launching a new site which does not offer them may still limit your potential for growth.