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Tourism in the UK is big business. The domestic market was worth £26.4 billion in 2003, while visitors from overseas spent another £11.9bn, according to tourism research group Star UK. Today, a massive slice of this is being generated online.

Last year, European online travel sales leapt 40 per cent to 17.7bn euros, of which the UK took the lion's share of 37 per cent. By 2006, this is expected to rise to 27bn euros, according to the Centre for Regional and Tourism Research in Denmark. The web provides a cheap and easy way for people to research and book a holiday. And its global reach is attracting the marketing budgets of both tourist boards and private attractions.

However, online, there's no such thing as a typical tourist. Separate markets cater for people with different interests. You wouldn't speak to a 70-year-old woman in Japan about adrenaline-fuelled mountain-biking in the Lake District, but she might like to hear about Kew Gardens. And then there are the cultural and language differences to consider.

Hurdling these barriers is paid-for advertising - via search engines, affiliates or ad campaigns - while rich-media branding is immersing users in the places they are interesting in visiting.

Take VisitBritain.com, the official web site for travel to Britain, for which direct response is a major investment area. The firm drives visits to its site through a pay-per-click search campaign with Google and Overture.

It spends £120,000 on search across 30 different countries and 20 languages, which drives 1.44 million visitors to its web site at a cost of 8p per visit.

"We don't sell things online," says James Keeler, international head of CRM and online marketing at Visit Britain. "But, we have worked out that, translating the visits to the web site into expenditure in Britain and tourism generated, it equates to £122m of spend - a significant return. Online gives us a better opportunity to speak to a greater number of people than we would otherwise be able to. We get significantly better results than with pounds spent offline."

Look and book

Search has also brought success for helpmego.to, a private company that owns sites such as travelscotland.co.uk, which aggregates travel services in Scotland. Following an initial outlay, its director, Sholto Ramsay, says he now spends nothing on marketing travelscotland.co.uk, yet claims it has seen 3.5 million unique visitors so far this year. "People might think on a Thursday afternoon 'Why not go to Edinburgh?' and online allows them to 'look and book'," he says. "The combination of information and instantaneous booking is incredibly powerful."

The Leisure Pass Group, a private company targeting tourists in places like London, New York and Dublin, makes 60 per cent of its £2.5m annual revenue online. This stems from an initial investment of £250,000 in search and affiliate marketing, working with agency Profero and networks including Commission Junction and dgm. Angus Rankine, its founding director, says his online business has grown 30 per cent, year-on-year, since its launch five years ago. He is pleased with pay-per-click and affiliate results.

Rankine originally managed all marketing campaigns in-house, but now finds it more effective to operate through an agency. But, he finds the major problem is developing an ongoing customer conversation with visitors to encourage them to return and earn his company repeat business.

Keeler at Visit Britain has a solution: while search marketing offers effective wide-reaching coverage, sometimes niche marketing is required and it is possible to build databases and develop dialogue through viral campaigns. He points to a viral ad campaign targeting audiences in South Africa, which ran in April 2004. For an outlay of £10,000, an email was sent to 3,000 people, which went on to generate some 50,000 valuable opt-in customers in niche markets, such as those with sports interests. This also provided fuel for follow-up email campaigns to attract repeat visitors.

The idea was for users to build their perfect holiday; choose their interests, where they wanted to go and who they wanted to go with. Then they could enter a competition to win a trip to the UK.

There are also branding benefits, says Keeler: "Building the brand through online advertising helps to develop sustainable traffic long-term and audiences get to know us, which we cannot do in the same way through search marketing."

For creative branding online, look to Tourism Ireland. In 2000, when the Irish government formed the body, its first task was to change people's perceptions of the country, long associated with shamrocks, leprechauns and Guinness rather than its beautiful scenery. Tourism Ireland supported offline marketing with a rich-media push through MRM Partners in 2001, which has since developed other campaigns.

Andrew Hyatt, director of business development and planning at the agency, explains: "We started by streaming incredible imagery in video in banner ads. By pushing technology to create an emotional environment, it helped someone to visualise what it's like to go on holiday there." For example, the agency ran ads with videos of water rippling across beautiful lakes.

"They are realistic images in a digitalised world," continues Hyatt. "It's about achieving standout in an overcrowded market."

This year's ads have a painting-by-numbers theme: the user rolls a mouse over scenes to add colour. "We are pushing the boundaries of Flash in a commercially realistic way. It's a way to immerse people in the environment.

People can explore, see and feel what it's like to go somewhere - and then book it. You can't do that in a 30-second TV ad. The same goes for a brochure - it's static. Smaller tourist boards can't afford to pump money into TV. It's increasingly the case that people go online to book travel and are stripping out the travel agents."

Hyatt cautions it's not all easy and cites seeAmerica.org's post 9/11 campaign, pushing America as a safe place to go, as "hackneyed". He adds: "The way they did the campaign was a turn-off. Rather than giving the user a good experience, it was forcing information on you." The tone was aimed squarely at Americans and wasn't tailored for overseas markets.

±±¾©Èü³µpk10 challenges

Tailoring a campaign to different audiences in a global market is one of the biggest challenges. Kim Colebrook, head of information and new media at Wales Tourist Board, says the web is cost-effective as a single content-management system can deliver different messages: "Ninety-five per cent of our visitors are from the UK, but we need to develop a different persona when speaking to the American market, for example."

Visit Britain analyses market intelligence in 25 countries to unravel the needs of each one. "Online campaigns focus on targeting different sites that appeal to our target audience," says Keeler. "Our target audience in Japan is significantly different to that in Belgium, and we fit campaigns around this diversity." The site is available in 20 languages, with as much of the content translated as possible. More complex is the information required. "The information needs of long-haul travellers are very different to that of short-haul," says Keeler.

There are also varying levels of usage and trust. "Somewhere like South Korea has a high level of internet usage and people are more likely to be able to access broadband content. But, in Poland or India, the percentage of people online is much lower," says Keeler. "Different countries also approach the internet with different levels of trust. It's important to ask if they're willing to enter their details online as some may be reluctant."

It's also important to be sensitive to cultural differences. In a market where homosexuality is taboo, it wouldn't be appropriate to market gay-friendly Soho. Going forward, says Keeler, interactive content is key.

"A big area for us is inspiring people to travel from the site. Towards the second half of the year, we are looking to introduce booking facilities across a range of product areas." There are also plans for a multilingual and multi-currency online shop and flights engine, which would allow overseas audiences to book direct with airlines. Users will be able to book accommodation and Visit Britain is in talks with other suppliers to enable booking for other events.

Visit Britain uses approved advertisers and is looking for key British brands to integrate with its global network of web sites through AdLINK.

The body aims to double traffic within a year and develop a CRM programme through online registrations. "Travel is the fastest-growing area online.

Expansion will let people share ideas and experiences through blogs or sharing photos," says Keeler. "The immediate experience will be there."

The Yorkshire Tourist Board also values the importance of interactivity to develop relationships online, where it spends 12 per cent of its marketing budget. All press and TV marketing aims to drive visitors to the site for information, generating about 200,000 user sessions a month. Future improvements include new content such as an interactive photo gallery.

"It's a way of adding value for our customers," says Amanda Smyth, marketing campaigns manager.

The BA London Eye web site takes this further. "We want to enhance the guest experience from the site," says head of marketing Jo Berrington.

This includes an online photo gallery, where visitors can load their pictures, and a kids' section. She points out that there are both Flash and HTML versions, so non-broadband users are not left out. "The site is fundamental, not just for enabling booking online but for information. There are hoards of people who are big planners and do things in advance." The site offers a 10 per cent discount. "We prefer people to pre-book. We can organise the business much better if we know how many people are turning up. About 40 per cent of ticket sales are pre-booked, she adds, half of which are online.

Package deals

The web also offers a chance to push other products. "We are a half-hour experience in London and people are looking for other ways to spend their day," says Berrington, so the site offers package deals with other London attractions like Madame Tussaud's. "We want to be a one-stop shop, so people can book a whole day or week from the site and we invest a substantial amount online." The site targets the domestic market though third-party partnerships and ads on BA sites and sites of potential interest, and it targets a global audience through translated, sponsored links on related sites and search optimisation.

"The web site is so cost-effective when speaking to overseas markets," she adds. "To advertise overseas is inordinately expensive and it's something we couldn't do otherwise."

VISIT LONDON POURS 10 PER CENT OF ITS BUDGET ON THE WEB

Visit London, the official organisation for visitors to the capital, spends about 10 per cent of its budget online and says measuring response is key.

According to the 2004 London Overseas Visitors Survey of more than 2,000 people, 50 per cent cited the internet as their main source of information on London - up from 11 per cent in 1999 - and 15 per cent said that visitlondon.com was their main source.

Over the same period of time, the use of newspapers and magazines fell from 14 to nine per cent.

All campaigns drive visitors to the site. Visit London's creative agencies, Publicis and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, are working with media agency OMD on a UK campaign promoting London's free festivals in late summer and phase five of its US campaign. Last year, Visit London ran a £5 million ad campaign targeting the US and spent about a quarter of that online, mainly through search, rich-media overlays and sweepstakes.

The organisation targeted travel sites through its New York-based agency, Mattlin Mandell, and estimates that online marketing achieved an ROI of 37:1.

"While it is difficult to say how much of our success we can directly attribute to online marketing (because all our campaigns are integrated), we know, for example, that when we engage in online marketing in the US, page impressions double," says Martine Ainsworth Wells, marketing director for Visit London.

She continues: "The best we've had so far is 80,000 page impressions in a day. You can definitely see where the peaks and troughs are coming from."