Do you run a beach resort? How do your customers find you?
After the difficult period of Covid, beaches too have gone digital: booking a beach club and a sun umbrella now happens online. This is why it is important for beach resorts to strengthen their presence on the Internet, with an SEO-optimized website and constantly updated social profiles. Summer is the season of holidays, travel and relaxation. In the summer months these elements take shape in the sea, the beach, crystal-clear water to dive into and a perfect tan before heading home. More and more, organizing and booking a trip goes through the Internet: flights and transport, accommodation, restaurants and activities to do are all chosen online. This is why, for beach clubs, beach resorts and lifeguards, it is essential to be present and visible online. Presence and visibility are the result of precise, detailed, thorough work that will make it possible to attract and retain customers.
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The online tourism data
To understand the value the Internet can bring to a beach resort, we need only look at some data*. From this it clearly emerges how the digitalization of a beach club can be an important plus for the business. The data refers to 2019, i.e. the pre-Covid period, which can be considered the most reliable source before all the changes and restrictions of the last two years. The long-term effect the pandemic will have, however, will be to increase these numbers, having made digital the norm and part of everyday life in so many respects. In 2019, Italians’ online purchases were worth 31 billion euros, of which almost 11 concerned tourism. In the sample selected by the agency QualityTravel, 97% use the Internet in the inspiration and research phases, and 85% for booking. This tends to be a young audience, between 25 and 44 years old, but the age bracket is constantly expanding. Only 2% of Italians between 18 and 75 years old did not use the Internet for any activity related to their last holiday. Furthermore, the Internet opens the door to collaborations and partnerships with online travel agencies. In fact, 70% of online bookings come from OTAs. This figure also indicates an important segment of customers who prefer to organize things on their own and who should be reached through your own official channels.The importance of mobile for booking a sun umbrella online
When we talk about online bookings, Internet searches and using the web for travel, we are mainly referring to mobile. As mentioned, the target audience is young and includes the smartphone generations: increasingly, the mobile phone is the reference point for Internet traffic. For the Travel & Hospitality sector, mobile traffic exceeds 40%. According to a study by Xeniapro, 90% of Italian travelers use their smartphone for the entire travel experience: from research to booking, and including social sharing and reviews.With a website, the user books the beach club online
The first step to bring your beach club online is building a website. It will be the digital interface with the customer, your business card to introduce yourself to visitors and win them over. Since, as mentioned above, mobile devices drive Internet traffic in the tourism sector, the site must be built according to mobile first logic. This will guarantee the best experience and usability from any device, making the browsing experience more pleasant and therefore encouraging the user to book. The website should not, however, simply be created. It needs updating, maintenance and, above all, quality, exactly like a beach resort! While the importance of quality content is a given, from precise information to appealing images all the way to a fast and secure booking system, less well known is local SEO.Local SEO to climb the SERP
SEO is the set of all those techniques that optimize a website for search engines. These activities allow Google to correctly read the site’s information and to display it among the results in a proper and relevant way according to users’ searches. Applying these operations from a local angle means giving your site verticality and precision. The keywords that will rank the site will be specific to the area, intercepting users’ exact searches. This way the traffic obtained will not be scattered but targeted and with a high probability of conversion. In this sense, starting a blog could prove a smart choice. Not only does it constitute a content update of the site that is important for the domain’s ranking, but it offers users extra entertainment and ranks the site itself for specific searches. For example, you could write an article on what to do in the evening in that particular location, after spending a wonderful day at the sea. Or the best beach sports to play to have fun and stay in shape on holiday, perhaps with the equipment provided by the resort.Social networks bring the beach online
Going on holiday to the sea also means sharing your best moments on social media. Much of users’ content on social networks relates to travel and holidays. This means something very important. The social profiles of beach resorts, as well as of accommodation facilities and restaurants, are viewed and evaluated by users during the research phase, and may also be tagged during the stay. This is why a beach club should have well-managed and constantly updated social channels. Facebook posts can tell the resort’s story, Instagram stories can show the beauty of the sea live while photos capture the memories, and TikTok videos show how much fun life is at the beach resort. And then there is the winter period, in which to show behind-the-scenes glimpses and perhaps announce some news. In short, social networks offer many possibilities for use and different ways to reach and entertain users and customers.Online advertising for beaches: Google advertising and social ads
To all this, an online advertising strategy must be added. As mentioned at the outset, in fact, potential customers are on the Internet. This is where people look for information, advice and inspiration. Therefore, it is essential to set up winning advertising campaigns that reach the audience and encourage them to book. For online advertising for beach resorts, Google and social media campaigns cannot be missing. On Google it is strategic to set up two types of advertising campaigns, Search and Display. With the former, you place ads in the search network, intercepting users’ specific queries. By choosing the most suitable keywords, search ads will appear in the top positions, gaining visibility and clicks. With the latter, instead, you use appealing graphic content that intrigues and catches users’ attention. On the other hand, on social media you can create emotional and engaging advertising campaigns. Highlighting the content of the editorial plan, creating ad-hoc graphics and videos for advertising, and inviting the user who is idly scrolling their feed to take action are all possibilities to consider. Advertising on social networks, in fact, allows you to cover a very broad user base, reaching the audience in their free time with relaxing and inviting content like a beach and a holiday at the sea. *https://xeniapro.com/mercato-turismo-online-statistiche/Related service: discover Advertising by ARvis — the agency that scales with you.
