World Congress - Quito (10/14/98)
Marketing Ecotourism on the Net
by Ron Mader
3200 Words
The following presentation was made at the 8th Annual World Congress for
Adventure Travel and Ecotourism, held in Quito, Ecuador in October 1998. During
the forum, I discussed internet strategies for travel companies and
environmental groups. I also reviewed major websites, underlining what works
and what should be improved. A Powerpoint presentation accompanies the
following text, which will be included in the proceedings of the congress,
available from the Adventure Travel Society, 6551 So. Revere Parkway, Suite
160, Englewood, CO 80111; email: ats@adventuretravel.com; web:
http://www.adventuretravel.com
Biography
Introduction
Web Promotion: Strategies for the tourism industry
Building the Web: Good, bad and ugly websites:
Strategies for Conservation Groups and Ecotourism Developers
Conclusion: Paying attention to expanding synergies
Biography
Besides hosting the award-winning Eco Travels in Latin America website
(http://www.planeta.com), Ron Mader is the author of the new guidebook, Mexico:
Adventures in Nature and co-author (with James Gollin) of Honduras: Adventures
in Nature. A journalist dedicated to covering Latin America, Ron has researched
and written about the internet for the past ten years and currently writes a
monthly feature, "Mexico on the Web" for Business Mexico magazine. Articles of
this column are archived online the Mexico Connect website at
http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/rmader/rmaderindex.html.
Introduction
I would like to begin my presentation with a few disclaimers. First, I have a
difficult time believing statistics about "ecotourism." Second, I'm equally
cynical about statistics about the growth of the internet. So I am certainly
skeptical about providing reliable statistical information about the success of
ecotourism promotion on the internet.
That said, I would like to offer a few anecdotes and observations.
For the past five years, I've hosted the Eco Travels in Latin America website
(http://www.planeta.com). Each month the site has grown in popularity. The
document counter currently records more than 80,000 document hits per month.
Again, all well and good, but I measure the site's impact primarily via email.
I know first-hand how promotion of destinations and services on the web works
- or could work.
Travelers tell me they want the names of recommended local guides and hotels.
Tourism agencies in the United States express their interest in expanding their
business and promoting environmental travel in Latin America. Likewise, I hear
from companies in Latin America that would like to promote their services
abroad. Finally, I receive requests all the time from students who want to
learn Spanish, so they can better understand this region.
In short, I get feedback all the time from travelers, environmentalists and
journalists who use this medium to plan their trips, make reservations, search
for in-depth features, background and contacts. Those promoting adventure
tourism or ecotourism services and who do not use the internet are at a serious
disadvantage.
That said, what we must explore and master is how the web differs from other
media. Contrasting from television or radio, the internet promotes not a
one-to-many but a many-to-many conversation. A tourism business can place its
brochure online, but travelers who are disappointed with your service can also
make their voices heard via usenet channels, chat groups and thousands of pages
devoted to consumer travel issues.
Let's explore some of the basics, beginning with web promotion.
Web Promotion: Strategies for the tourism industry
Contacting travel agencies, hotels and even guides is easier than ever thanks
to the internet. No expensive, long distance phone calls. No phone tag. That's
the good news. The bad news is that many of these entrepreneurs have yet to
learn how to make the internet work for them.
While individuals may have an email account, they often refuse to respond. No
answers, no feedback, no acknowledgment a message has been received. The irony
of this is delicious. How can you do business if you don't answer potential
customers. Once the manager of an insurance company asked me how quickly he
needed to respond to email. "Treat it as a phone call," I said, adding, "How
long would you wait before you had your receptionist return a telephone call?"
"That day," he said - surprised at his own answer, because he had been leaving
- and continues to leave - email unanswered for months at a time.
When people are preparing to travel they want to know what kind of tours,
accommodations, services are available. The internet provides seemingly direct
contact to services that are off the beaten track. If travelers can prepare the
trip ahead of time, they will use the internet to make reservations, or at
least to get the phone numbers and contact info that they will use after
arriving at their destination of choice.
Unfortunately, the businesses don't seem to grasp the needs of this growing
customer base. When businesses do respond, the info they send usually does not
answer the pressing questions: What does this cost? Can I make a reservation?
What kind of tours do you offer? If it's an environmental tour, how does it
benefit local conservation efforts? It seems as if I could on both hands the
number of times someone from the tourism industry actually responded to a
simple query. I'm usually overwhelmed with a 30-page tract prepared for travel
agents that outlines each of the potential trips the company offers or could
offer if there is the demand. Travel agencies may say they don't have time to
answer individual requests, but if I call them up, I can get specific answers
on the phone. Why are email queries different?
Sometimes when the other party has a website, I'll get a one line message to
check out the site. Visiting the site, if I don't see the answers to my
questions, I have a choice - either resend my original query or just ignore
this business. I usually choose the later. If the business cannot provide a
timely and informative response, can they be counted on for their services?
For example, last year in the research of my book, Mexico: Adventures in
Nature, I asked a hotel near Cancun that was touting its environmental programs
if they could be more specific. "Look at our website." I did and after five
minutes, I couldn't find any details about how this hotel is "eco friendly." I
rarely ask the same question twice. The hotel is not in my guidebook. Likewise,
a travel agency in Oaxaca said it offered trips to the coffee farms. Please
send me info! "Look at our website." I tried but the site was so
graphics-heavy, I just got bored after ten minutes of waiting for all of the
images to load, so I abandoned this effort and surfed to another website. Such
poor website design is responsible for the criticism of the web as the "World
Wide Wait."
The adventure should be the journey, not the quest for information used to
plan the trip.
Improving communications
Part of the problem is that those working in the travel industry know how to
create one document - a glib public relations effort. It sells an image, but
little else. As travelers and writers seek out more in-depth information, this
process must change.
Worse, I find that many of these agencies like to send documents as
attachments to email. That would be fine if I could read the materials, but
often they are the cutting edge of word processing technologies (using Word
6.0, 7.0, etc. when I am content with my Word 5.0). The result of the technical
mismatch is that they send documents that come across my screen as gibberish.
The solution is easy. Find out if the person wants an attachment and if so, if
they can read the documents you want to send.
There is no reason why a file can't be sent via simple email, not even using a
fancy attachment. If you have a business, create a simple fact sheet that you
can send to those asking basic questions. Who are you? What are you offering?
Do your trips run year-round? Create a series of fact sheets that answer the
most frequently asked questions and take the time to respond to each query
individually, adding the information from these fact sheets when it's
appropriate.
If you must send an attachment to a lot of people, use the least complicated
format - a simple ASCII file. If you have a website, by all means send a guide
of where visitors can find specific information (individual URLs) without
having to hunt for it.
Building the Web: Good, bad and ugly websites
If you need to construct a website, it's best to look at what's already
online. Let's review a handful of websites - run by government organizations,
tourism businesses, environmental groups, and individuals - and see what they
do well and how they can improve. Also, in English we have the expression that
people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I'll conclude this
section with a critical review of my own website.
Government Agencies
Organization of American States (OAS) - http://www.oas.org/
Tourism Secretariat of Mexico (SECTUR) - http://mexico-travel.com/
Uruguay Tourism Ministry - http://www.turismo.gub.uy/index.html
Ecuadoran Tourism Ministry - http://www.cetur.org
While conducting and sponsoring a great deal of research - both into
sustainable development and tourism promotion, the OAS website has placed
little of this information online. Nor does it let readers know what projects
are currently underway. The SECTUR website seems to have everything, except
that the site is poorly organized and information is scattered. Related
documents are not linked in any discernible fashion. Uruguay has added content
to its site only this year. Ecuador's CETUR has a colorful home page and some
basic info to tourism sites, including the country's national parks. But there
is nothing in-depth here, nor will you find the ministry's press releases or
reports. Other vacuous sites in dire need of in-depth reports and
reader-friendly content include USAID and the World Bank.
Private Businesses
Sanborns Insurance - http://www.hiline.net/sanborns/ or
http://www.sanbornsinsurance.com
Bahia Tours - http://www.aventuras.com/bahia-tours/
Ecotourism Nicaragua - http://www.eco-nica.com /
Tread Lightly - http:///www.tredlightly.com/
Texas-based Sanborns is not an adventure tourism or ecotourism provider. It
sells autombile insurance. But it's a good example of a commercial site plagued
with serious problems. The site could be fine, except that it has not been
updated in a year. The contact page is hard to find and worse, the email
addresses listed no longer function. But wait... I've been looking an outdated
page which their former Internet host has not taken offline. The new version is
better, but for a novice user, it's impossible to tell which site to use. A
good lesson here is to let people know when and if you change the address of
your website.
Bahia Tours, on the other hand, offers a graphics-rich (without being too
slow) and well-organized online brochure for its tours throughout Central
America. Another good site in Ecotourism Nicaragua. Run by Tom Fletcher, this
is one of the sponsors of my website. Tom asked for some feedback as he was
developing his site and I suggested that he let readers know what the company
does not offer, in this case, day tours. Anticipate responses and provide the
appropriate information. Also, since his company is titled "ecotourism," the
site should include basic information on how he assists local conservation
programs.
Environmental Groups
The Nature Conservancy - http://www.tnc.org
The Ecotourism Society - http://www.ecotourism.org
Ecotravel Center (Conservation International) - http://www.ecotour.org
Earlier this year I participated in an online conference titled Ethics in
Tourism and I wrote an essay, criticizing environmental groups for the lack of
quality materials online
(http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/jan98/eit/2_mader.html). Such criticism
is offered in a constructive manner. After being rather harsh about the
Ecotourism Society for its has limited public access to materials, this group
has increased the number of reports on its website. Other groups are hampered
by bureaucracy and perhaps lack of initiative. For example, Conservation
International has a great number of environmental projects throughout the
world, yet its website contains only a few blurbs. There are no progress
reports and no evaluations of programs it's already funded. Follwing suit, The
Nature Conservancy (TNC) aspires only to brochure-quality propaganda. On the
TNC site, there are no local contacts nor information on current projects. The
only contact information provides assumes that you want to join this
organization. Shouldn't these be the groups that lead the way and offer readers
in-depth research on environmental issues, particularly the projects they have
funded?
Individual Efforts
Marcus Endicottís Infotec/Green Travel - http://www.green-travel.com and
http://www.earthsystems.org/list/green-travel/
Scott Walker/Ecotourism Fieldbook -
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2310/
Alexis Aguilar and Derek Parent/Friends of Celaque National Park -
http://www.generation.net/~derekp/celaque.html
Individuals, not government agencies or environmental groups, are well ahead
of the curve and provide good content for those interested in particular
regions or ecotourism in general. Marcus Endicott has created the foremost
listserver and website focusing on the topic of green travel, a forum open to
anyone interested in this field and a must-read for anyone interested in
ecotourism with internet access. Scott Walker and the cyber team of Alexis
Aguilar and Derek Parent have focused their energies on particular places.
Scott's page on the northernmost cloud forest in Mexico has promoted both
research and travel in Tamaulipas. Likewise, Aguilar and Parent's Celaque page
is one of the few online promotions for rural Honduras and provides background
on other pressing issues in Honduras. In terms of content, these efforts are
all light years ahead of what the government tourism offices or tour companies
provide and provide a good model of how the internet is being well used.
Eco Travels in Latin America
Home page - http://www.planeta.com
Exploring Ecotourism- http://www2.planeta.com/mader/ecotravel/etour.html
South America - http://www2.planeta.com/mader/ecotravel/south/south.html
To be fair, I feel the need to confess some of the inadequacies of my own
website in this forum. First, the name "Eco Travels in Latin America" sounds
too much like a travel agency, which it is not. The purpose of the site is to
provide a clearinghouse of information and a forum to discuss ecotourism. That
said, the home page is a long document, perfect for students and researchers
but not concise enough for impatient web surfers. On the plus side, the site
does use a minimum of graphics and those used are rather small - meaning the
site is fast loading. My chief complaint is that there are the frequent errors
in web site links, as other websites die or simply change the addresses of
their URLs. As an individual effort, I can make changes rather quickly, but if
I don't know that there is a problem with a given link, a problem may stay
online for months before being corrected.
Strategies for Conservation Groups and Ecotourism Developers
Before I conclude with comments on the co-evolution of internet and
ecotourism, I'd like to take a step back from the internet and review some
basic promotion and communication strategies. Repeatedly, I'm asked for advice
on environmental tourism projects. I don't believe there exists a model for
ecotourism in Latin America, let alone a specific country. Every locale has
different opportunities. That said, there are some common sense strategies:
Build from the ground up and stay within your budget
A common mistake of development funds and international conservation groups is
the construction of large visitor's centers. Fine, if they are self-supporting,
but many rural projects can't afford the maintenance and end-up boarded up or
as impromptu bodegas. The alternatives are simple - if you want to provide an
introduction to local ecology and responsible tourism, place the information at
the local bus station, a restaurant or if a sheltered kiosk.
Be open to tour groups and individuals
The key word is inclusivity. The tourism industry caters to the packaged
tours. While there are many good tourism providers, don't ignore the
independent traveler, who will be the first to spread the word about the
project's attractions or problems. Unfortunately, official tourism studies
depend on statistics, which are more easily uncovered for packaged tours than
individual expeditions.
Develop communications savvy
For the project to succeed, communications must be clear within the community
itself and within the national and international spheres. Make sure that
operations are as transparent as possible so you can avoid local conflicts.
Simultaneously, connections must be made with outside contacts. Post updates on
the internet, develop a simple newsletter or do both! Be inclusive, rather than
exclusive in developing your contacts.
Build a website
Regardless of whether you have or are planning a website, take a moment to
consider what the goals of the site are. What kind of information do you have
at hand that could share with the public? Who is your target market? What
language do they speak? Be sure to explain how both independent travelers and
small group tours can visit your destination. Also, for environmental groups,
make a point of welcoming travel agents, who are a vital link in the chain of
promotion.
Conclusion: Paying attention to expanding synergies
I have found in my work that I see a certain synergy between the use of the
internet and the growth of ecotourism, particularly in Latin America. Via the
internet we see people making connections, regardless of distance or geography.
Likewise, ecotourism's success lies with its cooperation among travelers,
travel agencies, conservation groups and government offices. In some ways, both
the internet and ecotourism are evolving together - providing information and
ways of active participation to people around the globe.
Achieving ecotourism is not so much hitting a stationary target, but taking
part in a dynamic process. Rather than fretting about the definition, more
attention needs to be spend on the application of ecotourism. We all
acknowledge that communication must be improved, among conservationists and
tourism leaders within both regional and international spheres. I believe that
ecotourism is not just a niche or a fad, but a model of where all tourism must
progress. This should be our conversation - how do we get there from here?
I can't say whether it's because we're heading toward the end of the 20th
century, or because global communication - especially via the internet - has
expanded exponentially in the last generation, or whether environmental
awareness has matured, but rigid divisions among groups are blurring and
boundaries are dissolving. What is emerging tends toward a union of common
interests. Via the net, we relate to each other by affinity rather than
vicinity. And if we do travel - to the ends of the world or across town - we
are seeking and demanding information key to making our journey a successful
one.
1998 Copyright Ron Mader. Permission granted to cite this article and/or to
create links to its home on the web
(http://www2.planeta.com/mader/planeta/1198/1198quito.html). For any other
usage, please contact the author via email - ron@greenbuilder.com.
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