Multichannel Tourism: 10 Questions to Answer for Customer Acquisition
Par Jean-François Bélisle, le 14 septembre 2009
Two weeks ago, I came back from a trip to Gaspésie which was a really appreciated (and needed) rest. However, even though I didn’t travel much this summer, in visiting Norway, Quebec City and Gaspésie, I drove a lot and had the opportunity to visit many different cities and to sleep in many different hotels and motels. And yes, I’m still bringing back home some sort of a tan, even though I focused my travels on northern destinations! During these vacations and especially whilst driving, one business question was always on top of my mind; how do these places (hotels, motels, etc…) operate to acquire new customers? But more precisely which kind of reasoning should they intuitively follow to optimize their customer acquisition strategy?
Moulin à Images (Quebec City), Parc Forillon (Gaspésie)
When coming back and after some serious thinking, I draw the following simple model presented below which explains in 5 questions who your customers and potential customers are and how did/could they find you?
1. Where are you?
2. Which period of the year?
3. What are you offering?
4. Who are your customers?
5. How did your customers find you?
Multichannel Tourism Model for Customer Acquisition
How to take advantage of this Model?
A model is always something that scares a huge proportion of practioners, but it is also a way to simplify a reality, a reality that should be understood in order to take advantage of a given situation. So let’s reformulate the 5 questions of this model into 5 Yes/No managerially-driven questions:
6. Are your offers aligned with what the city has to offer at that period of the year?
7. Are your offers aligned with what the customers want in this city at that period of the year?
8. Do you know how your customers find you?
9. Do you optimize your number of customers coming from all 9 ways?
10. Do you know why your customers choose you?
So what are your answers? Common sense and archived data should take care of 6, 7 and 9, while a simple single-sheet questionnaire with two questions distributed to customers should answer 8 and 10 and provide you with a starting point for increasing your number of customers. If you answered “Yes” to all questions, then you perhaps need some vacations, your job is done, if this is not the case, then take another close look at this model.
Jean-Francois Belisle
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Special contribution : Jean-Francois Belisle is a a lecturer in E-Marketing at HEC Montréal and a consultant with expertise in e-marketing, strategic marketing and advanced marketing research methods (i.e. experimental designs, mathematical modeling). He is also a Ph.D. student in Marketing at McGill University, with a minor in Mathematics (Statistics), as well as a blogger at jfbelisle.com.
Sujet : Blogues d’affaires, Conférence, Marketing Internet, Stratégie, «Parce que ça me tente» |
3 réponses à “Multichannel Tourism: 10 Questions to Answer for Customer Acquisition”
Commentaire
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Le 15 septembre 2009 à 11 h 24 min
Merci Jean-François.
C’est un bon exemple de la scénarisation du contenu (qui découle de la stratégie de contenu… que toute entreprise présente sur le web devrait avoir, non?) L’idée est de structurer les informations dont le client a besoin pour magasiner et acheter le produit, puis de concevoir et livrer le contenu de telle sorte qu’il ait ces informations au moment où il en a besoin.
Le 15 septembre 2009 à 13 h 52 min
Modèle intéressant qui permet de ne pas oublier de points de discussion lors d’une rencontre avec un établissement touristique. De plus, il facilite la réflexion sur la définition du produit offert.
Le 15 septembre 2009 à 14 h 58 min
Merci pour les commentaires Étienne et Marc. J’avoue qu’en lien avec vos commentaires, l’objectif de ce court billet était de traduire de manière très succincte ce qui devrait se passer dans l’industrie du tourisme d’un point de vue stratégique. En ce sens, on pourrait diviser les entreprises de cette industrie en trois catégories : (1) celles qui réussissent très bien en servant de leurs trippes, (2) celles qui réussissent et qui ont un plan très en lien avec mon petit schéma, et enfin (3) celles qui auraient avantage à s’inspirer de mon petit schéma dans le but de réduire le nombre de chambres non-louées.