Digital marketing and its importance in the context of Seychelles’ tourism industry |03 August 2018

In July this year, the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) hosted a digital marketing workshop on Mahé and Praslin for their partners, in an effort to help participants learn how to expand their business’ digital presence.

In the following interview, STB’s chief executive, Sherin Francis, enlightens us on the topic of digital marketing in the context of the local tourism industry.

Q: What is digital marketing?

A: The use of various digital technologies and online means to market or give visibility to products and/or services.

There are various means for online marketing, e.g. websites, social media platforms and travel platforms. It can go as far as doing business online, e.g. through booking/reservation platforms. 

Q: What is required to effectively market a business online?

A: The necessary hardware is required to start with, e.g. desktop computers/laptops, mobile devices; reliable internet and knowing how to go about it. People can learn a lot about digital marketing by themselves and can even train online. Those who are less technology savvy can always approach companies for guidance, for instance STB makes it a point to provide assistance to tourism establishments.

Q: What are the benefits & disadvantages of digital marketing?

A: As much as there are various avenues to market one’s business in general, digital presence is quite relevant in getting visibility. Today, a lot of people have internet access, and not only on desktop computers, but on mobile devices. A large percentage of holidays are being searched online. It is important to note that about half of our visitors are coming to Seychelles through online or direct bookings.

Seychelles being small and limited in terms of resources, digital marketing actually presents itself as a good opportunity given it is a strategy which is within our reach.

Once a small entrepreneur has had the relevant training, he/she can manage their marketing, which shows that, having a marketing company / middleman will no longer be an absolute necessity to be able to market and promote individual businesses.

In the tourism industry, both businesses and customers used to depend on travel agencies a lot to book a holiday, but digital technology has now provided the opportunity to reach the clientele directly without any intermediaries, and this has been seen as very cost effective, especially for smaller businesses.

Through digital marketing, businesses can also have direct control of how they wish to be seen, and are able to monitor and adjust their marketing messages as and when required.

Additionally, the more tourism establishments in Seychelles are online, the more it will help the destination as a whole because when a search is made for holidays, the likelihood of Seychelles coming up is high.

STB encourages everyone to make maximum use of this opportunity to connect to a large database of potential customers.

With every opportunity comes its pros and cons. For instance, people are not able to falsely advertise their business and services in today’s digital era. Most online platforms are user-driven, meaning that while you can be given good reviews from customers about your establishment, they can also share bad experiences online. It is important to remember that people trust the views of other travellers more than a professional.

Hence, it is important to be ‘au-fait’ with the pros and cons of digital marketing, and how to go about using it effectively. If your business is not up to standard, and you are portraying it to be, it can be detrimental to its reputation.

Similarly, any perceived view of your businesses and services will reflect through the comments on those various platforms. This is why STB hosts such workshops, so that our tourism trade can learn how to use it, and how to optimise the use of it.

Q: What were some of the most important outcomes of the workshop?

A: The digital world is not a static world; one cannot attend a workshop and suddenly know everything. The importance of such workshops is to be updated on trends, and to understand how to make full use of digital marketing means; once we know how to use it correctly, it will bring a lot of benefit.

The expert who conducted the workshop gave tips on how to use digital marketing to its full potential. Depending on the type of client you are targeting, you can decide which online platforms you should market your business on.

As an example, we tend to think that the elderly are not online; this is not true as many people of the older generation are online. To engage fully, one just needs to understand which platforms this grey market can be accesed from, as for different age segments, there is a tendency towards different online platforms.

Another point was that blogs are now becoming less popular since there is a trend shifting more towards visuals, with less people reading and writing; photos, videos and Vlogs are now top ranked.   

Q: How are local tourism establishments currently making use of digital marketing?

A: About five years ago, the term digital marketing was foreign to a lot of people, and most did not know anything about it; it was mainly about websites only.

Today, although more people know about it, a lot of establishments don’t know how to optimise use of it. If you are not doing it well, e.g. not using the right key word associations or not tagging your website properly, when people will make searches, your establishment will never feature in the search engines.

Our population is quite technology savvy, with one of the highest mobile penetration per capita in Africa. We are very adapt to technology, and this should make it a lot easier for us to go digital for business purposes, but a lot of people still use social media merely for personal reasons.

Internet connections in Seychelles have improved; we now have the fibre optic cable and more options for online accessibility. However, many tourism establishments feel that the prices could be improved while service providers are of the view that one just needs to be aware of the type of package to get at an ideal price.

Q: What are some barriers hindering progress of digital marketing in Seychelles?

A: Aside from the price of internet packages and reliability of the internet, there is hesitation among some tourism establishments to make use of the internet for marketing. There are those who are used to traditional marketing methods that may feel that digital marketing is a threat, but it is not.

Marketing methods have evolved and all organisations should make an effort for their business model to fit this. Digital marketing and e-commerce can be used combined with the traditional way of marketing; this way the business adapts while maintaining its core business model. It is important that today’s business models are adjusted to meet the evolving needs of customers; if customers want to buy online, this is where we will have to sell.

In Seychelles, there is still space for both traditional and digital marketing. For example, the luxury clients might not go online to book their holidays and will ask someone else to do this for them. Seychelles has a lot of this type of clientele and travel agencies are quite helpful in this manner.

Similarly, there are a lot of value-added services which are provided if you buy a holiday through a travel agent or tour operator and which will not be available online. This is why STB still engagesin many traditional marketing activites. As a destination, we always need to maintain the right mix of marketing activities.

Q: What is the vision of STB with regard to digital marketing?

A: STB’s wish is to have more establishments train themselves in what is required to make themselves more visible and dependent, without solely relying on booking platforms.

It is important to have maximum tourism operators have some presence online and to have a good percentage that are actively present.

As a last word, I would make a plea for all of the businesses in Seychelles, especially those in tourism, to make the effort to have a presence online. This is where the majority of your clientele are looking for inspirations, dreaming and making plans!

Photo sources: STB