South Africa promotion to European French-speaking markets
Some references :
Altafiumara Resort & Spa
5-star hotel in Reggio di Calabria:
bimonthly newsletter
Les Cordons Bleus 3-star hotel in Senegal : quarterly newsletter
RENT-501 in Madagascar : bimonthly newsletter
Sarahma, 3-star hotel in Senegal : quarterly newsletter
Because of the very negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, starting business again with European markets is not going to be an easy task :
Travelling bans should be gradually lifted, mainly in a question of weeks, which means that airlines will be able to start operating again.
Of course, it will take months and months before we come back to the original situation we enjoyed at the beginning of 2020, when tourists could fly all over the world at low prices.
Traditional safe touristic destinations will be given the preferences by European authorities (Mediterranean, S.A., Thailand, the US – if they accept us… ).
The next "step" will consist in pushing people to make a decision of flying far away.
It clearly means that a big promotion job will have to be done.
For obvious reasons, S.A. traditional European markets should be easy to start again (i.e.: Germany, NL, UK, …) .
Regarding Southern Europe (France, Italy, Spain, ..) the situation is slightly different : these countries are not doing so well on the economic point of view BUT they still have very distinct different social classes which means that the upper middle classes will not be personally affected too much in their everyday lives by the economic crisis to come.
It will all be a question of bringing them to make the decision.
And this is exactly what we can help you with.
Our company has been involved in the promotion of foreign tourism operators for several years, including:
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Promoting foreign DMCs, hotels, theme parks, resorts, … to European French-speaking Tour Operators, Travel agents, Travel journalists and opinion leaders.
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Advising some Paris operators on new destinations (and their local inbound operators) to market and sell.
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Organizing fam trips for European MICE and LEISURE executives and deciders (to Italy, Madagascar, Senegal, …).
Our customers are local operators who want to advertise their companies by showing their activities and trying to sell them to the people we bring along. -
Organizing presentation of road-shows in France (Paris and Lyons).
This is what we have been doing for African and Asian operators since 2015.
You may know that French people are usually not very good at understanding English and generally dislike being addressed in a foreign language, therefore, it is of a paramount importance to use promotion tools in French for such markets.
What we are going to do :
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Create several webpages introducing South African operators, tours, hotels, etc.
These pages have to be very attractive with beautiful pictures and videos if any.
These webpages would be hosted on www.afrique-tourisme.com.
The webpages we create are « Google-friendly » and get first page natural ranking on google.fr very quickly.
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Create a short presentation of these pages and host it on our other website www.night-n-day.org. (This website is mainly intended to Tourism, MICE and Corporate professionals). On such short presentation there would be hyperlinks to the pages hosted on www.afrique-tourisme.com.
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Creation of bimonthly newsletters (6 in a year) fully dedicated to S.A. operators interested in the project and sent to :
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A panel of 5,700+ registered French-speaking Tour Operators, Travel Agents and also MICE deciders, Corporates and Travel journalists in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Quebec and Switzerland.
(Such newsletters we have been sending for several years have an average opening rate of 23 % , which is far more than the usual 3 % when sending a campaign to the untargeted general public).
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A panel of 8,500+ people (general public) who have bought an African holiday or made a quotation request for it in the last 3 years. This general public, if interested, could buy directly from the S.A. operator or from a Travel Agency you would appoint (if necessary, we can introduce you to some Paris-based T.O./Travel agents likely to be very interested).
Each of the 6 bimonthly newsletters would showcase a different aspect of the activities of the operators advertised on them. For example a hotel would have the focus put on its different types of rooms on Newsletter #1, then on its restaurant and bar facilities on Newsletter # 2, etc...
Of course, we would not send the same information 6 times in a year ! ...
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The S.A. operator interested in our promotion tools are kindly requested to provide us with texts, logo, photographs, videos, ... All texts will be translated into French at no extra cost.
On each newsletter there could be up to 10 S.A. operators (provided they are not competitors, which means : we could have one 3-star hotel in Knysna and one 4-star hotel in the same place but not two same standard hotels in the same town.
Such newsletters should be bimonthly (6 sent in a year) in order to create an awareness and develop an interest in the specificity of your activities.
That, of course, does not mean we should be limited to 10 clients.
Example:
A first set of 6 newsletters promoting 10 operators would be sent on Week 1, Week 9, Week 17, Week 25, etc ……
A second set of 6 newsletters promoting 10 other operators would be sent on Week 2, Week 10, Week 18, Week 26, etc ……
Etc., etc., etc.
The newsletter would have several hyperlinks leading the key words or key phrases to the French webpages (on my two websites) in charge of giving all the details.
Ten days after each campaign we would send the S. A. operators the statistics (opening and clicking).
Importance of the newsletters: relying only on a website is strictly not enough especially when considering the number of competitors operating in Southern Africa, likely to be better ranked by Google.
With the newsletters linking to the webpages, you no longer expect professionals or the general public to find your websites among dozens of competitors: the newsletters reach directly the commercial targets who are encouraged to discover your webpages by clicking on the hyperlinks
Concerning S.A. inbound operators that we would like to promote to French-speaking Europe, we understand that the financial possibilities are nowadays very limited.
COSTS (ALL INCLUDED) FOR A YEARLY ENGAGEMENT:
The webpages created on www.afrique-tourisme.com + www.night-n-day.org: € 350 for the first 12 months, € 150 p.y. for each following year.
The 6 bimonthly newsletter campaigns: € 650
We accept monthly payments : € 83 per month for the webpages + the 6 newsletters (± ZAR 1,610)
You can see an example of the mutualized newsletter we suggest for the S.A. operators at : https://mailp.ro/1564780
We also make newsletters fully dedicated to ONE operator (the rates being of course higher) : https://mailp.ro/1536823