Financial Times

Valuable suggestions on E-Marketing of Sri Lankan tourism
This was among the five entries of The Sunday Times FT’s post-tsunami tourism contest organized earlier this year that was picked for honourable mention. The competition in conjunction with the Business Management School (BMS) called for suggestions in the form of a 500-word article from the public on how Sri Lanka’s tourism industry could recover from the Tsunami. The final winning entry will be published next week.

By Sarah Sheriff
Today, the Internet and the World Wide Web is the world’s fastest, most potent and economical tool of Information Communication technology. Sri Lanka being a developing country, it can ill-afford frequent Trade Fairs, Exhibitions, etc. which are costly affairs, as the recently held (local) Travel Mart proved! It is indeed unfortunate that Sri Lanka has underutilized the power and potential of the Internet to generate tourism to our country! To remedy this, the following suggestions may be helpful:

E-Marketing
The Sri Lanka Tourist Board could create a more comprehensive and attractive website showcasing all of Sri Lanka’s attractions and translate it into different languages. This will increase our overall target market. We should aggressively drive traffic towards it by placing articles and ads in Travel Ezines (electronic magazines) that provide a free service and have a large readership. Imagine the exposure Sri Lanka could gain, for some ezines reach over 100,000 subscribers! When people read the article/ad and click on the link to the website, a sign-up form on the Home Page would encourage visitors to subscribe to a fortnightly (or so) newsletter, informing them about special promotional packages and Sri Lanka’s hot spots, enticing them to visit our Island.

It is important that the website features an Online Catalogue, containing a categorized list of Sri Lanka’s tourist resorts, their packages on offer and holiday destinations to facilitate easy navigation. The web site could also have an exclusive membership club costing a one-time fee of around $50. Members will be entitled to exclusive benefit packages and airline discounts.

Focused Promotions: Targeting ezines catering to exclusive tourist groups such as the adventure and wildlife enthusiasts, history buffs, honeymooners etc. Articles backed by real-life photographs could achieve a more penetrative drive into the worldwide tourist market. The rewards of focused promotion are global reach, lower communication cost and improved awareness and visibility!
Internet Marketing Plan: Ads on Sri Lankan tourist destinations and its rich culture and heritage could also be posted on popular blogs and forums for free. (E.g. A search on Yahoo and MSN would produce a long list of such blogs/forums.) Classifieds too can be posted for free on various popular web sites. E.g. postaclassified.com, freeclassifiedlinks.com, adlandpro.com, etc.
Since discussion boards on web sites are usually arranged by subject, it makes them highly targeted. The SL Tourist Board could promote our country on tourism related discussion boards.

The SLTB could create its own web ring and gain targeted traffic. Other similar sites will link to the site because they’ll want to join the ring. For example, since SLTB wants to promote its tourist web site, they would want to start an online tourist marketing web ring. They could then draw their targeted audience.

Viral Marketing: Internet marketers are also known to use a powerful tool called ‘The Viral Method’. This technique could be applied to promote Sri Lanka as a safe and ideal tourist destination! For example, the Tourist Board could encourage tourists who visit Sri Lanka and expatriates living abroad (especially Canada, UK, USA and Australia) to distribute brochures offering specialized promotional packages to foreigners living in their countries.

If they manage to refer, say at least a group of 10 people to come over and visit Sri Lanka, they earn themselves an attractive incentive! (This could be in the form of a pre-paid 2 day stay at a resort in Sri Lanka.) Afterwards, if each one of those 10 tourists refers another group of 10, they in turn earn themselves the incentive.

The cycle continues rotating and even though initially the Tourist Board may have to invest some funds, ultimately the rewards are STUPENDOUS!
The Sri Lanka Tourist Board could hold regular contests on its web site, offering attractive prizes and promotional packages. They could also give other similar tourist web sites the option of offering it to their visitors.
This’ll multiply SLTB’s advertising all over the Internet, making it a viral contest!

Joint Ventures: The SLTB web site could create an alliance with 3 or 4 similar tourist web sites, including each of their ads or banners on the web sites.
The websites will all share targeted traffic with each other. For example, SLTB would simultaneously have 3 web sites promoting Sri Lanka without paying them ad space on their web site. And SLTB would do the same for them in return!

Internet Radio: SLTB could even start its own Internet radio station featuring the local music scene!! Through this, they could also advertise their web site as well as special promotional packages and contests. (This would be an ideal way to reach expatriates living abroad and inform them about the viral marketing program mentioned above.)

E- Book: SLTB could publish their web site in e-book format and put it on a disk or CD-ROM. This could also be given as a complimentary gift to passengers on transit flights, encouraging them to visit Sri Lanka!
Sri Lanka needs to tell the world loud and clear, that she has successfully overcome the devastating effects of the tsunami and is now absolutely safe to visit! We also need to go beyond the traditional ‘sun, sea and sand’ tourism and capitalize on other unique and diverse attractions Sri Lanka has been blessed with.

After all, we Sri Lankans have a reputation for being the friendliest and most hospitable people in the world, which definitely gives us the competitive edge over our other Asian neighbours!!

(Note: This winning entry has some valuable suggestions based on Internet marketing and it’s hoped the Sri Lanka Tourist Board will seriously look at these proposals even as a long-term marketing strategy for all purposes of promoting Sri Lanka, not only post-tsunami -- Business Editor).

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