The Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau (SIVB) with South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) and Pacific Islands Trade and Invest (PT&I) will play host to the digital marketing workshop for small and medium sized (SME) accommodation providers in Gizo and Auki.

This will be be held in Gizo from the 15th -19th and Auki on the 22nd -25th July.

Following a successful pilot project conducted in Tonga by the South Pacific Tourism Organization (SPTO) and the Tonga Visitors Bureau (TVB) to build a stronger online presence for SME accommodations, SPTO and Pacific Islands Trade and Invest (PT&I) decided to extend the project to Solomon Islands working with the Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau.

The project aims to get as many accommodation providers as possible in Solomon Islands set up with a professional e-commerce enabled web site able to process bookings instantly, combined with channel management tools to enable third party distribution when they need it via sites such as Wotif, Booking.com, Expedia and others.

In a later phase it is planned to supply all participating accommodations with interconnected Facebook sites with a booking widget embedded, plus providing help to build their TripAdvisor presence.

The costs for the photo shoot, set-up for the new web sites with booking engine, the channel management and the social media is all covered by PT&I and SPTO.

To commence the project, PT&I, SPTO and SIVB will be conducting this workshop on the 15th July 2013 in Gizo and 22nd July in Auki, where the small to medium accommodation providers will learn about: Why Online (Digital) Marketing is important for their business, Building Channels to Market (Top 7 Things To Do) Your web site (Central to Success), The Booking Button (for those who want to keep their existing web site) and What it cost?

Following the workshop, appointments will be made with those accommodations interested in participating to visit their properties to assess the market readiness of their property, conduct a photo shoot and collect digital content for the creation of either a new web site (or booking widget that can be inserted into existing websites). All participants will receive a DVD with the photos collected which they can use for other online and offline promotions. 

 

Source: http://www.eturbonews.com/