I want to go to Tofino, BC for Christmas this year, so I recently started trolling the web sites of my favourite West Coast inns to see if there were any specials in the works.

What I found at Long Beach Lodge got me thinking about how on-line marketing might be the salvation of many a small tourism operator.

Tourism 2.0 is the new normal

It used to be that I found travel “deals” while browsing the pages of my favourite newspapers, but today I get all my news online or via CBC Radio.

Nowadays, I find the same deals by going to the web site of a particular hotel or airline–either directly (because I’m already familiar with the property or carrier) or because I’ve been referred there via a Twitter link or a blog post or even a Google ad.

That’s how I ended up at Long Beach Lodge’s site: it started with a Twitter link. Once I got there, I expected to find a “Specials” page–what I didn’t expect was a very proactive teaser campaign to get me to come back not once but twice each week for a chance to score amazing (but limited) deals.

The Long Beach Lodge strategy

Basically it works like this: on Monday afternoons, the general manager posts the details of his weekly offer. You have 24 hours to consider the details and then you have to come back on Tuesday at 4:15 pm to close the deal.

The discounts are deep enough to make the repeat visit worth the hassle. And by signing up for their newsletter, you get a weekly reminder in your in-box to come back and play. So guess what? I signed up for the newsletter.

They win; I win.

Act fast; fail fast

Long Beach Lodge gets social media marketing.

They seem to grasp that it’s ok to take small risks in this untested realm because an on-line marketing campaign allows you to “fail fast”–you get to know pretty quickly what’s working for you and what’s not.

And when beans are scarce in the jeans–as they are for so many in the tourism industry in these times–that’s like money in the bank.

For the record: I haven’t booked with them yet–this week’s deal was out of my time-frame. But they’ve got my attention and I’ll definitely be checking back…and sharing the link with my own network.

Do you have any other examples of creative, low-cost on-line marketing initiatives in the tourism industry? I’d love to see the links!