Travel Victoria – travel and tourism blog

  • Identifying those fake TripAdvisor accommodation reviews

    The world’s largest and most popular holiday review site, TripAdvisor, publishes millions of reviews by those who have stayed at hotels and other types of accommodation around the world. The primary reason for its popularity is that one of the best ways to find out what to expect when staying somewhere is to actually read…

  • Be cautious of those offers to get your website to the top of Google

    If you have a website, you will no doubt be a regular recipient of offers via email from website marketers who promise that their large company of professionals will make your website feature highly in Google.  However, before you take up an offer like that, carefully analyse the contents of their email and think about…

  • Monitor the results of outsourcing of your website promotion

    Outsourcing the job of promoting your website is becoming an attractive option for business owners who either don’t have the time or know-how to do this promotion themselves. However, you really need to keep a careful eye on what your promoter is doing, as if they are not professional about it, their work could end…

  • Official tourism websites – Victoria vs. Tasmania

    Each one of Australia’s states and territories has their own official tourism website.  If you own or manage an accommodation property, it is certainly beneficial to have some exposure on these official sites as they are used by a wide range of travellers. Victoria’s official tourism website is Visit Victoria, while Tasmania’s equivalent is Discover…

  • Does your writing reflect your level of professionalism?

    Over the years, accommodation providers who list their properties on our Travel Victoria website have regularly said they want the facility to edit the wording within their advertisement themselves, rather than telling us what they want changed and waiting for that to be done. The fact we don’t offer that facility has many thinking it’s…

  • Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket with Google AdWords

    For those marketing accommodation on the internet, Google Adwords is the easy way to get your website to the top of the page when people search for somewhere to stay. But the cost can be significant, and could you achieve similar results for considerably less cost? Firstly, most people searching on Google trust the unpaid…

  • Are organisations shunning email communications with the public?

    Email is great for quick and easy communication, however some larger organisations are increasingly treating email from the general public as no more than a nuisance and give low priority to dealing with it. Let’s consider a recent situation we experienced.  While developing our Dogs On Holidays website, we wanted to create a page containing…

  • Make sure your website’s drop-down menus work on an iPad

    By the end of 2011, Apple had sold more than 55 million iPads worldwide. In many markets, sales of the iPad represented over 70% of tablet computer purchases. Therefore it is important to make sure your website is fully functional when used on an iPad. If you don’t have an iPad, one of the first…

  • Spend more time growing your business than debt collecting

    It’s the bane of any business’s existence – trying to extract payment from those who owe you money. Ideally, you’d prefer to devote your time to actually running and developing your business, yet nowadays in these economic challenged times, many businesses seem to spend more and more time on the unpleasant task of debt recovery.…

  • Your accommodation property’s website – who’s looking at it?

    An accommodation provider may typically spend between $1,000 and $5,000 getting a website developed for their business. A professional image is created, all facets of the accommodation are on show, but who is looking at it? The next step many make is to then market their accommodation on commission-based travel websites, such as Stayz, Take-A-Break…