Travel Victoria – travel and tourism blog

  • Why you need a real-time online booking system

    You’ve just spent a few great days at Mallacoota and enjoyed the natural beauty of the beach and surrounding national park. You and the family are heading home tomorrow morning, but just before going to bed, you check out the latest weather forecast on the internet – sunny and 30 degrees for the next few…

  • Putting TripAdvisor reviews into perspective

    There’s no arguing about the powerful influence the world’s most popular travel review website, TripAdvisor, has on travellers planning where to stay when away from home. There’s nothing more compelling and revealing than reading about first-hand experiences by independent guests as opposed to the slick and sanitised marketing material on a property’s website. However, some…

  • Design your website for people, not computers

    We get the opportunity to view many websites for accommodation properties due to their details being listed on the Travel Victoria website. There’s all different types we see – some spectacular ones, some fairly run of the mill, and the occasional one which is just plain odd. One website we came across recently was for…

  • Why showcase your internet provider in your business email address?

    Say a business has their own domain and website. How many times do you encounter businesses that publish their email address as being the one they were allotted by their internet service provider? For example, let’s say “Melbourne’s Best Apartments” has a website at www.MelbournesBestApartments.com.au. On their website, they advertise their email address as being…

  • Does your website really need a version designed for mobile phones?

    Back a few years ago, as people started acquiring mobile phones that could access websites, there was a push to create a separate mobile versions of websites, suitable for display on those small devices. The idea was to create a scaled down version of your website which was fast to load, given that at the…

  • If it’s free, is it really worth it?

    You know the familiar saying, “you only get what you pay for”…but does it always apply when you get something for free? Here at Travel Victoria, for many years we’ve been offering free listings for tour or activity businesses within our tourism pages for locations throughout Victoria. There’s no catch, just a brief listing with…

  • Good ideas that go nowhere

    It’s big business at the moment for companies that register internet domain names for you. Apart from the fact more businesses than ever are seeking to create an internet presence, there’s many people out there who come up with catchy domain names that they later plan to turn into killer websites. So they register them…

  • Hosting your website in Australia? Read the fine print.

    The merits of hosting a website within Australia, for an Australian business that expects most of its web traffic to come from Australia, are well known. Hosting in Australia has become much more affordable in recent years, so the question about where to host is now a no brainer.  However, do you know what you’re…

  • Keeping comments on Twitter informal but professional

    One of the things people love most about Twitter is its informality. Post a question to say one of Australia’s most affluent companies that have a presence on Twitter, and the response back may be more akin to that you’d expect when chatting to friends over dinner. Some small businesses may take this a little…