How Visitor Attractions Can Increase Bookings Using Social

Visitor Attractions, Social Media November 05, 2017
How Visitor Attractions Can Increase Bookings Using Social

With numerous events and activities taking place over the Christmas period, it is a highly competitive time, particularly within the visitor attraction industry.

Therefore, you can’t rely solely on your current customers, you continually need to find and reach new audiences. With billions of users, and 82% of consumers trusting a company more if they are involved with social media (Forbes), social is the way to do so.

Social media allows you to “accurately target practically any audience”, with Facebook offering the most comprehensive advertising. So whether you’re trying to reach a really defined demographic or a completely new audience, social is the way to do so. This is something we recently spoke about at the National Conference of Visitor Attractions.

We’ve seen this in practice through a recent campaign with a UK visitor attraction, who asked us to help generate awareness, drive traffic to website conversion points and sell tickets for three of their key events.

…our social advertising generated 67% of ticket sales

Using social advertising and leveraging local influencers, we saw 33,789 new page visits and generated a conversion rate of 10.36% (5x above the industry average) that resulted in 3,502 transactions and four sold out events. Based on the assumption that the average consumer purchased 3 tickets per transaction, our social advertising generated 67% of ticket sales.

We also achieved 3,627,861 impressions with a reach of 514,181 across social media, and 531,112 opportunities to see from 7 influencer articles and 184 social posts.

Now as we fast approach the festive season, it is vital to utilise social media to drive bookings for your visitor attraction in the same way.

Visit Britain’s annual survey of visits to visitor attractions in 2016 reported that visitor admission rose by 3% amongst attractions that increased their marketing spend, and resulted in an 8% increase in local visits.

However, if you’re not looking to push social advertising, organic social content can be just as important. Within the UK, 82% of attractions use Facebook, 68% are on Twitter and 64% now use sites like Instagram and Pinterest for communication. Those using an extensive range of digital communication platforms saw a correlation with visitor volume increasing. (VisitBritain)

Each social channel you use is an additional gateway to your website, driving increased inbound traffic, and each piece of content you post is a chance to create brand awareness, reach a new audience and acquire a new customer.

To find out more about the importance of using social to drive bookings for your Christmas events, please get in touch on 0117 440 0500, or email simon@digitalvisitor.com.

Digital Visitor is the UK's leading strategic agency in travel, tourism & hospitality. For any more information on how we can help, get in touch.