You know your tours are awesome. So why aren’t they fully booked?
There could be a few reasons why your services aren’t getting snapped up. But the tour descriptions on your website might be a good place to start.
Your tour descriptions should:
- speak directly to your target customer
- be easy to read
- use specific (rather than general) language
- provide just the right amount of information – and no more!
- be written with SEO in mind
Let’s look at each of these points in more detail.
Speak to your target customer
This doesn’t simply mean knowing who your target customer is (age, gender, socio-economic group, interests etc.). While that’s all important stuff to know, it’s the what.
You need to think about the why and the how:
- Why is your customer considering your tour?
- How can you show them you understand their needs?
- Why might they be hesitating to book?
- How can you address their objections?
Keep these questions firmly in mind as you write your tour descriptions and the answers will shine through your copy.
Make it easy to read
Confront your readers with long paragraphs at your peril! Whether we like it or not, attention spans are shrinking and no one is going to wade through huge chunks of text on your website. Use short paragraphs, bullet-pointed lists and white space where you can.
Also, put yourself in your reader’s shoes and don’t assume they know things. Instead of writing:
Climb the Scott Monument. (what’s that?)
write
Get a bird’s eye view of the city from the Scott Monument, Edinburgh’s 61-metre-high literary landmark. (Sounds cool! I want to do that!)
Be specific
There are a million tour descriptions out there, describing scenery as breathtaking, spectacular and stunning and monuments as architectural gems, iconic and world-famous.
It’s all too easy to reach for the nearest cliche, but this is not going to help your tours stand out from the competition!
Use specific details to grab your reader’s attention. Instead of writing:
Stop for a drink in Ernest Hemingway’s favourite bar.
write
Make like Hemingway and drink a daiquiri in Bar El Floridita.
See the difference?
Less can be more
You don’t need to provide every single tour highlight. Long lists don’t look good, and a highlights section should be as its name suggests – a list of two or three of the very best bits from your tour.
Keep your best highlights for your first and last bullet points, as these are the points that are most likely to grab your reader’s attention.
Write with SEO in mind
There’s not much point in writing amazing tour descriptions if no one reads them, is there? Now you’ve spent time crafting your copy, you need to get as many eyes on it as possible.
There is lots to say about SEO (and I’ll leave it for another blog post) but a good starting point is to choose a keyword that defines your tour and include it in your title. Then make sure you include the keyword once or twice in the body of your tour description (don’t overdo this or you will be penalised for ‘keyword stuffing’).
I’m busy helping a tour operator craft the tour descriptions for their website right now – but will have availability for more of this kind of work from the end of March onwards. Do you need someone to cast an eye over the tours on your website? If so, get in touch.