As you already know, branding is used to personify your business. Branding gives your business a voice, personality, looks, and values, making it special and different from others. The ultimate goal of a well-defined brand is to appeal to the right audience, having a long-lasting effect. Branding is essential for any kind of business, including travel and/or tourism one. Creating a strong brand for your travel and tourism business can help you stand out from the crowd in the highly competitive market. In that way, you can attract more customers and increase the number of bookings.
To do the branding right, you should first create your brand story and identify your target audience. Along the way, you should be thinking about the tone and voice of your brand. Also, it is important to grasp the importance of the destination brands – more on that later on. If you already have a brand, but you’re not so satisfied with it, you should consider refreshing it. You can refresh all of its aspects, including the logo, colour palette, imagery, and typography.
- Create your brand story
Every business has some kind of backstory, a story of origin. When it comes to a travel or tourism business, it often starts out with a passion for adventure, the community, or the destination. Being aware of how you started can help you with outlining your values. Your values are, in fact, the base of your brand story. When you write them down and share them publicly, you will have principles that will help in guiding your business decisions. To learn more about your company’s purpose, you should think about some questions, such as how you started your business, where you got the idea, what inspired you, what makes you different from other companies, what you strive to do, and why your team is exceptional. Then, blend these answers into your brand story.
- Identify your target audience
What goes along with creating a perfect brand story is identifying your target audience. It’s always easier to match your brand to the target audience than the other way around. Think about whether you already appeal to a certain group of people. Keep in mind the different types of travellers as they prefer diverse types of trips. For instance, if you offer your customers the unique experience of whale watching on the Gold Coast, your target will be people who are adventurers and love animals. On the other hand, your business can offer trips to exotic destinations or snowy ones, and then your target audience is a bit different. Consider carefully who you want to attract. It is quintessential to identify the right target audience.
- Set your brand tone and voice
The next things you need to set are your brand tone and voice. When communicating directly or indirectly with your customers, your attitude, personality, and values shine through. Every message that you send out in any form reveals your company’s mission as well as its characteristics. It is what we call the brand voice. Your brand voice should be clear and distinctive as it helps you position yourself in the market. What you should be mindful of is the fact that it should be unique across all channels to be effective. You should have the same tone and voice across your website, social media, and blogs, as well as in communication with customers.
- Don’t overlook the importance of destination brand
A destination brand is a specific type of brand that has the goal of creating a shared vision of the destination your business is promoting. In a way, it promises a unique travel experience based on the special features the destination in question offers. In most cases, there are destination organizations that create their brand and then just pass the information on to you to use it and attract customers. By having a plausible destination brand, the visitors arrive with preset expectations and, naturally, book activities that will fulfill those expectations. When you deliver them what they are looking for, they will surely have a unique and memorable experience.
- Refresh your brand
In cases when you already have some sort of branding done but you are not fully satisfied, you can always give your brand a makeover and refresh it. Assess the aspects such as the logo, colour palette, typography, and imagery and make changes where needed. You can even consider using one of the beloved celebrities to promote your brand even more.
These are just some of the most essential aspects of branding for travel and tourism. Make sure that you don’t skip them if you want to achieve business success.