How important is it to rely on Travel Marketing Experts to bring out your expertise? We talked about this with Elisa, Sales & Product Manager at Itinera Bike & Travel.
Itinera Bike & Travel is an incoming tour operator specializing in outdoor, food & wine and incentive tours in the Triveneto area (Northeast Italy). Elisa decided to rely on and work with XeniaPro on the management of web marketing activities. Let’s find out her story!
Thank you Elisa for being here with us!
Tell us more about Itinera Bike & Travel
Itinera Bike & Travel is a small tourism company born in Verona about 12 years ago.
We kicked off in the world of cycling holidays and then expanded our business further and today we design tailor-made tours for small groups. We are an incoming tour operator which carries forward the values of slow and active travel, outdoor, undertourism, farm-to-table, lesser-known artisan traditions. Likewise, we are a reliable local B2B partner for the European market.
What does it mean to be an outdoor experience provider nowadays?
Providing outdoor experiences today implies a lot of expertise. Foremost, of your field and then of your destination partner network.
Today, more than ever, the concept of safety related to active tourism is loaded with additional meanings. Safety today is information. Travelers need to be informed and reassured. Also, because outdoor tourism is not only for professional sportsmen but it is accessible to everyone: think of an inspiring e-bike tour amidst Valpolicella hills. Ensuring safety is a distinctive character that every outdoor tour operator should communicate.
What issues have you encountered in managing tourism marketing activities?
As a small business working directly in the field, dealing with tourism marketing across all channels is definitely complex. Managing customer communication consistently is a challenge we were not keeping up with.
To stand out, it is not enough to know you have a top-notch product: you have to find the right language, tone of voice, and communicate your values through different channels. You can have excellent experiences but you are not up to communicate them properly!
And this is where XeniaPro came in.
What kind of support provides XeniaPro?
Direct and personalized advice. We would often dwell on certain questions internally that were difficult to take: XeniaPro helped us make strategic decisions to this extent. XeniaPro is the technical and concrete translation of our needs.
XeniaPro team was supportive in identifying our uniqueness, expressing and communicating it, as well as in giving consistency and structure to our plan.
Which activities do you particularly appreciate?
We can sum up them in three main points:
- Direct relationship – the chance to communicate with them throughout the onboarding phase.
- Handcrafted and curated experience – Knowing that I can always address the same people, namely Davide for the strategic plan and Shari for all the content part, is definitely an additional value. I know that waiting for me is not just any marketing agency’s customer care chat.
- Punctuality and training – I also appreciated the punctuality of the deadlines, the training in using different digital platforms and being able to be free then to choose which ones to use for the future as well. Because everything we are doing together will stay with us!
Can you tell us more about the importance of web – CRM – form integrations in targeting a foreign audience?
The work with XeniaPro has also covered the integration of our site with Hubspot, the uploading of the database and the creation of forms: this way of structured planning allowed us to follow our customers, to track their requests and expectations. Through Hubspot we also deliver contents using direct email marketing and monthly newsletters.
How much does it matter to have a deep tourism know-how to manage your marketing plan?
It is of paramount importance! Compared to other professionals, XeniaPro is not a general marketing agency, but it is a vertical agency specializing for tours and activities providers. Definitely relying on professionals in the field is a breakthrough and an additional value for all businesses like ours.
Are you struggling with your tourism marketing management? Share your project and we will know how to enhance its potential, putting forward a customized communication project!
