SMART TOURISM IN CBT AND RURAL
In accordance with Goal 2 , rural development is taking place in the world.
In the field of tourism, these are Community Based Tourism (CBT) and rural tourism, the importance of which has been repeatedly stated by the UNWTO
Unfortunately, CBT lacks a minimum qualification for working on the Internet
Therefore, we have created a special simplified Practical guideline for CBT, which will help you set up the correct operation of CBT on the Internet at the very beginning.
The Practical guideline is posted in the public domain and is available for use by everyone:
- Find someone in your community or business with some computer and smartphone skills to take charge of the Internet activity. Perhaps there will be more than one person, because we need more people who are at least a little proficient in digital photography, writing texts, and shooting videos. It is important that they are creative people with a desire to learn something new all the time. Over time, they will be able to improve their skills through self-education. The main thing is that they have a great desire and strength.
- Create your own website. You can use free website builders such as WordPress , Tilda , Wix and the like.
All these systems have a lot of tutorials and training videos on the Internet. With their help, anyone with a little computer skills will be able to create websites on their own.
It is better to create multi-page sites with sections of news, blog, photo gallery, etc. This will improve the position of the website in organic search.
- Buy a domain name from a local registrar in a regional internet segment that reflects your location, business activity, or business name. You can also buy a domain online in one of the website builders from the previous paragraph. Usually it’s not expensive.
- Buy a hosting service from a local hosting provider. Usually this is not a very big cost, but it will allow your website to be constantly on the Internet.
- Install Google Analytics or Yandex Metrica on the website. It’s free. Each of these systems has courses for self-study and several levels of certification. Before you start promoting your website on the Internet, be sure to pass at least a basic certification and ask your employee responsible for the Internet activity to pass it too.
- Sign up for Google My Business. It’s free, and it will allow you to send all your information to the search engine, post photos, respond to reviews, and even take orders and requests from Google Maps. It is important to fill in all the required fields, receive confirmation of the address by mail and always monitor the relevance of the information posted there.
- Sign up for Yandex Directory. The service is similar to the previous, but specified for Yandex search engine and maps.
- Create business pages in the most popular social networks and services such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube.
- Share all the information you can – address, phone numbers, emails, etc. Then put out a few posts, videos, photos that tell about your activities. This is necessary so that your customers can easily find you in these services and understand what you do and what you offer.
- Sign up your business for Tripadvisor , fill in everything that is required, post photos, videos, etc. This is one of the most visited travel resources on the Internet, so you need to be there.
- Respond to all reviews, comments, ratings, and questions no matter where they were left – social networks, Tripadvisor, or maps. This is important because reviews and responses are read not only by those who write them, but also by potential customers. In addition, the activity in communication with users is observed and evaluated by all online platforms and directly affects your online reputation, and therefore all the organic indicators of your business.
- Constantly work on your content to make it relevant, original, interesting and useful for your potential customers.
- Constantly read and study all the news of Internet marketing together with the person responsible for the Internet activity. There are a lot of materials on this topic available on the Internet and Youtube. Try to apply new knowledge in practice.
Of course, these are just the basics, but this is the minimum that will allow your community to take a worthy place on the Internet and help potential customers find you easily!