TTE 2013: ArrivalGuides push to raise profile and embrace social

Travel content provider ArrivalGuides is looking to increase its awareness among destinations beyond its core market in Scandinavia.

Travel content provider ArrivalGuides is looking to increase its awareness among destinations beyond its core market in Scandinavia.

The Gothenberg-based rival to the likes of Frommers, Columbus Travel Media, and Lonely Planet, admits it is not the best known brand in the sector.

But it believes this allows it to offer distribution partners like airlines and OTAs a more cost effective way of obtaining rich content for their websites.

Among its 170 customers it lists Europe’s largest budget airline Ryanair which uses ArrivalGuides content on its website to help drive up conversions.

Ola Zetterlof, director of distribution and client solutions, said: “Our focus is really to get destinations onboard.

“The future of SEO is about how you engage the consumer, and what better way to do that than through high quality updated content. More and more people are using Google+ which is going to increase SEO value, so our next release is going to include social media capabilities.

“The internet is changing the way people research trips and while most travel operators have really mastered the art of the booking process they still do not have good solutions for this part of the process to get the traveller back to their website in the inspirational stage because they have god content.”

ArrivalGuides takes its content from destinations directly, charging them a fee and making sure it is updated in-house, and distributes it through its network of travel industry partners.

Previously it used local freelancers to create all of its content, but this proved unreliable and it now looks to promote its services to destinations of which it now has 400 signed up to access the 50 million travellers that access its content each year.

Last year it launched a back-end portal which gives the destinations the ability to update their information directly subject to its editorial approval process. ArrivalGuides content can be delivered in a number of formats including downloadable PDFs, an API feed, via a mobile app, a Facebook app or even on an HP Printer app.

Zetterlof said travel firms are using its content throughout the booking process, including in confirmation emails which have seen 20% of people down load the guide to the destination. A major global hotel website has reported lower rates of cancellations when guides are available on confirmation pages, he claimed.

Another endorsement of the power of the content, claimed Zetterlof, is the fact that Ryanair opts to place it in the most prominent positions on its web pages where it you would expect it to locate offers or calls to action.

“When Google bought Frommers we wondered what was going to happen, but for us it was good because it lifted the whole industry. Content is suddenly big.

“We saw Frommers as a competitor but I do not think Google is interested in selling content, they wanted it for their own travel strategy. But like with Flight Search, nothing has happened really.”

ArrivalGuides claims it is unique in the way it aggregates and distributes content direct from destinations and says it is as much as a tenth the cost of some of its rivals.

Other well-know travel brands it works with include Monarch, Flybe, Avis and Stena Line.