Newsletters: It's all about the content, just like your brochures. Frequent updating and new content are the most important things that search engines look for.  A dynamic newsletter, either quarterly or monthly, serves two marketing purposes: Driving new traffic to your site via search engines and reminding those who have already expressed an interest in your services about them. Past clients and inquirers will love an update, so why not keep them informed of new offerings and specials, while strengthening your search engine position?

Meta Tags: They’re useful and needed and should be included on all pages during a web site’s design, but they’re not the be all, end all they once were. That means “search engine optimization,” the constant revamping of your meta tags and key words, a service that some try to push, is useless.

Paid placement (aka search engine advertising or pay-per-click) can spike traffic, but can’t filter out Lookie Lou’s from serious customers. It’s also expensive: You can expect to pay up to $2 per click. Using a rule of thumb that says it takes 500 click-throughs to equal one sale, be prepared to pay a lot for success.

Search engine submission services, which charge you monthly, are useless. There are only five main search engine players to begin with, and if you submit once to each and to the Open Directory Project, that’s all you need to do. Beyond that, a dynamic newsletter with monthly or quarterly changes will draw search engine interest and keep you ranked relatively high.

You’ve read items here bemoaning the sorry state of web site design and giving advice on how to avoid design mistakes. We’ve pushed the topic so many times there’s probably some of you who’ve snapped and said, “Put up or shut up. Show us a good site.” Well, we’re proud to introduce African Walking Safaris, the first web site that Enterprise Webs, our parent company, has custom-designed for a tour host (www.africanwalkingsafaris.com). It’s a template for how we intend to approach smaller businesses in the travel industry that need sophisticated web sites. This particular site has all of the signature touches we’ve been advocating: ease of navigation, an uncluttered look, very deep databasing capability, low maintenance cost and a Web Page Ad on CulturalTravels.net. Not only do we design great sites, we offer what no other company can, we drive traffic to your site.

The biggest complaints we hear from tour operators about their web sites is that they’ve either been hijacked by out-of-control designers or cost way more to maintain than originally thought. That’s human nature at work: Many designers over-engineer web sites to show how good they are, which leads to making them more complicated (and fragile) than they need to be. Think of a basic web site the way you would a Saturn automobile: reliable and with many of the features you’d find on a much more expensive car. But even as you move up to power windows and electronic seat adjustments, you’re still dealing with an understandable and reliable thing. Now, think of some over-designed sites as Formula 1 racing cars – very impressive, but not very good day-to-day transportation. Where are we going with this? Simple: see Item 3 above.

Not only does nature abhor a vacuum, apparently the travel market does, too: Tauck reports that transatlantic bookings jumped 381% in July over the year before. Destination Europe reports July travel was up almost 25% over 2001. Gogo Worldwide Vacations reports brisk sales of its Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii packages. Much of the activity was last-minute bookings, indicating really pent-up demand. Yes, it is the Bigs reporting good times, but where they go the rest eventually follow. Despite terror, a stumbling economy, airport security hassles, SARS and a dozen other irritants, it looks as though the travel market is finally rebounding. Soft spots remain: Asia continues to suffer from the SARS scare, France has seen U.S. tourism decline at least 30% (some say it’s as much as 80%) and U.S. national parks are seeing large declines in visitors. Still, the overall picture is a much more than a glass-half-full scenario.

Keep your eyes on such foreign air carriers as Lufthansa, SAS, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines and British Airways – they’ve been testing technology that will allow travelers to surf the Internet and send e-mail while in flight. If those experiments go well, expect to see U.S. carriers following suit shortly. While there’s nothing earth-shaking about this development, it does open another opportunity for tour operators to serve their clients. As people are flying to meet you in Africa, or Europe or Asia, you can update your web site to keep them abreast of any changes in plans or conditions, as well as send and receive personal e-mails. Airborne Internet technology will provide a gratifyingly high level of personalized service. It not only will give your clients more reassurance, it will give you a greater sense of control.

The next issue of The Cultured Traveler, due out the last week of August, will feature articles on traveling abroad to take courses in a foreign language, art workshops or teach English to foreign students. Current articles range from Argentina and China to France and include an art school in Venice that gives students a chance to do hands-on fresco preservation and restoration. The issue reflects a trend among more and more cultured travelers to seek new experiences and understanding of different cultures from within. we are still looking for additional hosts to highlight, so let us know if your company offer educational trips.

·         Whoa! E-commerce is predicted to hit $230 billion by 2008, according to a prediction by Forrester. That’s way up from this year’s projected $95.7 billion and will equal 10% of all U.S. retail activity on or offline. By 2008, 65 million U.S. households are projected to be habitual online shoppers.

·         Research company comScore says travel is the largest category of online spending among U.S. Hispanics, and that Hispanics’ visitation to travel web sites has been growing at a 7%-per-month clip since earlier this year vs. 4% for the general U.S. population.

·         For shame! The travel industry is by far the biggest user of pop-up ads on the Internet. Nielsen/Net Ratings reports that while 5% of all online ads are pop-ups, 22% of all travel ads take the form of America’s least favorite online ad format. The biggest culprits, of course, are commodity brokers like Orbitz, who operate on the logical theory that if 1% of all the people you irritate buy from you, who cares about the other 99%?

·         Media-drenched teens now like the Web better than TV, says Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited. During an average week, 13-24 year olds spend 16.7 hours online, excluding e-mail, vs. 13.6 hours watching TV, 12 hours listening to the radio and 7.7 hours on the phone. Keep an eye on this: Your future clients love the Web and can be reached through it.   

·         At-home broadband users are twice as likely to spend more than $2,500 per year online than people who access the Internet at work or away from home, according to Scarborough Research. They spent $15 billion last year, making 31% of all online purchases. An estimated 24.7 million people will fit the category by the end of this year.