Not Every Russian Has Booked a New Year Tour Yet—How Do We Help Them Choose?

New Year holidays are one of the most welcome days for Russian travellers. In the beginning of 2020, Russians will have 8 rest days (January 1-8), so travellers prefer buying New Year tours that last 5 to 7 days.

Russians start getting interested in New Year tours already in August, while the peak of popularity of query ‘buy new year tour’ in Russia, according to Yandex.Wordstat, is in October and November.

The peak of popularity of search queries ‘new year tour’ in Google is in late November.

If you have not engaged online channels yet to promote your New Year offer, it is high time to intensify all your efforts and attract tourists who have not made their choice yet.

What Do Russian Tourists Want on New Year’s Day?

Based on past years’ experience, Russians give their preference to holidays in warm countries, trying to escape winter cold that rules in the most part of the country. Thailand, UAE, India, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, and Cuba were among best sellers of 2019 New Year tours.

However, there was also a rise in demand for ‘non-beach’ European destinations: pistes of Italy, Andorra, Austria, and France and excursion trips to Czech Republic also hit the top of Russian tourists’ preferences.

That is why it does not matter what kind of holidays you offer—it is high time to join the fray for Russian tourists in the New Year 2020.

We propose a check list for online promotion of your New Year offer.

More information

A holiday offer, first of all, must appear in your website and also be published on all pages of the destination in social media. Moreover, do your best to make information that you provide comprehensive: it is important for the audience to learn not only and not so much about the tour itself as the cost of the trip and where it can be purchased cost-effectively.

Adapt your offer

If you have set up context ads, adapt your offer to New Year tour queries; if not, a pre-New Year search for travel is high time when you must engage search ads and retargeting.

A query ‘new year tours 2020’ is off and running, so make sure that your offer is on top of search results related to New Year travels.

Promotion via partners

Take care of promotion of your offer in the websites of your partners. Usually, tour operators offer several routes at a time, including ones in the website. Your task is to help your offer enter the top. The same holds for context ads results. Suggest a tour operator to pay for promotion of your very offer in its website by means of Yandex and Google context ads, and here you have a win-win deal: while a tour operator gets sales and traffic, you get a committed tourist.

Article publication

Well, articles like ‘Where to Go for New Year 2020: Top 19 Destinations’ or ‘Fabulous Ideas Where and How to Meet New Year of 2020’ are on top of search results when asking ‘where to go on new year’—why don’t you make your top with a focus on your travel destination and a direct link to a tour purchase in the website of the tour operator? It is even better if this is a hot offer that will be available, say, only until the end of the week.

Catch ‘independent’ travellers

Work out a New Year offer that you will be able to spread through air ticket metasearch sites and hotel booking services because the lion’s share of Russian tourists arrange their holidays on their own via online booking.

An excellent decision can be a ‘special project’ (for instance, you can elaborate a creative New Year trip with Aviasales metasearch engine).

In practice

By the way, the Catholic Christmas is not less favorite among Russians, too, and as this holiday is celebrated far more than New Year in most foreign countries, Russian tourists do not mind meeting it in a festive travel atmosphere either (what is more, this is an opportunity to prolong New Year holidays).

So, Norway reminded its subscribers on September 15 so far than only 100 days are left until Christmas and it is high time to think about where to meet this bright holiday. A number of posts about Christmas in numerous cities of the country create a required mood and really make you think: why don’t I go to Norway for winter holidays?

The Japan National Tourism Organization reminds us that Christmas is, first and foremost, a family holiday, and it has already told us what Christmas holidays can be visited in Japan.

An interesting solution was presented by Greece that published a list for tourists in their official website greecelive.ru ‘How to celebrate Christmas holidays in Greece’. Such simple recommendations can become an excellent decision to attract both new tourists who do not know a thing about what to do on Christmas in one or another country and for sophisticated travellers who could miss something during their previous trip.

Summary

• Use as many tools as you can to contact your target audience so that tourists interested in travelling could see your very offer first.
• Experiment—this is high time to engage and test digital channels and tolls that you might not have even considered for promotion before. For instance, why don’t you upload a creative video on Tik Tok and grab their huge audience in Russia?!
• Follow your competitors and be ready for quick corrections of your creatives and marketing strategy.
• Work with reliable partners. Experts from RMAA Travel marketing agency will help you form a strategy to attract Russian tourists not only during the New Year sales season, but also throughout the whole calendar year.

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