As if there weren't enough challenges facing tourism operators in Fiji. I've found myself thinking about this a bit during the past few weeks. Check it out... A Google query for "fiji" results with the following:
Although it's good to see that the bulafiji.com link still presents itself at the top, the problems facing the country are a bit too evident further down the page. Fiji has obviously been in the news and those stories are high up in Google's results for the country. For someone contemplating a trip here, seeing search results referring to how Fiji needs to be "fixed" and how Fiji is "supporting Tibet's crackdown" and how groups are "lashing out" all communicate a general unrest (read: undesirable holiday destination).
Now, compare those results to Tahiti:
Given, Tahiti has not had a lot of problems as of late but what about places like Goa, India, reeling from the violent murder and rape of a British teenager? That's pretty big news yet a Google search for India doesn't seem to flag news stories at that level. I can't explain that.
For Fiji, this is not an insurmountable problem but the onus does fall upon the people marketing bulafiji.com. Other than the somewhat controversial FijiMe campaign of last month which probably sent a nice jolt of traffic into the site, there has never been a co-ordinated effort to push people there from the FVB. Now with a massive reduction in overall content, the site is already beginning to suffer weakened traffic ratings. A search for "Fiji beaches" or even "tour fiji" demonstrate that. Those used to be keywords which drove certain segments of visitors to the site. Anyway, this isn't mean to be another slap at bulafiji.com but the site has to begin playing a more important branding role online when marketing the country. Using a very simple example, the Google search result that displays when just searching for Fiji is as follows:
This is a missed marketing opportunity, especially when any given website has so little time to make a impression via a search query . Look at the meta tag information: "Fiji Islands Travel Guide by the Fiji Visitors Bureau"? I think that's an area which can be improved upon.
Now take a look at Jamaica's listing:
I guess my point is this. For someone querying "Fiji", the goal is to show them the most attractive result in the quickest amount of time so they don't need to look any further. I don't think it's far-fetched to assume user behavior will ignore the line about "Fiji Islands Travel Guide" and scan the page for something a bit more enticing. At that point, what will they find? They'll come across words like "fix", "crackdown" and "lashing out". These are not the words which conjure up images of relaxation, adventure and good times. Well, maybe adventure.
But what about these random queries through Google? Do they really impact a person's decision? Given the majority of traffic to bulafiji.com is stemming from Google, I think it does. Websites have one chance to get a visitors attention before they move on somewhere else. Conversion starts with impact and we need to push that bit more for Fiji.
