Tips on writing texts for your travel content marketing

Having the right words combining your visuals, can just be that extra push to make a traveler choose for your travel company.
Crafting compelling travel content is about creating stories that strategically guide readers from daydreaming to itinerary planning and eventually booking their adventure with your company.

How do you write compelling travel marketing content that is in line with your strategy and will help to guide the reader towards a booking ?

I love using underneath framework, that is simple, but makes sure i communicate all i need to say to assist people further to becoming a customer.

Content Model for Travel Marketing

To guide visitors through a customer journey that goes from inspiration to planning to booking. I developed a 4 step content model.

• Inspire
• Help
• Proof
• Sell

Inspire; wow the target audience with a vivid description of your best offerings

Help; confirm your destination is the best next holiday choice and explain to the target audience how to make this holiday  happen and that this wow experience is in reach for the target audience

Proof; Show through your awards and reviews that you are safe and solid choice.

Sell : Convert the target audience into a customer with clear call to actions and easy to use booking forms. An extra push to convince a traveler to book now, can be that there are limited places available or that the destination is changing fast. Arguments that create an urge to decide fast, or come soon.

Potential buyers need information from all four blocks to come to a booking, you need them all to build the trust needed for a sale.

Read more about Inspire, Help, Proof & Sell

Get Inspiration from competitors

If you find it difficult to start writing texts from scratch, a good idea is to check on what your competitors are writing. Use that as your starting point and try to make their text better aligned to your specific target audience.

Just copy paste their text and adjust it to your situation, make sure you changed the text enough that it really becomes your text:  try to use your competitors as inspiration not to copy them.

When writing try to keep it as short as possible, unnecessary text leads to skipping,  if your text needs to be long to give a good description than mention early in the text what people who will read the article learn from reading it.

Be Helpful and Relevant

To have your webpages picked up by Google you need write helpful and relevant content. Which means you create value for your visitor. For example by guiding them through a sales process. That goes from inspiration, planning to booking. Your content should help them planning their trip and decide if you are the right company or destination to visit. A visitor expects from you to give them the best possible advice.

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Use all senses to bring your texts alive and turn them in a story

Screen your sentences if you are using all senses to paint a travel experience. Writing that something is a great place for example has no meaning, however writing:

"Imagine walking through an old middle ages street, passing a traditional boulangerie, where the smell of freshly baked croissants, mix with the tunes of an accordion player singing traditional french chansons"

Takes the mind of a reader to the experience you want to sell.

Use Emotions

Emotions bring people in action use the different senses to take people to an emotion of admiration of beauty and longing to place or experience. Before you factual describe what the destination or experience is about.

Emotions and senses in combination with a description of the setting of the destination, the characters and items / things that make the destination / experience interesting are the ingredients of a good story.

Create Urgency

Try to give the traveler reasons why the experience should be their next holiday trip, you can do this by offering temporary discounts, that the destination is growing fast and changing, you want to be a frontier traveler not a mainstream one.

Writing Process

It helps to write according to a structured process, especially when you are with a team or writing for a company. You like to develop a certain style, and therefor it's good to work with templates. A extra benefit is that a structured process makes it easier to co write with the help of AI.

• Have templates
• Do research to find interesting content and topics
• Create an outline
  • Add unique knowledge and ideas you have
• Agree with decision maker on outline
• Start writing
• Edit
• SEO optimization

Work with and stand out in AI generated content

Now that generative AI systems like ChatGPT, or dedicated AI writing tools like Writesonic or Jasper are becoming more widely used. The internet is going to be flooded with content. How do you stand out ?

You can use AI for all the stages of writing, starting from idea generation.

You can use AI to help you learn more about a topic you want to write about before starting to make an outline. But be aware because sometimes AI comes up with facts that are not true; the search engine tool of perplexity can help : they give results back with source you can check yourself and decide if the are reliable enough.

I do suggest you also use AI generated content to quickly create outlines, ideas for your paragraphs and a quick basic set up. However its important you make this content unique with your own insights and new expert information.

Because that is what AI can't do generate new things, it will write/create something based on what it has learned. If you as an expert can feed the system with first hand novelties, you can create high quality and unique content.

Those experts who master to get the best the input into an AI system will be ahead of everybody else. (But you need to keep doing that to stay ahead).

So give insights, share your own opinion, paint your experiences in a descriptive way that appeals to all senses, and ask your AI robot to help you with this, but overrule the bot when you know, that is not how you experienced it.

Think about things that have been changed recently, is there a new access road, better facilities something else you can mention that most people aren't aware of.

You don't have to focus here on the best sentences, just try to write down the essentials you can use for example word trees. Try to create and refine templates for different types of content; destinations, experiences, tours etc.

The other thing you need to teach the AI is what kind of structure do you want to follow, a brief intro, lots of pictures, highlight sections etc.

Once your article is ready use, the system on more time to help with grammar and style.

Just like Microsoft Word or Google docs, AI also helps with grammar and spelling correction, however AI can even help to create a sentence with just a few words. Making it much easier for you to write in a language you are not fluent in.

Use AI with underneath tips to make your content better. And use the to create your own templates that you can refine.

Beside Gemini, Co Pilot and Chat GTP you have also writers with fixed templates and or connection with SEO programs. Examples of such AI writers are ; Jasper, Koala, Rytr, Writesonic

The benefit of these programs is that they help you with prompts and formats.

To get the most out of Chat GTP and AI system, its good that you first have an example or template on how you want your content to be. This will improve the content significantly.

When writing with AI, make sure you have good prompts / questions, you put into the system, make sure you are clear about the task and provide enough details and context.

Use the right amount of words

When you are transferring information, you don't want to waste your readers time, with long sentences full with words you actually don't need. Keep your texts tight and focused.

Writing a good Title

Titles are the reason people click on a post, link ad, search listing etc.

Try to be specific and let readers know what to expect and for who the text is interesting. Make the title with simple words everyone understands.

Ghorepani Trek - Best Mountain View Trek for Family and Children

vs

9 Days Ghorepani Poonhill Trekking

If you are only mentioning the name of destination, you assume travelers already know about the destination, but that is not always the case. Especially not for people early in the customer journey.

Short Checklist to use if your title is good

Is title easy to understand
Make the title not too long - max 10 preferable 8 words (SEO 7) Does the title make you curious ?
Can you add emotion in the title ?
Does the title make the reader important ?
Do I understand from the title that there is value for me reading the text
Is it clear why i should read the text ?
If you are not sure about a title, do some a/b testing especially with Facebook and google ads this is very easy to set up.

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