quest vacation international
Tourism, Ecuador and the New Age Pirates
Executive Summary-Key Points
- 80% of people seeking to travel world wide use internet search engines (Google, Yahoo Search etc.) to find services and vacation destinations.
- 70% of people seeking to travel world wide pay for their vacations “online”.
- Any random survey of popular search engine query criteria for Ecuador (Ecuador Travel, Viajes en Ecuador, Galapagos Vacations, Vacaciones Galapagos etc.) will find Ecuadorean companies in the one to five percentiles within the first fifty results.
-Few people look beyond the first ten to twenty results (the first two pages) for a given search.
- Foreign owned “Dot Com” companies (satellite websites that present information and collect fees from advertisers and use fees for a presence on their site) and foreign owned travel agencies dominate search engine query results.
- “Dot Com” companies and foreign owned travel agencies do not pay taxes to the country of Ecuador on the profits they make from marketing destinations in Ecuador nor do they take responsibility for the impact of travelers on those destinations from which they make their profits.
- In today’s world, Ecuador and the Galapagos are prestigious destinations for travelers. The promotion of Ecuador and the Galapagos by “Dot Com” companies and foreign owned travel agencies is doing more harm than good for Ecuador and those destinations.
- The domination of search engine query results by “Dot Com” companies and foreign owned travel agencies has resulted in the loss of the ability of local operators to contact clients directly through the internet, forcing them to work for international travel agencies or pay the Dot Com companies for a presence on their web sites. In both cases this is forcing local operators to work for a fraction of the real world value of their services.
- The Ecuadorean Ministry of Tourism’s “portal” website is equally over shadowed. It can only be found with one search criteria, “turismo en Ecuador” in which it is number four. Attempting hundreds of other searches the second best result found was number one-hundred-fifty-one with “vacaciones en Ecuador”.
- English speaking people from Australia, England and the United States make up more than one third of all visitors to Ecuador and are responsible for almost half of the tourism generated revenue. Any web page not available in English is turning away one half of its potential.
- Search engine result rankings can be improved by “optimizing” a web site and following specific practices.
- In the internet/technology driven world of today countries such as Ecuador are in a unique position to be able to create and enforce regulations that would insure travelers purchase their tours of Ecuador through Ecuadorean travel agencies and small tourism companies.
New Age Pirates
Search engines are not the problem. Their job is to serve their clients. When a client goes to Google, for example and types in a search query, the search engine must sift through millions of websites world wide and attempt to present and order the websites that will be the most helpful. In order to do this they have had to develop and adapt criteria to determine which websites come up in which order for a particular search. They are constantly adapting their criteria to combat websites that try and manipulate search engine rankings. Again, search engines try and accommodate their clients needs by providing the most pertinent websites for a given web search query. (more information about this process below)
There was a time when Ecuador and the Galapagos needed to be promoted as possible vacation destinations. There was also a time when people seeking travel went to travel agencies. With the internet people can now see reviews of hotels and services. Investigate companies. Compare values.
In today’s world, Ecuador and the Galapagos are prestigious destinations and people seeking to travel go to the internet. It is on the internet where the new age pirates with the unwitting help of search engine ranking criteria, siphon off tourism revenue from small countries throughout the world. Dot Com companies and international travel agencies are the new age pirates, exploiting the people and countries of vacation destinations.
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The problem is not only that these companies market and profit from travel destinations while taking no responsibility for the impact of the visitors on those destinations or the maintenance of those destinations, nor do they pay taxes on their profits to the governments which DO have the responsibility for visitor impact and maintenance of those destinations, but these companies also squeeze out or force local businesses to work for them.
Through their priority presence on the internet Dot Com companies and international travel agencies have made it virtually impossible for small travel companies throughout the world to market directly to their clients over the internet where their clients are looking for them. In order to survive these small travel companies are forced to pay exorbitant fees for a presence on Dot Com websites or work for the large international companies at a discount of the true world value of their services.
It would be as if a group of companies sold tours of your home, paid you a fraction of the value of your work to operate these tours and then would not allow you to sell your own tours of your own home.
Search engine result rankings
As stated above the search engines work for their clients, searching through the vast expanses of websites available, looking for websites that would be pertinent to their client’s search and then ordering or ranking them for presentation as “results” of a search query. On every web page of every website there is a sub text which can not be seen by the viewer. The purpose of this sub text is to help the search engines find and classify those web pages. Properly writing this sub text in a format that is easily recognizable by search engines is called website “optimization” and there is an art to it having to do with the subtleties of the website’s subject.
After a web site has been “optimized” the following evolving criteria are then used by the search engines to “rank” a website: Traffic to the site, time spent on the site, size and dynamics of the site, age of the site and links from other “quality” sites to the site. Again these criteria are evolving as search engine companies combat websites trying to manipulate their results. Different search engines place different weights of importance on different aspects of the above criteria.
“Dot Com” companies (again these are satellite websites that present information and collect fees from advertisers and use fees for a presence on their site) and international travel agencies routinely occupy prominent search engine rankings for the reasons mentioned above and here is how:
-Traffic to the sites: “Dot Com” companies and International travel agencies market travel to all corners of the globe, so they receive traffic from people interested in going to all parts of the globe. A website that deals only with a specific destination will receive only traffic for that destination, significantly less.
-Time spent on site. Visitors to these sites can “shop” for destinations around the world, thus increasing the average time a visitor spends on their site.
-Size and dynamics of site. These sites are huge, some with hundreds of pages representing the many world wide destinations and are constantly being updated to reflect changes throughout those many world wide destinations.
-Age of site. Many of these sites and companies have existed since the “Dot Com Boom” of the early 1990’s.
-Links to site. For the above mentioned reasons these companies naturally have many links to their sites.
Ecuador’s Website “Rankings”
In English:
-In the first fifty results of a Google search for “Ecuador vacations” on June 23, 2009 there was not a single Ecuadorean company or website listed. Not one.
- In the first fifty results of a Google search for “Galapagos tours” on June 23, there were only two Ecuadorean company websites listed, ourselves at number 31 and Galasam at number 11.
Ecuador’s website rankings do not improve when searching in Spanish.
In Spanish:
-In the first fifty results of a Google search for “vacaciones en Banos” on June 23, there was not a single Ecuadorean company or website listed. Not one.
- In the first fifty results of a Google search for “vacaciones en Ecuador” on June 23, there was not a single Ecuadorean company or website listed. Not one.
The Ecuadorean Ministry of Tourism’s “portal” website created to help small Ecuadorean companies came up on page sixteen of the search results for “vacaciones en Ecuador”, ranked number one-hundred-fifty-one.
Ecuador Is Victimized By Search Engine Result Criteria
The Ecuadorean Ministry of Tourism’s “portal” website was created to help small Ecuadorean companies. That site, all the companies within and the country of Ecuador (along with many other countries throughout the world) are victims of search engine ranking “criteria” and the resulting priority presence of Dot Com companies and international travel agencies in search engine results.
Eighty percent of all visitors who arrive in Ecuador contract over the internet with international travel agencies outside of Ecuador for their travel. In the Galapagos alone in 2008 one-hundred thousand visitors arrived via international travel agencies. At an average per visitor trip cost of $4,000, the travel agencies gross profit (conservative 10% of trip value)) would be $400 per person or 40,000,000 dollars. That is forty million that didn’t enter the Ecuadorian economy and the taxes on that that didn’t enter the government. This is in the Galapagos alone which accounts only for a fraction of the tourism generated revenue in Ecuador.
Improving Website “Rankings”
Website rankings can be improved with proper “optimization” and website development. The process takes several months to a year.
Remember, most people conducting a search engine query seldom look beyond the first one or two pages of results. If a website is not found on the first one or two pages it might as well be on the fiftieth page.
Below are the search engine results/rankings for www.cometogalapagos.com in Dec. 2008 and June 2009,
December 2008 June 2009
-Galapagos family vacations- page 9 #80 page 2 #19
-Galapagos vacations- page 9 #80 page 1 #10
-Galapagos island tours- page 16 #158 page 1 #10
-Land based tours Galapagos- page 5 #48 page 1 #3
-Customized tours Galapagos page 6 #56 page 1 #1
Improving Ecuadorean Website “Rankings”
The Ecuadorean Ministry of Tourism’s “portal” website can be adapted to become a major presence in internet searches. There is no reason why any internet search involving Ecuador travel, the provinces of Ecuador or tourist destinations in Ecuador that that website should not be on the first page of results. The following steps can be taken:
-To improve availability for search engines:
-Optimization of the sub text of the web site to allow easy access for search engines in both English and Spanish
-To improve traffic, time spent on site and dynamics and size of site:
-Translate the web site and all websites within (which care to) into English. This alone would double the existing traffic
-Archive and translate on the web site all the information possible about Ecuador, everything, history, geography, political information, governmental information, this is a long ongoing process which keeps the site “fresh” and changing.
-Develop huge photo galleries with proper “alt tags” (to help the search engines) for each photo.
-Redesign web site to incorporate the above items with a “user friendly” governmental style rather than the existing advertisement style. An official Ecuadorean government website will lend confidence to its viewers and be a welcome relief from the flashy difficult to manage travel websites that exist.
-Place web cams around Ecuador and have them broadcasting live on the web site.
-Publish news from and about Ecuador on the web site.
-Send out press releases about the web site.
The idea is to create a site that incorporates all things about travel in Ecuador and the above is only a very partial list of possibilities. With this naturally links to the site will develop. All of the above were done to the website www.cometogalapagos.com and account for its rise in search engine results rankings.
As the Ecuadorean Ministry of Tourism’s “portal” website begins to be more prominent in search engine results, the companies within the portal will thus receive more traffic which, after all is the goal of the website.
It is one thing to have a website. It is quite another to have a website that can be found on the internet.
Turning Back the New Age Pirates
Improving Ecuadorean website “rankings” can be done through proper “optimization” of websites, improved website design and content and development of quality links, but this will only put those websites in a position to compete with the Dot Coms and international travel agencies.
There is another step that can be taken to help Ecuadorean websites and tour operators that will also benefit many other ancillary Ecuadorean industries, accounting and legal services, communications, transportation and most significantly banking, just to name a few.
That step is to require that all organized tours of Ecuador be sold through Ecuadorian travel agencies and payment for all travel to be received and processed through Ecuadorean banks.
Were such a step to be taken it would not only propel Ecuadorean website rankings to the top by eliminating international competition (no sense in having a Galapagos or Ecuadorean website if you can’t sell travel there), it would:
-Halt the exploitation of Ecuador’s natural tourism resources and offer significant financial benefits for both the people and government of Ecuador.
-Have a profound impact on international travel businesses.
-Further establish Ecuador as a leader in protecting its natural resources.
-Have an enormous, ongoing news cycle in those countries most effected, thus giving Ecuador a massive media presence just when it would benefit Ecuador most and without cost.
-Bring world wide attention to the exploitation of tourist sites and countries.
-Take advantage of an economic cycle that has seen reservations usually booked a year in advance vanish. If there was ever a time to do this it is now.
Turning a Page
Obviously this would be a president setting action and would not be possible were it not for the internet. It is also complicated by political affiliations of existing tour operators in Ecuador, foreign investment in hotels and cruise ships and international ramifications.
Prudent initiating actions would be to put a temporary freeze on issuing travel agency permits in Ecuador to give time for the analyzes and development of best practices that would safe guard as much as possible existing economic realities while shifting the tourism sector from a reliance on out of country agencies to receiving quests directly.
Conclusion
In today’s world people seeking to travel use the internet. They use it to book international flights, hotels and services, to find reviews of services and destinations and to shop and compare companies. To do this they use search engines. Search engine results rankings are critical for “in bound” (receiving) countries and tour operators.
Ecuador and Ecuadorean companies are virtually not represented in those search engine results rankings. Seemingly everyone else in the world except Ecuadoreans is selling tours to Ecuador and the Galapagos over the internet. This is both costly for the people and government of Ecuador and unnecessary.
Ecuador is in unique position, at a unique time to halt the exploitation of its natural resources by foreign owned travel companies and dot com websites.
The above suggestions will net the government of Ecuador more tax revenue than the cost of implementing them, increase revenues for the people of Ecuador as a whole and be an immense help to tour operators and tourist services throughout the country.
Personal Note
Come To Galapagos CIA.LTDA ruc#1792072298001 and Come To Galapagos, LLC cst#2083876-40 is an Ecuadorean company based in the Galapagos and has been at the forefront of developing sustainable economies in the Galapagos since 2005. We market and oversee customized land based tours of the Galapagos involving the community with these tours. Our clients fish with the local fishermen, tour the farms where much of the food they eat is grown, we purchase produce and services as much as possible within the islands and every single dollar of the revenue generated by our clients (with the exception of international airline costs and very small promotion budget) end up in the hands of the inhabitants.
We believe that the best solution to the problems we face with tourism in the Galapagos exists on the supply side, in the education of visitors both before they book their vacations and while they are here. However, while we are making progress it does not seem near fast enough in the face of the mass marketing of the Galapagos.
We believe in walking the walk rather than talking the talk (setting an example) and several companies are following our example. The tragic aspect of this is that they have not had years to develop a business and website, do not understand the nature of their competition and the market. Currently for them the best possible scenario would be for them to work for one of the large international travel agencies.
Over the years we have met extraordinarily committed people working hard in the National Park, Ingala, the Charles Darwin Foundation, Impade, within the state and national governments, working for “non profit” foundations, volunteers and students. The administration of Rafael Correa has made significant strides in stabilizing the political situation, reformation of institutions and assisting in the development of sustainable economies here in the Galapagos. We are all only getting started. The above suggestions will go a long way to bringing about real sustainable economies, not struggling economies being bled by foreign owned businesses. We would like to help.
About the Author
Galapagos Citizen
Quest Vacation International
