Marcom, which provides marketing services to companies in Azerbaijan under the slogan “Educate to engage clients,” announced that the tourism sector will face serious competition following the pandemic.

Most travel companies are not ready for digitalization, according to the CEO of Marcom.

“Every year we analyze the marketing strategies of various companies operating in the country. These analyzes help us to further improve our services and create new services that are relevant to the market. Despite the temporary stagnation of global and national tourism due to the pandemic, there will be serious digital competition for market share after the pandemic comes to an end. However, our research shows that most of the country's hotels and travel companies are unprepared for this digital competition. Today, the websites of many hotel and travel companies do not meet the requirements of the user and Google's search engine. This could render the marketing activities of these companies ineffective after the pandemic."

Jeyhun Farzaliyev added that there is a serious need to create unique written and video content in the hotel and tourism sector's market.

“Sustainable and useful content is behind the digital transformation. Imagine a hotel or travel company without unique and useful content on their website. How can this company compete with other competitors as digitalization accelerates? Having useful content on websites will help save on digital marketing costs in the future and attract tourists who want to come to the country from abroad after the borders are opened. For information, on average, around 2 million searches for tourism destinations in Azerbaijan were conducted from different countries the year. However, in most cases, users had to leave the site because they could not find what they were looking for. Currently, there is very little written or video information about historical monuments, nature, cuisine and traditions of the regions. The available data cannot be indexed by Google. This is again due to the fact that the sites are not fit to Google standards. In addition, it would be good to translate this information into other languages. If a hotel in every region prepares interesting photographs, videos, textual information based on the values of its location and posts it on its website, it will be useful for them from a marketing point of view. Companies working in this area should also be aware that getting information from other sources and posting it directly on their websites can lead to serious problems. The search platform on Google has an algorithm that can identify if the information is copywritten or original.  When it finds the text, video, or an image from another source, it weakens the site's position in the Google search engine. Therefore, I recommend that companies contact professionals in these matters."

Jeyhun Farzaliyev said that after the pandemic, customer satisfaction at hotels and travel companies will be more important than ever.

"After the pandemic, hotels and tourism companies will try to offer attractive packages to the locals following their annual campaign plans. The main responsibility here lies on the staff representing the hotel. Therefore, companies operating in the hospitality and tourism sector must seriously train their employees in order to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and tell them that everything depends on the services they provide. "

Referring to the electronic customer database, the company's CEO said that tourism companies should prioritize local software.

“Most of the companies that ask us for cooperation do not have CRM platforms. The marketing and sales department of the hotel does not know who their A, B, C customers are, what to offer them and when to do so.  In this case, it is difficult to formulate an individual approach to each customer, as well as other marketing activities. Many hotels outsource creating CRM systems to foreign companies. This will pose major challenges in the future such as the timely provision of technical support, language barriers, the difference in time zones and currency. "

Marcom Marketing and Communications plans to become a strategic partner of another company by the end of this year. The company is currently continuing its strategic partnerships with Cubics Technology and Onevision Business Solutions.