Capital and Statista honors Germany’s most innovative companies for the third time. Among the 470 companies selected in 20 different industry categories, Outdooractive has been listed with a 4 out of 5 star rating in the “Internet, Media & Communication” category
Outdooractive, together with HS Kempten, WTZ and Allgäu GmbH, presented the kick-off of a series of events around the challenges of visitor management in the Allgäu on Monday, February 14. Tourism managers, politicians, press representatives and interested listeners from the entire industry attended the event.
A new format exclusively for our customers: With free webinars, we help them master the tourism challenges of today and tomorrow and get the most out of their Outdooractive products. The webinars are offered in German and English and cover topics of current relevance to our products and features that provide our customers with sustainable support in their activities. Experts teach more about the visibility of your own organization, how proper content marketing works, how guests and visitors can be targeted, and much more.
The first webinar already took place on 20.01. on the topic “State-of-the-art Tourism Content: Routes & POI“. The focus was on the most important part of the platform: the creation of appealing routes and POIs and their publication. More than 30 participants were able to expand their knowledge.
Take the opportunity and register directly for the next possible date. On 27.01. the second webinar will take place on the topic: “State-of-the-art Tourism Content: Collections & Images”. Learn what to look for when selecting images and how to combine your content into collections.
Outdooractive continues its international growth and presence with the addition of Dutch and Japanese as two new languages to the platform. Tourism is a global industry and by constantly translating and maintaining relevant languages, we are better able to communicate to visitors and users in their own language. This latest integration brings the number of available languages to 17 in total.
Our live languages are available across all of the the platform’s applications: Business accounts and both our websites and apps. Multilingualism gives our customers access to new target groups and potentially new guests. With all the platform software translated by us, our customers save having to invest time and money into agency work, programming and planning.
There is more to come as well. We are already working to expand the list with Hindi and Turkish are set to be our next additions.
In order to actively support our reseller in Portugal and to build a full connection with the Portuguese market, we are in the process of dividing Portuguese into European and Brazilian versions, raising similar opportunities in Brazilian market.
We will keep you posted on further developments.
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When distance make it difficult to get to know people in person, digitizing your guests is a necessary step to help sustain your business. Outdooractive provides you with the tools you need to ensure you are securely positioned for the future.
Every destination and every hotel wants to offer visitors and guests the best service. This is only possible if you are able to understand the personal needs of your visitors and make the effort to build a digital relationship with them before they arrive. Digital and sustainable, two-way communication as well as customer loyalty are the key to this.
How do you gain the trust of your guests and go about obtaining their data?
Relevant and personalized content based on the guests’ personal preferences increases interest and loyalty to the platform. The frequency of bookings grows and with it the possibility to collect relevant data from guests. Detailed guest profiles are created voluntarily through the registration process. Outdooractive offers this service nationwide and can also track guest data beyond the borders of a destination creating a foundation for understanding the market and being able to make forecasts for the future.
We create profiles for each user and permanently enrich them with data that is relevant to offering a personalized service. Each user retains full control over his or her data, can withdraw their consent at any time and delete the profile completely. Compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) promotes users trust in how their data is handles and used.
Outdooractive’s full-service white-label community solution is seamlessly integrated into all front-end products. The system is centrally managed by the Outdooractive Community Team, which deals with all questions from users as well as all infringements, spam and troubleshooting.
The data of all users who have registered in your front-end applications can be viewed in your business access and is automatically synchronized into your CRM.
The Outdooractive platform provides a number of options that you can use to create digital profiles of your guests. Reasons for a guest to register include challenges, ratings and comments, FAQs, competitions, and much more.
Offer your guests the best service and give them a direct added value with a gift of 4 weeks of Pro+ service.
Upon registration, the data will be directly transferred to your CRM, giving you the opportunity to use it for further services. This can be done once a booking is confirmed with a guest card, on your website and at other touch point.
Digitizing your guests is key to becoming more resilient in times of crisis and opens up additional flexibility in the future.
Find out more about our products and services today:
During hikes in the Alpine region, incidents with mother cows and guard dogs occur more and more often. The animals are exposed to enormous stress in the process and the confrontations may lead to accidents. In order to counteract this problem, Graubünden, in cooperation with Outdooractive, has initiated an innovative pilot project.
One animal per herd have been equipped with a transmitter that transmits the animal’s location to a server every 30 minutes. This information is transferred to the Outdooractive platform within 24 hours. Afterwards, the pastures used are shown to visitors and the owners of the animals on the map.
This enables Graubünden to inform outdoor sports enthusiasts before they start their route and to guide them specifically to safe areas where no grazing animals will be disturbed. A QR code attached to fences on site, serve those who decide on a spontaneous trip to share the data and find information quickly. In the future some grazing animals will also be equipped with transmitters on around 8.000 alpine pastures in Austria. The transmitted information will be visible in the online hiking maps of the Alpine Club and will be transferred to all Outdooractive maps.
In the long term, conflicts between agriculture and tourism can be minimized and mutual understanding expanded.
The search for routes and activities in a region nowadays mainly takes place online. This is also confirmed by a study by Bergzeit, which shows that 65% of hikers from the DACH region inform themselves about possible destinations for their excursions on online portals. Here, the best-known routes are usually presented in detail. One of the reasons for this is that tourism regions have so far focused their marketing efforts mainly on highlighting top routes. This now creates the problem that these routes are communicated, commented on and recommended via a wide variety of channels. The logical consequence is that visitors are drawn to already overcrowded routes. Thus, all visitors continue to gather on the same paths and the expected recreational effect is gone. And yet this loop can be solved so easily.
Potential visitors only need to be made aware of other routes in the region. This can be achieved if even unknown routes are adequately described and thus automatically suggested during the online search.
With the Outdooractive Business Account, destinations can create these routes in an uncomplicated and almost self-explanatory way. The more detailed the routes are described and the more information they contain, the higher they will be displayed in the search. Destinations can also integrate these digitized route descriptions on their own websites. Landing pages on the Outdooractive platform for specific activities present the diversity of the region even more clearly to the more than 11 million users (e.g. biking or hiking).
With these digital solutions, destinations can actively guide visitors along new paths and proactively avoid streams of visitors gathering in one place. It is important that DMOs become active and digitally present their regions and the offers available. This is the only way to create qualitative content that reaches potential visitors and provides sufficient information.
With Outdooractive’s new 3D Flight Videos, Pro+ users can now create high-quality videos of a route they have recorded in a single click. Furthermore, they now have the ability to share these experiences on social media. By letting visitors act as influencers you have a whole new way to market your destination.
Greater reach through new users
Guests at your destination must first create an account to use this feature. Registration can be done via the destination’s White-label website and White-label app, automatically making them members of the destination’s branded community and leads. In short, communication take place using the destination’s brand.
Qualitative data for digital visitor guidance
In order to create the videos, users will need to record their route. This data is transferred to the Destination Heatmap, which our customers can access via their Outdooractive Business Account. The information generated creates stats that can be used to further improve visitor guidance.
Attention for your region
The videos can be downloaded and shared thousands of times via social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Prospective visitors who see the video are directed to the destination website for more information. In addition, destinations have the opportunity to create 3D Flight Videos with the Outdooractive Business Account and upload them via their own social media channels. This allows DMOs to become active themselves and use this tool to reach new guests.
Hardware solutions enable DMOs to count visitors on site, but can only measure visitor flows selectively (e.g. at parking lots and POIs). This is not suitable for comprehensive visitor management. In addition, it is not possible to react proactively to visitor flows. Measures are only initiated when tourists are already in the region. This makes it impossible to react reasonable to overcrowding in the long term and to solve problems such as nature destruction, overtourism and parking shortages.
Use the Destination Heatmap from Outdooractive as an indicator
The Destination Heatmap is Outdooractive’s tool that allows DMOs to see live, even before tourists arrive, which locations are in high demand. The software-based solution calibrates an exact count at individual points and enables visitor guidance over the entire area. In the long term, this information is stored and recorded in statistics. This information is the most useful basis for destinations to make correct decisions in different areas. For example, it becomes clear where the focus should be placed in marketing, which investments need to be made and which information should be displayed even more visible to visitors.
In addition to this background information in the Destination Heatmap, Outdooractive also provides tools (e.g. POI Challenges) to guide visitors in a targeted manner.
In this way, the Outdooractive platform, which has a wide reach, covers two central points in visitor guidance. On the one hand, statistics on visitor flows can be compiled and important insights can be gained from them. On the other hand, well-developed tools are offered that can be used to react directly and efficiently to these findings.
Three well-known portals form the pinnacle of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). A 2020 study by “Hotrec” (A European umbrella organization for restaurants and hotels) shows that 30% (up 10.2% from 2013) of hotel bookings in Europe are made using these portals. At the same time, direct bookings have decreased to 45.5% (a 10% reduction from 2013).