Without content, the travel industry would not operate. People are inspired by content; they experience it while traveling. They require online content creation related to itineraries, guidebooks, and on-the-ground suggestions in various forms, and to make platforms appropriate. Thus, online travel agencies, travel agencies, and tour operators must render organized content applicable to their needs. Enter structured content. For an industry that facilitates the gathering of a tremendous amount of information about the world, structured content is a means by which complicated travel-related information can be organized, controlled, scaled, and disseminated. From modular pieces that create detailed itineraries to those that correctly address the most nuanced questions in activity books.
Content Types for Travel Content for Reuse and Flexible Use
There are many types of travel content from day-to-day itineraries to city overviews, hotel information, things to do, weather recommendations, social and cultural recommendations, etc. Without structure, this ever-expanding body of information could be overwhelming to manage and nearly impossible to ensure information is up to date. With structured content, teams can create their own content types with fields that make sense for them, like location, duration, cost, accessibility, things to do versus things offered. For instance, if the team creates a content type for “Travel Stop,” it will have fields for title, description, GPS location, images, and travel time to the next stop. Editors will create this information one time and will be able to request this content block from day-to-day itineraries and more extensive destination guides without duplicating efforts. Every time the Travel Stop is utilized, it will be a consistent entity. Storyblok for marketers makes this process even more intuitive, allowing non-technical teams to structure, reuse, and visually manage content across platforms with ease.
Mobility from Components Allows for Dynamic Itinerary Creation
One of the biggest benefits of structured content is the ability to create dynamic itineraries from a static structure. Instead of hard coding an itinerary on a web page, travel companies can inventory components that can be pieced together. “In the morning,” “for lunch,” “dinner suggestions,” “hotel check-in,” and “sightseeing” can all be components. With traveler input dates of travel, preferences, budget, accessibilities, companies can generate itineraries automatically using a structured content inventory. This creates a more personalized experience but also allows companies to shift on a dime without jeopardizing their structural integrity of travel plans. If midday components are not applicable, travelers can eliminate them without jeopardizing the recommendations for the entire day.
Keeping Destination Guides Up-to-Date and Consistent Across Channels
Destination guides need to be up-to-date and consistent across channels, whether appearing on a website or an app, or even received via email. Travelers need to trust the same safety recommendations and hours of operation, whether they are on one platform or another. Structured content allows editors to change one hour of operation on one channel and have it disseminated throughout all others. When a museum in Barcelona changes its hours of operation or safety mandates for a hiking trail in Patagonia change, editors need to update the content types and watch an automated cascade happen across day-to-day itineraries, destination guides, and user interfaces.
Improved Localization for Globalized Travelers
Travel is a global phenomenon, and travel-related content should be, too. Structured content generates potential localized variants of content inherently tied to the same original unit of content. Therefore, an article about a postal destination in Tokyo can be edited and updated in English, Japanese, Spanish, and German from the same content source. Each “localized” version can have the same metadata, visuals, and interlinking to other relevant articles, ensuring that translation and dialect distinctions are accurate but not inconsistent. Such systems facilitate translation and improve experiences for international users across nations and cultures.
Better User Experience with Searchable and Filtered Content
Travelers want specific subsets of content about their destination and want to filter things based on time and needs, children’s activities and family-friendly sites, green spaces and eco-friendly places, and even things to do indoors when it’s raining. With structured content, every opportunity presents itself for an asset to be tagged with metadata indicating potential uses. Therefore, Chicago can be filtered by neighborhood, type of activity, and even accessibility or historical significance. When relevant, tools exist to find what users need; for the travel provider, this facilitates a more nimble use of assets to compile lists, search fields, and suggestions.
Ease of Collaboration Between Editorial and Development Teams
Travel companies rely on synergy between editorial teams and product/dev teams. Structured content helps achieve this by segmenting design from content. Editors merely need an editorial CMS to host destination content, excursions, or travel recommendations; product/dev teams can create a nimble frontend where such content is accessible through API calls. This allows editors and developers to work simultaneously without intrusions on either side. Changes can be published without exposure to the user until completed and vetted; teams can work side by side without interrupting user-facing elements or editorial independence.
Content Delivered Contextually Based on Behavior, Time and Location
The optimal time to deliver travel content is when travelers are seeking it, engage them and convert better afterward. With structured content, there are contextual deliveries based on how and when certain content relates to a profile and/or location of the user. For example, someone who just booked a trip to Rome might receive articles about things to do in Italy, restaurants in Rome, or packing guides that align with their time of travel. Once they travel to Rome, they may receive articles about things to do next to their hotel (which aligns with geo-fencing) or how to use the Metro each delivered to them automatically for experiencing content within the right time and location. But this can only be done when structured content exists.
Rules Based on Time for Seasonal Travel Details
Travel is often seasonal; people don’t always have the opportunity to travel to something all year round, so they shouldn’t always be exposed to that information. With structured content, organizations can create rules, timeframes and tags to either shelve or prioritize visibility of certain content. For example, a link to cherry blossom season in Japan should only be allowed to show itself in the timeframe of March/April but with structured content it’s easy to link such relevance. Likewise, links to ski resorts should be prioritized in December, January and February and logically go de-prioritized in July and August which can all be done programmatically.
Maintenance Overhead Reduced with Ease of Updates
There’s never enough relevant travel content that’s accurate and updated. Creating content on the enterprise level is always a challenge for any organization. But with structured content, much of the maintenance headaches can be avoided in the first place. It centralizes content entries that can be used in multiple areas so they only have to be updated once. For example, if one travel description exists 20 times across different travel itineraries, editors only have to update once for it to change across all visibility areas. Version control and scheduling allow teams to publish content entries with timestamps in advance or push unpublish in advance; with structured content no one has to wait hours for things to change, they change in real-time. Time is saved when there are less human error and miscommunication based on memories from the past that remain. Travelers are always grateful for proper, updated information.
Scaled Content Delivery to Partners and Affiliate Channels
Many travel brands have partner airlines, excursion companies, or even affiliate partners who need access to your destination content and itineraries for sales or inclusion. Structured content allows you to push select content via APIs to these affiliates to create a constantly refreshed pool in their engines, consistently updated and with proper attribution, automatically and reliably. The travel brand has control over how and where content is published and affiliates gain access to up-to-date versions and targeted streams of content. This means the ability to scale B2B content delivery without additional operating time burdens and extended revenue streams.
Tailored Travel Recommendations from Intelligent Content Associations
People love tailored suggestions so they don’t have to hear about things that don’t apply to them or general recommendations that don’t apply. With structured content, for example, travel brands can create intelligent associations between streams of content activities to destinations, hotels to itineraries, special interests to suggested affiliation groups. Whether the computer can create a highly recommended list for someone visiting an AVEDA day spa for a week or recommend a Pinot Noir tasting with a French Cooking Course down the street, travelers will appreciate the in-depth associations achieved through structured content and their experience will be much smoother.
Offline Access to Travel Content for Travelers Without Internet Access
Many travelers wander in environments without Internet access subways, small rural towns, busy parks, etc. Structured content allows easier offline access as smaller bits of content can come together without a master document. Itineraries, highlights, maps and frequently asked questions can all be available offline making travelers more comfortable and able to get the information they need without worrying it’ll disappear on a page refresh. This fosters easier in-the-moment usability and increases traveler satisfaction in remote locations or with limited access.
Driving SEO and Discoverability Through Structured Metadata
Travel-related websites require SEO to gain organic traffic. Therefore, content organization helps with SEO as it specifies the metadata relevant to the content. Each travel-related post can have a unique page title and description, relevant keywords, and schema markup. It will benefit travelers attempting to find such information and travel agencies seeking exposure to have itineraries, guides to various destinations, and events appropriately tagged/found via search. If search engines know how to index specific travel-related posts properly, they just might and travel agencies will have the opportunity to increase their visibility.
Conclusion
The benefit of utilizing a structured content approach for ticketing and activities itineraries/destination guides is that it transforms how travel operations run in an oversaturated, competitive environment. Accuracy, personalization, and time-stamped relevance are essential to a proper user experience and have never been more important; thus, relying upon historical, static, page-driven content models will not suffice as it once did for hotels, resorts, activities, and excursions. Therefore, content related to such endeavors needs to be as pertinent as possible, in the moment, to serve the needs of travelers based on interest, available devices, and physical geolocation. Structured content allows companies to think of travel information not as an offer that exists in a vacuum on a page, but as a piece (modular/reusable) that can be updated relevantly and quickly.
Thus, should a travel company merely want to change hours of operation for one entry in its content about its various activities, it doesn’t have to update 50 pages. Editors can adjust the information in one controlled landing pad and that will automatically filter into all proper locations in all proper places instantaneously not just online but in eNewsletters and print collateral as well. Structured content can create a master landing pad for all like activities that provides uniformity across brand output with one governance structure informing editors what all natural components are. For companies operating with 1,000’s of location and 100’s of options, the ability to contextualize governance over single resources is crucial.
Furthermore, time-sensitive changes to this information can happen far more seamlessly in a structured context. One-off alterations can occur during peak times if certain areas of town are closed for safety or precaution; structured content allows editors to make instantaneous changes so that no matter where a traveler accesses this information varying itineraries or destination guides they are populated with the same time-sensitive information. Thus, users are encouraged to rely upon this travel company as a trusted source as proper information encourages compliance to successful travel.
Additionally, structured content allows for localization and personalization, both with global offerings as well as user-based accessibility. Thus, activities around the globe can have translatable captions to their activities itineraries while at the same time suggesting similar local resources based on geoaccessed data. Holistically, the same content blocks can serve different purposes in different contexts, be part of one itinerary over here, but then recommended as something else over there, and trusted as part of larger continuity.
Ultimately, as the travel industry continues to create new destinations driven by technological uniqueness and world-circumventing opportunities/intentions, a strong, dependable, structured approach allows for entities to grow itineraries without worry for digital disconnect. Whether adding a new mobile function or assimilating into a new third-party booking engine across the globe and across languages, reliance on structured content will maintain consistency. This is no longer merely a technical enhancement; it is a competitive advantage for forward-thinking companies, whether diverse in regional personalization or digital platform requirements.
