What's Involved in Commissioning a Paid Travel Review?
Paid travel reviews for medical tourism destinations and sellers are a very effective influencer marketing tactic for raising brand awareness, website traffic, and ultimately increasing medical tourism revenues.
Paid travel reviews generally include professional photography and videography of destinations, health facilities, hotels and resorts, and local attractions. In current practice, a paid travel review for medical tourism destinations and sellers includes the following services:
- Copywriting and professional editing
- Content creation and layout
- Website promotion and positioning
- Social media distribution management
- Paid advertorial placement that can be inserted into multiple magazines and online publications (e.g., in-flight magazines and travel magazines)
- SEO/SEM services, and
- other digital marketing services that are not part of the print (magazine and newspaper or printed book) travel review process
There are numerous perspectives that can be included in your strategy, for example:
- Dialysis travel planning and care coordination
- Wheelchair accessible travel planning and care coordination (a $35 billion market)
- Rehabilitation (mental health, physical rehab, and substance abuse) travel planning and care coordination
- Yoga retreats
- Performing arts medicine travel associated with master classes and single instrument player "camps"
Where are the articles published?
Paid travel reviews for medical tourism destinations and sellers can be published on your website, on social sharing sites, in our digital magazine and on our medical tourism websites and blogs and our social sharing sites.
Paid travel reviews for featured medical tourism destinations can end up being mentioned in several magazines, not just one. And with publishing cycles, those reviews mentioning the resort could go on for months and be edited down or expanded depending on the use of the content and the audience anticipated. If you hire us to manage promotional services in addition to the travel review authorship, we would continue to promote the resort on social media, encouraging our visitors and the general public to read each article as it is released. By doing all of these things, we generate interest in your destination and services, promote the articles as they are published, and generate multiple article streams, all to promote the your medical tourism business.
Internal (secret) reviews
Mystery shopping allows our client owners and executives to see how employees are really treating their guests. You need only tell us ahead of time that you want a mystery review done so that we don't disclose to employees why we are there. Mystery shopping can be done to inspect competitor's strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. You need only give us the scenario from which our reviewers will work and any specific points to include or questions you would like answered.
Who is the typical client for this?
We are most often hired by governments and private health facilities, doctors and resorts to promote medical tourism to their destination. Clients include hospitals, clinics, doctors, dentists, health resorts (thermal springs, seaside resorts, yoga retreats, spa resorts, restaurants and cultural attractions.
Sharing the Cost Makes Paid Travel Reviews More Affordable
Often stakeholders collaborate so that the cost is shared across all collaborating partners. They often also share the cost of our travel to their location (by enlisting an airline partner to offer an international business class seat that might otherwise remain unoccupied on a flight) and accommodation (by enlisting the support of a partner hotel or resort) that will be featured. Restaurants often also collaborate with hosted meals to be reviewed along with perhaps a recipe for a featured item on the menu, or special features (slow food, farm-to-table, organic ingredients, special dietary restriction preparedness, etc.).
How does the review process work?
Before we arrive, we spend several days researching everything we can find online about the destination and featured providers and suppliers. This includes information about the location itself, the city, and location where it is located, the geopolitical climate etc. Prior to arrival we also undertake research to determine if there are any unsafe areas around the destination or any areas of the city that tourists should avoid. To create excitement and start the brand awareness development and use our influencer status, we begin posting in real time on our own social media sites about what we've learned, what we're looking forward to, where we are going, why, to do what, and what we hope to achieve and who we will meet while there.
From our research, we then prepare a model itinerary and agenda for the meetings we need to book with tourism and other local officials and personalities, tours we need to pre-arrange, visits to the operating theater by our nurses and doctors, if applicable, and other arrangements that the client will undertake in preparation of our arrival. To do this after we arrive wastes precious time and opportunity, and risks that we won't be able to arrange the meetings and visits we need on short notice.
While at your location, we thoroughly investigate as many aspects of the destination and featured facilities as possible. This enables us to develop several different articles so that we deliver unique content that is appropriate for magazines, newspapers, advertorials, blog content, and more. We are also able to have these pieces of custom created content translated by native speakers and editors so that you can use the content to attract your target clientele and visitors in their own language.
