More people than ever are using the Internet to do research for their vacations. One area that benefits more than most from promoting itself on the Internet is cooking vacations. Because of the number of participants for each cooking vacation being low, it is not cost effective to use the traditional media for extensive promotion and advertising. The Internet can provide the ideal medium for putting across your message to far more people in relation to your actual spend. .

Consider the following:

• The average number of people on a cooking vacation is ten.

• Because of the small scale of each vacation the operational costs have to be shared between just a few people, making this a more expensive vacation than a lot of people expect.

• It is therefore essential to keep costs to a minimum.

• Adding big advertising costs to such small numbers would make them unaffordable.

• This leaves the organiser with a quandary - how to promote a cooking vacation at little or no cost.

Can you afford just over £11 a month ($20 or €17) to promote your cooking vacations and increase your bookings?

Why is it so difficult to promote and sell cooking vacations?
Ways to sell a vacation	Traditional Vacations	Cooking Vacations	Negatives for cooking vacations	Positives for cooking vacations
Glossy Brochure	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive Out of date too soon Too many variations to vacations	None
TV advertising	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive	None
Magazine Advertising	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive	None
Newspaper Advertising	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive	None
Leaflet distribution	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive	None
Mailshot	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Too expensive	None
Travel Agents	Yes	No	Insufficient number of places Paying commission means reducing profit Paying commission means over-pricing the vacation	None
Internet	Yes	Yes	Getting found amongst 56.1 million web sites	Low cost Not date sensitive Copy can be changed at no cost Potential to reach anyone interested in such vacations The internet has already become the accepted place for the consumer to look for a cooking vacation

The obvious answer is to promote the cooking vacation via the internet because the price of web space and a domain name is inexpensive. However life is never that simple - you are trying to find the people who are interested in cooking vacations in order to tell them about what you do . . . but if they have never heard of you how are you going to achieve this?

There are two possible types who will be interested in finding out about your cooking vacation:

• The person who is actively looking to go on a cooking vacation:

To find you they will use a search engine . . . but will they find you?
Google accounts for 80% of world searches. It is generally accepted that your site will not be found if it is not in the top two or three pages of results. To get continuous high ranking with Google you need a large, informative site directly related to the subject matter in question. It is not possible for an organiser of cooking vacations to build such a website . . . they would not have time to run the vacations.

• The person who has never considered (or never heard of) a cooking vacation:

  To find you . . . well, how are they going to find you?

You now have the opportunity to promote your cooking vacations using the power of www.cookingholidays.co.uk and www.hub-uk.com/cooking-holidays to get you found both on search engines and by people interested in food and cooking.

If you would like to find out more about this opportunity and how it works email enquiries@cookingholidays.co.uk