I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Ted at Hawaii Destinations - a Hawaii travel and tourism site which is a guide for independent travelers visiting the islands. The goal of this website, as stated on their about page, is, “to become a respected destination and vacation guide, providing a quality and quantity of information without peer amongst independent websites”. Hawaii Destinations has made a good start with a respectable amount of information on Hawaii travel insurance as well as a nice selection of Hawaii accommodations. The site uses 2 monetization models:
- Cost Per Click (CPC) - They use Google Adsense for their contextual advertising.
- Affiliate Model - They use multiple affiliate programs to provide accommodations, car rentals, travel insurance, vacation packages, cruises and activities.
Overall, the site has a nice theme and is easy to navigate. I appreciate the simple straight forward navigation and everything is just one click away. The buttons to “book” and “learn more” are also easy to see which leads to high conversion ratios.
Likes:
Besides easy navigation, I like that Hawaii Destinations has tried to incorporate many different things that Hawaii visitors might want for their vacations. They have an informative golf and wedding sections which is great content for visitors. Travel insurance is something that I don’t see offered by a lot of Hawaii vacation sites, and this is thoughtful.
Dislikes:
In order to become more popular, I think Hawaii Destinations needs to continue on its goal of providing “quality information”. While the golf and wedding sections are great, they are certainly not everything somebody visiting Hawaii is looking for. More information on beaches, sightseeing, activities, etc would really go along way in improving their traffic.
Conclusion:
Hawaii Destinations has made a great start in the competitive Hawaii travel website market. With their multiple monetization models (that could be successful with more traffic) and low overhead, this could be a sustainable business model if they continue to develop more useful content.