Those successful online marketing elites have gone through a lot of stressful experience. Just like in any other side of our life, their success was not achieved instantly in a blink. Just like anything else in our life, when you are short in financial capital you have to be prepared to spend more in other sides, brain, time, and energy.

It is widely known that one the most prominent factor of their success is SEO, the free way to drive tons of business leads from popular search engine, to our online shop. That is 100% correct. With successful SEO, we are not only getting visitors to our shop, those visitors need our merchandise.

Unfortunately as crowd of followers comes in expectation of slice of the fortune, most of them swept away in disappointment. Many of those who failed to secure their slot in online marketing success have spend their sweat on a finally successful SEO effort. But still, as they are getting flood of traffic into their websites, none of them buys.

I have been in online marketing for more than a decade, enough time to see those rises and falls. In my early days I was in fact struggling the same experience as well. The most prominent mistake in my view is that people believes that SEO is everything. A kind of “When you get your website floats to the first page of Google, you will start to get flood of dollars into your pocket”.

That believe is damn wrong. Online marketing is no difference in principle with brick and mortar business. Online marketing has SEO (and many other methods) to bring visitors into the online shop. Brick and mortar business has the same stage in different form, media advertising for example.

As you get flood of visitors hit your doorsteps, another critical step kicks in. You have to make them find what they need in your online shop, convinced that you are the right place to buy it, and pull their wallet. These process includes a lot of things, from the way you arrange and present the products in your website to competitive price.

Is SEO important, YES. But it is only one in a series of long and exhaustive process. Will you fail without it, maybe, but not necessarily. There are many other ways to drive traffic of visitors to a website, PPC, banner exchange, affiliate marketing, are just to name some.

I hope it gives you a better insight in relationship between SEO and Online Marketing.

However, no matter how mature the service excellent has grew, private villas remains as private property of the owner which inherit personal taste and style of the owners. Professional management companies may be able to bring service excellent to certain high quality standard, but who could standardize people’s personal taste? In that very sense, getting consistent offerings like luxurious hotel chains is hard to achieve in villa rental industry.

This is the main reason why offline travel agents, selling their products through physical outlets, find it difficult to sell villa accommodation. Another reason is private villas only have one selling unit per property, compared to resort hotels which have hundreds of rooms to sell in one single property. Creating product package, preparing sales material, and similar efforts are not economically viable only to sell one selling unit per property.

Therefore so far private villas remains very dependent to online rental agents, featuring the villas in network of their business. Low cost of creating and managing websites makes online marketing fits the nature of one selling unit per property nature. In fact, once a website completed, the only costs on featuring a new villa is five minutes of time. “All of our business comes through website, and guests referred by happy clients, which initially came from our websites”, Wisna Wedhana of Private Leisure International, villa rental agents representing Bali and Thailand villas said.

Most of these rental agents got their business solely from their websites. In most cases, they never make any traditional advertising. “Website can reach everyone allover the globe at one cost. If you place an and on The New York Times, you will only reach people in New York. Imagine how much you have to spend if you want to reach the whole world”, the Chairman of Bali Villa Rental Association exposed the logic. No wonder why Bali SEO and Bali web design consultants are packed by villa rental clientele.

I may be wrong. This is a rough conclusion from what I have seen through my own eyes. And my eyes could be wrong. I fact I am very dependant to a cylindrical glass. Well, I do not want to mislead people. Quite contrary, I want to encourage people to look into things from the positive sides, at at least if it is at all negative, to find a way to turn it around.

I guess my lifestyle helps has saved me from the impact of global financial crisis. With almost everything I consume, from meals to clothing and even vehicle, is locally produced, I can afford anything I need the same way as two years ago. Few things like gadgets and computers did not bite quite an attention as I do not buying these stuffs everyday.

Running a holiday rental business I found that closing to peak holiday season coming between July and September, my salespersons are crying for supplies. Inquiries are flowing in whilst supplies are no longer exist. All villas in Bali are booked out during the period. Supply for Christmas - New Year period which is still a half year ahead starts to run out as well.

It is definitely not a picture of myself alone, I believe. My fellows in the same business confirmed similar situation. Bali tours are foreseeing similar picture. I believe the whole tourism industry in Bali is not really affected by global economic crisis. Officials announced that number of tourist visits recorded a slight increase in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period of previous year.

Thank God that I life in Bali. It is a real paradise, I think. More than beautiful beach and sunshine along the year, it protects from the harm, even the one flow from the most powerful country.

To strengthen its market positioning in Phuket, the board of PLI invited the board of DwiBali to join their business trip to Phuket. Having the collaboration based on friendship, the trip was designed to combine leisure in addition to business objectives. “We are in leisure business so it makes sense to give ourselves chances to enjoy what we are offering,” said Wisna Wedhana, the Managing Partner of PLI.

The journey started from Penang, Malaysian tiny island which combines industry, European heritage, tropical beaches in a very nice package. Whilst both PLIs and DwiBalis agreed that Penang was not the right place for their business, they had all the reasons to agree that they were having a good time before hading up for a heart pumping action of F1 drivers in Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

Their program in Phuket was led by PLI’s Phuket representative Chatrudee Chookeaw, a young energetic holiday property veteran who joined PLI since the first time it entered Phuket. From the picturesque Baan Talaefun where they stayed, site inspections and meetings were planned, executed, and evaluated. In addition to courtesy meetings with owners and representatives of luxury villas which have so far been happy clients of PLI, the program was also directed to acquiring newcomers into portfolio, especially low to mid end ones to fill the needs of their prospective clients.

“It is a potential market and we are keen to start joining PLI to expand our own business portfolio”, said Denny Widhana, the Director of DwiBali in their evaluation discussion in Singapore. At the end both PLI and DwiBali were looking toward a closer cooperation to strengthen market positioning in Phuket.

Little different with both ceremonies above, Nyepi Day or many people known as Silent Day will be celebrate once a year. But in this year, three ceremonies above will be celebrate in two weeks. Many peoples have enthusiastic to celebrate ceremonies in this year, but we will not find Ogoh-ogoh (giant puppet) on Pengerupukan day (day before Nyepi), it caused in this period Indonesia will hold election.

Happy Galungan, Kuningan, and Nyepi Day !

Photo by Ramayadi

There are many logics explaining the cycle actually. “Everybody have just got back home from a Christmas – New Year holidays, so it just does not make any sense to expect the to come now for another holiday,” a simple explanation threw by Gede, a car rental Bali driver who had rare chance to meet his little baby back home as his schedule was completely full from early December through mid of January.

Working for a holiday rental company focusing on up market private accommodation service, Gede was exclusively assigned to families spending their holiday in Seminyak villas. “A number of different clients, but back to back stay period has completely filled up my schedule,” he continued.

With regard to the slow business in the last few weeks Gede did not show any negative expression. “It’s time for me to enjoy my earning from the peak period and spend enough time for my family,” he said. He is quite confident that there is nothing for him to worry about as the holiday rental company has started filling up his schedule starting March onward. The mid season will start as soon as the rainy season ends.

Gede is one of thousands of tour drivers in Bali, a small nut in a huge vehicle of Bali tourism industry. But I guess we have to learn from his optimism. Bali has been seeing worse situation, all of which got through peacefully and ended up in an even stronger business.

As the peak holiday season expired and the last client depart, worries started to arose. A perfect combination of low season and impact of global financial crisis came as a potential threat. “We have to be very careful in controlling our spending as we have to ensure that we have enough to run our business during the slow period,” an owner of a prominent holiday rental agency in Bali said. “We have been seeing Bali tourism survived worse situation, so there is nothing to worry about. Just business as usual,” another one expressed a more optimistic opinion.

I personally have not that much of worries. With price ranging from $500 to over $3,000 per night, target market of villa rental is wealthy business owners and investors. Crisis may force them t reallocate their portfolio or even significantly cut capitalization of their assets, but it will not affect their lifestyle. If Bill Gates lost 5 billion dollars, will he sell his private jet and fly commercial flight instead? Definitely not. There are a lot of executives and professionals are loosing their job and therefore will no longer afford to spend a holiday, but those people are in $100 - $200 resort hotels’ market range.

Nevertheless, I carefully watch the situation in my own company. It is correct that we do not have many in-house clients in January and probably February as well. But those months are in low season anyway. However bookings for the coming months do not show any evidence of financial crisis. From income point of view, January 2009 has been a good month. I believe that other agents were experiencing similar situation.

For your information, an investor named PT Anantara would like to develop any tourism spot at Buyan lake, such as adrift restaurant and adrift stage for art performance. Water at Buyan lake has getting contraction, and the investor will take benefit from that to develop some tourism spot. But some Balinese component believe that Buyan lake is one of sacred place that sacred to Balinese, and also from some research said Buyan Lake is fountain head. That’s why they prevent any exploration at Buyan Lake.

Buyan Lake is one of the biggest lake in Bali, surround by tropical forest make Buyan Lake is favorite place to have outbound activity such as trekking and camping.

We hope Bali Governor always consist to prevent any exploration at Buyan lake by investor that only take profit.

Let we keep holiness of our environment!

The fact of trash has been classic problem for tourism area of Nusa Dua also accrued by Mr. Made Mandra , Head of BTDC Nusa Dua, and also he said that elite tourism area will not has a sense if it doesn’t support by neighborhood of BTDC.

Mr. Made Mandra also hope the local government will aware for this problem and take solution for trash problem around Siligita Street, where he didn’t pry up tax of hotel and restaurant.

In other side, Coca Cola - the famous soft drink producer in world has collaborated with Reef Check Indonesia foundation to create special program to promote clean live as a life style especially for cleaning coastal area. This program has named Coca cola for Bali Coastal Clean Up, has been running since July until December 2008. From this activity, they have success to raise around 1 ton of trash from coastal of Kuta, Sanur, and Nusa Lembongan.

It’s important to keep our surroundings still clean, and also important to emerge awareness of cleanliness from young. Tourism also depend on cleanliness of our surroundings.

Mr. Al Purwa (Head of ASITA Bali) said that Chinese New Year holiday would increase occupancy of hotels in Bali, and the occupancy itself will be 80 percent. Most Chinese and Hongkong tourist will be stay around two until three days during Chinese New Year holiday as Mr. Purwa Said.

Another optimism also come from Mr. Jeffrey Wibisono (General Manager of Villa Mahapala), where Villa Mahapala has been booked by mostly guest from Korea and Chinese. He hoped that occupancy will keep increasing in the coming weeks.

Bali still to be one of the most favorite travel destination for Chinese tourist to celebrate Chinese New Year away from their home. But we hope the weather will be friendly (at least no flood again) as we known Chinese New Year is identical with rain.

Gong Xi Fa cai!