Quebec - 10 tips to help you sell your outdoor and adventure activities to Europeans

Aventure Écotourisme Québec is a non-profit organization created in 1990. It brings together the main players in Quebec's outdoor industry, including accredited adventure tourism and ecotourism companies, land managers, specialized travel wholesalers, tourism associations and schools specializing in adventure tourism and ecotourism.

10 tips for promoting your outdoor and adventure activities to Europeans

Number 1: Be reachable by phone free of charge ☎️

Europeans love being able to ask questions if they need to. Being able to contact the professionals organising the activities easily is reassuring, and reassurance is very important for a European organising a trip to Quebec.

At Manawa, feedback from our partners tells us that the number of calls to book outdoor and adventure activities tends to fall year on year, even more so with cross-border customers. This is mainly due to the development of online sales, but also because outdoor and adventure activities are gradually moving out of their niches and becoming well-known tourist activities.

Furthermore, answering a customer's questions is still an important and effective conversion factor. At Manawa, we have a conversion rate of over 70% following a telephone call to our customer service department, and the questions are always simple, such as: Can I book? Can I do this activity with a child? How does the activity work?

For our part, to enable Europeans to contact you easily, we invite you to create a WhatsApp number, which is the most widely used application in Europe, and make it visible on your contact page. Another solution for calling via the Internet is Messenger (Facebook). Alternatively, you can invite customers on your website to email you their telephone number. It's important to commit to calling them back afterwards, but this is time-consuming so we recommend less.

Number 2 : Europeans and Americans don't do the same research 🔍

We're not going to make a list of language differences here because we're still beginners at learning Quebecois at Manawa (besides, this could be a great article to have on your sites 🤔) but it's important to bear in mind that we don't necessarily use the same names for our nature and adventure activities. This is true in French and perhaps even in English for some activities. The simplest example is "dog sledding" which is "chien de traineau" for French-speaking Europeans and which may be dog sledding or mushing in English depending on where our customers come from.

Other examples include water tobogganing, which is known as hydrospeed throughout Europe, canoeing, which is mostly replaced by canoeing by other French-speaking countries, and there's no doubt that we'll be discovering even more as we continue to promote Quebec over the coming years!

If you're not sure which name to give to your activities, the easiest way is to use both names, or ask your European friends, the Manawa team or use Google Trends to filter by customer origin.

For example, Quebecers and French people are looking for dog sledding:

PS: At Manawa, we agree with you that "dog sledding" makes more sense, but we haven't yet managed to convince all the French speakers in Europe 😁

Number 3: In Europe all taxes are included! 🧾

Customers ask very few questions about prices when they buy their outdoor and adventure activities online, and this is even truer for Europeans who plan their holidays in Quebec.

It is also important to be as clear as possible about the amount of tax each time you display prices on your site. A European who takes the time to read your website, and enters your business thinking he's reading a description of a $150 CAD activity, must pay the expected price. If, on reaching the payment page, they discover that the price is 14.975% more expensive, they are likely to be frustrated or, worse still, to leave your site without buying, because this is not what they had originally envisaged.

We'd also like to take this opportunity to ask you to warn customers about tipping in writing, as this is not common in Europe. Europeans won't necessarily think of tipping and they carry less and less cash, even on holiday. So my recommendation is to teach them to get used to your way of doing things. This won't help you sell your activities online, but it will limit the embarrassing moments at the end of the activity when the customer doesn't understand or leaves without leaving a tip.

Number 4: Offer options with all equipment included 🥾🎿🧤

By default, the European customer who comes to Quebec to discover nature and adventure activities is not properly equipped. This is obviously true for winter, but also for summer, because it's not always easy to transport your equipment by plane. There are a few exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, customers will not have the ideal equipment to come and discover your nature and adventure activities in Quebec.

Our advice is to create additional options to your business with all the necessary facilities included to simplify your customers' experience of your site. The extra cost for comfort is rarely a problem for Europeans. The other solution, if it's complex for you (because of stock, size or other problems), is to write very clearly that such and such equipment can be hired on site for such and such a price (be careful to specify taxes) on your activities pages.

Number 5: Be specific about the accessibility of your activities 📏📍

Quebec is huge for your European customers, and it's not necessarily obvious how big your region of Canada is. Our regions are much smaller, and a European might book a hotel in Quebec City and an activity in Tadoussac, thinking "it's the same region of Canada, so it's not far". To give you an idea, it's quicker to cross 8 regions from Paris to Amsterdam, crossing Belgium completely, than it is to travel from Montreal to Tadoussac.

So don't hesitate to write clearly that your activity is X hours' drive from Montreal and X hours' drive from such and such other towns or points of tourist interest so that customers can plan their holidays around your outdoor and adventure activities.

Number 6: Reinsurance is very important 🥶

Outdoor and adventure activities can seem impressive to people who want to discover them, and this is even truer for Europeans who want to discover your activities in Quebec. Reassurance is therefore a very important point to emphasise on your website and in your activity descriptions.

When planning a trip to Quebec, Europeans can :

• Some of our French colleagues think it's -15°C and our Spanish colleagues imagine -30°C in the Quebec winter.
• be intimidated by winter driving, many European cities are paralysed as soon as we get 2 centimetres of snow on our roads.
• Ask questions about the local wildlife, as the chances of coming across bears or caribou in Europe are even lower than they are here.
• Wondering how boat crossings work, taking a boat with your car in Europe is always endless.
• and certainly many other things depending on your destinations and activities...

All the above points are mainly due to a lack of knowledge about Quebec. So it's important to reassure them so that Europeans come and discover your outdoor and adventure activities and change their preconceptions.

Number 7: Cancellation policies increase conversion rates 📈

The last few years have been special, and many people have had problems with cancellations and refunds in all sectors of activity. We've noticed with our Quebec partners that you rarely communicate on this issue, even though you're quite flexible and it's a real added value for the customer.

If you are flexible about last-minute cancellations, write this down clearly, as this will encourage customers to buy in advance. If you're not, write that down too, to protect yourself from customers who've partied too hard the night before. To give you an idea, you can find the 5 cancellation policies that our partners choose on Manawa. Today, 60% of our nature and adventure activities are flexible, 15% super flexible, 15% intermediate and 10% strict or super strict.

Number 8: Open your bookings as soon as possible! 📅

It's true that more and more of our customers are booking at the last minute (less than 10 days on average at Manawa), and this trend will continue to decline over the next few years. What's more, many Europeans are planning their holidays in Quebec and some like to book in advance, because it's a trip and not just a holiday. So it's important to give them the opportunity to book your activities when they're looking, even if they're planning their holiday a year in advance.

For some multi-activity destinations, we have even noticed that some customers book early in order to spread out the costs of their stay, and have more budget when they are there to enjoy it.

This can lead to some management difficulties, but it can help Europeans organise their holidays in Quebec. If the schedules are closed, they'll move on thinking you're not available and won't necessarily come back later.

Number 9: If you haven't already done so, find out about online booking

We won't insist on it here, but today in Europe, it takes 3 clicks to make a doctor's appointment: we really can't imagine the new generations picking up the phone or worse, writing an e-mail to buy your outdoor activities and adventure sports. Facilities that are not equipped by 2025 will lose a significant number of bookings year after year! Today at Manawa, we are connected with booking software such as Fareharbor, Rezdy, Resamare, Yoplaning, Trekksoft, Booking Kit, Activitar, Turitop and Bokun and our aim is to connect 2 new tools every year.

There are many other tools available on the market, the important thing is to find the one that suits you best. In Quebec, many of our first partners, mainly members of Aventure Ecotourisme Québec, use Reservotron, which you may have heard of? It's still a secret, but we're planning to work on an API connection for 2025 🤫

Number 10: Improving your search engine optimisation (SEO) 🌐

Here are a few quick and easy ideas that can help you increase the visibility of your website over the medium to long term through natural referencing:

• Create a FAQ (frequently asked questions) on your site, note down each customer question and answer them: add an extra page with answers to questions that customers could type into Google directly. Two essential questions for Europeans: Can I come to DESTINATION if it's snowing? How should I dress for an ACTIVITY at DESTINATION? How much does the boat cost to get to DESTINATION by car? ...
• Create a separate page for each of your activities and emphasise sport + destination in the title of each page. The article How to build an activity to sell it online may also help you.
• Create a blog/article section and write in-depth articles about your sport and your spot (start "sport in spot", what to do in "spot", weekend/holidays "sport in spot", typical week in spot, etc).
• Ask your partners (hotels, restaurants, other activities, resellers like Manawa, etc.) if they can put a redirect link to your site. Aventure Écotourisme Québec already does this for you on their Aventure Québec site 😉
• If you speak more than one language, let us know and create one or more articles in the blog/article section in the language in question. Germans, Dutch, Spanish and Italians are customers we're starting to see in Quebec via Manawa, and we think this is just the beginning.

If you're interested, we've also written an article for our European partners. There may be a few more (more basic) points that may be of interest to you.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to write to your regional manager directly or, if you are not yet a Manawa partner, to join us on Manawa.com.