It's nothing new for me to preach the benefits of having a website. Unless you are rolling in the dough with more customers and visitors to your store, restaurant or place of businesses than you can handle a website is a must. A no-brainer if you will. However, having a website is no longer enough. If people know the name of your business or your URL, they shouldn't have any trouble finding you on-line. Don't let arrogance get in the way and assume that every tourist coming to your town will automatically know about your business and the projects that you offer. 90% of tourists won't know this information. They will however, know the area, what type of accommodations their seeking and their favorite types of food and merchandise that they might hope to find. Common keyword searches on the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo specific to boutique tourist dependant towns look something like this:

Bandera Cowboy Dude Ranch
Boerne Romantic Bed and Breakfast
Ruidoso hand carved bear
Fredericksburg wineries
Hill Country Hotels with Wi-Fi
Live music and entertainment in Boerne

I'm sure if you think back to a recent trip you have taken, your searches might be similar. Now put yourself in the mind of a person looking to visit your area. What kinds of searches will they do that pertains to your business? When you do those searches, where does your site rank? Can people easily find you? If not, I recommend pursuing SEO/SEM assistance.

A great way to make sure that your business is easily found by tourists is to be sceen on travel focused and social media sites.

Examples include, TripAdvisor , CitySearch, ShopBoerne YELP, VirtualTourist, RealTravel, Gusto, eTravelReviews, Facebook and Twitter. If you are a business catering to tourism, you should know these sites intimately! If the task seems daunting or a bit intimidating, most reliable web marketing companies provide social media marketing and reputation management services.