Ruba Partnership
NTA has teamed up with Ruba.com to offer our tour operator members an effective and affordable option for reaching the packaged travel consumer online. Below are the key partnership points:
- NTA members benefit from having a free opportunity to increase their exposure on a highly visible consumer Web site. They only pay for qualified leads.
- NTA benefits by providing a strong member benefit with no extra costs to the association and a potential revenue opportunity.
- Ruba benefits from tour operator content, from revenue from tour operators who sign up to receive leads, and from the travel expertise of NTA staff and members.
To sign up, go to http://www.ruba.com and click on the "join" link in the upper right corner. Then, click on the "tour operator tab" in the pop-up window and follow the instructions.
Ruba Background
Ruba is a visual travel guide and tour review site that helps travelers from around the world discover their next perfect trip. Ruba is a third-party review site that allows travelers to post reviews of tours that they have taken and recommend tours to travelers who are researching their travel options. Ruba takes the “word-of-mouth” marketing that is so successful in the travel industry to the Web.
Tour operators may list their tours and packages on Ruba at no cost. Tour operators only pay for qualified leads that are generated from their postings on Ruba.
Most tour operators who use Ruba as a tour distribution source encourage travelers who have taken their trips to write reviews on Ruba.
Other facts about Ruba:
- Tightly integrated with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, 75% of Ruba users login with their Facebook credentials.
- Ruba ranks high in Google searches and utilizes a variety of search engine optimization strategies to maintain their high ranking.
- Ruba is now receiving about 70,000 unique visitors to their site per month. This is a 42% increase in traffic since the second quarter of the year.
NTA/Ruba Partnership
NTA is announced its partnership with Ruba at the Annual Business Meeting luncheon at Convention '09. Here are some of the benefits to NTA and its tour operator members:
- All NTA tour operator members with an active company profile on NTA Online will receive complimentary and automatic login credentials on Ruba. They will just need to activate their account to login and start posting tours.
- NTA Online will be tightly integrated with Ruba, and tour operators can link to their consumer tour packages on Ruba to their NTA Online profiles, increasing their exposure to consumers who are visiting NTA Online looking for qualified and reputable tour operators.
- The NTA logo (symbol of quality and reputation) will appear on the profiles of all NTA tour operators who list tours on Ruba.
- Ruba will add information to its web site on why it is important to use reputable tour operators, like those qualified by NTA, and refer non-member tour operators to NTA.
- NTA will receive a 10% commission if NTA tour operators sign up to receive qualified leads from Ruba.
We encourage tour operators who sign up to let NTA know so that we can link their account to NTA Online and make sure an NTA logo appears on their Ruba profile.