What a tourism marketing agency in Colombia should do

There are two kinds of agency in Colombian tourism: the one that delivers assets and the one that answers for results. They charge similarly and differ in concrete things you can verify before signing.

Five deliverables to demand

1. An initial written diagnosis: how bookings arrive today, how long you take to reply, what is missing from your Google listing, what your site measures.
2. A plan with order and dates, not a list of services.
3. Original content, shot in your operation.
4. A monthly report with bookings, not “impressions”. If the report does not talk about money, it is not a report.
5. Access and ownership of everything: accounts, Business Manager, pixel, domain, hosting and WhatsApp number in your name.

Red flags

• They ask to create the accounts with the agency’s email.
• They promise follower counts or “going viral”.
• They never ask about your occupancy, your average booking or your season before quoting.
• The contract says nothing about what happens to access if the service ends.
• They report reach and impressions and never conversations or bookings.

What to ask in the first meeting

• “What would you do in month one?” If the answer is “post three times a week”, they are selling assets. If it is “measure how bookings arrive today”, they are selling a system.
• “How will we know it worked?” There should be a concrete number and a date.
• “Have you run a tourism business?” Not essential, but it changes the answers a lot.

What the investment looks like in Colombia

As a reference, a tourism business that wants a real direct channel invests 5 % to 10 % of revenue in marketing, split between fees and ad spend. Below 3 % you maintain presence but do not grow; above 15 % without measurement, you burn money.

How to tell if you are overpaying

Run this for the last quarter: divide what you paid (fees + ads) by the bookings you can attribute to marketing. That is your cost per booking. If it exceeds 25 % of your average booking, or you cannot calculate it because nobody measures, there is your problem.

In-house, freelance or agency

• In-house: makes sense when content volume is high and constant. Costs salary, equipment and management, and depends on one person.
• Freelance: cheap and flexible, good at execution. Rarely covers strategy, ads, web and WhatsApp at once.
• Agency: more expensive monthly, but covers the whole system and does not go on holiday. Worth it when the bottleneck is connecting channels, not posting.

Contract: three clauses that prevent problems

1. Ownership of accounts and data: everything in the client’s name, with documented handover at the end.
2. Deliverables and deadlines in writing, not “social media management”.
3. An orderly exit: notice period, transfer of access and delivery of produced material.

This is how we work: one connected system of social media, ads, WhatsApp, Google and web, with everything in the client’s name. If you want a second opinion on what you are being charged, write to us.