Our Approach to Educating You About River Cruising
Hank Schrader, USMA '71, Europe Destination & Europe River Cruise Expert
Anne Schrader, Certified Travel Counselor & Certified Luxury Cruise Specialist
You will seldom see an ad from us about a promotion from the 8 river cruise lines we follow. It is not that there are some great offers that have expiration dates and might tempt you to take advantage of the offer, we just try not to throw out ideas and hope you want to take advantage of the offer. There is no personalization in this approach.
Instead of bombarding you with constant offers, we prefer to educate you about the benefits of river cruising and then look for a promotion that fits your desired travel dates after you decide you want to try or go again on a river cruise or other trip.
So, let’s examine our marketing approach and see if it fits the way you prefer to learn about the benefits of river cruising and our services.
Types of Marketing
Our marketing efforts are designed to maximize reach and engagement to our potential customers and then turn them into loyal clients. We want you to understand the good and bad of each vacation option we write about or post on our website.
There are two strategies for marketing. They are Direct Marketing and Content Marketing. Each has a unique approach, which could be used online to find clients.
We find good content marketing mixed in with an occasional direct marketing offer, is the best mix for long-term success in our business model. Both methods raise awareness, which is central to making our business thrive and provides you with good ideas to consider for your vacation.
A good way to look at content marketing versus direct marketing, is to compare them to races. Direct marketing (traditional marketing) is a sprint, looking for immediate results and sales. Content marking is a marathon, where it takes longer to see results but usually delivers better long-time clients.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing works when the aim of the campaign is to promote a product by providing the features, benefits and prices of a trip to persuade our potential clients to buy the trip being promoted. This is the buy now approach. The communication is direct and does not usually allow for interaction. If not overused and sent selectively to a good target audience, this method can be very effective. We sometimes send out ideas to select folks who have indicated a desire to go to a destination or celebration (we think this is a very good use of direct marking) or even post them on our specials page on the website (less effective as they may not relate to a trip you desire to take and may expire quickly).
Content Marketing
Content marketing is really about two-way communication to build a loyal following with you. Here are 3 reasons why content marketing is our choice as a marketing technique
Content marketing works by providing you with valuable, relevant information about river cruising and travel.
Our goal of content marketing is to engage our readers to develop a relationship and ultimately turn you into a paying customer getting the trip you desire.
It differs by not directly selling a product or service but relies on building our brand loyalty with you when the time is right and hopefully develops a loyal, trusting client base that you want to be part of our clients.
If we have the correctly interested target audience, our content marketing focuses on your travel needs, your travel interests, your travel challenges and the problems you face and provides you with a solution to these travel difficulties.
How we use Content Marketing for Your Benefit
The problem for all travel agencies is that not enough potential clients know who we are and how we can benefit them.
Our solution is to blog. We try to build awareness from our weekly or bi-weekly blog, and excellent content on our website which results in high SEO (Search Engine Optimization). No cost (organic searches) is the best of all advertising worlds, and it really boils down to high quality content.
One of the keys to why our blog is so effective is that our blog targets potential clients who want to explore a Europe River cruising as a vacation option and we hope it attracts highly interested readers.
The SEO comes from the articles which use the long-tail keywords, such as Europe River Cruise Comparisons. This precision targets specific traveler interests and higher conversion rates. We want to attract the right clients who value our specialized knowledge and tailored experiences in our river cruise niche.
Here are some amazing statistics about the effectiveness of our website from organic searches (indicates a website's SEO effectiveness, reflecting its placement in non-paid search results),
17.89 % of our key words rank in positions 1-5, and 6.17% rank in positions 6-10 key word rank.
In other words, 24.06% of the organic key word searches from our website are on page one of Google (source online.seranking.com 12 May 2026)!
Let me put this into perspective for you.
90.63% of website pages get no organic search traffic from Google (source Ahrefs).
Websites with an active blog generate 67% more leads and 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t post a blog on their websites (source Demand Metric).
For those who do not know, each blog creates a new page on our website, and enough quality blogs have moved us up in SEO rankings.
Quality Counts
Ok, you know we rank very high in Google searches. Now it is time to showcase our catalog of blogs to help you have a better trip.
Here are some of the key blog sections in our archives part of the blog resources 1) Itineraries. 2) Painless Planning with How to Guides, 3) Help finding personalized or special events ideas, 4) Client experiences and 5) Seasonal travel.
Kuekenhof Gardens on a Riverside Tour we took 2025. This is the most beautiful garden in Europe. Picture Anne Schrader
Good value travel is making the most of your travel dollars. It is about memorable experiences. It is about reduced hassles on the trip. There are 2 important topics of our Blog—River Cruising and Blog Archives.
The River Cruise Blog Archives on our website is an excellent place to learn if river cruising is the right trip for your vacation. The topics in this section are Our River Cruise Services, River Cruise Line Comparisons, Europe River Cruise, River Cruise Routes, River Cruise Advice and River Cruise Reviews.
Sailing the Iron Gates on the Danube River in 2013. This rock sculpture is of Decbalus, the last King of Dacia, who fought agasinst the Romans. It is the tallest rock relief in Europe at 180 feet high and 82 feet in width. Dacia is the pre-Roman name of Romania.
Our comparisons of river cruise companies and Europe River Cruise route Guides are especially strong—we are number 1 on Google (or close to number 1) for both topics. Just remember to skip the ads (sponsored content) on Google to get to the real content.
On our Blog Archives Page, we write about, Europe Travel, Europe Destinations, Best Value Travel, Travel Planning, Ocean Cruises, and Veterans. There are 116 + blogs in this page
The stunning views of Siena, Italy and it famous Cathedral. Picture Anne Schrader
We Have Unmatched Knowledge About River Cruising
Our knowledge is unmatched about river cruising. Like some proof?
I will say without hesitation we have the most complete content of any travel professional about river cruising on our website. There are 162 + day-by-day route itineraries from the 8 river cruise lines we follow.
Tauck Savor River cruise ship 2025. We take tour pictures of all 8 river cruise lines we follow and post them on our website. Picture Anne Schrader
There are ship tours of all 8 river cruise lines we follow with our pictures of the facilities and the staterooms.
You already know about the over 140 river cruise blogs organized by topic for easy search and onboard reviews of the 8 different river cruise lines we follow.
We feature our pictures to get a sense of what we experienced and saw during our 31 river cruises and countless training sessions.
We love seasonal trips and Anne used her sprocket to create a picture of one of our favorite waiters as a gift to him, showing we all need to lighten up a little!
In only 6 months of 2026 (as of 11 June) we have had 52,960 visitors, 48,822 unique visitors, and 58,469 pageviews.
I think this is the ultimate content marketing—free quality information that you can study to make an informed decision about using us as your travel advisor, so you can get the best possible vacation.
Our Final Thoughts
We hope you find this blog interesting and meaningful to you about our approach to marketing. The better we can connect with you, and the better we can educate you, the better we can serve you. Please reach out to us with news of your life, any travel dreams even if you are not quite ready to travel and, of course, a trip you want us to plan.
We are travel experts, ocean and river cruise specialists, and Europe destination experts. We have first-hand knowledge of almost anywhere you want to visit in Europe. We know our products and the vendors who sell them to you. We have designed special tours for dozens of clients, led several and will continue to find just the right vacation that will exceed your expectations.
When you are spending your hard-earned money for a vacation, you want an advisor who can match you with the right trip. You want someone who will understand your expectations and fuel your anticipation (or excitement) to get you the best possible trip experience. And, you want someone who can help you with the decision-making process. We think we have all these qualities.
Whatever your Dream Destinations are, we are here to help you get the best possible vacation based on what is important to you! We will provide you with high quality, expertly planned travel. Please give me a call 713-397-0188 (Hank) or email me at hschrader@visitdd.com . We want to help you: Savor life…make memories…Visit Dream Destinations! Your journey begins here!
ANNE has earned a degree from the University of Houston in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Serving as the President of Visit Dream Destinations, LLC, since 2016, she is uniquely experienced professional travel advisor with over 30 years’ experience in the travel industry. Among her numerous certifications, she is a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC) by the Travel Institute, considered the gold standard in travel agent certification and she is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC) by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), as well Luxury Cruise Specialist also from CLIA. Having traveled often to Europe since 1989, she has expanded on her certification as a Destination Specialist in Western Europe (DS) with extensive first-hand experience in luxury vacations. She holds numerous other specialty designations from individual vendors. An expert photographer, she delights in capturing the true essence of destinations to share with all.
HANK is a certified Western European Destination Specialist (DS) who has been traveling to Europe for 55 years. He is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC), conferred by the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA). His last major certificate is a Verified Travel Advisor (VTA) certificate earned from the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA). This recognized expert in cruise and leisure travel is a retired Army Officer, and taught World Geography for 8 years. He is a `71 graduate of West Point and has earned 2 master’s degrees. His other Certifications:
AmaWaterways River Cruise Specialist
Avalon Waterways Specialist
CLIA Riverview Certificate
Emerald Waterways Specialist
Riverside Luxury Cruise Specialist
Scenic River Cruise Specialist
Viking River Cruise Specialist
Brit Agent
