Live from the Low Country! It’s Travel 2.0!

Ah Charleston, so charming.

For those of you following our tweets at @travel2dot0, you know that I am (Troy) currently in the beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina for the SATW (Society of American Travel Writers) Atlantic and Caribbean chapter meeting.  Speaking on the topic of social media (of course) and how travel writers, CVBs and the general travel industry can learn, work with and thrive in social media.

A huge thanks to Ruth Sykes, the VP of Media Relations and Marketing for the Macon (GA) CVB, who invited yours truly to speak at the conference.  Also, Bob Jenkins and Rick Sylvain, for honoring me with the opportunity to speak to such an influential group.

Next, the staff at the Charleston CVB, kudos on hosting a great conference.

Finally, for those of you who have not visited Charleston, you need to.  Not as famous as the other French Quarter, downtown and historic Charleston is a gem.  I thoroughly enjoy my unfortunately short stay in the downtown area.  Charming, historic…a touch of France and colonial America all in one…seriously, this is not an ad, you should visit.

Okay, on to the presentation.  First, a real privilege to speak with / be on a panel with Chris Elliott from elliott.org.  A true pioneer in embracing social / new media in his work as well as making the risky,  but rewarding jump into ‘self-publishing.’  Yes, he is ‘giving’ his writing away.  Ah, open source.

Let’s review some of the highlights from the presentation:

Prezi:

Those of you who know me, know that I dislike PowerPoint and this was the perfect opportunity to test out the anti-PowerPoint service Prezi.  A spectacular leap forward in presentations, easy to create and a visual feast for the audience.  No more bullets, no more flying words and graphics.  Great stuff.

Oy, I am giving away all my secrets…ah well, open source.

Presentation:

One downside of Prezi, for now, is that the presentation cannot be embedded into a blog, for example.  A small price to pay for the service.

You can find the presentation at: Using Social Media to Promote, Communicate & Influence

Oh, and no spell check…dangerous for those who type fast.

3 Things You Must Remember:

If you remember anything else from the speech, remember:

1. Ask yourself if you want to communicate one-on-one with your peers, constituents, readers, etc.
   If the answer is no, then you can stop right now and step out of the social media box.
2. There is no such thing as a social media expert or guru.
   Sorry guys and gals, it is the truth.  Unless your business card reads ‘CEO, Twitter’ you can take ‘Social Media Expert’ off of your profile page.  Social media is something that anyone can do, learn and thrive at…and at the current rate of change, I would challenge anyone who claims to be an ‘expert.’
3. Your social media marketing strategy will be different from your counterparts.
   Twitter is not right for everyone, neither is Facebook.  We all have different goals, different demos and different messages.  Twitter might not work for you.  Don’t be afraid to test and say no to a social media site.  If your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow? Thanks mom.

The 4 Steps:

We went through this section quickly in the presentation, so a recap:

1. Target
   
2. Message
   
3. Tactics
   
4. MeasurementWe talked a little bit about the social media metrics developed by Peter Kim…here are the details, per Peter:
   • Attention
     The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time.  Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
   • Participation
     The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel.  Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
   • Authority
     Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content – like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
   • Influence
     The size of the user base subscribed to your content.  For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

   And we mentioned some sites that could help you track the social conversation about your brand, subject, etc.:

   • Google Alerts
   • socialmention.com
   • icerocket.com
   • trackur.com
   • tweetbeep.com

Quotes:

And, some of my favorite, oh-so tweetable quotes:

• “Just because it is free, does not mean you should do it.”
• “You have different audiences, why wouldn’t you have different messages.”
• “Talk first, sell second.”

For the full presentation, although let’s face it, without my fantastic combination of comedy and mind-numbing facts the presentation is just not the same online, visit prezi.com: Using Social Media to Promote, Communicate & Influence

Again, thank you to everyone who allowed me to present to the fantastic group.  And to the audience, easily one of the most receptive groups I have presented to.  Thank you for your time today.

Feel free to email, tweet or message me with any questions that did not get answered during the session.

Au revoir Charleston.

Random Thoughts: Thanksgiving Travel

Are you crazy?

As requested by Dave, a quick post on Thanksgiving travel.  First, my tip for traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday…fly on Thanksgiving Day!  The airports experience (what appears to be) an average travel day, shorter lines, less people, less hassle.  This Thanksgiving will be my 3rd flight on turkey day and I love it.

Sure, you might be a little late for Thanksgiving dinner, or if you are lucky, just have your parents / siblings / friends celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday.  Honestly, you are important enough to wait for, right?

However, considering it is the day before Thanksgiving and many of you are reading this via your Blackberry, iPhone or G1 while sitting on a runway, it is a little late to change your travel dates.  Luckily, both Orbitz and Travelocity are providing travel updates.

Similar to our post last year (Thanksgiving Blogging), Travelocity, via it’s The Window Seat blog, has a Thanksgiving Task Force of 10 bloggers at some of the nation’s busiest airports (including PHX!) providing updates on lines, parking, flight delays, etc, etc.   Simply based on the fact that this is the 8th year for the Task Force, Travelocity must see some success from this campaign.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the OrbitzTLC Traveler Update section.  Perhaps it is simply a minor issue with the site, but the most recent update on the entire system was 13 days ago.  The most recent tip for PHX, 8 months ago.  Which is too bad, the idea behind the travel update system was a solid one.  Perhaps a lack of promotion or interest from the traveling public.  Or, perhaps it was replaced by Twitter.

Ah, Twitter, how thankful are we today (okay, tomorrow) for the service? A quick search via search.twitter.com reveals that the most recent update on travel conditions from PHX Sky Harbor was 20 minutes ago.  Much better than 8 months ago.  The tweet:

spyrodeath: Second trip through sky harbor airport wasn’t too bad either. – http://bkite.com/02Ci8

Travel updates from real travelers, another reason to love Twitter.

On that note, have a great Thanksgiving all.  Keep traveling!

Seriously, .hotel?

Simply log on to marriott.marriott for more info.

Worried about having to shell out millions of dollars to protect their brands, several major companies are protesting the launch of a slew of new top-level domains — the suffixes like “.com” that appear at the end of Web-site names.

Verizon Communications, Marriott International and New York Life Insurance are among the companies arguing that the new domains could open the flood gates to Internet fraud and drastically increase their costs of doing business online. The companies also say there couldn’t be a worse time than a down economy to saddle them with the added expense.

The organization that oversees the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, plans to start selling the rights to an unlimited number of top-level domains next year. These domains are likely to take their names from popular subjects, types of businesses, geographic locations or even brand names, such as .bank, .hotel, .nyc or .verizon.  >>Full Story

Thoughts// A good article on a frankly ridiculous subject that has been floating around interactive marketing circles for a while.  ICANN, the masterminds at the control of this domain name headache, says that the current .com domain name landscape is ‘too crowded‘ and offering new domain extensions such as ‘.bank, .hotel, .nyc or .verizon‘ is the answer.

Amazing.

As some of our loyal members know, we are not so high on the current state of the .travel domain name, let alone any other domain name that does not end in .com.

I could rewrite the entire article, but it addresses the issue perfectly:

Companies fear that if they don’t register their trademarks at the new domains, their brand names could be hijacked, leading to mistrust of their brands, as well as Internet scams.

Companies are debating whether they should buy up the rights to operate their own brand-specific domains, such as .marriott or .nylife. They also are looking at registering their trademarks for more generic domains. For example, Marriott is considering acquiring the rights to Marriott.nyc, Marriott.travel or Marriott.vacations.

The application fee to operate a new top-level domain is $185,000. Companies that buy the rights to one would also bear the technical costs of running a registry, as well as the marketing costs of drawing consumers to the new sites.

Industry executives say consumers are likely to stick with their current Web-surfing habits, so they expect the new domains to have little business purpose. Web surfers are more apt to continuing visiting sites with the standard .com suffix, such as NYLife.com, instead of visiting a Web site with the address customerservice.nylife, says New York LIfe’s Mr. Hittel.

“It is difficult enough to get consumers to visit any domain name that doesn’t end with .com,” he says.

Companies say they have been through this before, pointing to earlier launches of such domains as .asia or .eu. They bought up hundreds of thousands of domains pre-emptively but say these sites either sit dormant or fail to generate traffic.

I could not have said it better myself.

Why Don’t Hotels Have Very Simple Alarm Clocks?

Airport security line woes; image credit: http://www.cagle.com/news/AirportSecurity2

Why does a banana cost twenty cents at the supermarket and $1.61 at SFO? Are hungry people supposed to subsidize non-hungry travelers? When I go through security, why do I need to remove a cardigan sweater but the woman standing next to me can keep her cashmere blouse on? Are certain kinds of wool inherently risky? What would happen if Imagineers from Disney designed the security line? Why not let them try? >>Full Story

Thoughts// Why don’t hotels have simple alarm clocks? Seth Godin recently wrote an interesting post posing this rhetorical question and many others exemplifying just some of the reasons why people inherently dislike the experience of travel.

As travel marketers, we spend a lot of time focusing on the quality of the sell; the website user experience, quality of the magazines or ads.  But how many of us are taking that brand promise and effusing it into other customer touch points such as the call center, welcome centers and yes, even down to the alarm clocks in our hotel rooms?

It would interesting indeed if the Imaginers at Disney had a chance to redefine the airport experience!

Travel Trends – HSMAI Marketing Review Summer 2008 (Cont…)

Come with me if you want to escape Web 3.0...

On Tuesday, we reviewed two trends from the recent HSMAI Marketing Review Summer 2008 report.  Today, we take a look at the specific technology trends that will be influencing your tourism life in the near future.

34 ) Technolgy increasingly dominates both the economy and society.

New technologies are surpassing the previous state of the art in all fields.  Laptop computers and Internet-equipped cell phone provide 24/7 access to e-mail and Web sites.  Flexible, general-service personal robots will appear in the home by 2015…By 2015, artificial intelligence (AI), data mining, and virtual reality will help most organizations to assimilate data and solve problems beyond the range of today’s computers. … Ultimately, speculations that we are approaching the ‘singularity,’ the time when our artifacts become so intelligent that they can design themselves and we cannot understand how they work, may prove correct.  At that point, humanity will be largely a passenger in its own evolution as a technological species. …

IMPLICATIONS FOR HOSPITALITY AND TRAVEL: Air travel will benefit more, and more immediately and directly, from new technologies than any other segment of hospitality and travel.  … Better sensors will tighten airport security … By 2018, the first supersonic business jets will take to the air. …

Cruise lines face changes, too.  Online travel agencies will account for only 9 percent of cruise sales in 2009, according to PhoCusWright.  That will not long be true.  Over the next decade, the most important technological development for cruise lines will be the continued growth of online booking.

Early suggestions that cruise travel was too complex and expensive to book without human contact are fast proving to have been wrong.  Carnival, Princess, Disney, and other have set up convenient and successful online booking systems for Net-savvy cruisers.  Operators with less efficient sits, or none at all, will find themselves at a growing competitive disadvantage.  Five years from now, the tradition of booking through a travel agent will have vanished, save in the extreme high end of the market – and there is room to wonder how long agents can survive to serve the luxury market after losing the rest.

Cruise lines hoping to do well in an increasingly Net-savvy marketplace will have to pay scrupulous attention to their reputation.  Tales of poor service and disappointed travelers go a long way in online forums, chat rooms, and blogs, and they can take forever to disappear.  An impeccable brand is the only assurance the online shopper has that his cruise investment will be money well spent. …

For hotels, the biggest techno-trend is well recognized already.  As database systems grow more sophisticated, operators are able to capture ever more detailed information about hotel patrons, from their choice of rooms to their dining preferences and local itinerary.  This enables hotel staff to give returning patrons a highly personalized experience and all but guarantees return visits.  This technology is quickly raising the level of play in the battle for customer loyalty.  Cruise lines, resorts, and other destinations are quickly copying the methods.

On the negative side, long distance calling through the hotel telephone system once was a significant profit center. …

Probably the biggest development for most sectors will be the growing use of RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips to track supplies, automate ordering, and make delivery more efficient, and therefore cheaper.

One nascent restaurant chain in California features order-entry computer at each table.  Customers use the terminal to read the menu, view each menu item, and place their order.  They see human staff only when handing over their credit cards-before ordering-and when the food is delivered.  Computerized ordering will not soon penetrate high-end restaurants, where savings are sorely needed.

Also expect to see innovation at self-bussing restaurants, where patrons will deliver their plates and tableware directly to the maw of the automated washers. …

Thoughts// Okay, that was a long trend.  Wow, Dr. Cetron packed a lot into that one.  We will look at these topics one at a time.

The initial thoughts on the subject are pretty wide-ranging.  Technology is getting better, smarter, faster, etc.  The idea of singularity or the ‘Terminator paradox’ says that eventually humans will build computers and machines so smart that they can build themselves and then continue to get smarter, realize they don’t need us and you end up fighting your refrigerator to the death.

I sure hope Gov. Schwarzenegger reads the Travel 2.0 blog.

Anyway, you can see a reoccurring theme here.  We are heading to the point where technology will be replacing our own efforts at certain tasks.  This has happened throughout the last 100 years, but as we mentioned in the first post, the advances are being deployed at a much higher rate.

Okay, enough of that, break out the tin-foil hats if you want.

The report mentions that airlines will benefit from this new technology…lighter planes, better security (insert your own joke here), better tracking, etc.

Next, we take a look at cruise lines and how online booking with change the industry, which then turned into an entire line about the total elimination of the travel agent.  Perhaps the ‘machines’ get to them first.  While I completely agree that we will continue to see additional advancements in booking engines throughout the travel industry, not just cruise lines, I disagree about the elimination of the travel agent.

If you have read more than a couple posts about the Travel 2.0 blog, you know that I am a pretty big advocate for the idea of all things being cyclical and the travel industry is no different.  The internet has made the travel agent increasingly less useful over the last 5 years, but as our recent post (Where Have All the Online Travelers Gone?) discussed, many ‘Net-savvy’ (Oy.) users are becoming increasingly confused and frustrated with the online travel process.  So, rather than the idea of a travel agent being an agent vs. online issue, I would see the use of a travel agent as becoming a value-add feature for many users.  Again, all of this keeps going around…eliminate all the travel agents, OTAs look to differentiate themselves, bring back the personal touch of the travel agent!

Not to skip ahead, but we can see the same idea happening in the restaurant industry, according to the report.  Computers at the table? Self-bussing restaurants?  Interesting hooks in the beginning which certainly have that ‘Wow’ factor, but eventually everyone will have them…no competitive advantage…so, break out the ‘new’ marketing line…’the old-fashion idea of table-side service, that’s right, a human will wait on you!’  Plus, I bussed my own table in school, not a new idea.

Not to mention (again, we talked about this before) that there is a certain segment of the population who will simply not participate.  They would rather, based on personal taste or economic factors (they have lots of cash), have someone else book their trip, take their order or schedule a spa day for them.

Finally, the report hit upon hotels…databases, telephones, etc…but briefly touched upon the real story, RFID.

For a brief explanation of RFID, it is the technology that powers your ID card that lets you into your office each day.  A little chip inside the card knows who you are and what access level you have to the building.  Now, beyond just ordering more lettuce…which is great…lets think about how hotels can really use RFID to enhance the guest experience.

For example, I am enrolled in the Hilton loyalty program, they issue me a Hilton Rewards ID card and assign a user name to my account.  I enter my preferences about hotel stays on my account (online, via mobile, whatever) and book a stay online at the Hilton in downtown Phoenix.  With the card in my pocket, I walk through the front doors, by the scanners on each side that detect that I have arrived…yeah, the same type of scanners that prevent you from stealing from stores…anyway, I receive a text message on my phone listing my room number.  I proceed to room 707, flip my cell phone screen at the lock, it reads the 2D barcode on my phone and unlocks the door.  When I enter the room, the lights are on, A/C is set to my preferred temperature and the TV is already tuned to CNN.  The RFID card / computer system knows this info and automatically updates the room to my preferred settings.

Now, enter the semantic web.  Because I booked my hotel online, my Outlook account has told the Hilton system that I have a business meeting at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.  Because I have entered the room, the alarm clock is automatically set to 6:30 AM and room service (Hilton knows what I like based upon previous visits) has already been ordered and is scheduled to arrive at 7:30 AM.

Oh, and there is an extra mint on my pillow.  I like that.  And the machine knows it.

Now that is a prediction.

.Travel Wants to be My Friend…..

Thoughts// Readers of this blog are well aware of our opinions on the whole “.travel” initiative. If you’re new to the blog, check out Troy’s posts on this subject here.

This friend invite from .travel on Facebook is unfortunately just another example of how not to blindly follow marketing trends. Check out the blog I recently wrote about it here.

Top 5: Our Favorite Posts

Since the Travel 2.0 blog just celebrated our one year anniversary, we figured a quick look back…for all you new readers…at some of our favorite posts, thoughts and stories was in order.

So, in no particular order, here are 5 posts that you should read.

…and for those of you who skipped out early that one Friday like 7 months ago, you should read these too.

Top 5:

1. Word of the Week – The Long Tail
2. When Fewer Clicks Are A Good Thing
3. Travel Trends – .travel, JetBlue, Privacy
4. Bloggers? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Bloggers!
5. Who’s Been Clicking On My Banner?

Ah, so many great posts…hard to pick just 5.

Enjoy!

Travel Trends – Zicasso, Four Points, Google Search

Zicasso – Add one more travel site to your online planning schedule. Zicasso, the online travel planning site that lets travel agents compete for your business (think LendingTree.com), officially came out of beta on Monday. As you can see by a simple Google search, there is quite a bit of buzz about this new site. While we will not go into a full review of the site (take a look at the Google search results for additional reviews), this new offering is certainly a different angle on booking travel online. Personally, I like the idea, but it will be interesting to see if this takes off or simply moves to the end of a very long list.
http://www.zicasso.com/

Four Points – While browsing for hotels in Tucson a few weeks ago, I came across a very different execution for a hotel homepage. Plus, the team at Travolution acknowledged the site as well at PhoCusWright@ITB 08. Considering the typical look of a hotel / resort homepage, I initially thought this page was a mistake. However, as you can see on the site, Four Points simply directs the user immediately to the search function. No upsell, no affinity program to push, no tabs…you came to this site because you wanted to find a hotel, so here you are. Good stuff.
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/

Google Search…in Search – This past week Google rolled out a little experiment it has been tinkering with, search boxes within search results. Take a look at it if you search for ‘amazon’ in Google. Notice that amazon.com is the top result and within that result is the option to search within the amazon.com site for more information on TVs, books, DVDs, etc. The additional boxes show up when ‘we (Google) detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site.’ Which means, like most things with Google, you cannot control it.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Travel Trends – California, .travel, 2007

California, The Land of Wine and Food – The California Travel and Tourism Commission has recently launched a new website and campaign in partnership with the California Wine Institute titled ‘The Land of Wine and Food.’ The site contains videos, Google map integration, wine info and wine blogs from regular Californians and celebrities such as Andrew Firestone (from ‘The Bachelor‘ fame…personally, I always preferred Joe Millionaire, but I don’t think he has a wine blog). The site looks great, but like most of these ‘partnership’ sites, it is lacking content. I could not find a simple address of a winery, let alone a link. And the search function displays worthy content (like this article on Lodi…hooray Lodi!) that is otherwise no where to be found on the site. Still, worth a look. Cheers.
http://www.landofwineandfood.com/

More .travel – Yes, more .travel. For those of you who thought I was crazy to dismiss the euphoric promise that is .travel (see my original argument and follow-up argument), I present an article from Jens Thraenhart, currently the Executive Director of Marketing Strategy at the Canadian Tourism Commission and fellow blogger. Here are the ‘cliffs notes’ version of the article:

Jens is a pretty smart guy and he agrees with me on .travel.

If you are keeping score:
Troy: 4
.travel: 0

Now, I should be fair when it comes to the .travel subject…if anyone finds a positive article about the current state of the domain name (which is not authored by someone directly involved with Tralliance, The Globe or EnCirca) just pass it my way.
http://www.hsmaieconnect.org/

The Year That Was – comScore recently released the ‘U.S. Internet Year in Review,’ which contained these interesting stats:

• Total U.S. Internet Audience grew 5% from 175 million to 183 million. (including Home, Work and University users)
• Social networking giant Facebook.com reaped the benefits of opening registration to all users, jumping 81 percent versus December 2006 to 34.7 million visitors in December 2007
• Wikipedia Sites gained 34 percent to reach nearly 52 million visitors, continuing its reign as the Web’s most popular reference hub
• Craigslist.org jumped 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors
• AT&T grew 27 percent to 30.2 million visitors boosted by its exclusive deal with Apple as carrier for the iPhone
• Yellow Book Network jumped 137-percent to 10.4 million visitors

http://blogs.mediapost.com/

Travel Trends – More .travel, All 50 States, Kayak

All 50 States – Forwarded onto me from Casey and the NCSTD State and Provincial Research Group (those research folks, always finding the good stuff) comes Christian Watson’s un-scientific review of all 50 state travel websites. A very interesting read even though it was posted in January (yes, those that have redesigned sites, he is reviewing your old site). Additionally, please remember that this is just one person’s opinion of your site…specifically his opinion on ‘if your site would encourage a visitor to actually visit your state.’ A limited question, but probably one that many consumers ask themselves. What is really telling about this post are the comments on the blog and the comments on the related digg article.

Here are some of my favorites:

‘ how come idaho’s website isn’t shape like a potato’

‘ Lovely website but just show me the darn pictures so I don’t have to mouse over each one.’

‘as for hawaii – i dont even think they -need- a website to get people to visit…’

‘Go Kentucky!!!!’

‘These sites are created by government slugs commanding other government drones. ‘

‘ Who avoids a state because of it’s website? That crosses a geek line that borders insanity.’

Good stuff. Congrats all you government slugs on your fine looking websites!
http://www.smileycat.com/

More .travel – Another note on the .travel discussion we have been having over the last few weeks on the Travel 2.0: Interactive Trend Report. This summary, pulled from the Travel Advance email, comes from TravelWeekly.com and suggests that my opinion on the new .travel regulations is one shared by many member of the travel industry.

Tralliance Changing Dot-Travel Rules
Tralliance, the company that controls the dot-travel Internet domain, is introducing several controversial policy changes designed to bring more Web traffic to dot-travel sites. The new policies, which remove some restrictions on who can own dot-travel domain names and impose new rules on registrants, were approved by The Travel Partnership Corp., the domain’s advisory and oversight body. The policy shifts, some of which are fundamental, will take full effect in January. But one change–doing away with priority registration of place names once reserved for countries, states, cities or other destinations–became effective Dec. 21. The changes have been greeted by surprise and uncertainty by the associations and other professional organizations that, until now, have been responsible for authenticating which registrants are legitimate travel entities and thus eligible to hold specific dot-travel domain names.

Kayak Buys Sidestep – For those of you who keep an eye on the travel meta search world, industry darling and popular travel search engine Kayak is purchasing a chief rival, Sidestep, for a reported $200 million dollars (insert Dr. Evil voice here). What I find interesting from the article is the revenues that these two companies are (reportedly) pulling in…$50 million for Kayak and $35 million for Sidestep. Sounds like a good time to be in the travel business.
http://www.techcrunch.com