Blogs

 In today's digital age, social media has undeniably transformed the way we travel. Among these platforms, Instagram especially has emerged as an essential tool for travelers seeking to connect with locals and experience authentic travel adventures.

Gone are the days when travelers would rely solely on guidebooks or travel agents to explore new destinations. With Instagram not only do we have the opportunity to discover hidden gems through beautiful photographs, but we can also connect directly

In the digital age, social media platforms have revolutionized the way we discover, experience, and share the world around us. Among these platforms, Instagram stands out as a powerful force in shaping travel destination choices. With its visually captivating content and vast reach, turning off business account on Instagram has transformed the way travelers research, plan, and ultimately choose their next adventure.

Visual Inspiration

One of the most significant ways Instagram influences trav

Let me get my "conspiracy theory" out here first: Imperialistic, giant players like Google, Twitter, Facebook build  social nets to ensnare us into doing their bidding by populating them to an extreme, which in turn makes big bucks for them. Are we then willing tools of their master plan to do their bidding?

But to lighten up, it may simply be that I'm on social media overload. Or maybe I'm struggling to find relevance with the travel category in Twitter.
But when I look at streams on, say, #so

Or, Are Facebook and Twitter a Waste of Time for the Travel Marketer?

How surprising is this: In the second half of last year, fewer that 1% of visitors arrived at a hotel or travel booking site, "via a social media link or a link shared by by a friend," reports Hotelmarketing.com.

Does this mean hotels are wasting their time chasing the Holy Grail of Twitter and Facebook? Could be.

We love our friends' photos and status updates, the report goes on to say, and it's very true that social media

I noticed that most every time I  stray outside the narrow range of “Travel on Twitter” topics, I’m unfollowed.

When I question someone’s viewpoint, for example, or offer an alternative way of looking at a travel topic, I get into Twitter trouble.

Recently I raised a question about a traveler’s Tweet which expressed her love of horses and pate.. and how she loved to eat horsemeat pate.

What followed was an aggressive flurry of “mind your own business” comments from the Twitter universe, or “don’

Travel is measurably one of Facebook’s fastest growing, strongest vertical, and this is the year Facebook will target travel as a major sales initiative.

As we reported in New Media Travel recently, impressively, 52% of the site’s users said that when they view Facebook, they already “started dreaming about a holiday even when they didn’t have one booked. And 95% use Facebook for ‘travel related activities’ prior to going on vacation.”

So what’s the bad news?

“Travel related activities,” may not me

It’s pretty amazing that Pinterest is valued at 3.8 billion dollars, even though it has no revenue. 
But that hasn’t stopped the popular image-driven site from expanding its reach into travel.  

The company, started in 2009, has more traffic from its mobile applications than its website, and co- founder Evan Sharp went so far as to say Pinterest is "probably the last big website...the last start up to become high-profile on the web.”



With the company's recent roll out of Place Pins, the more th

Anatomy of a Twitter Suspension

So it begins innocently enough.

I Try to send a Tweet from an active, important  account I manage. The Tweet doesn’t send.

Error Message: “There was an error sending…please select the Social Network and try again.”

So  I try,  and try again.

Then it slowly dawns on me:  There’s more here than meets the eye.
I sign into the account, and there it is: “Your Account Has Been Suspended.”

Caution light flashes: The suspension occurred the day after I published a mildly critic

Someone in my home feed on Twitter only posted the number of followers he/she gained. And the number of followers he/she lost. Every day

"Today I lost 5 Followers and gained 3."
"Today I lost 1 Follower and gained 0."
And so it went.

The steady drumbeat of the daily report fascinated me: I wanted to know why these followers came on board or jumped ship.
I wanted to know why they followed and unfollowed this rather humorous, clever person.

Then of course I started seriously to wonder the same ab

Will buying an airline ticket soon be as personalized as buying a suit from a sales person? Probably, as trends go.

It's no surprise that airlines want to personalize their relationships to their customers. If they can figure out how, it would be a huge step toward making the ticket-buying process a lot more individualized, and rewarding.

And why shouldn't it be?
After all, buy a book from Amazon or any savvy online retailer, and you're guided to other books you might like based on your readin

by Kyle McCarthy (Family Travel Forum) and Kaleel Sakakeeny

Forty-four per cent of adults bring children (and grandchildren) along on leisure travels. Taken as a group, they take more trips per year (4.5) than business travelers (3.9), Gen Y (3.9) or Gen X travelers (3.5), according to the 2012 Portrait of American Travelers (MMGY Global/Harrison Group).

Parents, fueled by social media, are becoming more vocal, more demanding and more interested in what travel businesses can do for them and their

In essence, travelers will create and share their own travel experience. They, not tourism officials or travel writers, will shape and determine the nature and quality of travel.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis , Director of the eTourism Lab at Bounemouth University (UK) , tells us what we already intuit: the world "is going to be totally interactive, using personalization, context information and inter-connected devices" that will change the face of travel, already a dynamic, fragmented industry.

We reported frequently in New Media Travel that hotels notoriously use photos of empty swimming pools, restaurants and rooms in their marketing material for fear of offending potential customers. Their thinking is that couples without children, for example, will be discouraged by pictures with children in them, while families may be be turned off by photos  featuring adults.

Enter Socialgraphics which claims the days of travel marketers having only the basic customer information they ask for, a

What would you guess most determines how we choose a hotel? Price? Location? Recommendation by a friend or someone else?

In a connected social media world, it's surprising to discover that what our friends, and friends of friends recommend, say on Facebook or other sharing platforms, counts for only 6.8 % in determining what influences our hotel choices.
"Past experience" weighs in at 11.9%.

In truth, according to Hotelmarketing.com what actually influences a hotel choice is location.
For exa

Radio Netherlands:  "There are more than 40 million widows in India - 10 percent of the country's female population. And for the majority of these women, life is what some have described as a "living sati", a reference to the now outlawed practice of widow burning."

Enter Nicki and Kria.

Blog Entry: Late January: BostontoBindis

"Thursday night Nicki and I sat in front of a group of about fifty widows and single women. They sang for us, covered our shoulders in white shawls, had us light a cand

New England is not an easy place to get to know, especially in its winters when the dark and the cold and the snow hold the land in a formidable grasp, and the people disappear into their homes and cafes for months.

But that can also be the fun part of New England, and especially the iconic state of New Hampshire

Here the spirit of Robert Frost is alive and well, his woods fill with snow, are dark and deep, and the lights on the landscape come from villages in the hills,  and especially old in

You can’t blame travel suppliers and companies for their myopia.  For all too many years they’ve had a Pavlovian response to their brands: promote them, and get around to taking care of customers later.

Or maybe never.

In spite of all the brouhaha that suggested social media is the way to connect with and service customers, the facts speak differently, according to Hotelmarketing.com.

They report that 62% of customers are looking for more support through social media. But, brand reputation an