The travel and hospitality sectors have long showcased resilience and adaptability, especially in recent years as they´ve bounced back from the slump caused by COVID-19, a resurgence fueled by eased restrictions and pandemic management in various destinations.
This has also shown the evolving dynamics of tourist behavior and spending. Financial trends cast their shadow over the travel landscape, and so understanding these shifts becomes needed for industry stakeholders aiming to not
Wanted: Someone to push heavy carts along a narrow aisle dispensing drinks, cookies and conversation, with a smile.
Applicant must be able to evacuate a plane, determine, behind closed curtains, what passengers are most likely to help in an emergency and wonder about the little girl flying alone, sitting next to that suspicious man.
The big question, considering the multiple roles an attendant has to fulfill, is whether fluffing pillows and handing out pretzels compromise the authority flight at
Recent events around the world have proven once again that holding a major event is no easy matter. Not only must a community deal with the event itself but there are always logistics, marketing, and public relations that go hand in hand with a major event. To make matters even more challenging we live in a world of political unrest. Major events are of course targets for terrorism. They also may incite local protests that have nothing to do with terrorism. These demonstrations are byproducts
Christopher Elliott, as usual, provides special insights into the "blending" of online travel agents and the impact on travelers. In the Seattle Times, he suggests that Travelocity's "strategic marketing agreement" with long time competitor Expedia could give consumers more travel choice. Or, he suggests, it could create some sort of travel agency monopoly, inevitably raising prices.
While the travel industry is not long on similar examples, Elliott refers to the $1.8-billion dollar purchase
Kintetsu International’s Annual Travel Showcase
Has A Record Number of Vendors and Clients This Year.
KIE Travel Trade Show Expands This Year To Include New Preferred Airlines, As Agency Rapidly Expands to Destinations Beyond Japan.
New York, NY … June 21st, 2013 … KIE/Kintetsu International, held its 4th annual KIE Travel Showcase last night, on the outside terrace of its New Yo
by Kyle McCarthy with Kaleel Sakakeeny
With demand for family-friendly summer vacation destinations, multigenerational accommodations and organized tours at an all-time high according to industry sources, the moms behind the first TMS Family Travel Summit decided to look at what “family travel” really means.
They found that the classic married couple with two kids, or more technically, the “married-couple-biological-children” family represents less than half of all American families. Single pare
Hotels live and die by the number and kinds of reviews they get. Especially on TripAdvisor, because the quantity, quality and frequency of reviews a hotel receives there, determine a hotels all-important ranking.
Very little is said about the authenticity of a review, but regardless, even a small change in TripAdvisor's rankings can send shock waves, and deeply impact a hotel's website and revenue.
Hotelmarketing.com points out that TripAdvisor's rankings are based on a propriety algorithm cal
Whether it be for business or for pleasure, or better yet, combining business and pleasure. I've always found that travel inspires me more than anything else in life. Nothing excites me more than to travel for business, only to discover new sightings that quickly turn into personal encounters. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, style, design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every business venture that I have set out upon.
I always bring home a pi
TOURISM & MORE'S "TOURISM TIDBITS" - June 2012
Developing a Tourism Continuity Plan
This is one edition of Tourism Tidbits that you hopefully will never need, but definitely want to keep. No matter how good your risk management may be, the bottom line is that from time to time bad things do happen. No matter what we do, natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes occur, people get sick, a crime happens or a terrorism attack comes at the most unlikely place and at the least expected times.
Another year, another World Travel Market or WTM London. Each and every year, the good folks at WTM give us their industry report. A “state of the union” for the travel industry.
In many nations, statistics say that unemployment was at its lowest level since 2008, when the global financial downturn began. An increase in employment in much of the world may have led to more people going on holiday in 2014 than the peak of the crisis in 2011.
In 2014, seven out of ten U.S. and U.K. residents took at
Reviews do matter. A report by SAS noted that positive reviews (less so TripAdvisor-based rank and brand), followed by lower price were the most important influencers of choice.
And lower price or higher ratings don't overcome the impact of negative reviews.
But even in America, it's possible that more isn't better.
Writing reviews is almost a national pastime. Writing reviews on everything and saying pretty much what we want and being rewarded by some sort of badge or other "atta boy" reco
Greece was one of many European nations relying heavily on robust tourist sector who came to WTM ready to conduct business.
Thai Airways reminded us all that they are "smooth as silk to the world."
Fiji brought local islanders with flair. A nation well known as a beach holiday destination. Tourism and the importance of WTM generates many new visitors and new business for all nations in attendance.
Staged annually at Excel – London, WTM is a vibrant must-attend business-to-business event prese
Many people outside of the tourism industry tend to think of tourism and travel as an ongoing never-ending party. Yet anyone who has ever worked in the world’s largest peacetime industry knows that travel and tourism professionals spend long hours at work and that travel and tourism works to a great extent like any other large corporation. Just as in other businesses tourism and travel professionals need to deal with budgets, have to justify lost opportunities and must overcome the issue of spo
If it's true that 1-minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, then hotels and travel destinations may have found the "holy grail" that converts the grazing online process of looking at hotels, to actually booking them.
And there isn't a hotel or destination in the world that isn't seeking the business alchemy that converts lookers into actual customers.
Generally, the hotel's website is held responsible for making this magic happen.
Of course service that exceeds the client's demands, locat
Will Google harness its awesome search capacity, plus its Youtube, plus social indicators from a person's searches to make travel suggestions and shape travel experiences? And book travel too.
We say, yes. It says "yes," too.
It's widely accepted that travelers are seriously unhappy with online travel agents (OTA's) - the big-box airline ticket aggregators like Expedia and Priceline.
The reasons are obvious: OTA's are complex, complicated and have no flexibility to address a traveler's speci
In a relatively recent article that proved very popular with readers and travel industry pros, New Media Travel asked, "Why Are Hotel Websites so Boring?"
We had our own theories, especially the one that said hotels do not want to offend certain potential customers by showing, for example, mixed-race couples or, say, real families having fun. These latter images might offend childless guests.
We also argued that hotel websites need to use more video...whatever it takes to create an emotionally
Travel and tourism professionals can never forget that their profession is not only one that evokes high levels of emotions, but is often open to all sorts of liability cases that range from the frivolous to the extremely serious. To add to the confusion, what may be legal in one place may be illegal or liable in another location and often visitors may not only sue in the location in which an incident occurred but also once they have returned home. This month's Tourism Tidbits might be read in
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.
Do you like to work out in your hotel’s gym when you’re away? If you happen to be staying in Denmark’s Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers, keeping fit while traveling will help generate the hotel’s electricity and earn you meal vouchers in their restaurant. The flagship eco-hotel is the first hotel in Denmark to generate all of its power from renewable sources – solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling pumps, and stationary bicycles connected to generators which provide the hotel’s electricity.
The travel industry gets lots of headlines for cruise ships that have to be towed into port, delayed flights and lost baggage. So it's nice to be able to wrote a good news story about the US travel industry supports US military personnel, both retired and active. Here's some of what airlines and hotels were doing for uniformed service men and women on Veterans Day, and beyond.
American Airlines is partnering once again with The Sands Foundation and the USO to host wounded warriors and their spous
