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How do action-less, people-less, laughter-less, romance-less, love-less  videos emotionally engage and move us? Move us to book or buy? 

 VFLeonardo is an acknowledged leader in the art of visual storytelling, promoting their services to the travel industry and beyond.

Their recent webinar was called “Lets Get Visual: The Power of Telling Your (Hotel’s) Story Through Video.” 

 The webinar made some solid points, among which were:

• Video drives a 150% increase in organic search traffic

• We are a v

The header at Hotelmarketing  was pretty blunt: social media travel sites are screaming for attention-but users and suppliers are not impressed.

According to the latest PhoCusWright data, social media in general generates so little traffic to travel websites it makes anyone wonder if there really is a need for "dedicated social media sites for travel."

In an earlier post at New Media Travel,  we argued that travel marketers were in fact wasting their time on Facebook and Twitter.

Now this rec

The Wall Street Journal report pretty much says it all: At $6.9 billion, Expedia is now worth 40% less than TripAdvisor, which is worth more than $11 billion.

How did TripAdvisor, a recent former subsidiary of Expedia, pull off such a gain when just a year and a half ago, it was an Expedia holding?

Hotelmarketing quite correctly reports that TripAdvisor, in its nimble ways, redesigned its website to show shoppers "more hotel options"  side by side with its traveler reviews, "rather than referr

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

USAToday reported that online travel companies "lag behind e-commerce retailers...in delivering a positive consumer experience." No surprise here.

For anyone who has tried booking travel that involves a flight more complicated than flying from Point A to Point B, the explanation is obvious. And it's obvious even for those who travel only from Point A to Point B.

Using one of the many flight-finding, online travel agents or tools, is a horrific process. Nothing seems to work simply.
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Family Travel: How Safe is Your Child’s Playground? 

Summer time and the traveling’s easy.

And as any traveling family will do, at some point in their journey they’ll just opt to forget the big sights for the day, and  play in a playground.

If they don’t, they should.

Hanging out in playground is a great way to get to know the locals, the scenery and just enjoy each other as a family.

Often I found that a few hours relaxing and picnicking at a playground were more valuable to my family t

Would you sedate your child on a flight? 
Are parents who do so wrong?


Not long ago, a Wall Street Journal  article  reported that many parents "drug" or sedate their kids on planes so they'll be less bothersome for the parents, flight attendants and fellow passengers.


The drug of choice seems to be Benadryl, and while it does calm kids, often putting them out for hours, it has awakened others to what might be an abusive practice.


The testy responses to an About.com (and other) postings on t

When did it stop being an experience and more of a package, a deal, a search result?

Travel has turned into an obsession for the cheapest airfare, cheapest hotel room and pretty much the lowest, cheapest  cost for anything and every thing related to travel.

Wasn't so long ago that airlines, the most "commodified" of the travel experience, were sufficiently different from each other that you could tell them apart.

There were differences in food served, space between rows of seats, service, in-

If you’re looking for a sales job in travel, now might be the time to approach Facebook.

The giant social media site is on a mission to elbow its way further into the travel space and has been reorganizing its sales force.

As HotelMarketing reports Facebook has been recruiting for travel sales representatives as it looks to turn travel, one of its fastest growing verticals, in to one of its biggest. Next year, 2014, is the target year.

All those images, and stories and happy travelers’ tales 

It wasn’t so long ago that all hotels pretty much looked alike.

Just another pretty face, or not so pretty.

There were some differences in the design of a luxury lobby and bar, versus, say  the lobby and bar of a moderate-priced hotel chain. No one would confuse a Four Seasons with a Best Western.

But basically, the design standard and principles of hotel brands were fixed by Corporate with little flexibility and certainly no impulse to take many design chances.

Apparently the powerful prese

There are 270 clubs and resorts in the United States, Canada, Mexico offering clothes free vacations of all kinds. And the American Association for Nude Recreation reports 213,000 members spending 400 million plus bucks on nude vacations. It's a global industry.

The Florida-based site is pretty savvy about its mission ("to responsibly enjoy nudity in the company of our family and friends…and to be treated as law-abiding citizens"), and offers many pages of insights including "From a Women's Pers

The case involves Mr. Ziggy Hussain who runs the popular Ziggy's Spice House in downtown Halifax (Nova Scotia), Canada.

According to the Halifax Courier, TripAdvisor summarily removed 280 reviews after its "fraud detection system indicated suspicious activity."

The result: Hussain's restaurant was demoted from the number one position in the town to the bottom of the list. Worse, TripAdvisor actually claimed the restaurant was engaging in "criminal activities" by breaking the law in publishing fr

“Female Eggs For Sale” may not be a sign you’ll see any time soon, but for all intents and purposes that’s what the global market for harvesting and selling women’s eggs is all about.

The in vitro fertilization market is a billion dollar industry that touches almost every country in the world. It touches the wealthy neighborhoods of London and reaches  into the Americas, Asia and the IVF capital of the world, Cyprus, which has more fertility clinics than any other country in the world, and attr

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

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.

Searching for a hotel online is actually more complex than, say, searching for a flight or car rental or even Viagra. A hotel stay is more of an emotional experience than flying somewhere. To go from New York to London, is simply to find the most convenient, and best-priced flight.

Choosing a hotel  is choosing a home away from home. It's actually a place where you live for a while, and often with someone you really care about.  It's an emotional experience. Flying isn't. Hopefully.

So, you ha