travel trends (21)
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
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
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
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
We remember being told about YOLO (You Only Live Once) Stand-Up Paddle Boarding on a random trip to the Beaches of Walton, on the Florida panhandle.
A couple of beach-fit, broad-smiled guys and ladies were balancing beautifully on small, colorful board in a wide stream, polling themselves forward with skill, balance and great fun. They introduced us to YOLO, a branded paddle boarding sport presumably started in Hawaii.
Those were very early days when we too were one of the first people to try th
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
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
"Big Data" derived from social media has almost become a buzz word in decision-making, product-innovation circles. Now, a report coming out of Amadeus, a technology company that provides IT solutions to the travel and tourism industry, says that Big Data is poised to "shape the future of the travel industry."
Travel would not be possible without Big Data, says Businessinsider.com. We use it every time we get a boarding pass, check the weather for a destination, use our cell phone internationall
by Hardie Karges and Kaleel Sakakeeny
Travelers probably already know that hostels can save a bunch of bucks in super-expensive Europe. But they can save a lot of money in Asia, too. Or Mexico, And some now rival boutique hotels for style and atmosphere. They aren’t just for youth anymore, either. They are not your parents' hostels!
Though still in their infancy in the US, hostels in fact are the hottest thing happening in budget travel and lodging.
These hostels are not the same as the t
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.
WHEN OFF THE JOB: TRAVEL AND LEISURE In order to see the world, we need time away from our jobs. That we can all agree upon, whether we call it holiday, vacation, quality time, or something else. But how we handle that free time of travel and leisure, and how much of it we have avaliable differs wildly, a new survey shows.
Net travel agency Expedia’s study “Vacation Deprivation“, in which over 8,000 people in 22 countries have answered questions about their holidays, how they want to spend it and
First, we’re glad Pinterest backtracked. Pinterest’s pinmeister and co-founder, Ben Silberman, is no longer asking followers to " avoid self promotion."
The CEO and his fellow pinners are saying that the Pinterest etiquette that frowned on pinning ones own content, is dead.
Originally, the fast-growing site wanted its members, as Hotelmarketing.com put it, “to share all the beautiful things they find on the web,” and eschew pinning their own content, thus the advice against “self promot
On the lovely morning of September 11, 2001, I was working as usual in my 7th Avenue Manhattan office as executive editor of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, when thanks to somebody over on the publishing side with a dinky in-office TV came word that a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. As we sat there increasingly nervous yet numbed, trying to continue to work with one eye on the news, one editorial assistant admitted to me at one point, "people here are scared, they don't
If you looked at afar.com’s web site you’d be impressed. It’s attractive, kinetic and well done.
The company, founded by Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz, stresses that travel is “experiential,” and that travelers have to “get out of their comfort zone.”
That’s their brand message.
They want travel “to delve beneath the surface and meet real people in real places.”
Not an especially original concept.
Then I watched the video on brandchannel, and basically
