Internet marketing and branding consultant, public speaker, columnist and owner of Scope Communications ehf.
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These months airlines seem to be mostly thinking about how they can cut down on service or add extra fees. The passangers on the other hand wouldn't mind seeing some improvements in service, instead of down cuts. At #TNI (Travelers Night In) on twitter last night, innovation in travel was the topic (you can read more about it on ZipSetGo.com). One of the questions was:
"State-of-the-art features you’d like on planes?"
And the answers rolled in, some being more "ambitious" than others:
@banffrocks: We should give airlines a clock that works.
@BridalTravelGuy: Sober pilots & air traffic controllers who are awake
@Mematw: a bigger toilet on long distance flights? Blankets big enough to make me warm. That's all, simple wish really
Considering the popularity of coffee shops, better coffee and more variety on board might be something people were even willing to pay more for. Same goes for the work out. Is there a possibility that passengers might do some work out on board? Or in the seat even? You really need to stretch on a long flight!
Regarding the iPad style inflight entertainment I know some airlines have simply started to rent out iPads with uploaded movies and others are looking into iPad like solutions. Those present day inflight entertainment systems can play movies - but shouldn't they be able to a lot more than just that?
I'm interested in hearing more ideas about how your flight experience could be improved by increased service, entertainment or facilities on board the planes.
A positive response to the situation in Egypt. Source unknown.
Egypt is in all the news these days because of protests that started in Cairo and have been spreading out the country. We see pictures of riot police, fires and hear that over 90 people have been killed. Yesterday the Internet and the mobile networks were shut down and this morning the government resigned. The protests are still going on and people are not satisfied, they want president Mubarak to step down as well.
A friend of mine, Jane Akshar, runs holiday apartments in Luxor in Egypt and wrote on her blog Luxor News on Thursday about the average man in Luxor:
"His priority is earning a living and the only living in Luxor is servicing tourists and he knows if they are scared, they will stay away and he and his family will suffer."
They have been there before and know how important it is not to scare away the tourists, specially where a big part of the economy is based on tourism.
Here in Iceland we were facing crisis in the travel industry last year as Eyjafjallajokull started spewing ash all over Europe closing down airports. People got scared and travel companies started getting cancellations. We also saw the news on channels like FOX news where they warned people about going to Iceland because of violent riots following the economic crash in 2008 which I thought was absurd as the protest was limited to one square in down town Reykjavik and was non-violent with one exception, and none lethal.
The protests in Iceland didn't cause any cancellations as far as I know but the eruption in Eyjafjallajokull did. People saw pictures in the news from farmers below the mountain where the ash was so thick you could barely see your own hands. At the same time I was living only 100 km away and had seen no signs of the eruption, air quality was just as good as normal, the international airport was open and the eruption wasn't affecting us in any way. Still, many tourists were scared away from visiting Iceland.
Scary thing, that volcano in Iceland. Image from the Icelandic Coast Guard.
Information is the antidote to fear.
It was interesting to hear tour operators talk about the effect the eruption had on bookings. Those who reacted immediately by sending out updates to all their clients telling them how the situation was in reality got in general no cancellations at all. Preventing decline in new bookings was harder as the direct relationship had not been establish but the same medicine is used there - enlightment - the distribution of correct information about the situation.
Social media is crucial for this kind of reaction. I started by writing a blog post on my travel blog called "Is it safe to travel to Iceland?" which immediately became one of the top results on Google for that question. There I provided realistic information about the danger of traveling to Iceland (or the lack of thereof) and what was in fact dangerous and what not. The Icelandic tourist board also started a new online campaign called Inspired by Iceland which was quite a big success in certain circles.
The most important reaction is for ALL tour operators to inform about the situation via their blogs, email lists, travel agencies, airlines, twitter accounts, facebook, youtube, search engines and other communication channels. The search engines are a vital factor making sure that the correct information floats to the top when people search for information about the situation. In the case of Egypt it would be what pops up when people search for phrases and questions like:
security in Egypt is it safe to travel to Egypt tourist safety in Egypt am I safe in Egypt how are the protests affecting tourism in Egypt where are the riots in Egypt what places to avoid in Egypt etc.
Monitor questions about travel in your area on LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, Quora, thorntree, tripadvisor and other chat boards and forums and provide good and accurate information in the answers and keep in mind that being unrealistically optimistic is not credible. For credibility you have to admit where there is a real problem or danger and rather provide information on how to avoid them.
A situation like we had in Iceland, and like Tunisia, Egypt and more countries are facing at the moment, needs a fast and well syndicated reaction to minimize the damage to the travel industry. Remember that some say "bad publicity is better than no publicity". This is also an opportunity to increase interest in the country or the destination. Look for those opportunities and make the most of them. I admit that it's much easier to do with a raging volcano than a raging population and not really comparable, but how to react is pretty much the same. This year, Iceland is on the top destination lists of many of the biggest publications. Hopefully the turmoil in Egypt and North Africa now will bring reform, prosperity and security in near future that can boost the travel industry, as well as other aspects of society.
Good luck!
Hjörtur
ps. if you want to know more about how Jane Akshar is dealing with it from Luxor in Egypt I recommend following her blog. Even though she still has no access to the Internet her friends in the UK are talking to her regularly via telephone and updating her social profiles.
Talks and courses on social media and marketing are becoming a bigger and bigger part of my schedule. I am now booking 2011 and it looks like it's going to be an exciting year. This year and the last I've been running courses, live-blogging and giving talks at conferences in as different places as New York, Faroe Islands, Berlin and Latvia. My main focus has been on the travel industry though that is not always the case. Most popular are my two day courses on social media and Internet marketing for the travel industry.
I'm now booking 2011 and it looks like I'll be in Latvia, Belgium, Greenland, Denmark and Norway, as well as Iceland of course. Some other exciting events are being explored as well. Exact dates and location can be found on my "Keynote Speaker Schedule"
If you're interested in getting a talk at your event or a practical and effective course in your home town on how to use social media and the Internet, send me a line.
In his article Darren points out that in the UK too much is focused on London when promoting England, and that it seems like too much is focused on buying expensive ad space. Is there a way to offer more value for the money?
The best job a tourist board has ever done Tourist boards are usually scarcely funded but have in many cases been able to pull off amazing things. I know that the Icelandic tourist board has been able to create a lot of attention in foreign media which has brought hundreds of thousands of tourists back to the country. The best value for money any tourist board has ever created is probably when Queensland Tourist Board in Australia created "The Best Job in the World" campaign, getting media coverage all around the world. Not only that, but they managed to get millions of people looking at pictures and information about the great barrier reef in Australia and put it on their list of top ten places they must visit before they die. Something that is probably going to bring them more tourists for the next two decades or so. That is good value for something that may have sounded like a ridiculous way of spending money when the idea was introduced in the beginning.
You see, the greatest value is not measured in ad space. It is measured in people talking about your destination, in people dreaming about going to your destination and finally in people actually coming to your destination. And fact is, ads seldom get people talking. Events do. Stories do. And that's what tourist boards should be focusing on. How they can get people talking and not only that, how they can help people spread the word about their destination.
The Destination Brand Like with all branding you need to start realizing what your "purple cow" is. What is it in your story, culture, cuisine, architecture or surroundings that interests people, that makes you stand out from the crowd, that gets people talking? The role of the tourist board is to realize what those stories are and who is actually interested in them. Find journalists, bloggers and trend sitters within your target niches and invite them over, get them to participate in some activities and get them to spread the word to those who are really interested.
Events Successful events are driven by passionate people. I don't think you can ever fabricate a successful event without having passionate people creating the content of that event. Storytellers of any kind, whether they are musicians, painters, farmers, cooks or others who share the same passion, a passion that people in your destination identify themselves with, are the people who give your event credibility, content and stories worth spreading. In my mind it is the role of the tourist board to help organize such events by connecting people, provide infrastructure and invite "big mouths", to spread the word to their readers and listeners. The Icelandic airwaves music festival is sold out every year and gets more publicity then the annual budget of the national tourist board could ever pay for. It started all with a small event with good content and invited journalists.
Social Media Social Media Marketing is built on these principles. For tourist boards social media is the perfect channel to spread stories. Not marketing material they fabricated, but actual stories from visitors and "peer tourists" who are already spreading their first hand experience through pictures on flickr, videos on YouTube, blog posts, tweets and facebook updates. Sometimes the price of on ad would cover the pay for your social media person for two months, a person who's role is to listen to the stories in social media about your destination and make sure they get heard.
How do you think tourist boards can get more value for the money?
Oh well. I noticed earlier today that Ryanair started following one of my travel accounts on twitter. Remembering how flammable Ryanair was on twitter the few days the lasted last time I was curious to see if it were really them. So I tweeted this:
When looking at their account, I noticed that they were retweeting what seemed to be just about anything mentioning Ryanair, like this tweet from @ihateryanair:
So, I started wondering if they were retweeting all the bad stuff being said about them just to stir the pot. After all, that's what seems to have been their strategy, creating scandals to get people talking. So I tweeted this:
Which of course got retweeted by them - and I guess I was right, cause this is the reply that followed:
Yep. They told me to get fucked! Maybe they read my post on their social media strategy last time though I don't think they would have needed much to be triggered.
That's got to be a fake account you might say. Well, this is the way they spoke last time they entered social media, both on blogs and twitter, so if it's fake it's at least someone who talk just like you would expect from Ryanair. They did how ever make the statement that:
"It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again.
"Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel".
Iceland has got enormous publicity in the last weeks, and pretty much all of it negative. Beside the financial difficulties and disputes with the UK and the Netherlands, the Eyjafjallajokull eruption caught the eye of the world by grounding all air traffic in Europe - outside of Iceland (yes, believe it or not, while Europe was shut down all airports where open in Iceland).
The president gave some interviews warning authorities and airlines abroad that this was not a unique event and a much larger volcano was expected to erupt any time. This is true, but this is not nearly as dangerous or as much of a catastrophe as the media tend to put it. Even though the mountain is bigger it may have much less impact on air traffic, and it is definitely not the end of the world as some media has been indicating (named after a small dog-like animal).
So the government of Iceland had a meeting this morning and decided to dedicate some 3 million dollars to restore Iceland's image and get back all the lost bookings - and more! People seem to fear coming to Iceland now, thinking they will be in immediate danger of exploding or risk being stranded in Iceland. The truth is, there's no risk except you are just by the volcano and since the mountain is located in Iceland, at least one of four international airports will always be open. The ash can only blow one direction at the time ;) You're therefore much more likely to be stranded in Europe than in Iceland in case of an eruption.
The government plans to spend the 3 million dollars on not only traditional advertising, but also online advertising - even social media. My thought is that we should not spend but maybe a tiny little fraction on advertising. We should rather spend it on events, initiatives and different kind of publicity. Something like a science project contest between 8. grade classes in the UK where one class gets an all-inclusive science expedition to Iceland. Or inviting 10 travel bloggers on a trip of a lifetime. So I'm asking you, if you had 3 million dollars to spend on publicity for a small country with a big bad name, what would YOU do?
Millions of passengers have been stranded unable to fly to or from airports in Europe. As this obviously has got huge implications and inconveniences for people and companies, and specially the flight industry, this also is an opportunity for alternative travel companies.
Destination offices have been offering packages and I know that VisitReykjavik offered stranded tourists in Reykjavik a citycard with access to several museums and attractions to "kill the extra time" they had in the city. Some hotels have been filled with stranded tourists while others have not gotten cancellations. Many have been losing money but many have been creative in cooking up offers and incentives to minimize the losses or even make some extra bucks on the whole situation, something that seems to get mixed reactions from the public.
I would like to hear more stories about how people in the industry have reacted to the situation and what the feedback has been. Did you do something to make the best of the situation? Did it work well or did it backfire. What's your story?
Iceland has taken matter into her own hands. And I'm not talking about the nation this time, but the land it self. A volcano eruption started in Eyjafjallajokull just after midnight.
It's still only a minor eruption and is actually located just east of Eyjafjallajokull glacier, which makes it much less dangerous. That's good news for the tourist industry, as this might just become Iceland's new biggest attraction, conveniently located about 150 km east of Reykjavik with a hotel on location (Hotel Skogar)
Iceland's most popular hiking route The eruption is actually located on a 1 km long crack on Fimmvörðuháls, a popular hiking route between two volcanoes, Eyjafjallajokull and Katla in Myrdalsjokull (jökull means glacier in Icelandic). Katla volcano has three times erupted following an eruption in Eyjafjallajokull, in year 920, 1612 and 1921, and is a much larger and more dangerous volcano. Last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted, it lasted almost two years, from 1821 to 1823, so we might be looking at something "sustainable" that could attract tourists. But even though the eruption won't last long, the hot new lava will be an excellent addition to the experience for hikers and the headlines a good commercial, with the volcanic eruption in Iceland already topping Google trends and being CNN's most read news this morning.
The biggest danger for the tourism in Iceland during the eruption is the effect it can have on flights to and from Iceland. As it is not an eruption under a glacier it will have minimal effect. But if it moves and starts to erupt beneath either of the glaciers, the smoke becomes more dangerous and the flight ban zone around it will be enlarged.
The PhoCusWright
bloggers summit was Thursday the 11th at ITB in Berlin. The day started with a
"town hall" meeting led my Philip Wolf, president of PhoCusWright,
where everyone could participate in discussions about the coming trends in the
social media environment. Quick surveys revealed that just about everyone reads
Kevin May's blog Tnooz and not a single person in the room admitted to using
Google Wave or Google Buzz.
Guido said that
he never watches the metrics from social media. He just isn't the metric guy.
For him it isn't about getting more guests, it's about getting better guests.
The hotel rooms sell themselves if people like him, plus, he gets guests to his
hotel who agree on what a hotel should offer. The relationship he has with some
of his guests is so strong that some of them even have keys to the hotel. Now
that's customer relationship management at the top level.
Yen Lee of UpTake
said they used the blog for two main purposes. One is to improve the content
which is good for both users and search engines, and the second is to aquire
more customers. "We spend a lot of money on social media even though we
can't proof the ROI. It just feels like the right thing to do." sain Yen.
While search is still crucial for the traffic and conversion, social media has
now become the primary channel for traffic for UpTake. The other panelists
agreed to that but Sigal reminded people that though social media had become
the primary channel, they still had number 2, 3 and 4 which should not be
neglected.
Kevin posted a
few twtpolls during the panel discussions which was a smart thing to do, though
I found the options incomplete and limiting.
Kevin May posted
a poll for the audience during the panel, asking what were the most successful
social media channels for improving brand recognition.
The crowd voted
for blogs, but Uwe Frers argued that commenting on blogs was much more powerful
than bloggingyourself. Robert K
Cole said it was like an ecosystem, the blog is good for creating content but
you need to feed it to your twitter and Facebook channels and engage your
customers.
Many still fear
social media because of the negative effect it can have on your reputation.
It's important to have a social media disaster plan. Fast response to crisis is
crucial.
It's a principal
policy never to edit or delete a negative review, said Sam Daams of
Travellerspoint. Just react. "I don't think bad recommendations decline
conversion rate" Uwe Frerer added. "The question is just which hotel
gets the revenue"
The panelists in
both the workshops seemed to agree on most things, which maybe made the
discussion less interesting that they otherwise would be. You need oposite
poles or some wild card into the panel to fire up some lively debates. People
could at least see what direction to take in their social media efforts.
Opportunities in Chaos The PhoCusWright conference started
Wednesday with Philip Wolf's introduction where he was focusing on the
opportunities in CHAOS, an approach I like. While the chaos and recession the
hotel industry is going through it also forces us to rethink what we are doing,
look for new opportunities and eventually become better at what we do. Being
adaptive is crucial to survival.
The
investors on the travel investor panel with Gene Quinn was disappointing, as they mostly said they were
looking for something save and profitable when times are tough. Not quite in
the spirit of Philip Wolf's talk just before. Not much support there for
innovators in traveling.
Changes in search for the travel industry
Krista Pappas from Bing
was my favorite speaker at the conference with a clear message and something new
for me, the Bing visual travel search. So far it's only available in the
States, but we all look forward to the day it reaches other parts of the world.
Krista started with 5 lessons for the travel industry that are never repeated
to often, supported by a few famous cases:
* Be authentic
(the million dollar website - can't be repeated)
* Relentless
measurement and optimization (TripAdvisor)
* Be social
(Starbucks)
* Be
opportunistic and responsive (Aston Kutcher's million followers on Twitter)
* Ads are content
(Burger King's dump a Facebook friend for a burger)
Javier Gonzalez-Soria from Google Travel in Spain was a bit more reluctant to
share inside information from Google. When asked if they were planning on
following the same path as Bing in vertical search, he said that Google would
never start competing with its customers. He pointed out that YouTube had now
become the second most popular search engine in the world, which is a reminder
to all to check your optimization on that front.
Rick Seany from Farecompare.com had some very interesting numbers about
conversion:
* You increase
your conversion by 2-4% if you cut loading time by 1/2 a second.
* Ajax pages
convert 10-20% better to checkout then other types of pages
* The best time
to book a cheap plane ticket is at 3pm on a Tuesday. This is actually based on
a research of 5 years of data.
Rick also stated
that rich content pages (bloated pages) would be penalized by Google within few
months. What matters is
having a fast page, and content of value. Value counts, not quantity, and value
is precisely what Google is trying to deliver. So my advice is don't start
cutting down your content richest pages, as long as they provide value and
convert. Just do what ever you can to make them fast, effective and user friendly.
Where's the growth? David Roche, president ofExpedia's Hotels.com and Venere.com
shared a few perspective from his side of the industry, but despite last year
being the worst in the history of the hotel industry, online hotel bookings
experienced significant growth. The reason is simple. The consumer is always
price sensitie, but never as much as in a recession. And the consumer knows
where to shop for the best hotel prices.
When asked about
airfares and alternative income, he said that when it came to income, Expedia
was a hotel company. That's were the margin is.
CEO Matthew Goldberg from Lonely Planet explained their strategy and predictions
for the future. According to Goldberg the big themes of 2010 will be social
media, mobile platforms and contextual commerce, and plan to harness it all.
Currently 75% of their revenue comes from traditional guidebooks but Goldberg
expects this to change to 65% in the future. Not because it will decrease, but
because digital publications will grow that much faster. Goldberg was not
willing to sign off a technology that's been around for 500 years that easily.
Besides, paper guidebooks never run out of batteries.
The most
important thing to LP's strategy, according to Goldberg, is to be authentic.
Their role is to help people get the most out of their travel and they will
continue to do that, even though it means aggregating third party content - and
that party being a competitor.
Overall, an
interesting day with some of the most influential people in the travel
industry. Norm Rose from PhoCusWright gave an enthusiastic talk about the
possibilities mobile phones, or mobile devices, are bringing to the travel
market. The crowd wasn't as enthusiastic, maybe still just seeing one big
jungle and waiting for someone to lead the way for the travel industry into the
world of mobile technology. It's great to see the open approach PhoCusWright
has to all the opportunities that are out there.
If you remember
something I'm forgetting or remember something differently, please share in the
comments below.
