360DigitalInfluence

Screenshots from my iPhone

Foursquare is an interesting, fun and [at times] useful service that’s gotten some solid buzz in the last few months.  It’s the brainchild of the folks who brought us the one-time Internet service darling, Dodgeball.  I found this article from the New York Future Initiative which does a nice job of explaining the service, and the creators’ vision for what it might become.

With the ever-growing buzz, I thought you might appreciate the skinny …

What it is

Foursquare describes itself as 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game, though my personal bias is that [at least for the time being] it’s more game.

How it works

A player checks in with Foursquare when they are out and about at a restaurant, bar, museum, movie theater, etc.  Checking in earns you points.  Points earn status [e.g, I was for a fleeting moment the Mayor of the Bowery Hotel Bar].  You can also earn badges for doing interesting things, like checking in at odd times or out-of-the-way places.

For now points/badges only get you bragging rights, though clearly that will change at some point [e.g., Ian checked in 5 times at Old Town Social, earning him a free cocktail].

How you play

Players check in via a slick iPhone app [uses GPS to find your location and things around you], mobile site and text message.  You can have Foursquare ping Twitter when you check in.

Where it works

At the time of this post, Foursquare is  available in: Amsterdam, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

My recommendation

If you’ve got an iPhone, I recommend giving it a whirl - nothing to lose.  If you’re a marketer, you should take a peak under the hood so you understand the possibilities when Foursquare [inevitably] opens for [paid] business.  If you’re a business in one of the cities above [particularly in a hipster neighborhood] maybe play around with rewarding patrons for checking in from your store/bar/restaurant.

It’s not there yet, and may never be.  But I continue to hear the buzz …

How many times have you arrived at your hotel to find that you didn’t need to squeeze all those bathroom essentials into your luggage after all as everything that you need is already provided by your hotel.  Or, have you relied on your hotel to provide a good selection of grooming products only to find that something significant is not supplied?

With the rise of cheap flights and the need to keep costs down by just taking carry-on luggage, many of us spend a long time considering which bathroom items we will take to fit within the 10 x 100ml fluid allowance.

What if you knew exactly what you were going to find in your hotel bathroom before you left home?  Problem is, you never can predict what you are going to find; there simply seems to be no logic.  Sometimes the most desirable four star hotel in Italy might not provide body lotion or hair conditioner, whereas a bargain 40 Euros a night Spanish hotel might provide enough items to make you not want to leave your hotel bathroom at all.

What if there was a website which held exactly this kind of information?  Content could be posted by both consumers and hoteliers stating what to expect when you visit.  Comments can be made on the standard of toiletries (Ritz Carlton, Santiago Chile – more top quality Bulgari toiletries than you can imagine) and how often they are replenished (Hotel Scribe, Paris - three times a day). 

This site would be great for hoteliers; they could see how they fare against their competitors and guests would be happier as they’ve enabled them to be more clued up about the facilities before travel.

Maybe this site already exists.  If it does please do let me know!  If not, perhaps I’ve found something to do with my evenings.

As we all know, 2009 has been a hard year for almost everyone. There are very few corners of the globe that have not been effected by the crisis. The economic downturn has left many countries in or on the verge of recessions/depressions. To compound these matters, the threat of H1N1 (aka swine flu) is leaving some countries worse off than others.

 
Take Mexico for example. They were at the epicenter of the outbreak and the fall-out has been devastating to their economy. Mexico’s claim that the H1N1 virus emanated from Asia  seems to have fallen on deaf ears as Mexico’s economy, which relies heavily on tourist dollars, has been suffering since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus. As a result, vacations to Mexico are cheaper than they have been in years. Forbes  is reporting that Travel-Ticker is offering over 20 Mexican vacations up to70% off.

Since amazing travel deals alone are not luring the tourists in, Mexico is using social media to entice travelers back to Mexico with its “Believe It” campaign. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History has signed an agreement with Google Mexico to promote archeological and historical sites. This is not a bad idea because according to Trip Advisors 2009 travel trends, 87% of travelers will visit a historical site on vacation. In addition to partnering with Google to showcase the plethora of historical gems in Mexico, they have started a channel on Youtube.com to further showcase their historical landmarks They will also be launching advertising campaigns in 12 major U.S. markets and six in Canada.

There are many communication lessons that can be learned from Mexico’s H1N1 fiasco. Had they handled their communications better from the beginning (apparently blaming Asia did not work) they might have avoided the swine flu’s name metamorphosis into the ‘Mexican flu’ .  Waiting four months to tell the world Mexico is a a safe place to travel might not have been the best idea. We encourage our clients to have crisis plans in place for just these reasons. However, their use of social media to launch a recovery campaign shows how serious they are about revitalizing their image as a safe place with amazing beaches and fabulous historical sites. “Mexico and its tourism sector have proven yet again that we are resilient to crisis,” says Oscar Fitch, CEO of the Mexico Tourism Board. “Not only are we back up and running and receiving tourists every day, but we are showing the world that this administration represents responsibility.”

Image from National Geographic

National Geographic has a nice rundown of travel related apps for the iPhone.  An app to help you remember your hotel room number?  I guess there really is an app for everything!

Safe and fun travels this holiday weekend.

In the last few weeks, two new online travel sites have been hot topics in the news – Google City Tours and Bing Travel, from Microsoft. Although the sites have different uses, both are designed to help travelers plan vacations easily.

Google City Tours is a service designed to create entire trips for travelers, identifying points of interest in the desired city and planning out an itinerary for a multi-day vacation. A different approach to online travel, Bing is a travel aggregate site, similar to Kayak or Orbitz. The site allows users to search for airfare deals or sort hotel results by popularity, star rating or distance from a certain location.

From a marketing perspective, I like Bing’s easy-to-use interface and multiple options for finding the best deal – a factor that always plays into my vacations – but didn’t think it was very visually pleasing. I searched the “Low Fares” tab for a flight to London, since I’ve always wanted to go there, and especially liked the graph that appears detailing when flights will be least expensive. I still haven’t been able to test Google City Tours, as it freezes my entire computer as soon as launch the site (It is a beta site, but still…)

With more and more travelers using the internet to book their vacations, sites like these will continue to appear, promising the best deals or most comprehensive search engines. Now if only I could find someone to pay for that vacation to London…

What’s your preferred travel search engine?

Came across this on SpringWise.  It’s a self-cooling canopy bed called Evening Breeze, “a canopy bed with built-in air conditioner that uses only a fraction of that energy.”

We find no shortage of green and eco-related online content when it comes to tourism.  It no longer seems to be a differentiator, but rather the cost of entry.  Would love for you to share some of the eco-friendly products you’ve come across.

Full post on SpringWise here.  Excerpt below:

In the Evening Breeze bed, air is filtered and cooled to a set temperature and humidity level and then gently directed over the sleeper via an upholstered canopy ceiling. A built-in mosquito net protects the sleeper from uninvited visitors while also helping to contain the cooled air, meaning that no airtight insulation is necessary—rather, the room can be left to its natural state, with windows open for fresh air. The eco-minded bed is crafted from FSC-approved wood, and it uses only environmentally friendly R410A coolant. Perhaps best of all, however, is that whereas conventional air conditioners use between 1,200 and 2,000 Watts, the average energy use for the Evening Breeze bed is only 400 Watts, creating a reduction in energy use of 60 percent per room.

With the wide variety of clients at Ogilvy, my colleagues and I travel to a wide variety of trade shows throughout the year, including the International Consumer Electronics Show, New York Times Travel Show, the American International Toy Fair and many, many more.

Over the past six months, we’ve noticed the same trend – fewer exhibitors and journalists are traveling to these shows. Journalists are either choosing to stay home or being told they’ll stay home by publications cutting costs. With online press kits and phone interviews, these reporters feel they can still get the same information over the phone. Others are spending one day at a show when they would normally spend two or three, as time is more valuable and travel budgets are tight.

Beyond that, exhibitors are showcasing modest product offerings and making sure to offer affordable options for businesses and consumers, as referenced in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about the 2009 Kitchen & Bath Industry Show. Some manufacturers are staying home altogether, choosing to reallocate the money they would depend on booth rental to extra advertising or other marketing initiatives during tough times.

The question is whether a phone call is as valuable as meeting with clients and media if you are a manufacturer or vice versa for media face-to-face on the show floor. New technology is making things like virtual tradeshows possible and nearly any information can be emailed or put on an online press kit.

Is this a trend that will turn back around after the recession recedes? If so, will we be able to replace the value of meeting with a potential client/customer in person?

Trade shows involve many long hours and sore feet, but they are invaluable for face-to-face time with media and clients. Allowing journalists to get a first-hand look at products or hear first-hand about a destination is key to their understanding. And, for client relations, meeting in person is always helpful to sustain solid relationships beyond emails and weekly calls.

So bring on the comfortable shoes and the coffee – I’ll be at a hotel technology conference in Anaheim in three weeks!

When I traveled through the Caribbean and New Orleans on my honeymoon five years ago, I did not give leaving my Blackberry at home a second thought. It wasn’t so much that it was my honeymoon, it was because technology was not as pervasive or accessible. It was just the start of the Web 2.0 world — for example, I was one of the few in my circle to have a Blackberry — at the time, many were taking baby steps (usually taught by their younger siblings or co-workers) of texting, so there was less of a need to plug in.

As we all acknowledge, though, today’s world is different. Airlines are fighting for your dollars by vying to be the first to have wi-fi access and now many will have it this summer . Many of us lament how it would be possible to leave our technology behind, even for a few days. And many a blog discussion has been had about the pros and cons of disconnecting or connecting.

Part of the beauty of a vacation for me, at least, is not only the getting away, but the feeling of getting away with something. When I’m lounging at a pool on a Wednesday at 2 p.m. and am truly relaxed, I feel I’m getting away with something. If I were to have my laptop or Blackberry poolside and anyone could ping me about a work deadline, question, or even a neighbor asking if we wanted our mail picked up, it would interrupt that zen quality that comes only from vacation and travel. Stories can always be captured and shared while traveling, but it’s the interruptive nature of technology that is what people should really disconnect from. Otherwise, you might as well have stayed home.

There’s really an app for that?

International travel used to be so foreign. The destination didn’t necessarily have to be a remote or exotic one, but people could embark to a new place knowing very little about where they were actually going. Sure, there were Frommer’s and Fodor’s travel guides with a few grainy, grayscale photos speckled throughout the descriptions of the must-not-miss things to do and a few quintessential full page color pictures of the token attractions. Fast forward to 2009.

There is now an entire television station devoted to uncovering all of the amazing international gems, a plethora of iPhone applications for anything from museum tours, language translators, currency converters, public restroom finders (really?), local taxi finders – the list goes on and on. And if you really want to vacation on autopilot, you can use Tripit which organizes your entire trip – flights, hotels, cars and attractions.

Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t all of this seem to take the fun and exoticness out of traveling? Some of my favorite cities, and the best trips I have been on, were ones where I got on a plane, train or bus knowing very little about where I was going. I once got on a bus from Dubrovnik, Croatia heading to Sarajevo, Bosnia. I only knew four things about Sarajevo before I actually arrived there. Upon arriving, I realized how little reconstruction had happened since the war and nearly every building is still riddled with bomb and bullet holes. This made the decade-old war seem like yesterday and I had never really been in a war zone before.

However, I did learn that Sarajevo was amazing; the people, the culture, the city, the museums, the mountains, the rivers – pretty much everything. I ended up completely falling in love with the place. And, had I spent too much time cruising through iPhone apps and virtual tours of a war-torn city and its museums, I probably would have never discovered one of my favorite cities. There are just certain things that can not be captured in technology

What happens when you take a bunch of Web 2.0 gurus armed with laptops and iPhones, ship them down to college town in Texas, and hold the most important social media confab in all the land?

You have South By Southwest Interactive - an event that has arguably done more for Austin, TX’s reputation and tourism industry over the last few years than the Longhorn football team.

Attendees at SXSWi 2009 (Creative Commons image courtesy of indigoprime on Flickr)

South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWI) has made Austin THE place for social media discussion, innovation and, to the regret of some (and delight of others), karaoke.

Brands from PepsiCo (Ogilvy PR works for several divisions of PepsiCo but did not do any work for SxSWi) to Levi’s to Dos Equis to Dell and many others had one sort of presence or another (ranging from official sponsor to party-thrower).

In a world where social media has become a powerful force in making or breaking brands, why not harness that power to make your destination brand?

Landing the hosting duties for the next big social media conference (whether you are a city or a hotel) could be a way to ingratiate your destination/property with key influencers, and bask in the halo of all the conference-related content that lives on for eternity in social media.