360DigitalInfluence

Have the reports of the death of luxury travel been greatly exaggerated?  Perhaps not (for now), but there are a few social networks out there catering to the more discerning traveler.  Here are the ones I’ve heard about lately.  Any others?

Voyage.tv is part TV station, part social network, part online travel booking service.  The New York Times recently profiled the web site in an article, the full text of which can be found here.  The cornerstone of Voyage.tv are their videos – all of which (at least the few I watched) are very highly produced, but are currently focused on the Caribbean.  Curious to see how they expand their offering to LATAM, EMEA, APAC, etc.

Indagare describes itself as “a membership-based community for sophisticated travelers, providing access to curated online archives, printed black books and custom advisory and booking services.” And true to form, much of the content on the site is off limits to those who have not paid for a membership, which ranges from $250-$1,200 a year.

The informational tour gives you a good sense of the rewards of membership.  What I find most interesting is that they’ve grouped travel recommendations around 10 passion points (e.g. adventure, arts, family, etc.) in addition to geography.  For travelers like me and my wife who are open to vacationing anywhere, this is an interesting approach.

SQUA.RE describes itself as “the first and only community-generated TV site dedicated to your ideas of Luxury, Style and Inspiring Lifestyle.”  And while not devoted to travel, they do have an “Escape” section devoted to travel.  As with Indigare, membership to SQUA.RE is by invitation only, and it’s unclear how many members they actually have.

The question I have is, where do these sites fit in with popular blogs like Jaunted, or even Twitter?  Is their value in their niche area of expertise?  Access to bespoke travel itineraries via luxury travel experts?  What do you think?

This is the first of in a series of posts I’ll draft on listening to conversations happening in social media.  Much (!) has already been written on this topic - my humble aim here is to arm you with one powerful and simple tool that will get your ear to the ground in a hurry.

It was inspired when I came across a Tweet from my colleague, Rohit Bhargava …

… and the first thing that came to mind was:  I wonder if the person in New Zealand who is responsible for this knows people are talking about it in social media?

I don’t think I’ll get much argument when I say that first and foremost, good marketers listen (particularly, social marketers).  Listening allows us to track conversation trends, brand/product mentions, what people are saying about the competition and what the competition is saying about themselves.  Having a good listening post in place also enables marketers to quickly identify potential negative stories brewing in social media - more and more often where crises are erupting - and to respond rapidly (more on that in another post).

This listen first mentality applies just as much to travel and tourism marketing as it does consumer packaged goods.  If you’re marketing a destination, airline, hotel, etc. and are not listening at all, here’s what I recommend you do immediately:

1. As people who know me will tell you, I am a bit obsessed with my RSS reader as a way to find, segment, consume and share important content. I use Google Reader, but I know a lot of people who use Ogilvy PR’s tool, The Daily Influence.  Either way, sign up for an RSS reader and learn how to use it today.
2. Populate your RSS reader with feeds from every important source of news and information (newspaper, magazine or blog) from your particular industry.  Everyone from The New York Times to Hospitality Net offer RSS feeds.  Look for the universal RSS icon and get clicking.  As you use your reader more and more you’ll find your comfort zone in organizing the incoming feeds (just as we have different styles of managing our email in-boxes).
3. Use Twitter Search to find brand, product, service (or in the example above, country) mentions and subscribe to the resulting RSS feeds.
4. Google Blog Search:  Purely anecdotal, but I get the sense that Google is overtaking (or even has overtaken) Technorati as the preferred blog search engine.  Again, I conduct a search on relevant terms and either grab the RSS feed or subscribe to email alerts.
5. Rinse and repeat for Google News, images and video (naive is the brand that does not think consumers are talking about them on multimedia sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube).

Again, I know we all have our favorite tools.  These are the basics that work well for my needs.  Would love to know what you use, and why.