360DigitalInfluence

I recently read a travel story about ‘Chuppies’ – a buzz word to describe “Chinese Yuppies” – a group who describe Australia as their number one destination.

This got me thinking as to the many buzz words associated with, or created by, the tourism industry.  Here are a few of my personal favourites:

Photourism – taking a tour guided by a photographer with people who share an interest in photography.  The purpose is to return home with the ultimate image gallery.  This one I made up myself, not unlike many of the below which we can assume have been dreamt up by PRs!…

Voluntourism – a holiday mixed with a stint of volunteering, popular in developing countries.

Babymoon – the last holiday a couple will take before their baby is born.

Bizcation – combining a business trip with a vacation.

Staycation  - taking a vacation in your hometown by exploring the tourism attractions whilst saving on accommodation.

Glamping – camping without roughing it (glamorous camping).

Flashpacking – backpacking without roughing it (flash backpacks).

Paliday – a holiday with your best friend.

Weddingmoon – when a wedding and honeymoon combine.

Sabbat-packers – grown up gap year travellers.  This one was popular with those taking a sabbatical from work due to the global financial crisis.

Liecations –lying about being on vacation to hide the fact you are spending a week being lazy at home.

From our colleagues in APAC.

Two years ago I moved to London to work at Ogilvy PR and since then like many people I often go back home to visit my family. For me this means heading back to the quiet rural village of North Petherton, deep in the heart of Somerset, which is a good three hours away. Now this trip made once or twice a month can accumulate into a costly activity, however, since moving to London I have come across a bus company called the Berry Bus, a small enterprise that runs a service from London to North Petherton. This trip sets me back just £20 return, plus a very reasonable sandwich served by the Berry Bus attendee Joan for £1.50.

During the recession more and more people are of course looking to save money any way they can, but in terms of travelling within the UK often people simply turn to the train system, which increasingly has become a very expensive mode of transport, costing me double what the bus does.

Small independent bus companies have a great opportunity to deliver UK transport as an affordable alternative in the face of an increasingly growing money saving culture. However, many people when asked to name bus companies they would use as an alternative to the train the answer is so often just National Express, which indeed in 2008 saw their revenue up by 5.6% to almost 2.8 billion.

The advice I would give to these small independent bus companies, much like the Berry Bus which has become a life line to me in terms of saving money when travelling back to see my folks, is that with a little bit of marketing they could really see a rise in demand for their services. UK consumers just do not know what they are missing out on; there is a clear market that these bus companies can own for cheap affordable UK travel.

I recently read on Springwise about a nice promotion from Omni Hotels called Omni Flips for Summer.   From Springwise …

… families staying at any of the chain’s hotels and resorts in North America can borrow a pocket-sized video camcorder for free and use it to record their most memorable moments. The camcorder provided is the new Flip Ultra video camcorder, launched this spring by Pure Digital, and it’s available to guests who purchase any “Omni Flips for Summer” weekend package … When their weekend filming is complete, guests can upload their video memories to their own laptop or use the Omni Hotels Business Center at no charge to transfer the footage to a thumb drive to take home. Guests are also encouraged to upload a three-minute video to Omni’s Local Scoop social networking website as part of the Omni Flips for Summer Video Contest, the winner of which—announced in September—will get a free trip for four to the Omni Bedford Springs Resort in Pennsylvania.

In the last few years hotels have become a very attractive environment for brands to reach their targets.  In my experience, here are a few things brands should keep in mind when partnering with hotels:

1. Simplicity. Hotel brands are usually governed by a centralized brand team, but operations are very much determined property-by-property.   And these days, operations teams are stretched thin.  The more you - the brand - can do to create a truly turnkey promotion, the better your chances for success.
2. Beta. Rolling a promotion out to an entire chain of hotels is risky, expensive, and will require logistics coordination you never imagined.  Instead, pilot the promotion in one or two markets - validate guests interest and take the opportunity to tweak the operational aspects to make it easier on a grander scale.
3. Localize. If possible, try to localize the promotion to make it more interesting to the guests in a particular market.
4. Delight. Travel - particularly business travel - can be grueling.  When possible, delight guests with something unexpected and fun.  At the very least, don’t make them jump through hoops.
5. Talkability. Don’t think me too.  Think me first.  The latter will generate much more word-of-mouth.

So what else should go on this list?

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?

A rather simple thought as we finish out the week …

[This post is adapted from one I originally wrote about two years ago. You can see that full post here.]

I was in a meeting where someone used the Finnish term Sisu.  They were shocked that I knew what it meant until I explained that l used to work for Nokia.

What many people know, but many more don’t, is that Nokia is a Finnish company.  I had many [+15] opportunities to travel to Finland.  As you can imagine, I got to know many Finns and learn about the culture.  One of the guiding principles of Finland is something called Sisu.  As Wikipedia describes it, Sisu …

“… could be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity. The equivalent in English is “to have guts”, and indeed, the word derives from sisus, which means something inner or interior. However, sisu has a long-term element in it; it is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain the same.”

I suppose the closest American equivalent is “patriotism,” but that does not get at the essence of Sisu.  You see, the Finns have endured centuries of struggles against the Russians, Germans, Swedes (and probably several others I don’t know about).  Not to mention that Finland is a tough place – cold, dark and vast.  These factors combine to give Finns a fortitude unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Interestingly, Sisu can also cause insularity — it is after all a bunkerish mentality.  Despite that I always very much appreciated Sisu — maybe not so much for what it stands for, but more for the fact that an entire nation operates under such a clear guiding principle.

SO WHAT IAN???

So it just got me thinking … what’s your destination’s Sisu?  Or as my colleagues might ask, what’s your lighthouse?  What’s the guiding principal on which your destination/country is built … find it, articulate it and use it as the cornerstone of all your marketing.

Have a great weekend.

The current economic downturn has affected millions of people all over the world. Very few industries have managed to trudge through this economic downturn unscathed and, sadly, the travel industry is no exception – it is faring worse than many other industries. Airlines are cutting flights, destinations and prices just to stay afloat. Hotel expansions are on hold and growth of new and current brands have been sizably downscaled. A perfect example is NYLO hotels, which unveiled a XP Hotels, a loft style brand, in 2005 with the ambition of having 50 properties open by 2010. However, to date, only two locations in Texas have actually opened – Plano and Warwick – with another planned opening in Irving next month. Lack of commercial lending and a deteriorating travel market, especially in the luxury category, are taking a heavy toll on the hotel industry.

On the bright side, all this doom and gloom translates in to great savings for travel consumers. Flights, hotels and attractions are the most affordable they have been in years and, compared to last summer, when gas prices hovered close to $5.00 a gallon, car travel is again reasonable. Hotels are giving away free nights and free food to entice customers to their brands. Summer flights are much more reasonable and internationally, the dollar is way up, making foreign destinations, which became so expensive over the last few years due to the sinking dollar, once again affordable. Disney is offering amazing package deals  – even Amsterdam is even giving away free hotel nights.

Now is definitely the time to scratch that travel itch and take advantage of the amazing travel deals to be had!