Travel Marketing in the Age of Web 2.0 & Beyond

NYCgo - a welcome new approach by a DMO

as reported here and elsewhere, NYC & Company has launched a new site and it takes a fresh approach to market the Big Apple.
The site design is on the hip side and a departure from the norm which for a city like New York is understandable and valid.



The key elements for me are these:

NYCgo.com includes information in nine foreign languages and will feature user-generated content such as personal profiles, user ratings and reviews, and peer-to-peer recommendations.

In addition, thanks to partnerships with Travelocity and OpenTable, NYCgo.com will be transactional so that visitors can book hotels, flights, car rentals, vacation packages and restaurant reservations directly from the Web site, thereby facilitating travel bookings with convenience, according to city officials.

The site makes use of interactive tools to give the user a voice and it has integrated commercial partners to allow more of a one-stop functionality. For a major city the inclusion of restaurant reservations is for me a must.

I like where they are going with this. Others should move in the same direction and focus on the customer experience and convenience and not politically correct supplier relationships.

Totally off topic - but I do love this item.....

I read on Tripso, today:

Is economy class punishment?

Serena Williams is threatening herself with a 16-hour flight in coach class if she is eliminated from the Australian Open. “I was thinking ‘Okay, if you lose, you’re going to fly coach all the way back to Florida,” she said when asked what she was thinking while she played against her last opponent. “How uncomfortable that would be? That motivated me to do a little better.”

We don’t need Williams to tell us coach class is one of the most exquisite forms of torture known to mankind. But having her experience it firsthand? Priceless!

Torture indeed, in my case it unfortunately applies whether I win or lose!

Why is there not more API integration?

TripIt Opens API, Third-Party Devs Pounce; Travel Sites Lag reads the headline in MarketingVOX today. What struck me most is the last part "Travel Sites Lag". The same thing can be said about the API's already available and being developed by the new innovators for travel planning like Tripbase, Uptake, Travelmuse as well as others and DMOs.

At last week's Canada-e-Connect conference, I made a strong plea in my presentation for exactly such integration and co-operation in what is fast becoming the new focal point in online travel, the research and planning process that preceeds the actual booking. This is where 95% of the activity happens and it's about much more than search, the present pre-occupation by the online players. It's in this space, which PhoCusWright has termed the "Perfect Storm" where the most exciting developments will occur over the next few years. Today's online travel consumers demand no less than a vastly improved experience in the pre-trip phase, an experience that integrates social media, social networks, UGC, etc. all the elements that need to be integrated to offer this improved experience.

For destinations - which are at the core of the planning process - this has important implications. Rather than trying to develop all this themselves, which most of them are not capable of doing anyway as part of their web development, new and forward looking partnerships need to be developed with the innovators who are already working on making it happen. The travel industry today still lives in too many silos without enough cross communications.

The conversation which is happening among the traveling public as consumers needs to start happening in the industry itself and that goes beyond the usual good will expressed at conferences but in the strategic planning and day-to-day tactics the various players deploy on a permanent basis. As the wisdom of crowd effect is important in the public at large, it can and should be applied more within the industry itself.

Marketing on Social Networks continued

as so often, Seth Godin in this last post on Brands, social, clutter and the sundae is spot on about the latest craze, using social network sites like Facebook and Twitter as a corporate marketing tools. I especially like his comment comparing "Twitter making Dell a million dollars" - which would be chump change for that company anyway, with "the phone company made Dell a billion dollars - more than chump change! It's about the difference between a marketing medium and a connecting medium. So, before you jump on this bandwagon, think about what else you can do to make your marketing relevant and effective.

CNN covers Web 3.0

in this article Making sense of the 'semantic Web' and presents a very innovative example by a German company of the kind of tools we will see being introduced over the coming years. The impact will be felt across all industries including travel. The huge amount of data about travel produced by so many sources and available is just waiting to be mined and better interpreted for improved results.

For an easy visual explanation, take a look at this video which I found very informative:

Here's an example of what's coming next!

as John Markoff reports in this article Slipstream - A Software Secretary That Takes Charge on NYTimes.com about web based intelligent assistants. The company mentioned - Rearden Commerce - is a leader in providing this kind of advanced services mostly to business travelers today that we will see more of in future and that will be deployed in leisure travel as well.

DARPA - the original developer of the internet - is investing huge amounts in artificial intelligence development and although mainly intended for military use, there will be an inevitable spill over effect into the commercial world. The implications for the travel industry are huge and the changes in how travel is researched, planned and booked will undergo significant improvement over how it is done today. The circle of the pre- during and post travel phases will be completed with tools for each totally integrated and easy to use. It will be an exciting time in travel as we enter the next decade of the web. Who will be next the winners?

Web 2.0 enters the mainstream

OK, web 2.0 is now officially part of the mainstream, as the Wall Street Journal reveals The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World!




So, the CMOs in companies of all sizes will now embrace social media, social networks, blogs etc. and know how to effectively deal with all things 2.0? Not so fast, I still have my doubts that this is the reality. There is still too much one way communication going on and attempts to control the message rather than enter the conversation, too many calls for traditional bottom line measurements of ROI and effectiveness when engaging in the social sphere. The recent stories about disappointing results of social media advertising have shown that the old yard sticks don't apply in this new web 2.0 environment of customer empowerment, combine with low tolerance for marketing speak. One old marketing principle still applies - present the right message, to the right audience at the right moment. When people are engaged in social networks and social media that is usually not the right moment. Those are not secrets, just comment sense marketing.

The innovators have been using web 2.0 effectively for a number of years now and while the mainstream of corporate marketers are catching up, these companies, usually small and nimble, are already moving to the next phase of the web - the smart web, where semantics are added into the mix, data talks to data and the web becomes an ever more useful tool making it easier for the empowered and connected consumer to stay informed about products and services that are relevant to them and to make smart decisions about them. While web 2.0 is now established, welcome to web 3.0

Company Blog Credibility - Part 2!

Forrester Research Gets It Wrong By Saying Corporate Blogs Aren’t Trusted says this post, referred to by Forrester's own social media guru Jeremiah Owyang. The arguments for these blogs are interesting and valid. I still feel that it's a discussion among insiders and not mainstream marketers, many of whom still show difficulty in how to cope with this new environment. The suggestions made in the post about blogging strategies are good but let's be honest, how many companies are following them? The reasons why the public - as opposed to the experts - rank company blogs lower is probably because they perceive them as just another PR tool and without having statistical evidence available, my own guess would be that many of these are just that - another tool in the marketing arsenal. That's just not what will hack it in the social media / networking arena.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement

People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it reads the headline of post in Groundswell, based on a survey Forrester conducted in Q2 this year with over 5000 people that according to their note, are as representative as possible of the US online adult population.

Company blogs came in last with only 16% who read them saying they trust them as an information source. At the other end, in first place with 77% trusting them, are "email from people you know". This shows, that the personal or social network has become the most trusted source of advice and information for a large number of people on the web. It also shows a high level of resistance to the attempts by companies to use these networks as marketing tools. Any attempt at trying to control or influence the conversation is suspect and likely ineffective.

On a more positive note, the trust level increases to 24% among people who regularly read blogs, and 39% among those who blog themselves.

What this tells me, is that the more familiar people are with blogs and the various types that exist and are able to distinguish among them the higher the credibility gets. It's also telling that a large number of the general public are probably still not as familiar with the whole blogosphere as those of us who are very close to the subject and personally involved in it. For marketers, the challenge to reach their audience in this new world remains as complex as ever.

So, the long tail is dead....!

it seems, reading that Anderson downgrades Long Tail to Chocolate Teapot status according to Andrew Orlowski writing in The Register.

Orlowski has written about this topic in previous articles with the provocative titles Chopping the Long Tail down to size and The Long Fail: Web 2.0's faith meets the facts

Now, that should stimulate a lively debate among the many who are basing their business proposition on this by now famous theory, developed by  Chris Anderson, the Editor of WIRED, a
number of years ago using the music industry as an example. The data quoted in these articles is certainly worth closer examination and study before making a final judgment but at first sight it makes a lot of sense. Just shows that once again grand new theories must be proven by facts before becoming reality and it might just be too early to come to a definite conclusion.