Travel Industry

Whether the UN Climate Change Summit (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark produces a global consenus on emissions cuts remains to be seen. Even so, the conference already offers valuable insight into how to organize ’successful’ green meetings on a massive scale.

Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol

The organizers are preparing a Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol (CSMP) based on the planning efforts undertaken for COP15. CSMP is expected be used as a template for organizing similar large, complex, multi stakeholder meetings in a sustainable way.

COP15 is responsible for generating 40,500 tons of emissions, including travel to and from Copenhagen for all the attendees. As per UN requirements, the host nation has to compensate for the local transport emissions, which only accounts for about 10% of the total.

But Denmark chose to make the entire event carbon-neutral, and so they’re spending around $1.02 million on carbon offsets, made via a project to replace polluting kilns in Bangladesh, which will cut more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.

As for the efforts to reduce emissions – Delegates are being encouraged to travel around on bikes and use public transit. A fleet of 150 limos powered by bioethanol, algae diesel or hydrogen is available. Bottled water is strictly frowned upon, and tap water has been made available in plenty throughout and around the Bella Conference Center. There’s a windmill outside the center producing electricity for use.

The prior preparation has been equally thorough. The MCI Group was charged with finding and allocating 75,000 hotel rooms for the conference. In the 18 months prior to the conference, MCI gave higher visibility on COP15’s online reservation pages to hotels which were already certified green, or were willing to do so. This resulted in the number of certified green hotels in Copenhagen jumping from 18% to 53% during this period.

All this being mapped out into the CSMP no doubt points to a very green future for the meetings industry, but the sweetest takeaway for the industry probably came from Jan-Christoph Napierski, the Head of Sustainability for COP15, in response to critics who accuse the conference of adding to climate change by filling an entire city with travelers enjoying luxurious hotels, restaurants and elite transport.

Says Napierski, “I think it is necessary that people meet face to face to come up with an agreement that everyone can sign.”

When the Head of Sustainability for the United Nations’ Climate Change Summit says its necessary to hold face-to-face meetings in order to get things done, that gives you a very big boost.

Combined with the widespread adoption of the Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol (CSMP) and similar frameworks for smaller corporate meetings, this could very well lead to a situation where the meetings industry is no longer at odds with environmentalists.

CSMP is scheduled for completion in February 2010, and is the result of a joint effort by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, VisitDenmark – the National tourism and meetings organisation, the City of Copenhagen, Wonderful Copenhagen Convention & Visitors bureau, pharmaceutical corporation Novo Nordisk, and the MCI Group.

Carnival Dream

Carnival Corp. has reached out to protect its Carnival, Princess, Holland America, Cunard and Seabourn lines reputations online by updating its paid search requirements and guidelines for third parties. Essentially, this means that when a consumer searches by brand name, they will find themselves at the official website as opposed to a travel agent’s.

It’s really nothing out of the ordinary, company officials insist — every retailer is now working to protect outsiders from bidding on their branded keywords. “When a consumer searches for Carnival, they’re seeking Carnival content and the goal is to provide the cleanest, straight path to the most comprehensive Carnival content available, which is on Carnival.com,” spokeswoman Jennifer De La Cruz told Travel Weekly.

The company plans to continue maintaining an agency locator database so online seekers aren’t necessarily encouraged to bypass third parties, and the decision didn’t cut off agencies’ ability to use its name in the ad text portion of search results. Of course, that’s allowable as long as the agency stays within the new guidelines in the first place.

Carnival Dream

Reaction from the travel agent ranks is mixed. Among the comments at Travel Weekly:

• The ruling makes sense for specific searches like “Carnival Dream,” but what about the person looking for generic terms carnival, dream?

• This is definitely another anti-agent move full of double talk and ill will … but it does level the playing field among those vying for a commission.

• The industry needs to ban together and protest, lest other operators get the same idea. In fact, why not boycott them for 24 hours and show them how powerful agents are?

• This idea is doomed to failure because cruise lines have far too many cabins to fill by themselves.

• Can Carnival legally require Google not to allow anyone else to use those names?

•What about an SEO company that doesn’t have a contract with Carnival and wants to buy key words containing the Carnival name or names of their ships?

• Hey, do the big OTA have to play by these rules, too? Huh, Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity? (Best line in the responses: “I can see some big online agencies with really snug pucker bands over this restriction.”)

My assessment as both a travel agent and business journalist? It’s a clever way to kill two birds with one stone. Yes, it does protect brand marketing efforts as they claim. Yes, it’s done in retail, where the customer and store have a direct relationship. But the fact that consumers will book directly on the site where they’ve been directed means Carnival pays no commission on those bookings — and that financial detail hasn’t escaped a single person in their C-suites. It makes sense on the bottom line and that will always be the engine that drives capitalism. The same capitalism that allows agents to come up with an answer rather than merely accept the spoonful of medicine.

Photography: Julie Sturgeon

If you think your tourism logo designer didn’t live up to your expectations, take comfort in the fact that your designer’s creativity didn’t land you in a soup like the ones listed below.

Exhibit 1 – France is the most visited nation in the world. 79.3 million people visited France in 2008, with the United States a distant second at 58 million and Spain in third place at 57.3 million.

Even so, Maison de la France (The French National Tourist Office, now known as Atout France), decided that they needed a rebranding, and so in Jan 2008, a new campaign named Rendezvous en France was unveiled, aimed at rebranding France as a tourism destination.

The new logo featured Marianne, an iconic symbol of the French Revolution. But something had gone wrong, and within a few months, they were forced to scrap the new logo and put out a modified one. What happened? Well, see for yourself…

Old Marianne (left) & New Marianne (right)

The popular upswell that forced Marianne to cover up is best expressed by Chris Dickman, who says ”There she is, in all her tragic former glory, an empty echo of the once-proud symbol of the French Republic, of those who fought and died for principles they held dear, which many still hold dear. Reduced to a bare-breasted come-on, a sleazy nod and a wink, worthy of some dubious vendor of dirty postcards in Pigalle.”

Exhibit 2 - The Tourism Federation of Wisconsin (TFW) was, until recently, known as the Wisconsin Tourism Federation (WTF). They switched over after being made aware by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that bloggers were making fun of the acronym.

Tourism Federation of Wisconsin logo - Old (left) & New (right)

The only problem – the coverup was worse than the crime, and the name and logo switch went viral on the internet – nearly a million results now on google for ‘wtf wisconsin.’

Exhibit 3 - Oak Park, Illinois, wanted a new tourism logo and a marketing campaign which highlighted their association with Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway.  But the logo designers stepped way out of line when they came up with this one. It was meant to be hip and edgy, and stir up a little bit of controversy. It did that very well.

Oak Park, Illinois Tourism logo

 Don McEachern, CEO of North Star Destination Strategies, which designed the logo for Oak Park, says the criticism of the logo being phallic shaped is a ‘little sophomoric.’

Paul Marobella, an Oak Park resident and Managing Director of Wirestone/Chicago - a digital marketing solutions agency, responds to McEachern.  Marobella says that “in my professional opinion the work is ’sophomoric’…They didn’t get to the core essence of what Oak Park is about and why people would want to visit…In addition, the people responsible for the campaign are ignoring the feedback they are getting about the campaign.”

Exhibit 4 - Ilfracombe, Devon is a town in the UK that recently rebranded itself with a logo and campaign meant to target big spenders.

Ilfracombe logo

According to Tessa Martin of Fresh Bread Marketing, which came up with the campaign and logo, it was meant to shift Ilfracombe’s focus from budget visitors to high spending groups. The swirl above the ‘i’ was supposed to reflect the twists and turns of the landscape and conjure up visions of coastal charm - seaside resorts, ice-cream, the harbour and fish.

They ended up with this headline in The Mirror – “Teen pregnancy hotspot Ilfracombe’s new logo looks like a human sperm.”

Say you’re walking down the street and you see something interesting – maybe a store, restaurant or a tourist landmark. To find out more about it, you don’t need to figure out and type in keywords, names, locations or anything at all. All you need is an Android phone and Google Goggles.

Google Goggles is a mobile visual search service that accepts pictures sent by you from your mobile phone, and sends you back related web search results.

Visual search using Google Goggles

Ideally, you can point your phone at anything – books, DVDs, barcodes, logos, even text, and of course – physical structures and buildings. Google says that that it doesn’t do so well for generic stuff like animals and furniture.

The service is currently available only for Android devices. But given how cool and geeky it is, it won’t be long before everyone’s phone is wearing Google Googles. I mean, the thing has enormous possibilities - facial recognition, comparison shopping, last minute reviews for walk-in attractions, restaurants and so on while you’re on the road, etc.

This service seems to be part of a trend, where Google is making a conscious effort to connect the real world with Google’s services. Last week saw the unveiling of window decals for Favorite Places on Google maps, under which each of the 100,000 U.S. businesses identified by Google as favorite places received a window decal with a unique QR code.

This code can be scanned by you with your phone to read reviews, star the business as your own favorite and more. So the Favorite Places decals and Google Goggles tie in nicely as a pair of services which help you use your mobile phone to retrieve (or provide) more information about an object or a place when you’re standing in front of it. 

Related posts:-
Bing Launches Visual Search

Is travel up or down?

So which is it: the travel industry is beginning to recover from the recession, or prices will continue to circle the bowl for the next 12 months?

Attendees at the U.S. Tour Operators Association annual meeting in Banff, Canada, this week are saying the future looks brighter. In fact, the past wasn’t so awful, as we haven’t seen a single USTOA tour operator go our of business in 2009, the association’s president announced. The secret, of course, was slashing prices to the bone in a survival move, and then having the business resolution to cancel unfilled tours. Seventy-five percent of survey respondents of a USTOA member survey in November predicted prices will be lower next year than in 2009 by an average of 5 percent, according to Travel Weekly.

And yet, 20 percent of member operators surveyed said that business had already turned a corner. Nearly 70% predicted a turnaround in 2010; of those, more than 30% saw business picking up in the first quarter, nearly 25% predicted a second-quarter pickup and more than 10% said the turnaround would not occur until the third quarter. Only 15 percent don’t see a recovery in 2010.

Meanwhile, Travelocity is putting out press releases showing its most recent data for hotel rooms booked over a holiday (December 20, 2009 to January 3, 2010) shows average daily rates have been falling as the popular vacation period nears. A week-by-week analysis shows that over a 14 week period ending November 28, overall ADR has dropped from $181 per night to $150 per night. The good news for the lodging industry: international hotel rates are rising for the holidays.

Over at rival Hotwire, the 2010 predictions say that hotel prices will continue to drop, especially in larger cities like Las VEgas, Miami a, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where rooms are already 55 percent off. Prices will stablize f0r the airlines, thanks to capacity cuts, but they’re not rising any time soon. Car rental prices, however, will be through the roof.

For the first time since CLIA started publishing stats, the number of ships setting sail from US ports fell year on year. In 2004, US embarkations accounted for 77% of all cruises. In 2008, that had fallen to 69%, says Travel Weekly.

Rooms for sale?

PhocusWright didn’t predict good things for the travel agent sector in 2008, even before the recession woes hit. Still, John Pittman of ASTA believes 2010 will be a year of recovery, with many agencies saying they expect to rebound by spring or summer. (Corporate travel, other members say, will lag until 2011.) How did Travel Agent’s editor sum up his state-of-the-industry interview with ASTA officials this week? “Despite the loss of 1,400 agency locations and real challenges to be faced in 2010, travel agents who provide value to suppliers by creating demand for travel and provide valued services to consumers, the future looks good.”

Well, that’s not especially definitive — go-getters and hard-core salespeople will always be able to make a success of the impossible. So the question isn’t whether individuals can make it but whether the service itself has a fighting chance.

Photography: Julie Sturgeon

Redmond based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced that the 2010 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC10) will be held in Washington DC. The conference, which takes place July 12-15, 2010, will bring in 10,000 Microsoft partners and employees.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at WPC

WPC is an annual event, with the first one being held in New Orleans in 2003, as was last year’s conference. In between, WPC has been to Houston, Denver, Boston, Minneapolis, and Toronto.

The conference is very well attended because Microsoft relies on its partner network to deliver and service applications and solutions to business, government, healthcare and other enterprises.

Nearly 95% of the corporation’s $60 billion in total annual revenue is generated by its network of more than 640,000 partners worldwide.

Partners will travel to DC from all 50 states and more than 120 countries. According to Destination DC, the conference is going to require around 30,000 hotel room nights and will pump $14.5 million in delegate spending into the economy.

Washington DC tourism officials are ecstatic and Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO, Destination DC, says that “This is a huge win for the city and a prime example of how our entire hospitality industry is working together to secure short-term business.”

He also noted that Microsoft is encouraging their partners to get out and explore the city and bring along their families. Pam Salzer, senior director of Worldwide Partner Marketing at Microsoft, confirmed that by adding that “It’s an exciting city with a powerful brand of its own, and we really want our partners to get out and get to know DC.”

Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner, Allison Watson and many other executives will be present at WPC10 to share their vision and strategies for the company.

Pat Jenkins gave Sean Keener a few questions to answer about his take on the innovators who presented Center Stage at PhocusWright, key takeaways from the conference and companies to watch during the next year.

Skyscanner’s recent poll of things that irk fliers most reveals some predictable but deep-seated hatreds:

A turn-off turn off

1. Don’t lie about flight times, said 30 percent of the participants. “Telling you a flight will be 30 minutes late, then another 30 minutes late, then another – when they know full well that the plane hasn’t even left its departure airport – is extremely annoying and downright dishonest,” Barry Smith, Skyscanner co-founder and director, said in a press release. The last time the company ran this survey, travelers pointed a finger at their fellow passengers with BO and bad breath. Apparently, being lied to is now more disgusting than poor hygiene habits.

2. “The captain has asked that you turn off all electronic devices including cell phones and MP3 players.” Yah, we know. We’re sick of hearing this announcement over the PA system,  griped 20 percent of those surveyed. Not only is the repetitious phrase annoying to the nth degree, it doesn’t make sense.

“It seems strange that airport security will confiscate an innocent bottle of water, yet we are permitted to board with these potentially lethal electronic devices. If an iPod could bring down a plane, would we really be allowed to fly with them?”  Sam Baldwin, Skyscanner’s travel editor, asked at Travel Mole.

3. If the flight attendant wakes a sleeping passenger to ask if they’d like to buy headphones, an alcoholic beverage or duty-free shopping, she will honk off 17 percent of the plane.

4. “Ear piercing trumpet calls and bragging about landing on time” irritates the snot out of 12 percent of the flying public answering this survey. Looks like a byproduct of #1, in my assessment.

Correct use of bins

5. Long security ques bug the other 8 percent of travelers, although to be fair, I don’t know what airlines could do about that specifically. It’s not their fault more than one flight will be using the airport this afternoon, or that the family in front of you can’t figure out how to take off their shoes and put them in a tray on the conveyor belt.

Frankly, the survey misses a pet peeve common among the folks I travel with. Or maybe it’s just me and my companions nod to shut me up. Airlines should get better control of the boarding process. The overhead bins are for wheeled luggage of the proper size. Briefcases, purses, diaper bags, coats, go under the seat in front of you. I realize the attendants make this announcement every time (see #2 on the iPod ban) but their failure to enforce it gums up the entire procedure. You have folks trying to store luggage 17 rows away because some pig in their row loaded stashed a kid’s backpack or wadded a suit jacket in the the only space the next passenger can use. And the flight attendant is aiding and abetting this behavior by helping the poor soul find an inconvenient place for his bag.

I’d pay good money to see a courageous flight attendant reach up there and start yanking that stuff down, yelling, “Which idiot left his courtesy and common sense at home?” If you haul on two items, then it’s at the sacrifice of your foot space … it’s not like there’s any there even without the luggage.

Now it’s your turn: Spill your biggest traveling peeves — and extra bonus points if you have a solution.

Photography: Brianfit (Flickr), jetalone (Flickr)

Irish budget carrier Ryanair and their CEO Michael O’Leary have cultivated a reputation for controversial innovations and colorful language. An O’Leary press conference is very well covered by the media, mostly because it promises controversy and more than a few unprintables.

Ryanair

Examples include O’Leary recently calling the Copenhagen climate summit (COP15) a ”talking shop for imbeciles.” Asked what he would do if he were in charge of BA, he says he’d be putting out his CV looking for a new job, and that the BA board was more interested in knighthoods than running an airline.

Ryanair reps haven’t been too far behind their CEO in brash talk. Aftar an Irish blogger named Jason Roe posted about an alleged bug in Ryanair’s booking system, one Ryanair rep called him a ‘lunatic’ and an ‘idiot’ and another rep added that Roe had a ‘pathetic life.’

For those who discount all this as mere barking, Ryanair’s ideas bite even harder. Their recent schemes include doing away with airport check-in kiosks and charging for checked-in bags. They’re also mulling charging for on-board toilets and offering standing-room tickets. 

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, O’Leary explains the method behind Ryanair’s madness. About the baggage check-in charge and toilets, he says it’s not about collecting ancillary revenue.

The baggage charge, he says, helped persuade Ryanair passengers to travel with carry-on luggage only, which meant the airline could do away with airport check-in and shift to a 100% online check-in system. This in turn means that passengers don’t ever get stuck in a Ryanair check-in queue, and this helps set Ryanair apart as more convinient than other airines.

Explaining the toilet charge, O’Leary says that again, it’s not about the money. It will train passengers to use toilets in the terminals before and after flights, which means the airline can replace a few toilets with more seats and reduce fares some more.

The standing-room idea apparently has no ulterior motive, and is simply meant as a way of offering dirt-cheap airfare by ripping off seats in the last 10 rows and offering 100 tickets for standing passengers.

From an investor’s point of view, it’s hard to argue with the results of Ryanair’s pavlovian policies, inspite of what O’Leary says about not being interested in the extra charges.

Ryanair’s ancillary revenue grew from 8% of total revenue last year to 20% this year. Ryanair carried 66 million passengers with a 15% jump in year-on-year traffic, resulting in revenues of €1.8bn with an 80% increase in net profits. As of now, Ryanair is the single-largest carrier of international passengers in the world.

But some things don’t change… At the end of a rather sensible interview, O’Leary partially redeems his reputation by answering a question about what people expect from a Ryanair flight experience. He says “You’re not getting free food. We don’t want your check-in bags. We’re not going to put you up in hotels because your grammy died… It’s a commodity. It’s not some life-changing sexual experience, which is what the other high-fare airlines have tried to convince you that it is.”  

Ryanair photo by Jon Gos

In June 2009, New York based Oyster Hotel Reviews launch was announced, backed with $6.4 million in Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures. Oyster’s plan: to provide professional hotel reviews for consumers, written by mainstream travel journalists after in-person visits to the property.

Oyster Hotel Reviews

They promptly hired 20 reporters and at least three editors, who were sent out to stay in and review hotels with all-expenses paid trips.

In September, Bain agreed to an extended $4 million Series A round, bringing the total to $10.4 million.

But $10 million doesn’t get you what it used to. As the year draws to a close, Oyster has dramatically changed its trajectory, with 17 staffers being laid off, including over half the reporters. Elie Seidman, Oyster CEO and co-founder, says the layoffs are part of a plan to focus on “winning in the markets we’ve already covered” and slow down the rate of new market coverage.

Fact remains that slow growth wasn’t part of the announced plans in September. This chapter in the Oyster story is one we have seen before: failure of travel editorial based exclusively on a direct-to-consumer model. Examples of prior failed editorial efforts: Gorp (now owned by Orbitz) and most recently in the rise and fall of Professional Travel Guide (formerly – owned by travel content giant Northstar Travel Media).  The issue isn’t whether a travel editorial site can create a compelling experience. They can. It’s that a direct-to-consumer (only) business model can’t support the editorial costs.

And perhaps direct-to-consumer (only) can’t even support the operating costs of a site when they get the content free. Despite getting “free” content from Northstar. Professional Travel Guide was unsuccessful.

Let’s clearly separate editorial-for-consumers-only businesses from other successful travel editorial businesses that are doing well.  NorthStar’s core business model is solid. They, and others like Frommers and Fodors have built lasting brands and profitable business models based on licensing and book sales. Others like 10Best and wcities are profitable solely licensing their content.  Supplier licensing drives the business model of other editorial companies like VFM Leonardo and Tripfilms.

As Oyster starts its search for additional funding and embarks on the path to profitability, it will rekindle the debate over user generated content vs. professional/editorial content (see Dennis Schaal, Troy Thompson, Pauline Frommer, Robert Flynn).

Oyster Hotel Reviews was differentiating itself from TripAdvisor as a source of authentic hotel reviews.

Oyster vs Tripadvisor

Professional Travel Guide’s failure and Oyster’s slowdown will likely tilt the favor in favor of the UGC proponents {disclosure: as a semantic search engine that searches over 5,000 sites including editorial sites like Frommers and Fodors as well as consumer UGC sites like Yahoo! Travel, TripAdvisor, we are agnostic in this debate – other then knowing different consumers want both types of content at different times but generally most want the ‘gestalt’ necessary to make a confident decision}.

The blogosphere hasn’t been kind to Oyster, but Oyster’s reviews are of very high quality and we hope Oyster is able to raise additional funding and create a viable business.

What do you think? Can standalone consumer-only travel editorial sites create a viable business? Or does new travel largely come from consumers in the future?