Travel Industry

Now Fido can enjoy the

Not long ago, I wrote about conflicts between passengers with pets in airline cabins and passengers with allergies. Today, I read about a new service that could help end the quandary of how to transport Fido without anyone suffering: A new pet-only airline.

While conventional airlines limit pets to under the seat (if they are small enough) or the cargo hold (if they are hardy enough to withstand extreme temperatures and other dangers and discomforts), Pet Airways has remodeled planes to accommodate pets right in the main cabin. Pet Airlways’ Web site has been periodically stretched beyond capacity by potential customers, showing that even in this economy, a great idea that solves a real problem can launch a travel industry start-up.

While it might seem strange for such a boutique service to debut during a recession — after all, doggie daycares and spas had their heyday in headier economic times — such a service could actually be a money saver. Without it, travelers who didn’t want larger dogs in cargo had to contemplate driving to their destination, which could certainly be more costly in time and money than Pet Airways’ starting fare of $149.

The only big drawback I can see is that owners can’t fly Pet Airways along with their pets, which could mean worries (although there is an attendant in the cabin) and, since the airline flies to smaller airports, an extra car trip to pick up the pet.

Despite the fact that Pet Airways seems to offer a nice solution to help both humans and pets fly comfortably, any mention of pets in the air seems dogged by controversy. On the LA Times’ Web site, the comments section of an article about Pet Airways degenerated into the same old battle over who is more important, pets or human passengers with allergies.

Photo by Paul Schultz, used via Creative Commons license.

I spend a lot of time everyday reading the travel industry tea leaves (press releases, blog posts, twitter feeds…), and there’s something funny going on the last month or so – people are talking about opportunities and ideas and product launches. When did the travel industry stop whining and pick itself up off the mat? All the roads lead back to Atlanta – where the U.S. Travel Association’s Travelcom ‘09 was held from March 31- April 2.

Roger Dow at Travelcom

That doesn’t mean Roger Dow was handing out magic potion, but what the 40 or so high-profile speakers shared with the assembled delegates seems to have struck a chord. The speakers laid out clear and simple business practices which put them ahead of the competition and allowed them to cash in on untapped segments.

Here’s a brief round-up of the highlights of Travelcom ‘09, including video interviews with CEOs present at the conference who talked to Elliott Ng, VP Marketing at Uptake.

First out of the gate was Forrester Research’s Henry Harteveldt, with a keynote entitled There’s No Room For Maybe. It was a call to action for the travel industry to overcome uncertainty and help consumers make more confident decisions and spend money on travel. The result? The Travelmuse Yaycations Calculator, which made a pretty big splash in the media.

I do believe that the Yaycations concept is a direct result of Harteveldt’s stirring call to action. And here’s the video interview with Travelmuse CEO Kevin Fliess while he was at Travelcom.

Another very well received speaker was Christine Petersen, CMO of TripAdvisor. She scored bigtime when she credited the Beatles as the role model for TripAdvisor’s strategy. TripAdvisor also won the Established Innovator Award at Travelcom. A lot of people present at the conference took their cues from TripAdvisor, and are working hard to re-tool their strategies in areas as diverse as meta-search, social media outreach and brand marketing, and international presence.

Tripit CEO Gregg Brockway, in this video interview, explains his vision for integration across systems and tying information together across travel providers, and shares his thoughts on the economy.

Dealbase CEO Sam Shank, who also founded TravelPost.com, outlined strategies for dealing with a challenging economy.

David Sifry, CEO/Founder of Offbeat Guides, served as the best role model for the travel industry’s new gung-ho spirit. In his video interview, he says “because he just started, his business has nowhere to go but up.” He calls this period of time the “new normal.”

This from the man who founded Technorati. Sifry’s Zen-like state of calm and sunny optimism about his foray into the cutthroat world of travel publishing, while in the middle of the biggest recession since the Great Depression, sets the tone for the travel industry. And the USTA and Travelcom organizers deserve credit for getting all these people together, so they could share their experience and vision, and help put the travel industry back on the right course.

Photo courtesy U.S. Travel Assocation – www.tia.org/

Ready to transport thousands of U.S. tourists?

The U.S. Travel Association has commended Pres. Obama for lifting restrictions on Cuban Americans’ family visits to Cuba. And why not? The news is expected to bring an uptick for at least in one tiny neighborhood of the travel industry — the charter companies that fly from Miami and New York to Cuba.

To be sure, Cuban Americans comprise only 0.5 percent of the U.S. population. It would be a much bigger boost for airlines and cruise lines if travel opens up for the other 99.5 percent. Will that happen? There is a bill in Congress that would do just that, but it’s uncertain if it will have enough votes to pass.

Time magazine says lifting the travel ban would be a good step toward engagement with Cuba. Others simply wonder if Cuba could handle an onslaught of curious (and demanding) American travelers.

That is a valid concern. A friend of mine once led a university-organized group of highly educated and well-off Americans on a tour of Cuba, and she came back exhausted by her clients’ unsatisfied demands. One group member was outraged that she could not be met at the plane by a wheelchair as she was in U.S. airports — never mind that after years of the U.S. embargo, medical supplies of all kind are in short supply on the island.

Then again, despite living in a Communist economy, Cubans are as entrepreneurial as anyone else, if not more so. Cuba allows its citizens to host tourists in their homes in exchange for rent and feed them in cozy home-based restaurants, where some of the best food on the island can be had. These small business people have already been providing a large part of the country’s tourism infrastructure, and this is a system that could quickly expand to meet demand.

If the travel ban is lifted for all Americans, it could be a great thing for Cuba, for adventurous Americans, and for the airlines that would bring them there. There would certainly be bumps in the road, especially when American high expectations collide with reality in a country where nearly everything is in short supply and customer service is a relic of the pre-Castro past.

Probably the best thing American companies organizing trips to a newly available Cuba could do is manage expectations. If travelers are made aware that they need to bring their own granola bars and that they probably won’t be able to buy a swimsuit larger than a size medium*, things should go more smoothly. And the best part is, as American tourism dollars flow in — and especially if the trade embargo were lifted along with the travel ban — the hardships that would bother Americans would quickly begin to ease.

* When we traveled to Cuba, my husband forgot his bathing suit and searched all over Havana for one that came in XL. We tried the gift shop of a fancy hotel, where the saleswoman looked him over and giggled, “You are very fat.” Not an insult in a country where getting dessert on a regular basis means you’ve really made it!

Photo by Matthaisschack, used via Creative Commons license.

When U.S. officials advised citizens against traveling to Mexico due to the swine flu outbreak there, it was another hard hit to the onetime vacation mecca to our south. (The first was the State Department warning about drug violence.) But it looks like the whole travel industry is getting hit too — shares of the major airlines and cruise lines fell hard.

Mexico season is winding down as the weather improves up here, but if this flu keeps spreading, will Europeans and Asians steer clear of the whole continent for the all-important summer travel season? America already sounds a lot less fun than it used to, what with our general malaise and whole regions (like Detroit) in decay. You know the risk-averse Japanese, at least, are not going to go on vacation anywhere the least bit germy.

Most of us would rather pack bathing suits than face masks on vacation.

For a prediction of how bad this flu could be for travel, just look at the SARS outbreak of 2003, where travel to Asia plummeted by as much as 80 percent.

At least it looks like the airlines are waiving those big change fees for the time being, allowing travelers to follow the advice to steer clear of Mexico. Whether would-be vacationers can get hotel refunds, however, is another story — even if they had trip insurance. According to the link above, many policies cover illness, but only if the traveler is actually sick. Not if they just don’t want to get sick.

Personally, the whole thing just makes me happier about my own modest summer vacation destination of rural Wisconsin. Even though it’s tough to escape contact with world travelers anywhere these days — even the rural community we frequent has dairy workers from Mexico who may well have just returned from a trip to visit family — getting a little more personal space and fresh air out in the country sounds better than ever right now.

Photo by hmerinomx, used via Creative Commons license.

Marriott facing Boycotts

Quietly and under the radar, hoteliers are being forced to choose sides in the political battles between left and right. And the stakes are incredibly high – One mistake, and it could mean a one way ticket to bankruptcy resulting from boycotts and negative publicity. Marriott International (NYSE:MAR) is bearing the brunt of this new threat, and getting hit from both left and right.

On one side, Marriott faces a call for boycotts by Life Decisions International, a pro-life watchdog group which tracks corporate supporters of the giant abortion group Planned Parenthood. Included in LDI’s list are Carlson Companies (Radisson Hotels, Regent Hotels, etc.), and the Marriott brands (Courtyard Hotels, Fairfield Inn, Renaissance Hotels & Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, etc.). LDI providers contact information in it’s list, so their members can contact the offending companies and let them know that they will no longer be making use of the company’s products and/or services.

It’s a pretty easy way to intimidate companies who donate to Planned Parenthood, who apparently has lost over $40 million because over 200 corporations have agreed to stop funding them as a direct result of boycott threats from LDI.

So, ok, it works, but the problem for Marriott is that they’re also being boycotted by the left. Bill Marriott is a Mormon, and the anti-Prop. 8 activists in California found in Marriott International an easy target and a way to unleash their anger against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which mobilized public opinion successfully to push through the controversial Prop. 8. That resulted in a nationwide call for boycotts of all Marriott Hotels, and Bill Marriott himself had to step in and clarify the company’s position vis-a-vis the LDS Church.

But it’s not over and done with, and every time these two fights heat up, Marriott is going to find itself in the crossfire all over again. And this is not something which has just hit Marriott. A few years back, there was a big flap and boycott calls over the Georgetown Marriott’s decision to reject an event being hosted by the ‘People’s Truth Forum’.

Hilton Hotels Corp., which is comparable to Marriott in size and scope, doesn’t seem to have the same problem. At least not on such a big scale. They used to get boycott calls from family values groups offended by Paris Hilton’s antics, but even that has stopped after Hilton Hotels Corp. was purchased by private equity group Blackstone. Hyatt has a few problems like the Marriott, but these are limited to individual hotels, and the brand hasn’t been targeted.

Not to say that Marriott is doing something wrong, but right or wrong (or left), they’re embroiled in things which shouldn’t have anything to do with the business of running hotels.

Photo by Authentic Organizations.

I could afford a Mexican beach vacation. For one.

In my other life (well, one of them) I’m a frugal blogger, so I am all about the power of budgeting and saving for the good things in life. I love to travel but with two kids and a third on the way there is not much extra money kicking around for trips.

So I was intrigued by TravelMuse’s new Yaycations calculator, which promises to help “discover the vacation budget you never knew you had,” by helping you save money on other stuff. Then the site inspires you to follow through by showing you actual vacation packages you could purchase with your planned savings.

The calculator walks you through common spending categories and asks you to select certain things to sacrifice. For instance, you can choose to sacrifice one $3.50 latte a week and earmark the saved $182 for your vacation budget, then forgo one restaurant lunch a week to sock away an additional $364 to $2500.

Once you’ve worked your way through the 20 spending categories, Yaycations helps you figure out what kind of vacation you could buy with what you hope to save. Promise to give up a lot of expensive restaurant meals, and TravelMuse has you in Kauai; only give up a few lattes and it will suggest something more local.

I tried the Yaycations calculator to try to find vacation money for my own family, but unfortunately our budget is already so close to the bone that there is little I’m willing to give up. I love cafe lattes but rarely buy them (in fact I am thinking of cashing in my SwagBucks from an online promotion for StarBucks cards just to give myself the occasional treat). I don’t currently have a gym membership, and I don’t have cable. I get most of my beauty and personal care supplies for free by using coupons and working the rewards system at CVS.

I did manage to find a couple things to give up: taking my kids out to lunch once a week (estimated cost of $7), a monthly DVD rental ($4), one tech toy per year ($200), 1 pair Payless shoes ($25), 1 beer per week for my husband to give up ($5).

Those hypothetical sacrifices gave me $897 for a vacation. Then Yaycations showed me where I could go for that. Actually, it gave me a range of choices including Carmel and San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. The only problem is that I was talking about our whole household budget, and the choices it gave me were under $897 PER PERSON.

So I guess by making a few sacrifices, I could take myself on vacation and leave the husband and kids at home. Which actually doesn’t sound too bad.

I think TravelMuse’s new tool is a fun way to get you into the mindset for budgeting for a vacation, and would work great for folks who have room in their budgets for discretionary spending. Of course, YOU’RE the one who has to follow through with going out for lunch one less time each week or skipping your monthly mani/pedi.

Photo by Carrie Kirby.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Earlier this year, I had a lively Twitter and blogosphere conversation with Stephen Joyce, Todd Lucier, Sean Keener, and Nitin Karandikar, and others about what to do with Corporate Twitter Accounts.  We even asked Sheila Scarborough of family travel blog Family Travellogue to write a post to call the Tourism industry to action, lest they be consigned to an ignominious and irrelevant end as their more social media savvy competitors slowly choke them to…

So what have we done with our corporate account?  Errr…

Here’s what one of our blog friends/partners had to say in a DM to me:

Thanks, MudslideMama!  What are “friends” for, if not telling you what you can’t see in the mirror for yourself?

Open Thread time!

So what do you think we should do with this account?  Yes, yes, of course we should Tweet more often.  And be transparent and authentic. And follow all this good Twitter advice for companies.

But what do you think WE should do?  Thanks!  Looking forward to your advice!

You can also help us by Retweet this call for help on Twitter:

RT @elliottng Open Thread: What should we do with the @UpTake Twitter Account? http://bit.ly/myTSg

PhoCusWright

PhoCusWright has published the Top 10 Travel Technology Trends for 2009. Every year, PhoCusWright takes a fresh look at the technologies and innovations that have the potential to drive change in the travel, tourism and hospitality in this annual publication.Each of the 10 trends from this report, listed below, has been weighed by PhoCusWright experts for its business value and potential to change the face of travel.

Bob Offutt, senior technology analyst and editorial director, Technology Edition, explained that “Innovation is at the very heart of the travel industry-from the beginnings of air travel and global hotel brands to GDSs and OTAs. These ten technology trends will reshape the way consumers search shop and buy travel.”

1. Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist
2. The Entire Trip Experience Will Be “Informationized”
3. Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators
4. Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools
5. Technologies Will Continue to Converge
6. A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market
7. Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution
8. Still Searching…for Better Search
9. Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field
10. Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront

The complete article, with technology overviews, in-depth strategic implications and examples of each trend, is available here (purchase required), but I’ll give you a sneak peek at the kind of stuff you’ll find inside.

The first trend, about investment, points out that 23% of private equity companies, 5% of venture capitalists and 25% of other investors are actually planning to increase investment in the travel sector in 2009. According to their survey results, investors still believe there is plenty of room for innovation, considering the large gap between Travel 1.0 and Travel 2.0 functionality.

Examples cited for this trend include the funds raised by AdventureLink, TVtrip, Uptake and Tripwolf (when I started writing this post, I had no idea Uptake was mentioned in the report). Summary of it is that if you have the confidence in your innovation/product, now is the time to hit the road, so to speak.

The second trend, about the trip experience being informationized, details the improvements and opportunities in local information access tools and content, which have enabled service providers to hang on to travelers even mid-trip, for things like local transport, restaurant reservations, trip changes or cancellations, etc. Leveraging existing content with GPS, tools from Google and the abilities of devices like Apple’s iPhone has resulted in the opening up of a huge local content market, and provides more opportunities for offering services from the time you leave home on a trip until you return.

And this area of development is also benefiting from additional trends that are improving the ability to rapidly deploy new capabilities, like Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and acceptance of Open Source in production applications.

We’re on to trend three here, and if I go on, PhoCusWright won’t take kindly to my considering all their hard work as open source, so… if you want to read the rest, you can get the full report here – http://www.phocuswright.com/report/09techtrend

Might as well get some late season skiing in while waiting for the job offers to come in.

Ever have a friend who gets laid off then spends three months traveling the world? How many Monday mornings did you spend half-wishing the lay-off fairy would visit you, too?

OK, with the prospect of replacing that job more daunting than ever, maybe you’re not as jealous these days. And yet, things are getting better for the “pink slip traveler.” According to the Chicago Tribune, ski resorts and other travel companies are offering discounts specifically for laid-off or furloughed workers who want to take a breather before jumping into the depressing job market.

For the travel industry, it’s a smart move. Hotels, airlines and resorts are anxious for customers, even at discounted rates. Here’s a population that has the time to travel, and some even have the money in the form of severance packages.

Whether it’s a good personal finance decision to take advantage of such an offer is another matter. It really depends on your personal situation; a single person with a savings cushion might be perfectly safe spending some of her severance package on a cruise. A more radical change, like putting one’s possessions in storage and leaving one’s apartment to live abroad for a few months, might even help stretch the severance pay while giving the economy time to improve.

On the other hand, for many of us the right thing to do if we lose a job in this economy is to retrain, interview like crazy or even take a stopgap job at Starbucks to keep our families in health insurance. If we can find a Starbuck’s that’s hiring, that is.

For folks in the latter group, more companies are following Hyundai’s lead and letting people cancel their trips if they lose their jobs. JetBlue and several cruise companies are now offering this option, and there’s always travel insurance with lay-off provisions, as I blogged earlier.

In fact, one plan even gives customers the option of canceling a cruise if they get laid off during the cruise. Not sure how that would work — do you get in a lifeboat and paddle back to shore?

Photo by Joao Maximo, used via Creative Commons license.

For our packed travel blogging panel at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference in Austin, my co-presenter Pam Mandel and I put together a surprise for our attendees – a travel swag/gift bag.

We wanted to put some of our favorite goodies into the hands of our digitally-chatty attendees, so we included magazines that we’ve written for, information about books we like and products and services that we support (many of them based in Austin or Central Texas.)

So many companies were unfailingly gracious in response to our requests, and I’d like to show specifically why reaching out to online travel enthusiasts and travel bloggers is a good marketing and public relations move for a wide variety of businesses. Every link below is one more effort to land a roundhouse punch against “there’s not enough ROI (Return on Investment) in social media marketing.”

First, travel blogging panel attendees were enthused about getting an unexpected gift. From a SXSW overview blog post by content aggregators OneSpot:

“The travel blogging panel (#sxswtravel) had grab bags for each attendant ready on our chairs when we walked in. I felt like a Fashion Week attendee! The bag had better swag than the official Interactive [one] (did anyone else get the leather notepad [provided by Condé Nast Traveler.] How sweet was that!)”

Individuals at the panel reacted to the surprise bag on Twitter.

• Bill Hunt (a global marketing guy) liked it.
• Small business expert Becky McCray commented on it.
• Travel writer and Traveling Mama Shannon Hurst Lane talked about it.

Then, panel attendees tweeted about specific bag items.

• Many liked the sample pralines from local Austin company Lammes Candies – traveler CouchSurfingOri talked about the Lammes habanero praline, and so did hedge fund talent recruiter Kim Haynes and Download Squad tech writer CJClark.
• Krista Parry (Park City, Utah resorts PR and marketing) cheered the stickers provided by the Alltop.com Travel topic channel.
• Canadian travel internet marketing guru Todd Lucier was ready to cash in his bag’s Blue Bell Ice Cream free pint certificate, and he told his friends about it.
• The SXSWi Guide talked about Texas Highways magazine.
• And I talked about several of the companies – here’s my tweet on Austin SegCity Segway tours.

So what? What’s the reach?

Well, if you add up the Twitter follower numbers for each person that I’ve linked to above, that’s a total of 23,279 followers of just a few people tweeting about a tech conference giveaway bag.

The products and companies involved with this bag can also be searched and found on the the Flickr photo-sharing Web site, because I described the bag and linked to every contributor in:

• this photo of the contents (also seen at the top of this post.)
• this photo of Pam and I with the bags, recently also added to the City of Round Rock Flickr photo pool because their CVB provided the bags.
• this photo of the bags set out in chairs before the panel started, also now in the City of Round Rock pool.

(I threw in a Flickr photo of bag contributor Driskill Hotel’s historic bar, with a link to them, of course.)

Finally, this travel panel was not confined to listeners inside the Austin Convention Center; it had, and still has, a reach outside the room.

It was livestreamed to the Web via Qik on a cell phone. Travel enthusiasts around the world watched it as it happened (including my boss at the BootsnAll Travel Network, Sean Keener, who watched from New Zealand) and it’s now archived for anyone to see at any time:

• Part One of the panel video (119 views as of this date.)
• Part Two of the panel video (143 views as of this date.)

If a business is looking for a way to get eyes on their high-quality product or service AND take advantage of the power of Web and word-of-mouth marketing, I heartily recommend investigating how to connect with social media-savvy travelers.

Here are the Web sites of every company that contributed to the bag – smart marketing folks, every one of them.

*** Condé Nast Traveler
*** National Geographic Traveler
*** Texas Highways
*** Lammes Candies
*** Tesoros Trading Company
*** Blue Bell Creameries
*** BootsnAll Travel Network
*** Austin, Texas CVB
*** Round Rock, Texas CVB
*** SegCity Austin Segway Tours
*** Yapta ticket price tracking
*** Moo.com printing
*** Alltop.com
*** Driskill Hotel
*** Austin Museum of Art
*** “Historic Hotels of Texas” guidebook, by Liz Carmack
*** Office of the Governor, Texas Economic Development including Texas tourism
*** “Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune” guidebook, by Tim Leffel