Travel Industry

Elliott Ng will represent  UpTake during the PhocusWright 2009 Conference, Blogger Summit Town Hall on Wednesday, November 18th at 9:00 a.m. Ten topics were suggested by the panelists for discussion during a planning meeting a few weeks ago. We decided to collect the best posts and examples about each subject and showcase them. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

How does social media marketing fit into your overall marketing plan? How to get corporate execs to buy into social media as part of your strategy? Some of the examples provided below demonstrate how corporate execs are warming up to social media marketing and factoring it into an overall strategy.

Lonelyplanet

Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/) – The dominant publisher of travel guide books is rapidly shifting from books written by LP writers to digital content partly aggregated from the community.  As a result, Lonely Planet has been ramping up their Thorn Tree Community Forum, factoring it into the future development of their main business, and encouraging their website visitors, guide book readers and purchasers to become contributors.

Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg says the shift in focus towards the community and digital content is part of a plan to provide solutions to consumers’ needs, instead of being only a content provider.

Carnival

Carnival (www.carnival.com) – The Carnival Cruise Line, as mentioned here, is aggregating UGC on Twitter and Flickr published by cruise passengers while on-board Carnival’s ships, and keeping up the engagement via John Heald’s blog, and CarnivalConnect.com - an in-house social media platform for their community, and FunShipIsland.com – an interactive virtual tour. All three sites now routinely bring in over 1 million visitors each, and are being used by Carnival for strategic brand positioning.

But it didn’t start like that. John Heald started blogging to create buzz for the launch of a new ship. CarnivalConnect was launched to encourage guests to send invitations to their friends and family. Carnival saw the potential across these platforms, and merged it all into an overall strategy of showing new visitors what’s happening on board, and allowing new and prospective visitors to engage with loyal customers via social media.

Banff

Banff Lake Louise Tourism (www.banfflakelouise.com/) – BLLT was chugging along like most other tourism organizations in Canada, when the Banff Crasher Squirrel popped into a photo and triggered a viral tsunami wave on social media platforms – over 300 blog-posts, 5,000+ tweets, and 650+ facebook posts.

BLLT understood the potential early, and set up a YouTube video, a twitter account for the squirrel, and a Facebook page, along with a search-engine marketing campaign with keyword “squirrel.” End result – $3 million in ad value, reaching out to 80 million people in North America and Europe via online channels, print and TV. The squirrel is now on billboards marketing Banff, and has established a permanent presence on social media platforms.

Affinia

Affinia Hotels (www.affinia.com/) – For hotels wanting to wade into social media marketing, Affinia offers a valuable lesson – It’s all about listening, and responding on time. They’re all over Twitter, talking to their guests, offering assistance and answering queries.  Their My Affinia program allows guests to customize and pre-select in-room amenities – from pillows to iPods. Items are added on to this list or modified based on the feedback that the Affinia reps get from the social media chatter. 

Another good example of a hotel implementing social media marketing as part of an overall strategy is the Roger Smith hotel – details here. The fact that Chris Brogan gives them high marks for listening to their customers and being social-media savvy is a testament to their success at playing the game.

Southwest

Southwest (www.southwest.com/) – Southwest Airlines looks at social media as an extension of their customer engagement offline. Their ‘Nuts About Southwest’ blog is a lot more popular than any blog owned or run by any other airline. The Blog-o-spondent video contest run on the blog went massively viral last year. The blog is updated constantly by a team of Southwest employees.

Newly uploaded videos can be seen every week on Southwest’s  youtube channel. Thousands of networked Southwest employees form a web that stretches into every corner of Linkedin. Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist,  Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines, says that the social media success is simply an online extension of their corporate culture of engaging in authentic relations and conversations with customers.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic (www.virgin-atlantic.com/) – Richard Branson’s mothership offers a valuable lesson in course correction. After taking flak last year over the firing of 13 employees who posted derogatory remarks about customers on Virgin’s corporate Facebook page, Virgin seems to have retooled their approach.

The airline now has a cross-functional Social Spaces Forum group comprised of personnel from eCommerce, PR, customer relations, product and service, marketing etc. The team works closely to understand the social marketplace, shape the direction for activity in social spaces and develop a framework for the business in this area, according to Allison Wightman, Head of Marketing Systems, Virgin Atlantic Airways.    

United

United (www.united.com/) – Again, a lesson in how to turn around a bad situation on the social media networks. Only, United hasn’t done it yet. I’m sure you’ve heard the viral Dave Carroll video on Youtube, which the Canadian singer created after United broke his guitar and refused to pay for it.

In a similar situation, Electronic Arts was hit with a user-uploaded video of a glitch in their game which showed Tiger Woods walking on water. EA promptly responded to this with a professional ad video featuring  Tiger walking on water, which in turn again went viral and nullified all the negative impact of the first video.

As Julie Sturgeon notes, the right approach for United would have been to co-opt Dave Carroll and turn it into an ad, or put out a video of their own in response. 

AA

American Airlines (www.aa.com) – American isn’t usually counted amongst the savvy kids on the social media block, but they have taken a right step with the creation of BlackAtlas.com – a community site offering travel insights from an African-American perspective. No other airline has a brand community like this, and it should go a long way towards helping AA score some much needed social media creds.

According to Roger Frizell, American’s vice president of corporate communications, they’re planning a site in 2010 which would collect in one place all the social media videos and chatter about AA. American, he says, intends to be a part of the conversation, instead of just letting it happen without them. 

Wyndham

Wyndham (www.wyndham.com/) – Again, Wyndham is probably the only hotel group to offer a community site – Womenontheirway.com – which aims simply to foster a sense of community among female travelers.

This community goes a long way towards humanizing Wyndham and adds a touch of gentleness  to the corporate image.

Elliott Ng will represent UpTake during the PhocusWright 2009 Conference, Blogger Summit Town Hall on Wednesday, November 18th at 9:00 a.m. Ten topics were suggested by the panelists for discussion during a planning meeting a few weeks ago. We decided to collect the best posts and  examples about each subject and showcase them. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

It’s hard to overstate the importance of being able to game the media and keep your company in the news. But at the end of the day, this is a losing proposition - there’s a limit to the number of press releases, interviews and travel columns you can  squeeze out of the media before they get tired of your PR pitches.

To get past the traditional media barriers, some travel companies are straddling the divide between making the news and breaking it – by becoming a part of the media. The travel companies listed below are the ones who are stealing the media’s mojo and beating them at their own game.

Cheapflights

CheapFlights (www.cheapflights.com/) – CheapFlights has a news section where you’ll find plenty of breaking news. It’s not just about air travel - they write about all things travel – hotels, vacations, legislation, destinations, etc. Even more important – the news really is breaking news, and they consistently publish it before everyone starts weighing in.

Bing

Bing (www.bing.com/) – Microsoft’s Bing Travel hosts a community travel blog with some big-name contributors, including Pauline Frommer, Peter Greenberg, Joel Grus and Rick Steves.

  Entries from this blog are getting a lot of exposure in discussions of hot topics in the news, and it’s quite safe to say that this is one of the things that Bing is doing right. 

Uptake

UpTake (www.uptake.com/) – The sum of it is that the traditional media approach was found lacking, so UpTake took a large part of its PR budget, and launched a blog network with 7 blogs and 50 bloggers, as part of a plan to inflict lethal generosity on the travel industry.

UpTake co-founder Elliott Ng explains it in this Businessweek piece – “Now we’re breaking industry stories… covering other companies’ launches… getting invited to cover conferences as bloggers. We’ve built real relationships with people in the media rather than just pitching stories.”

CarRentals, UK

CarRentals, UK (www.carrentals.co.uk/) – Has a news section, entries from which have started turning up in breaking news alerts of late. The news section features stories from a wide range of subjects, most of which have something to do with either travel or the UK or both.

Rogersmith

Roger Smith Hotel (rogersmith.com/) – Take a look at Roger Smith Life and Roger Smith News and you’ll find that everything – the news, the art and all the people – leads you right back to the hotel in New York. And the connections are a lot deeper than just plain talk.

Earlier this year, they ran an ‘experiment’ where a couple from the UK was put up in a storefront recreation of one of the hotel’s suites. Basically, the couple was living in a see-through glass room on the street in New York City, and it was an art experiment by Roger Smith Life covered by Roger Smith News which brought in huge publicity for the Roger Smith hotel. 

Hilton

Hilton (www1.hilton.com/) - Hilton’s Homewood Suites recently launched a family travel blog and community site named SuiteTrip.com. In their own words, “SuiteTrip.com is your go-to guide for everything family travel-inspired.” 

Another Hilton outreach is into Travelskoot’s Videos (www.travelskoot.com/hilton) - Hilton provides destination videos featuring concierges working at Hilton hotels in these destinations.

Starwood

Starwood (www.starwoodhotels.com/) - Starwood runs a blog for its SPG members, called The Lobby, which is more of a traditional travel blog talking about destinations and attractions from all over the world, rather than just a Starwood blog talking about Starwood hotels and resorts.

The PhoCusWright Conference kicks off on Nov 17, 2009 with the Travel Innovation Summit, where travel innovators will demonstrate applications, technology and solutions that significantly impact travel planning and purchasing. Part I and Part II  introduced to you the first 20 innovators. Listed herein are the remaining companies.

Planetism

Planetism (www.planetism.com/) – Gaithersburg, MD based Planetism is an eco-friendly tourism service which promises a ‘revolution in online travel shopping.’  The company, and their website – is premiering at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit.

Travelport

Travelport (www.travelport.com/) – New York, NY based Travelport’s lines of business include their Global Distribution Systems and GTA, which combined, represent a global travel distribution footprint. Travelport’s IT Services & Software business provides next generation IT solutions for airlines worldwide.

Traveltainment

TravelTainment (www.traveltainment-group.com/) – Aachen, Germany based TravelTainment provides a multi-market, multi-channel distribution system for sale of leisure travel products. TravelTainment AG was founded as Usbeck Engineering GmbH in 1991, renamed TravelTainment AG in 2000 and became a subsidiary of Amadeus Technology Group SA in 2006.

Traxo

Traxo (www.traxo.com/) – Dallas, TX based Traxo enables users to share their past and future travel plans with their network. Starting with travel plans booked anywhere on the web, Traxo automatically detects travel reservations and imports this information into a user’s travel dashboard in Traxo, creating itineraries and keeping track of all past and future travel.

Tripcase

TripCase (www.tripcase.com/) – Tripcase is a travel application put out by Southlake, TX based Sabre which currently works for the iPhone and Blackberry, with plans to add a version for Windows Mobile. The Tripcase app allows you to organize information about your upcoming trips, and will automatically import trip details from connected travel partners.

Tripware

Tripware (www.tripware.com/) – Mesa, AZ based Tripware is a travel service for people who plan, book, and manage their own trips. Tripware can be integrated with your Microsoft Outlook calendar using the Tripware OutBook plugin so that the entire process for booking travel can be done right from Microsoft Outlook.

Voyage.tv

Voyage.tv (www.voyage.tv/) – New York, NY based Voyage.tv – currently in beta, provides  destination video programming, with hotel & resort Profiles, activity & tour videos, and signature series that deliver content that is unbiased, current, accurate and personal. Their technology is provided by Trisept Solutions.

Voyij

Voyij (www.voyij.com/) – Cupertino, CA based Voyij allows users to explore and discover travel sales and deals regardless of origin, destination or dates. Enter where you are and Voyij presents a comprehensive list of travel deals on the web at a given time. Further filtering can be done based on travel dates, hotel star ratings, destination, activities, price, and more.

YourTour

YourTour (www.yourtour.com/) – YourTour is a personal tour planner put out by Mons, Belgium based DeciZium SA, which offers customized trip propositions based on users’ preferences. YourTour allows users to plan and book customized self-drive tours, with the help of content provided by Lonely Planet and online reservations from Booking.com.

ZipSetGo

ZipSetGo (www.zipsetgo.com/) – Dayton, Ohio based ZipSetGo.com is an online community-based travel website which aggregates extensive amounts of credible content, organized in a usable format. Members have access to downloadable documents and hundreds of data points of aggregated information per destination.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Travel Innovators can be found in Part I and Part II.

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The PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovation Summit takes place in Orlando on Nov 17, 2009. In Part I, we took a look at the first ten travel innovators. This is the second part of an introduction to the 30 odd companies taking part in this year’s Travel Innovation Summit. 

Goby

Goby (www.goby.com/) – Boston, MA based Goby (pronounced Go-be) is a search engine that helps people find fun new ways to spend their free time. Goby creates an information model that provides semantic organization and lends structure to unstructured data. It can search, sort, filter, map, and contextualize heterogeneous web data.

GuestCentric

GuestCentric (www.guestcentric.com/) – Stamford, CT based GuestCentric Systems provides an integrated platform for hoteliers that includes website design, a dynamic booking engine, reservations platform and internet hotel marketing. It gives you your own branded specialty store on the Internet where you have full control over the content, inventory and pricing.

iPerceptions

iPerceptions (www.iperceptions.com/) – New York, NY based iPerceptions offers solutions which allow companies to collect feedback from actual customers in self initiated, real situations. Their webValidator Continuous Listening Solution and the iPerceptions Satisfaction Index (iPSI) help you get inside the hearts and minds of your visitors to discover the issues that matter most to them.

Language Weaver

Language Weaver (www.languageweaver.com/) – Los Angeles, CA based Language Weaver offers solutions and products for automated language translation. Their translation solutions are designed for organizations that need to translate large volumes of information into one or more languages, at high speed and high accuracy.

LuggageTag

Luggage Tag (www.luggagetag.com) – West Chester, PA based LuggageTag.com offers a design tool for you to personalize designs for luggage tags, which the company will then manufacture and ship to you.

Milestone Internet

Milestone Internet Marketing (www.milestoneinternet.com/) – Santa Clara, CA based Milestone Internet provides online hospitality marketing and consulting services, with complete soup-to-nuts solution for hotels, resorts, and hospitality industry for enhancing internet presence.

Mondial Assistance

Mondial Assistance (www.mondialusa.com/) – Paris, France based Mondial Assistance offers specialty insurance and assistance services. Their US offerings – based out of Richmond, VA – include Access America travel insurance and Event Ticket Protector insurance. Mondial also offers worldwide medical assistance and concierge services.

Tourabout

Tourabout (www.tourabout.com/) – Sydney, Australia based Tourabout offers a travel platform called ‘The Social GDS’ where community and commerce are merged in a marketplace and organisations connect and engage directly with travellers. It exists in the Facebook and mobile environments and is integrated with Twitter.

Translations

Translations.com (www.translations.com/) – New York, NY based Translations.com offers website localization, software localization, GMS (Globalization Management System) software products, and enterprise-level, professional translation services.

TravelGuard

Travel Guard (www.travelguard.com/) – Stevens Point, WI based Travel Guard is a travel insurance plan provider, specializing in providing travel insurance, assistance and emergency travel service plans which are distributed through virtually every distribution channel in the travel industry.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part I & Part III.

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The PhoCusWright Conference takes place Nov 17-19 in Orlando, and the highlight on Day 1 – Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009, is the Travel Innovation Summit. Attendees are expected to rate all 30 innovators in real-time, based on their demonstrations.

Over the next few days, we’ll introduce to you all 30 travel innovators. In this post, we take a look at the first 10 companies.

10Best Solutions

10Best Solutions (www.10bestsolutions.com/) – Greenville, SC based 10Best Solutions  provides search engine optimization, content management, content creation and design/development services to an impressive roster of clients including major hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines and travel sites. 10Best Solutions is a division of 10Best, Inc.

AboutAnywhere

AboutAnywhere (www.aboutanywhere.com/) – Miami, FL based AboutAnywhere.com offers a direct-to-consumer travel website, with a low-cost online travel agency business model with major innovations in e-marketing services and improved functionality for both hotel partners and consumers.

Amadeus

Amadeus (www.amadeus.com/) – Madrid, Spain based Amadeus IT Group SA is the leading Global Distribution System (GDS) and the biggest processor of travel bookings in the world. From global network airlines to low cost carriers, from multinational travel agencies to independent hotels, Amadeus provides IT solutions to everyone in the tourism and travel industry.

CarTrawler

 CarTrawler (www.cartrawler.com/) – Dublin, Ireland based global car rental distribution company CarTrawler offers large selection of car rentals from over 500 car rental suppliers in 135 countries in 15,000 city and airport locations. 

CheapLimoRates

CheapLimoRates  (www.cheaplimorates.com/) – Phoenix, AZ based CheapLimoRates.com claims to be the first comparison shopping and booking engine website for the limousine industry, and matches millions of consumers with nearly 10,000 limousine companies who offer discounted rates to book their unused vehicle inventory.  

Twavl

Twavl (www.connectme360.com/) – Twavl is a city-specific community service based on twitter which offers answers and provides insider tips in the form of tweets. Twavl is run by Connectme 360 – a Denver, CO based answer logistics company which helps employees of travel and hospitality companies locate the perfect response to customers’ queries in less than a minute. 

Dapper

Dapper (www.dapper.net/) – San Francisco (and New York) based Dapper provides technical solutions for quickly creating widgets, Google gadgets, and Facebook apps — leading to its flagship product, Dapper Dynamic Ads, which pull live product and inventory from your site, bringing the right offer to the right consumer at the right time.  

Exalead

Exalead (www.exalead.com/) – Paris, France based Exalead is a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search markets, and the maker of CloudView, one of the top platforms for search-based applications (SBAs), which uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-utilized data. 

Expedia Media Solutions

Expedia Media Solutions (www.advertising.expedia.com/) – Bellevue, WA based Expedia Media Solutions is the world’s largest travel lifestyle media company, which leverages the nearly 30 million customers that visit the Expedia, Inc. network of sites every month. 

Gliider

Gliider (www.gliider.com/) – Based in Brooklyn, NY, Gliider offers a browser plugin and travel tool which helps you to collect travel information from around the web in one place by simply highlighting and dragging and dropping the part you like.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part II & Part III.

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PhoCusWright doesn’t just talk and issue reports about innovation and travel technology. They’re actually doing a little bit of innovating themselves.

The PhoCusWright Conference Online Ticket

Thousands of people working in the tourism& travel sectors the world over would no doubt love to attend industry events such as The PhoCusWright Conference being held in Orlando from Nov 17-19, 2009.

But time, budget contraints and distance make the trip unfeasible for many.  If you fall into this category, then PhoCusWright has just the ticket for you – An Online Ticket.

Signing up for this ticket enables you to experience the best speakers, the most crucial topics and the biggest innovations… all from the comfort of your home or office.

You get on-demand content from Center Stage, The Travel Innovation Summit and exclusive interviews with renowned travel leaders. You’ll be a part of the audience, listening to the best speakers, joining in for intense debate and live question and answer sessions –  previously available only to in-person conference attendees.

The Online Ticket leverages Twitter’s vast network and allows participation and discussion with other online viewers, attendees in Orlando and the speakers on Center Stage. All streaming video is available on-demand for 60 days allowing Online Ticket viewers and conference attendees to review content and never miss a session.

It’s early days yet, but what PhoCusWright has done with the Online Ticket - a successful marriage of face-to-face networking and virtual conferencing - is likely to be used as a template for every single major travel industry conference in future.

See a Preview of the Online Ticket, and if you like it – Register here.

Related Posts:-
Travel Industry Gears up for The PhoCusWright Conference

This November, the travel industry is all set to be one of it’s own biggest customers, as hundreds of travel & tourism leaders and executives enjoy Orlando’s hospitality. The PhoCusWright Conference will be held at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate (Nov 17-19, 2009).

The PhoCusWright Conference

This is the sixteenth year for The PhoCusWright Conference, and promises to be just as big, interesting and informative as last year. Even more so, given the wrenching changes in the last year or so.

Attendees will discover how other travel  companies are growing their businesses, hear where the industry is heading to and learn how to apply new strategies and ideas. Millions of dollars’ worth in deals and networking opportunities are there for the taking.

Day 1 (Tuesday, Nov 17) starts with the Travel Innovation Summit. Thirty innovators from around the world will demonstrate applications, mobile technology and solutions that significantly impact travel planning, purchasing and memorializing.

The audience rates the innovators in real-time, and the top 4 innovators will duke it for the big prize on Nov 19. You can see the full list of this year’s innovators here. Last year’s winner was Interactive MOBILE @dvertising (iM@)

Day 2 (Wednesday, Nov 18) is Deal Day and makes up the meat of The PhoCusWright Conference. In addition to two DMO workshops being presented by PhoCusWright, you can learn about future trends and hot products from workshops presented by Compete Inc., Akamai Technologies, TripAdvisor, Expedia Media Solutions and others.

A big attraction on day 2 is the Bloggers Summit town hall presented by Tips from the T-List, moderated by Stephen Joyce. The panelists include:-

Kevin May – Editor|Tnooz;
Dennis Schaal - Travel Industry journalist & blogger for Tnooz;
Joe Buhler – PhoCusWright blogger & social media consultant;
Elliott Ng – UpTake co-founder and the driving force behind UpTake’s blog network

Attendees will also be able to dig further into the innovators and establish new relationships, cultivate leads and meet diverse companies face-to-face on the exhibitor floor.

Day 3 (Thursday, Nov 19) brings Center Stage, focused on “Money, Media, Mobile and Moxie” - this year’s theme, which translated reads something like this – financial stability, expanded revenue streams, technical innovation and the guts to achieve challenging objectives in a demanding, complex environment. The audience is encouraged to question the speakers – challenging them and providing their own insights.

One more interesting aspect of this year’s PhoCusWright Conference is the Online Ticket, which brings the Conference to your Desktop. If you’re not able to be in Orlando in-person, then this ticket is the next best thing – you can watch the conference real-time, interact with the audience and online attendees worldwide, and review archived presentations.

PhoCusWright says the response to the online tickets has been stunning, but equally stunning is the heavy registration for in-person attendance this year – which included the highest single-day registration sales ever on record for any PhoCusWright Conference.

This is a shining example of the travel industry showing the way for reconciliating the necessity of face-to-face meetings & business travel with the power of technology and virtual conferencing.

Registration and ticketing information – www.phocuswright.com/the_phocuswright_conference_register.

This year’s Travel Blogcamp is to be held in London on Nov 10, 2009. Travel Blogcamp is an opportunity for travel companies, bloggers, journalists and writers to come together and discuss social media and travel blogs.

Travel Blogcamp

The annual event – organised by Darren Cronian of Travel Rants – is timed to coincide with the World Travel Market (Nov 9-12, 2009) in London.

This year’s venue is the same as last year, and will be held at Doggett’s Riverside bars – located on the south bank of the Thames with stunning views of The River, The City, and St Paul’s Cathedral.

Travel Blogcamp – if it stays true to form – is pretty informal, with speakers lined up to talk about specific subjects, coupled with audience participation. The audience asks questions, which then leads to a healthy debate.

Here’s the speaker list for Travel Blogcamp 2009:-

Murray Harrold – Advantage Travel
Joel Brandon-Bravo – Frommer’s
Guillaume Thevenot – Hotel Blogs
Eva Keogan – Lastminute.com
Darren Cronian – Travel Rants 

Moderated by Kevin May – Tnooz

Some really interesting subjects and discussions do indeed pop up at Blogcamp. Take, for instance, Karen Bryan’s speech last year in Nov 2008 – which focused on the future of travel blogs. That speech led to the creation of a travel content aggregator in Europe, which is now helping out independent travel blogs get some much needed exposure.  

If you’re interested in getting to know the cream of  Europe’s travel industry, you ‘ll get plenty of time before and after the event to have drinks, mingle and chat with the attendees.

Registration for Travel Blogcamp 2009 starts later this month. For more information and updates, visit www.travelblogcamp.co.uk/

I enjoyed and was inspired by yesterday’s Conde Nast World Savers event on travel and corporate social responsibility.  I also used the excuse to rent some photo gear for the event.  I used my new Canon T1i Rebel, with a rented 70-200 mm f/2.8 L zoom lens, and my precious 35 mm f/1.4 L prime.  I also took a few wide angle shots using the 18-50 mm cheapo kit lens.  I saw Conde Nast’s professional photographers also covering the event and saw the awesome gear that they had.  Gear envy is a terrible thing.

Hope these photos give a nice flavor to the event.  They can be found on my Flickr photostream in 4 batches:  batch 1, batch 2, batch 3, and batch 4.  They are all licensed under Creative Commons so free free to use, with credit and link to UpTake.

Morgan Library

Entrance to the World Savers Congress

Event location

Chris Mitchell, Vice President & Publisher

Klara Glowczewska, Editor in Chief

Economics of Doing Good keynote panel

Downstairs reception

Wendy Perrin

Committed Consumer panel

Mandy Moore

Wyclef Jean

Blogger table at the back

afternoon keynote:  Timberland’s Jeff Swartz

Bottom Line: Why Responsible Travel Matters

Dinda Elliott

Dinda Elliott welcoming Edward Norton

Feel free to use all photos, under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0.  And if you want to use them for commercial reuse, let me know, we’re happy to extend that to you as well.

Can the travel industry create lasting and needed change to the world that serves as a backdrop for the travel experiences they deliver to their customers? Will travel consumers make choices that financially reward these efforts?  This week, Conde Nast Traveler convenes the World Savers Congress for the 3rd year to answer these questions and showcase examples of corporate social responsibility in the travel industry.  I attended 2008 half expecting to see polished, superficial PR efforts by big brands.  Instead, I found an eclectic mix of activists,  local travel providers, and large companies putting money where their mouth is.   While the event was a showcase of money, brand, and power–it also was full of examples of how one person, or a small group of committed people, can make a difference.

I’ll be live blogging the conference on this post. Scroll below to timestamped sections.

I’ll post updates throughout the day on this blog post (short URL: TBD). Just scroll down!

How you can follow the conference online and on Twitter:

Conde Nast Traveler (Julia Bainbridge, Beata Loyfman) will also be live blogging here.  On Twitter, you can also follow Jen Leo (@jenleo) and @CNTraveler who will be  live-Tweeting the event. You can also follow the Twitter hashtag #cnt09.  Julia Bainbridge (@juliabainbridge) and Jen Leo also pulled together all the Twitter handles of all the World Savers Congress people and you can use TweepML to mass follow all of them. UPDATE: Jen Leo posted about her involvement and created a cool widget to track #cnt09 tweets.

Background: Behind the scenes with Deputy Editor Dinda Elliott

Dinda (nee Dorinda) Elliott (@dindaelliott), Deputy Editor of Conde Nast Traveler, blogged about why the event is important to her:

Our conference, scheduled for Sept. 21 at New York’s Morgan Library, will convene some 250 travel industry CEOs and leaders from the non-profit world to discuss what more can by done by the travel industry–particularly during challenging economic times–to improve the planet. We will also present the World Savers Awards to this year’s winners, which were announced in the September issue.

The World Savers Congress initiative, backed by Conde Nast Traveler’s brand and influence, has been a platform for creating conversations about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  Dinda describes the behind the scenes work:

…throughout the year, Condé Nast Traveler has hosted a series of brown-bag lunches around our conference table and telephone meetings with a group of leading U.S. hotel companies to discuss CSR, learn more about the challenges they face, and set some goals. Our editors realized that we not only have a platform to speak with our readers through our magazine, but also that we can play a role in helping convene an important industry conversation.

All of us want to connect our work to a larger purpose. World Savers Congress shows examples of how to do that in the travel industry.

Background: The World Savers Awards 2009

The core of the program is an Awards ceremony for the winners of the World Savers Awards, announced in the September issue of Conde Nast Traveler and listed here.  The awards are in the following categories: Education Programs, Wildlife Conservation, Poverty Alleviation, Preservation (Environmental/Cultural), and Health Initiatives.  Being a bit of a data junkie and taxonomy freak myself, I find this a useful way to break down the amorphous term “corporate social responsibility” into concepts that mean something.  Helping kids get education.  Protecting wildlife and biodiversity.  Helping the poor.  Providing clean drinking water.  Concrete things we can do to help the world.

——-> LIVEBLOGGING HERE at 8:00 AM EDT Monday 9/21 <———

Come back here on Monday 9/21 and I’ll post some updates.

8:30 a.m. – Introduction by Klara Glowczewska

Klara Glowczewska, Editor in Chief, made an introduction that was liveblogged nicely by the CNTraveler blogging team here.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

“We’re at the dawn of a new era,” said Condé Nast Traveler’s Klara Glowczewska at the opening of the magazine’s third annual World Savers Congress. “Business will be transformed, and ultimately in the best possible ways.”

There’s proof of that in the stats Glowczewska shared with the audience: 75 percent of Condé Nast Traveler readers say that they are influenced by hotels’ sustainability practices when booking, and 50 percent would pay slightly higher rates to help local impoverished areas.

“In this economy, people are thinking about larger issues,” she said, highlighting the upside of our current economic state. “We’re all aware of our interconnectedness.”

Klara’s introduction highlighted two roles that Conde Nast Traveler has found in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR):

1.  Facilitator

As blogged above, Conde Nast has spearheaded an effort to bring together major hotel chains and tour operators including Vail Resorts, Abercrombie & Kent, Fairmont Hotels, Hyatt, IHG, Lowes, Ritz Carlton, Sandals Resorts, Starwood Hotels.

2. Bullhorn

A second role, is to use the magazine’s reach and audience to bring attention to efforts to readers.

According to Klara, “We have found our subject – water….Water is the new CSR frontier.”  It sounds like the roundtable discussions have focused the industry group and the Conde Nast team on a key issue that can be attacked by the hospitality industry in concert.

8:45 a.m. Keynote Panel: The Economics of Doing Good

• Dina Powell, Director of Global Corporate Engagement, Goldman Sachs
• Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOMS Shoes
• Rachel Webber, Director of Energy Initiatives, News Corporation
• Moderator: Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times

What are the economics of “doing good?” Klara Glowczewska and Nicholas Kristof frame the question of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the context of the global financial and economic crisis.  Is there rationale within the profit-maximizing charter of for-profit businesses to invest in CSR?

Dina Habib Powell, who serves as global head of corporate engagement at Goldman Sachs, spoke about the 10,000 women project, that was announced in March 2008 by Goldman Sachs, just prior to the breakout of the financial crisis.  The initiative focuses on providing 10,000 women from across the world with basic business and management education.  The theory of change that the program operates under is that great labor force participation by women is a key driver of GDP growth and development.

According to Dina, the CSR effort at Goldman is not allowed to be the “soft” part of Goldman and is required to come under the same metrics-driven decision making that the rest of the firm does.

Recruiting and retention of the best people is part of the “economics of doing good,” according to Dina.  Honestly, I don’t know that holding on to people is an issue today in investment banking, especially for a top firm like Goldman.

Blake Mycoskie, CEO of Tom’s Shoes, shared some lessons from his experience with Tom’s Shoes. The company donates one pair of shoes for every pair of shoes that is purchased.  They also invite customers to come on Shoe Drop Tours in Argentina and other locations in the world.

In response to Nicholas’ question about mistakes made in pursuing CSR projects, Blake said that an initial mistake was “saying yes to everyone.”  Without a strategy, the first year resulted in just giving away a lot of shoes.  Then later, they identified Southern Ethiopia as an oportunity where shoes could make a big difference in the incidence of a disease that attacked victims via pores on the feet.  This condition could be prevented easily by providing shoes for people’s feet.  It seems that the initial exploratory phase of charitable giving evolved into a more targeted effort focused on locations where shoes could have maximum impact.

The final panelist, Rachel Webber, serves as Director of Energy Initiatives as New Corporation.  They started with a focus on becoming carbon neutral by 2010.  Rachel commented that the goal of carbon neutrality needed to be part of a larger vision for the company for energy efficiency.  The key was providing clarity as to what the vision meant, having clear milestones, and focusing on internal communications to employees so they “got it.”

9:45 a.m. 2009 World Savers Awards

10:30 a.m. Special guest: Ken Burns

11:15 a.m. Panel: The Committed Consumer: Engaging Your Guests Now

12:30 p.m.  Wyclef Jean, musician and philanthropist, How Tourism Can Help Haiti

12:30 p.m. Jeffrey Swartz, President and CEO, Timberland, The Connections Between Doing Well and Doing Good

12:30 p.m. Mandy Moore, singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist, Condé Nast Traveler Five & Alive Fund

1:30 p.m. Panel: The Bottom Line: Why Responsible Travel Matters

3:00 p.m. Concurrent afternoon panels:

Panel 1: The Local Benefit: Reaching and Empowering the Community

Panel 2: The Ripple Effect: The Travel Industry’s Power to Ignite Change

The Complete Schedule form Conde Nast Traveler:

To make it easy for me to live blog, I’ve cut and pasted (from CNTraveler) the schedule of the event:

8:00 a.m. Registration & buffet breakfast
8:30 a.m. Welcome remarks by Condé Nast Traveler Editor in Chief Klara Glowczewska and Vice President and Publisher Chris Mitchell

8:45 a.m. Keynote Panel: The Economics of Doing Good
Dina Powell, Director of Global Corporate Engagement, Goldman Sachs
Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOMS Shoes
Rachel Webber, Director of Energy Initiatives, News Corporation
Moderator: Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times

9:45 a.m. 2009 World Savers Awards
10:30 a.m. Special guest: Ken Burns

11:15 a.m. Panel: The Committed Consumer: Engaging Your Guests Now
Carmen Baker, VP of Responsible Business, Carlson Hotels
Richard Edelman, CEO, Edelman Public Relations
Niki Leondakis, COO, Kimpton Hotels
Gregg Michel, President, Crystal Cruises
Bruce Poon Tip, CEO, Gap Adventures
Moderator: Wendy Perrin, Consumer News Editor, Condé Nast Traveler

12:30 p.m. Lunch & featured speakers
Wyclef Jean, musician and philanthropist, How Tourism Can Help Haiti
Jeffrey Swartz, President and CEO, Timberland, The Connections Between Doing Well and Doing Good
Mandy Moore, singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist, Condé Nast Traveler Five & Alive Fund

1:30 p.m. Panel: The Bottom Line: Why Responsible Travel Matters
Raymond Bickson, CEO, Taj Hotels
Mark Hoplamazian, CEO, Global Hyatt Corp
Jorie Butler Kent, Vice Chairman, Abercrombie & Kent
Kara Hurst, Managing Director, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
Moderator: Dorinda Elliott, Deputy Editor, Condé Nast Traveler

Related Links:

• Concierge.com – World Savers Congress Schedule with some links to bios
• Concierge.com – World Savers Awards 2009 listed here.  Background, methodology, judges, and links to the winners in each of 5 focus areas:
  • Education Programs
  • Wildlife Conservation
  • Poverty Alleviation
  • Preservation (Environmental/Cultural)
  • Health Initiatives
• Perrin Post – Summary of what the event is about, link to the winners, links to bios
• CNTraveler on Concierge.com – All World Savers Congress blog posts here.
• JenLeo.com – Twitter widget to track #cnt09