Travel Industry

The new pod hotels resemble cruise ship cabins.

I think I first heard of pod hotels in Japan in the 1990s, and like most people, I laughed. Who would want to “package” themselves for the night in a cell that felt like a compartment in a bee colony?

But now Westerners in the United States and Europe are checking themselves into pod hotels. They’re at airports and in large cities that attract low-budget travelers like New York City. They appeal to customers with promises of a clean, safe place to sleep and a sense of hipness, in stark contract to other accommodations in the same price range.

I can see the attraction. If I were had a small budget to sleep for the night on a trip, I would certainly value a clean, safe bed in a good area over square footage. The privacy of a pod would be a welcome change from a bunk in a communal hostel room.

I only wonder if this is a good time for this travel industry innovation. It seems that such a business would thrive on volume, since there can’t be a huge profit margin on inexpensive micro-rooms that still need to be cleaned after each use. Plenty of hotels are sitting on empty full-sized rooms right now, and lowering the prices of those rooms into the area that will surely compete with pods. As hip as an mp3-enabled pod might look, why stay in one if you can get a full-sized hotel room that is also pleasant for the same $90?

Then again, pods may be the perfect thing for companies looking to slash costs on their business travel, and especially avoid the appearance that they’re wining and dining employees. No one can point an accusatory finger about wasting resources when you’re sending your employees to a convention where they’ll sleep in cells.

And as long as these pod places have bars, maybe they can make up any lost profits there. Clients, I’m sure, are way more likely to hang out in the bar and spend money there if there is barely enough room in their “room” to shake a mini-bar martini.

Photo by Subbu4, used via Creative Commons license.

Travel industry: Don

Industries are getting used to receiving a helping hand from the federal government these days. The travel industry, not to be left out, asked Congress in April to respond to the latest decline in tourist arrivals by creating a new travel promotion program.

Which must have made the sting particularly sharp Thursday when travel industry execs heard Vice President Joe Biden say he was advising his family to stay off airplanes and subways because of the H1N1 flu (a.k.a. swine flu). The industry’s spokespeople are too polite to say so, but it surely felt like putting a hand out for help and getting it slapped away.

The VP’s staff was quick to “clarify” that Biden meant nothing like what he said. It’s very lucky for the travel industry that the average American probably doesn’t consider the vice president a prime source of medical advice anyway. To tell the truth, comments I’ve heard seem to indicate the public doesn’t give much credence to the federal government at all in this situation.

Still, the U.S. Travel Association felt the need to urge Americans to ignore the veep and listen to doctors, none of whom have publicly told people to stop traveling by plane or subway at this point.

So what are bona fide medical professionals advising Americans to do about travel? Depends which professionals you ask. While the Centers for Disease Control has advised against travel to Mexico, the World Health Organization has not. (That might be good news for bargain seekers, because if you’re bold enough to vacation in Mexico right now, there are deals to be had.)

For those who do go to Mexico, the CDC recommends that high-risk people (such as pregnant women, the elderly and small children) consider bringing anti-flu medications on their trip. For all travelers, the CDC recommends making sure you’ve had your flu shot, knowing how to use your health insurance coverage while away, and of course practicing good hygiene to prevent spread of disease.

As a traveler, I wish the CDC would say more. Since my family is headed for a large water park resort next week, I’m really curious (and a little worried) about whether we high-riskers (I’m pregnant and I’ll be going with my small children and my elderly grandparents) should be avoiding places where travelers converge. I recently heard from another family headed for a Disney theme park with the same doubts.

But it’s not the kind of thing the industry is going to want to hear, unless the advice is, “Go ahead!” I worry that Biden’s gaffe will make the government reluctant to issue more travel advice, even if it is warranted. And I’m confident that it will make some people less likely to listen, even if advice is issued. Now that the government and media have been branded as overreacting, that public impression is going to stick.

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.

This beautiful nation is on sale, but is it fun to visit when the people are all depressed?

Once upon a time, a young couple set out for a honeymoon on the beaches of Thailand. They budgeted their trip at 25 baht to the dollar, which is what their Lonely Planet guide pegged as the exchange rate.

The first time they changed money in Bangkok, they got 40 baht for each dollar. The next time, it was 42. By the end of the trip, they were getting 50 baht to the dollar and eating lobster.

The year was — you guessed it — 1998, when the Asian financial crisis sent Thailand’s economy into a tailspin. That young couple is now a couple of middle-aged, broke parents — my husband and I — whose ears perk up at the sound of another beautiful country experiencing such a great awful financial spiral.

Next year — or later this one, the way we’re going, that destination could be the Grand Canyon or any other in the United States. But for now, it’s Iceland. The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the Iceland Tourist Board itself are touting the island nation as a suddenly affordable place to vacation.

“Iceland is on sale,” the Web site announces. Indeed, the Icelandic krona is worth about half as many dollars as it was a year ago.

The people of the world — more anxious than ever to score a bargain — are apparently heeding Iceland’s call. Tourism in the last month of 2008 was 43 percent higher than the same month a year before, the tourist board reports.

But is it a good thing to have fun at the expense of a failing economy? Is it any fun to go sightseeing when all the businesspeople you deal with are worried about losing their livelihoods?

From our Thailand experience, I have to say: Yes, it’s a good thing, and yes, you can still have fun in a country that’s going to financial hell in a shopping basket.

In Thailand we chatted with any English speaker we found about conditions, and it was certainly sobering to hear taxi drivers and hoteliers talk about their fears and losses. And yet, we didn’t feel guilty about enjoying ourselves, because everyone we met made it clear that they were very glad we were there. We were bringing dollars into the country, the only thing they thought might help.

Seeing tourism boom in Iceland, I’m now wondering — how much does an influx of tourism help an economy in crisis? I can’t imagine that tourism ended the Asian crisis — although it might have helped some.

Besides, we may never get the chance to find out if travelers from other countries can save Iceland. The rest of us can only keep traveling while our own currencies are worth something, and while we have incomes of our own.

But in the meantime, a weekend in Reykjavik for under $500 sounds awfully nice.

Photo by Martino!, used via Creative Commons license.

There is a lot to remember for effective blogging, so use a checklist (photo courtesy mictlan at Flickr Creative Commons)

One of the comments on my rant about social media foot-dragging by much of the tourism industry was left by Seattle-based writer/photographer Pam Mandel of Nerd’s Eye View. She’ll be my co-panelist at the Blog Highways travel blogging panel at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive tech conference in Austin.  We talk all the time about travel bloggers and tourism internet marketing.

The phrase she used in her comment is one that I hear a lot: “….we have a blog but no one is reading it.”

Well, why is that?

If your content is good, the problem is eminently fixable, but it takes work. Social media tools are (generally) free in monetary terms – good news in today’s economy – but they are NOT free in terms of the time needed to nurture and sustain them, which is true for any endeavor that involves human relationships and communication.

This is not something you toss over to the office intern for her/him to do in their spare time. Do not tell me you are “too old” to learn how to do this, either – I’m 47.  Nice try.

This is not your Web site, broadcasting pretty pictures and marketing-speak in one direction.

This is the “social” part of social media.  There’s a lot to it, but it isn’t rocket science; it’s building connections and relationships with prospective visitors to your destination.

OK, let’s break it down….why is “no one reading?”

• Define “no one.” Are you a brand-new blog (less than 3-6 months old?)  You will not have soaring readership numbers (my benchmark, among others, is unique visitors) unless you represent a very popular, world-class destination.  Every blogger starts out with 2-3 unique readers a day, and yes, one of them is probably your Mom (ask her to leave a comment next time; lots of comments are an important metric, too, so please don’t make it hard to comment by requiring registration and other silliness.)  Do you have about 50 uniques a day stopping by?  What if 50 people physically showed up at your office wanting to know more about your destination – see them all lined up in the hallway? Feels pretty good, right?  Take what you can get in the beginning. As super video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk says, “Everything is better than zero.”
• Is your content boring? Be honest – is it written by committee and vetted to within an inch of its life, then poked at by an “SEO expert?”  Gimme a break.  Readers connect with a lively human voice that has fresh news. Don’t waste their time with your recycled press releases – what else d’ya got?  I recommend the Philadelphia tourism blog UWishUNu or Experience Scottsdale (AZ) as examples of how to do it right.  If your content is boring because your destination is boring, then I’m sorry, I can’t help you.
• Do you link OUT in your blog posts? That’s how we wave to people on the Web….links say, “Hi, I appreciate your content and consider it link-worthy.” No, you do not have to ask to link to someone’s site; that’s part of the fun. Do you see the hyperlinked (light blue) items in this post? Every one of those people will see me talking about them over here on UpTake, because they see the link coming into the administrative back end of their site. Most will come over to visit and see what we’re talking about. That means traffic for this blog. Sure, I planned it that way. So can you.
• Do you surf over and check out the sites that link IN to your main Web site and/or your blog?  They thought you were link-worthy; isn’t that nice?  You always know when someone links to you, right? (meaning the data is visible to your entire marketing, public relations and communications teams, not just “the IT guy.”) Go look around on the site that linked to you, and maybe leave a comment on one of their posts in return; that’s how good link karma works, like any human kindness or courtesy. Some incoming links are from spammers/link farms – Boo! – so identify them as spam and delete.
• Is your number of blog content subscribers (by RSS or email) moving in an upward direction?  Do you make it easy to subscribe and is it obvious how to do so on your site?  Do you periodically encourage subscription in your posts?
• Is your blog registered with Technorati and lots of other blog directories?  Do you automatically or manually ping major search engines/directories after each post?
• Do you highlight your best blog posts in your Twitter stream and your destination’s Facebook page, along with photos of your destination on Flickr and some videos on YouTube? Yes, I’ll wait here while you go set those up. To get the word out about a blog, you don’t just do it on the blog itself – you need outposts on the Web.  Go see the Twitter stream from the tourism people in Nova Scotia, or the 3 folks who do Hawaii tourism: DavidHTA, Michael Ni and Nathan Kam.  Go see the Facebook page for Iowa tourism. Go see what these tourism guys in the Amazon have done with social media – good for them!  There’s a lot of travel action on Twitter.
• Ready to learn even more about successful blogging? Do what every other new blogger does – we all head over and read every word of Aussie Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, a simply indispensable resource.

If this all sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is HARD to build a blog that draws a crowd, and don’t let some newly jumped-up “social media marketing expert” tell you otherwise.  I’ve been at it for three years as a blogger, and I’m still learning. The learning curve will only get steeper, so get hot.

In the long term, you cannot outsource social media and be particularly effective.  My consulting company Every Dot Connects, for example, just finished what we think was a pretty good marketing campaign contest with HomeAway vacation rentals. I wrote some blog posts for their new microsite as a part of that project, but the idea is that such content eventually moves in-house because you want your organization’s voice in social media, not mine. I’ll teach you how to fish, and all that….

While you’re at it, keep an ear to the ground about mobile content – my long-time tech mentor Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle tells me that mobile devices (mostly because of the game-changing iPhone) are the next huge leap for the Web, social media and how humans connect.

Is your tourism organization thinking about mobile? Do you check your blog’s presentation on mobile devices?  Start now, because people are driving near/through/around your destination even as we speak, looking for guidance on their Web-browsing mobile device.  Make sure that your blog is easily findable and full of useful information for your visitors, just like that danged brochure that you still print for an ever-shrinking audience at the highway rest stops.

Sure, keep doing occasional print runs, but your focus should be shifting now, to the future and to the Web.

PhocusWright 2008 came to a close yesterday. During the four days, three trends surfaced. The first trend was the extreme pessimism about the economy and its impact on the travel industry, the second was the rising importance of video and the final trend was the impact of mobile on travel

1.  A global economic meltdown is worth discussing

Downward Spiraling DOW

If I wasn’t concerned before the conference, I am now. The state of the economy was discussed on stage, in blogs and during lunch breaks. It is obvious the travel industry is preparing to be hit hard and is doing its best to prepare. A few of the center stage speakers comments were noteworthy and offered some hope in the new economy:

Jean-Claude Baumgarten President and CEO World Travel & Tourism Council just arrived on stage direct from from India.  He encouraged and inspired attendees to look at India and China’s emerging economies are a realistic means of growing their travel businesses world wide. These two countries each have a thriving middle class with money to spend and a desire to travel.  His comments were inspirational and informed.

McKinsey supports Mr. Baumgarten’s message with these statistics in a recent report:

“The lure of China’s urban-affluent segment is easy to understand. These consumers earn more than 100,000 renminbi (about $12,500) a year and command 500 billion renminbi—nearly 10 percent of urban disposable income—despite accounting for just 1 percent of the total population. They consume globally branded luxury goods voraciously”

And TimeAsia offers the same growth statisitics from India,

” for the past 23 years India’s GDP has grown at an average annual rate of 6%, making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The growth rate may have been lower than that of China’s, but it is double that achieved by the West during the Industrial Revolution. As a result, India’s middle class has more than tripled in size to 250 million people.”

With record growth in these two economies, the west can look to the East for revenue and profits for growth or just survival during the next few years.

A few other speakers joined in the discussion, Stephen Kaufer, President of TripAdvisor, told the conference  he was irritated by the pessimism and found it “boring.”  Jeffery H. Boyd, President and CEO of Priceline, when asked if the economic climate could be a windfall to Priceline, responded, “we are not feasting on their pain, we are helping fill seats and rooms. This comment alone proves that even in a downturn, some firms may show record growth.

The overall message from the conference was that we must innovate, invest in the product, cut all possible costs and focus on profitability.

2.  The rising importance of video

Travel Channel

Most travel web sites don’t feature video. Beautiful photography, UGC and original editorial content seem to be everywhere, but not video, unless you look for it.  However, Charles Younge, President of the Travel Channel, stated that “video and travel go together like love and marriage, horse and carriage.”  With the growth and popularity of YouTube, the rising number of mobile phones (350 billion worldwide) and the fact that 1 in 7 people view a video prior to making a travel purchase, he may be right. He  mentioned that the TravelChannel had 30,000 visitors view a short video on a resort in the Bahamas, in just a few weeks that had had no promotional effort whatsoever. In his opinion, if video is done correctly it can be a game changer. To do that it must be:
Searchable-support multiple video platforms, optimize, etc.

Relevant-if presented correctly, it can be a deal closer

High quality-most viewers consider web- based video unsatisfactory, they want the good stuff

Trusted-”bad creates a premium for good,” he recommends 90 seconds that is  not overtly commercial, takes them beyond the obvious such as Intercontinental Hotel Group concierge series

Ubiquity-one reason travel planners don’t search for video is that they don’t think it exists

Two firms seem to be on trend,  TVTrip offers high quality hotel videos by professional photographers and TripTelevision offers an award-winning, intelligent media player that travel marketers can “visually direct their customers through an intelligent, TV like experience. It was only after Mr. Younge’s presentation that I realized TripTelevision with its high quality and searchability may be onto a good idea.

3. Mobile & travel may have made a match

IM@ wins Innovation Award for 2008

Mobile remains the new profit frontier because the industry leaders recognize its importance and the innovators are delivering a product that performs for everyone.

• Steve Kaufer mentioned, “TripAdvisor brought out a great mobile product a few years ago. It was used by 1,000 people.”

• The Travel Innovation Summit Innovator Award winner was IM@, Interactive Mobile @dvertising, LLC. They offer a free downloadable travel application for most phones. The application offers travelers information they need while on the road. It caught the audience and the judges’ award winning attention.

In a few short days, a leader in travel mentions he tried to capture the power of mobile, but failed.  Conference participants chose IM@ from32 innovators as one of the top six, and then a panel of experts selected it the winner of innovation for 2008. It won because it promises to make mobile work for the consumer and for advertisers. That says potential… Here is the link to the demo video from the Innovator stage presentations.

(now you see what I mean about video, if only this worked better, and was searchable…)

Three trends:

1. A economy spiraling out of control;

2. Video gaining momentum; and

3. Mobile applications delivering on both sides of the travel equation.

I will be interested to see what happens in the next year, who is flourishing and who is not and if these trends continue to rise in importance.