Tag: twitter

Top Travel Brands Making Positive Use of Social Media

Nov 04, 2009 6:52 - By: P. Ling

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

We are now at a stage where the market is social media. It is simply not enough for companies to jump in occasionally, talk to  journalists and industry insiders, and hope to create some buzz with a press release.  Travel companies are increasingly targeting consumers directly on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s a list of the top travel brands making positive use of social media to target consumers directly.

Jetblue

Jetblue

United

United

JetBlue (www.jetblue.com/) – Offers time-limited deals announced on twitter for last minute flights every Tuesday. More information here and follow on twitter @JetBlueCheeps.

United (www.united.com/) - United has a similar offer for twitter users called Twares – special fares available only via Twitter. More information here and follow on twitter @UnitedAirlines.

 

Hyatt

Hyatt

Hyatt (www.hyatt.com/) – Hyatt was the first major hotel group to offer a global 24/7 ’Twitter Concierge.’ Almost every major travel brand offers customer service via social media, but Hyatt was the first to specifically name it and create a separate account (@HyattConcierge). They’re now asking guests to use it to book spa appointments, dinner reservations, etc and make special requests.

 

Starwood

Starwood

Starwood (www.starwoodhotels.com/) - Starwood has taken the unique step of creating a  clearing house for all the social media chatter about Starwood – on blogs, apps, facebook updates and on twitter. This allows them to make use of user-generated content on social media as a means of providing real-time information and updates to their SPG members.

 

JDV

JDV

Joie de Vivre (www.jdvhotels.com/) – JDV offers special deals via Twitter Tuesdays and Facebook Fridays. The offers go out at a different time every week and are only good for one hour, so unless you’re following JDV on both twitter and facebook, you’ll miss these deals.

 

Fairmont

Fairmont

Fairmont (www.fairmont.com/) – Their main account (@FairmontHotels), in addition to the usual interaction, deals and ’suite tweets,’ also regularly puts out twitter-only deals and runs innovative contests with free prizes – usually a free stay at a Fairmont.

 

 

Marriott

Marriott

Marriott (www.marriott.com/) – Marriott’s social media efforts encompass all the usual avenues – deals, twitter-only deals, contests and special offers. Their most recent ’Tweet Yourself to Hawaii’ contest  is a pretty big success, and is earning them a ton of followers and fans on both twitter and facebook, and generating a lot of press.

 

Note:- As far as Fairmont, Starwood and Marriott are concerned, their brands, executives and even hotels have an active  presence on twitter and facebook.

For example, Starwood’s Aloft brand has one main account, and then each of their hotels has a separate account – and the entire effort looks like its been well planned to manage future growth.

Fairmont’s individual hotels also have their own twitter accounts, and are quite aggressive in marketing themselves. The Fairmont Chicago went so far as to hire a marketing company to manage and promote a twitter contest.

Marriot’s Ritz-Carlton brand similarly has an official a/c, the individual hotels have their own accounts and their key executives also maintain active profiles. Their co-ordination was plainly evident when their Jakarta hotels were attacked with bombs earlier this year in July, and all their accounts were tweeting information at various levels. 

Marriott (@MarriottIntl) provided the official responses, Ritz-Carlton CEO Simon Cooper (@SimonFCooper) provided the sympathy and a human face, while Alison Sitch, corp. director for PR (@RitzCarltonPR), provided active assistance.

The three travel brands listed below also need to be commended for their innovative use of social media to connect with consumers and improve brand visibility and image.

V Australia

V Australia

V Australia (www.vaustralia.com.au/) – V Australia has taken twitter by storm with their 4320LA and 4320SYD twitter contests. It helped promote their twitter presence, their brand and the destinations – Los Angeles and Sydney.

 

 

Travelocity

Travelocity

Travelocity (www.travelocity.com/) – Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome doesn’t just travel on site and in real life. He also has a sizeable presence on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. Putting the Roaming Gnome as their public face on social media platforms helps Travelocity connect with consumers.

 

Carnival

Carnival

Carnival (www.carnival.com/) – The Carnival Cruise Line has a unique strategy - They get tons of free publicity on Twitter by  aggregating tweets and blog posts from people on-board their ships. Here’s a recent sample. To further this angle, Senior Cruise Director John Heald blogs about his life as a cruise director, offering behind-the-scenes insight. Carnival has also set up an in-house social network – CarnivalConnections - for building and maintaining an active community.

TSA Video Exonerates Agency in Blog Post Accusing It of Taking Baby

Oct 19, 2009 12:33 - By: Julie Sturgeon

When Nic posted her My Bottle’s Up rant on October 16, allegedly detailing how TSA agents separated her from her child at Atlanta’s security checkpoint, the tale garnered plenty of sympathy and outrage, mainly from mothers who know what it’s like to travel alone.

Blogger Nic

Blogger Nic

The blogger’s story contained plenty of drama, from a crying toddler saying ‘No, no, no,” as he disappeared from sight to a woman blacking out from emotion in the bathroom. She claims to have called her husband and mother, begging them to help her because “they took Jackson.”

It’s a social media nightmare for anyone involved in the travel industry today, as bouncing prices, additional fees and last-minute changes have prepped the public to believe any horror story that comes down the pike. But what social media taketh, it also giveth back.

By Friday evening, the TSA got the last word at its blog, using less than a fourth of the space Ms. Nic took up for her side of the dust-up. It merely put up a video of the events showing that many of her claims were exaggerations, including the fact that no one carried off a young child. The Twitter-sphere was next in line, regugitating the blogger’s cyber comments after boarding the flight:

” dunno if i’m going blog about it… may pitch it to publications and go waaaay out with it. i dunno yet. “

” eh, i can put it on my blog, but get paid if someone picks up my story… MWUAHAHAHA…. pay me for my insanity!!!! ”

” i’m not posting sh*t. i’m writing a piece to be published much more widespread than my blog that get 6 hits ”

” full story can’t be posted on my blog…. publishers want it. “

“needless to say, today has been hell… but TSA will be ripped a new asshole thanks to freelance writing.”

Tylenol would have killed for this kind of defensive weapon during the tampering scare several decades ago.

Jason Chaffetz

Jason Chaffetz

But lest the TSA gets a swelled head, the surveillance video it released of Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) traipsing through security at Salt Lake City International Airport proves the politician’s assertion that he did not choose a whole-body-image scanner after voting against that measure in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nor did he throw his business card at TSA officials on the scene as some had suggested.

“It corroborates exactly what I’ve been saying,” Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It dispels the erroneous myth perpetuated by the union.” Not to mention the erroneous myths perpetuated by life in general.

Photography: My Bottle’s Up, Jason Chaffetz

Twitter Travel Apps & Sites

Aug 17, 2009 0:42 - By: P. Ling

RThe importance and growing clout of Twitter as a gateway for the travel industry to tap consumers can no longer be denied.

Twitter Travel Apps

Twitter Travel Apps

This has in turn unleashed a flurry of twitter applications and websites intent on helping travel marketeers and travelers connect and find what they’re looking for - on and via Twitter.

Of course, it’s early days yet, but just as iPhone travel apps like FlightTracker have made it into the list of top 35 iPhone apps this year, it’s a good bet that some of these twitter travel apps and sites too are headed for the big time.

Here’s an updated list of these twitter travel apps and sites:

TwtTRIP (@twtTRIP) - A travel organizer tool that helps you to share your travel plans, meet people and plan your next adventure on Twitter and other social media sites.

Trazzler Buzz (@Trazzler) – Tells you which destinations and regions are trending hot on Twitter, so you know where to go.

Schmap Geotweets (@schmap) – Add maps to your tweets, and share local restaurants, bars and travel adventures with your followers.

Twihotels (@TwiHotels) – Tweets your hotel requirements on Twitter, and connects you with destination hotels and/or twitter users who are in a position to offer unbiased and first-person hotel reviews.

ArrivedOK (@arrivedok) -  Instantly notify your friends and family when you arrive at airports worldwide. Their mobile twitter add-on application lets you tweet from your cell phone – free of charge – even from abroad, avoiding charges for SMS, voice or data transfer.

Twaller (@mytwaller) – Real-time travel related tweets ( #travel ) pulled in from Twitter, sorted by locations and categories.

Wanderlisting (@Wanderlisting) – Filters Twitter to provide you with up-to-the-minute news, deals, tips and tales from the world’s leading travel experts, bloggers and explorers and presents them to you in one convenient location.

Related Posts:

Twitter’s Travel Search: the Start of Something Big by Dennis Schaal

4320SYD – V Australia Twitter Contest

Aug 12, 2009 23:46 - By: P. Ling

It’s time for 4320:SYD – stage 2 of V Australia’s quirky twitter contest. At stake – a free 3 day trip for a group of three from Los Angeles to Sydney, instant fame as an elite tweeter, and round the world tickets with V Australia and Virgin Atlantic.

V Australia

V Australia

In stage 1, which was called 4320LA, the winning team came to LA from Sydney and cranked out 4320 tweets in an equal number of minutes – (3 days & nights non-stop) - to win the grand prize of round the world tickets with V Australia and Virgin Atlantic.

The same shtick applies to 4320SYD, but the currents are flowing in the other direction, and the winning team will be flying from LA to Sydney on September 8, 2009 to test their tweeting skills to the max.

Once in Sydney, the trio will experience the ultimate non-stop three day adventure down-under, from swimming with sharks to enjoying a beer at the Opera Bar at the Sydney Opera House and, of course, scaling the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

It’s not all shrimps on the ‘barbie’ and ‘coldies’ however, as between them the team will need to ‘tweet’ every single minute of the 4320 minutes they are in Sydney.

Competition entries will be accepted until Aug 21, 2009. All you have to do is tweet in your entry about why you deserve to be the winner. For more details or to submit your entry, visit the contest website www.4320SYD.com. On twitter – @VAustralia and @4320SYD.

Virgin Australia 4320LA Twitter Contest

Jul 22, 2009 0:40 - By: P. Ling

Virgin Australia is running a quirky promo contest called 4320LA, where you stand to win 3 round-the-world tickets on Virgin Atlantic and V Australia.

V Australia 4320LA contest

V Australia 4320LA contest

All you have to do is spend three days checking out the attractions in Los Angeles. And send in a tweet once every minute…

That’s 4320 tweets in the same number of minutes. Thankfully, the contest involves three people, so you and two friends can divvy up the tweets amongst yourselves.

Way it works is that the winning group gets a free trip to Los Angeles, where they have to prove their extreme twitter endurance. If successful, the winning trio then gets the 3 round-the-world tickets.

Virgin says that the campaign was inspired by trends showing Australians continue to travel overseas but are increasingly value conscious and keen to cram in as much action and activities into shorter breaks.

V Australia, in partnership with Nova Radio, has already kicked off the first round of this contest, and the three winners – Kelvin Yap (24), Nathan Hackett (25) and Matt Hodges (24) - are in LA July 21-23, tweeting away at a rate of 1 tweet/min.

Apparently, sending in a tweet a minute isn’t hard enough for them, so they’ve decided to also pose with one new person every single minute in LA. You can see the tweets and pictures and follow along here – www.4320la.com and @4320LA.

The second half of the contest is scheduled for August, so you might want to start following that twitter account if you want to take a shot at it in the next round. Especially if you’re in Sydney.

Open Thread: What should we do with @UpTake Twitter account?

Apr 16, 2009 13:23 - By: Elliottng

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

200+ Travel Twitterers I’m Following on #FollowFriday

Jan 16, 2009 22:40 - By: Elliottng

image

UPDATED 1/20/09: see more travel Twitter people from the comments and responses, @wandermom and @wendyperrin. Thanks!

Are you in the Travel Industry and not yet on Twitter?

If so, read Travolution Kevin May’s post on why travel firms MUST take note and his experience with the Twitter Travel community at PhoCusWright this year.  Then join Twitter and follow @travolution.

Still not convinced?  Read “Changing travel, one tweet at a time” on MSNBC by Christopher Elliott (@elliottdotorg) and BELIEVE!

Are you on Twitter and looking for more Travel Tweeters (or is it Twitterers?) to Follow and Connect with?

Then this post is for you.  Today on Twitter, a meme called #FollowFriday was spreading like wildfire.  People would tweet about other Tweeters they enjoy following, and then add the hashtag “#FollowFriday” to their tweet.  Follow the #followfriday action via Twitter Search.

I tweeted about a few top-of-mind Travel Twitterers that I wanted to share.

#FollowFriday tweet

But there are so many more interesting Travel Tweeters that I’m following.  In fact, I counted 200+ Travel Tweeters that I’m tracking using a special group in my Tweetdeck browser.

Other Lists of “Top” Travel tweeters

There are a number of lists out there that have the “top” Travel tweeters, including:

The 200+ Travel Tweeters that I follow

Well, without making any strong recommendations on who YOU should follow, I thought I’d simply share who I follow.  I’m happy I’m following all 200+ of these Tweeters.  Mine these Tweeters for the ones with the same interests as you.  Happy Following!

There you have it.  My precious Travel Twitterer list!

UPDATED 1/20/09: Added some great adds from the comments below, @wendyperrin, @christinelu, and @wandermom.

Free (but welcome) advice on the corporate use of Twitter

Dec 03, 2008 16:01 - By: Elliottng

People who have a healthy skepticism about Twitter, like my wife, have the impression that people on Twitter talk about mundane topics like “I ate a slice of pizza for lunch.”  But in fact, those of us on Twitter know that there is no more popular topic on Twitter…than Twitter itself.

I shared on Twitter that we were planning to use the @UpTake twitter account more in the future.  Many of us at UpTake are already personally on Twitter:  @yenlee @patjenkins @elliottng and others.  But I was hoping to have @UpTake be a shared account between Pat, Steve Yu, and me for more focused Travel Industry information and discussion.

An interesting and spirited conversation then ensued about the corporate use of Twitter with a number of people in the Travel (and general) Social Media space, including:  @NitinK of Software Abstraction Blog, @StephenJoyce of Rezgo, SEKeener of BootsNAll, @ToddLucier of TourismKeys.ca, @nerdseyeview of NerdsEyeView, @chadcat of ZoomProspector, and @chinkerfly (who worked with me on my CNReviews China blog).  This is what is so cool about Twitter…an instant water-cooler discussion with some incredible people distributed across the world.  And yes, like a real water-cooler discussion, plenty of free advice emerged.

Todd Lucier of TourismKeys.ca

@ToddLucier’s initial tweet reaction to us starting an @UpTake twitter account was a little negative: “Elliot, surely this place is more about people and their ideas than corporate brands.” Todd went further and on a post argued that people should use their own personal name consistently across all Web 2.0 platforms so as to build a consistent Web 2.0 personal brand.

Stephen Joyce of Rezgo and Travel & Tourism Technology Trends Blog

@StephenJoyce weighed in with a tweet that people agreed with:  “I think you and Pat have more impact on the Uptake brand then an Uptake twitter feed. You, Yen, and Pat are the human element.” I totally agree with this, but we also expect to build UpTake into a leading online travel company that transcends individual people.  Also, our corporate culture is totally allergic to the “cult of personality” (perhaps because Yen is Canadian, Stephen and Todd).  So how do you add that personal touch in a way that transcends one person, even the founders?

Sean Keener of BootsNAll Network

Sean Keener tweeted that “Look @ history of goog SERPs as indicator 4 twitter” and then elaborated his idea in a nice video-post on his blog and YouTube:

Sean points out that person-to-person marketing is always the most effective way to get your message out, and that as founder of BootsNAll he has been doing it in independent travel for the last 10 years.  “Nothing beats meeting someone, shaking their hand, and talking about something they love.” Couldn’t agree more.

More great links and resources

I received some great links from Sean, Nitin and others:

  1. Search Engine Guide – Jennifer Laycock – Great Examples of Corporate Twitter Use
  2. Fast Wonder Blog – Dawn Foster – Using Twitter for Brands or Corporate Identities
  3. How to Change The World – Guy Kawasaki – How to Use Twitter as a Twool
  4. Web Strategy – Jeremiah Owyang – Why Brands Are Unsuccessful in Twitter
  5. Horse Pig Cow – Tara Hunt – Tweeting for Companies 101

These are incredible resources!  A great example of Twitter serving as a social computer.

What’s UpTake going to do?

Well for one, we’re not going to overthink it.  We’re just going to do our best to develop a shared UpTake account that highlights interesting stuff related to the Travel Industry, Travel Technology, Search, and happenings at UpTake.  We’re all going to keep our personal accounts and keep using them as we all want to individually.  And we’re going to heed the advice provided above on keeping it personal and enjoying the process of building relationships with people who care about the same things we do.  That’s it for now!

Tim Hughes & Media Immediacy in the Age of Twitter

Dec 02, 2008 15:08 - By: Elliottng

photo courtesy: uselessnano

Tim Hughes (Twitter: @timothychughes) of The BOOT – The Business of Online Travel – posted a highly personal account of his experience watching the Mumbai terrorist events unfold.  His wife’s cousin and family were long-term residents at the Trident Oberoi hotel. His wife’s cousin (mom) and children were trapped in the hotel for 36 hours hiding from the terrorists.

From old media to new media – getting the information he needed

Tim started tracking the news using old media–the BBC and CNN–but found himself moving to Twitter:

By the end of the second day I had my eyes glued to Twitter under the search tag #mumbai and more generally searching Twitter for any mention on the word Oberoi. Towards the end of the siege these twitter feeds updated themselves with nearly a tweet a second. People from all around the world were tweeting with the important (”am watching pictures of commandos storming the hotel”), the emotional (”thoughts are with all those in Mumbai”), the practical (”here is the direct line to the Oberoi Mumbai staff”), the wishful (”heard a rumour that it was all over, is that true?”) and of course the useless (”here is a link to [an unrelated] video”). Meanwhile my other screen was alternating between live web streaming of NDTV (local news) and CNN-IBN (CNN’s partnership in India). Live professional feeds on one screen and live citizens on the other.

This kept me so up to date that I actually saw the live footage (as it happened) of my cousin and her family stepping out of the hotel and towards the buses. My cheers of glee brought work colleagues rushing into my office as I jabbed at the screen screaming “That’s them!!! That’s them!!!

Twitter was also my primary source of information in the early hours of the attack.  I (Twitter: @elliottng) follow about 1200 people on Twitter and started to see tweets tagged #mumbai with news of the event.  Associated Press also recounted the rapid flow of information on Twitter:

Twitter users, who simply tagged their comments “mumbai,” traded information at a rate of 50-100 posts a minute in messages that were sometimes wrong, often fragmented, but always instant.

The lightning-quick updates of the attacks that killed 174 people read like a sketchy but urgent blow-by-blow account of the siege, providing further evidence of a sea change in how people gather their information in an increasingly Internet-savvy world.

“‘Emergency’ can some one check if there bomb blast of some shootout in oberoi hotel of anywhere in Mumbai ? I am at inox inside,” a user named Puneet wrote on Twitter, a popular “microblogging” Web site, shortly after the violence began.

“I just heard what sounded like a bomb blast! I hope I am wrong,” krazyfrog, a user in Mumbai, wrote soon after.

“People stay where you are. We’re under attack,” wrote Whizzkidd, also in the city.

Unfortunately, as Shel Israel related, Twitter also exposed the hatred and evil that poisons some people’s thinking.

Twitter delivers Situational Awareness

I write this post because I noticed that Travel technology blogger Alex Bainbridge (blog, Twitter: @alexbainbridge) just joined Twitter today (and sheepishly blogged about it), and I wanted to congratulate him for joining the party–its far from being too late and just getting started.  I encouraged Alex to follow 100 travel industry people (with a focus on his existing friends in the blogosphere and Real Life) and aim for about 100 people following him back to start with.  This forms a good platform for getting situational awareness in the specific field of focus.  I also saw that Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel Blogs was complaining of Twitter overuse by Travolution (I totally disagree) and I encourage him to give it another chance, maybe by following more than 24 people!  And if someone is livetweeting a conference and you’re not interested, try the Twitter utility called TwitterSnooze that lets you unfollow and automatically refollow after time is up.

With that basic platform, the next step is to discover, over time, a more diverse group of people to follow.  This further creates even greater situational awareness of the world as your followers increase.  With Mumbai, I heard about the news quickly because I follow @arjunram, an entrepreneur based in Bangalore, who started tweeting and retweeting news about the attack almost in real-time.

I’m hopeful that the Travel blogosphere can benefit from Twitter in the situational awareness that it can deliver to each of us.  Yes it is distracting and “noisy,” and not good for people at risk of Adult Onset ADD (yikes).  But in the difficult times that the Travel industry is facing, this situational awareness could deliver the information each of us need to make the right decisions for our companies and ourselves.

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