If HuffPostTravel can declare that the “Old Travel Show is Dead, Long Live the New York Travel Festival,”  then we might be right in declaring that “Travel Destination Articles Are Dying, Long Live Social Media Travel Content.”

So, when a senior editor at Technorati  told me that, going forward, all travel-related content had to have a Social Media spin, had to be presented via a Social/New Media filter, I knew the travel content game had changed. No more colorful destination pieces?

And then I read about a Travel Trends Blogger Conference in New York this month, further proof of the nichification of travel content, and the trend toward travel trends.
And then this: Travel Writing is Dead from the nihilistic publication 3am Magazine

No more straining for appropriate adjectives and stumbling over cliches.

Technorati, after all, has millions of unique visitors a month, and while the content site is not especially known for its travel articles, the Technorati Travel home page is petty vibrant with article Tweets typically running in the 20-50 range in any 24-36 hour period and many, many Facebook shares.

Personally, I had been noticing on New Media Travel the movement away from high-page views for destination content (The ‘Wow’ of the Caribbean), and the increasingly high numbers of page views for travel articles with a travel news/trends/social media orientation, like “SocialMedia Powers Family Travel Tends.”  In many cases the disparity was dramatic.

It seems descriptions of blue waters, great dining experiences, famous landmarks, cozy inns, and distant places can be found almost anywhere in our totally Googleized world. Friends and friends of friends share images and tales on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and the many review sites.

But content on family travel trends or how new technologies will enrich travel or how airline booking sites can personalize their information and flex with a customer’s specific travel needs, are more sought after.

On the other hand, content on how a specific Caribbean island reaches out to its visitors and co-creates the island travel experience through Social Media, works. It’s simply more relevant to today’s traveling digital natives who are “in touch,” and sharing useful, relevant information at every stage of their decision-making process and travel experience.

They are co-creating travel, and today’s travel content reflects that change from the passive travel article, to one that highlights the engaging, Social Media dynamic of travel today.

Hotel guests have said it again and again: after location, and service that exceeds  expectations, free and reliable WiFi matters the most.
So why do hotels charge for WiFi and why do guests have to struggle find a location that works?

Hotelchatter says that while most hotels provide free Wi Fi, (according to their 1013 Hotel WiFi report , more than two-thirds of hotels say they provide the free service),  “availability can be limited to the lobby, or its only free for a while before you have to pay, or you get minimal bandwidth.”

Or, and this is a pet peeve of mine, you have to sign in every time you access the service, and too many times the process is not straightforward. It should be.

Hotelmarketing believes that this is changing. Because so many travelers book hotels on the basis of reliable, free Wi Fi, hotels have woken up and increased efforts to provide free, fast and reliable service, even at great expense, especially in older hotels.

More progress is necessary.

One-third of hotels still don’t provide good, free WiFi service, or stick customers with onerous add-ons like having to become a member of their loyalty program. Or they impose limits on use, like half-hour free before rates kick in. Often, guest aren’t aware that rates “kicked in,” until the bill is paid.

Why are hotels so short-sighted? The idea of “nickeling and diming” a guest is a difficult habit to break. But as guests arrive with multiple devices requiring Wi Fi as a basic necessity, these hotels will either adapt or lose guests and revenue.

HotelChatter has a fun, colorful infographic showing which hotels offer free WiFi..and which charge and how much. And it also shows  the best and the worst services from around the world.

Video Book Reviews (VBR)

So, authors, publicists and publishers, truthfully, how many media releases have you sent out promoting a book or author, and how are they working for you?

Simply, video brings your book to life with action and effects, and video motivates the undecided or marginally interested  42% more effectively than print or text.

New Media Travel and Travel Video PostCards now offer publicists and authors 1-2-minute Video Book Reviews Reviews/Promo or VBR . Video is simply a more effective and dramatic way to connect with buyers, than print or text.  Here is a recent Video Book Review

Print/Text reviews have dropped significantly, and Amazon and other book sellers want video for your book to increase sales.

What we do for you:

* Your VBR  becomes part of our 5 million plus views TV Channel as a VBR  playlist.
* It reaches 2000 subscribers instantly
* It is posted to YouTube
* It circulates via YouTube to, and is often embedded on thousands of websites and web pages.   The VBR can be posted as Video Features to high-value sites,  Travel Weekly, Technorati Travel, Family Travel Forum, TripAdvisor, etc.
* You can put this on Amazon! Amazon wants video for your book. We can help with that
* It becomes promoted via our 14,000 follower-based  Social Media activity
* We place promotional messages within the video that promotes your book and links to a website, seller, etc.
* We feature your travel VBR on our visual mailer, reaching 36,000 travel professionals.
* You have a compelling video promotion of your book for you to market and circulate as you or your publisher wish.

Ask us for stats. For detailed viewer demographics. Ask for a demo.

Why not email to set up a time to talk further. Kaleel.tvp@gmail.com  If you’re interested, do share with your client.  Who else is offering you more?

Cheers and thanks!

image/courtesy hgacreative.com

Monday, May 6, 2013

if you teach a woman to sew…

by Oonaballoona

here’s a little something that is actually in fact quite large.  if our corner of the blogisphere isn’t the right place to share it, i don’t know where is.


i look at pictures of collapsed buildings and raging fires, the products of which make up far too much of my closet, and i think about the lives of others around the world and the ways in which we simply can’t make it all better, and so i stand motionless.  and i am amazed by those who can see past the enormity of problems out there in the world, who are able to do something to make something BETTER.

two such ladies, nikki and kria (the latter being my friend, and how i came to know about this), have hatched a plan to make something better: empower widows in india with the skills and tools they need to support themselves and their families, through sewing.  why?  well, here, they explain it best:

“In India, a widow is the ultimate social outcast. Seen as a burden whose bad luck caused her husband’s death, a widow is stripped of her colorful saris, jewelry, and bindi. A widow is no longer referred to as “she” but “it,” and is expected to mourn the loss of her husband until her death. She is left to care for her dependents with little or no resources.”

“We are traveling to southern India for two and a half weeks with the goal of establishing a small sewing cooperative for widows in Coimbatore. Ultimately, our hope is to provide economic opportunity and empowerment to women who need it the most.”

they’ve already traveled to coimbatore, to begin the process with their indian counterpart, sister stella baltazar, a woman who runs a support group for over 200 widowed women at the franciscan missionaries of mary.  

it’s the kind of thing you wish you had the energy/power/courage to do, yes?  in my case it is.
and of course (and you knew this was coming), we can all be a part of this, by helping to fund their mission. you can check out their indiegogo campaign page, read up on it, and if it’s your bag, throw a little change their way. they’re almost halfway to their goal.  or,

if there’s not a dime to spare, you can share their campaign and spread the word.

as a me-maker, as a sewist, as a human, i’m in.  i’d love to see them realize their mission.

Samples of the 37 comments:

abailey May 6, 2013 at 1:13 PM
You have me in tears…crying. This is such a touching story and I am so happy to hear that there is already a group of people who have pulled together to help these women! I definitely want to help and will spread the word! Thanks for sharing. Amazing…


anneke May 6, 2013 at 2:23 PM
This is a truly beautiful cause, thanks for letting me know about it! I made a donation and shared it on my own blog as well.

The Reckless Needle May 6, 2013 at 3:19 PM
This is the kind of aid that I think is really important, empowering people to become independent. I’ve made a donation and I’ll share it on my blog! Best of luck reaching the target!

Enjoy the Video

(please watch the Video PostCard here or below)

By Hardie Karges

Twenty years after the fall of Communism, tourism is finally on the rise in Eastern Europe, and for those in the know, it’s the number one tourist destination in the world—cheap, beautiful, and friendly.  So why is it so hard to find a budget hotel in a region where incomes are still only half that of the West?

Mostly, people are looking in the wrong places.

The government-related agencies are now deeply into  Social Media, to make the quest easier.  For example, the Slovenian Tourist Board uses no fewer than eight sites to promote tourism there, a little gem of a country in the ex-Yugoslavia.
The Czech Republic , an easy weekend trip from the West, has at least four social media accounts, posts 5-6 times per day on its FaceBook page in multiple languages, and has 85,000 likes; even little brother Slovakia has 4000 likes and posts every day.

Leave it to Latin-linked rural-based Romania to uphold traditions.  “Romania is natural, cultural and authentic and we are trying hard to also be authentic in the use of the social media,” according to Simion Alb, a spokesperson at the Romanian Tourism Office in the US.   Feel free to direct tweets on that subject too.  It’s like a parallel reality of social media.  They didn’t have Twitter and FaceBook to help them win the wars.  But they can certainly use it to win the peace.

But one axiom remains:  If  travelers want to meet local people then they should  go to hostels, usually mom-and-pop operations frequently located in and around the city center.  There you’ll meet people from all over the world, too.  And rooms are cheap, $10-20 for a dorm bed, maybe twice that for a private room.

Sometime the problem is finding them.  Not  online;  the places themselves, physically. Maybe there’s only a sticker by the doorbell indicating the business within.
They’re very easy to find online, though: on hostel-booking sites like Hostelbookers   Then of course there is always
TripAdvisor, FaceBook, Air BnB – and various Social Media platforms.

Regardless of how travelers get their information on East Europe…Social Media or traditional media… be sure you go!

 Watch the fun 1-min Video Postcard here

image courtesy travelingted.com

Hotels live and die by the number and kinds of reviews they get. Especially on TripAdvisor, because the quantity, quality and frequency of reviews a hotel receives there, determine a hotel’s all-important ranking.
Very little is said about the authenticity of a review, but regardless, even a small change in TripAdvisor’s rankings can send shock waves, and deeply impact a hotel’s website and revenue.

Hotelmarketing.com points out that TripAdvisor’s rankings are based on a propriety algorithm called “The Popularity Index,”  and obviously the higher the hotel’s ranking, the greater the number of visitors to the hotel’s  website.

But while it’s logical to say that more visitors to a website translates into more bookings, that’s not necessarily so.
Or is it?

Does heightened traffic equal more bookings? The point that  Hotelmarketing makes, then, is the difference between traffic and “qualified traffic,” the latter more readily convertable to bookings.

To test the idea, a random sample of clients from Micros ecommerce , was analyzed.
The conclusion was probably predictable: “The closer a property is to a Number 1 ranking on TripAdvisor, (in its given market), the greater its online bookings.”

The research, prepared by Jonathan Brinksman, Senior Web Marketing Analyst at Micros, breaks it down further, such as: Properties ranked #1 in their market see 11% more directly booked room nights per night than those ranked number 2.

A huge increase in revenue.

Brinksman reports that older reviews carry less weight than recent ones, making the rankings game very fluid and immediate.

The report offers way to increase hotel rankings, and makes it quite clear that doing so is imperative to a healthy bottom line.  Great service and exceeding customer demands are still the best way to get to #1

image/courtesy cnn.com

Will Google harness its awesome search capacity, plus its Youtube, plus social indicators from a person’s searches to make travel suggestions and shape travel experiences? And book travel too.

We say, yes. They say, “yes” too.

It’s widely accepted that travelers are seriously unhappy with online Travel Agents (OTA’s) – the big-box airline ticket aggregators like Expedia and Priceline.

The reasons are obvious: OTA’s are complex, complicated and have no flexibility to address a traveler’s specific needs.
And while other travel sites pop up almost daily with some useful innovations (think Hipmunk ), the real answer to where travel is going is evident: Google and Facebook are expanding into the travel space with force and foresight.

Hotelmarketing.com reported that at the Mountain Travel Symposium  at Snowmass, Colorado, the two giants made it clear that they want to influence “how consumers select places to spend their vacations, and how destinations sell themselves to prospective customers.”

Eric Hawkins, Facebook’s industry manager for travel, reportedly told the symposium of travel professionals that his social media-site is an “underappreciated source of travel bookings” and urged the travel industry to tap into the travel wisdom of Facebook to connect with potential customers.

The viewpoint was more compelling when Hawkins pointed out that it matters less how many friends one has on Faceebook, but who the friends are. In effect, these “quality friends” can be converted to customers and clients, using the targeting tools Facebook makes available.

And it was no surprise that Google’ s Rob Torres, managing director for travel, pointed out that YouTube, owned by Google, is a great tool for the travel industry.

SummitDaily.com reported that Torres touted YouTube’s 1- billion monthly unique users in a reference to what he called Generation C: a group of people with  shared mindsets rather than  ages.

If you’re not reaching these potential clients by video, you should be, he reportedly said. Travel Video PostCard, which supplies the travel industry with 1-minute Video PostCards agrees. The channel has 5 plus million views and thousands of subscribers.

But Torres went further by saying that Google will harness its awesome search capacity, plus Youtube, plus use social indicators from a person’s searches to make travel suggestions and get more involved in travel.

Which really means, Google will soon take the next step and almost certainly offer travel bookings.

image/courtesy blog.microsecommerce.com

In a relatively recent article that proved very popular with readers and travel industry pros, New Media Travel asked, “Why Are Hotel Websites so Boring?”

We had our own theories, especially the one that said hotels do not want to offend certain potential customers by showing, for example, mixed-race couples or, say,  real families having fun. These latter images might offend childless guests.
We also argued that hotel websites need to use more video...whatever it takes to create an emotionally engaging website, free of empty dining rooms and vacant pools and generic people posing.

Now comes a piece from Hotelmarketing.com that reinforces the idea, that while hotel website copy must contain core information that the client is looking for (price range, location, services and, increasingly, experiences), it doesn’t need to be boring.

The real content, the stuff that excites a potential guest must be imaginative, engagingly-written with the brand’s voice in mind, “to give users the final push to ‘Book Now’.”
And it must also have search engine appeal!

What’s also very interesting, we think, is the emerging idea that hotels are valued less on their amenities, and more on the kinds of experiences they can provide their guests.
Does a hotel give kids a mini-tablet and encourage them follow the exploits of a literary character who toured the city in which the kids are now staying?
Might there be some NBA floor-seats tickets available?

Writing for HeBS Digital , a hospitality strategies company, Erica Garza, makes several points relative to creating content that  engages the guest – but that’s also “tailored” to search engines.

Three of her main points:

• Close the gap between the hotel’s official content (stuff created and approved of by the hotel), and unofficial content – the real-world opinions and observations on Facebook, Yelp, etc.
The bigger the gap between these two, she says, the more the trouble the hotel is in. And typically, the user-generated content is more dynamic, direct and honest. Sometime this may simply require dropping a key word, like “luxury,” Garza says, if all the unofficial content says the property is not a “luxury property.”

• Both search engines and consumers want content that is engaging, timely and relevant; content “intuitively structured across a user-friendly site.

• Avoid duplicating web site content. Search engines regard duplicate content as spam. Of course hotels will provide the same content to booking sites, OTA’s etc. But they must avoid providing duplicate content to third-party sites, an industry  problem that seems to be growing in recent years.

It’s a bit of an axiom (cliche?) but still true: the goal of a hotel’s website is to turn “lookers into bookers.”
But while an eye-catching design will draw potential customers into the  website , it’s the promise of an emotionally-fulfilling experience, communicated by engaging, natural and fun content that gets them to click and book.

image/courtesy authenticbusinessgrowth.com

By Jennifer Nagy

“No Grandma, I don’t work at the TV station. And no, I can’t introduce you to Anderson Cooper.”

One of the most undervalued and underutilized marketing tactics is public relations (a.k.a. PR). This is most likely because most people – my immediate family included – have no idea what PR is. In my Huffington Post article I tried for clarification and will try again here,

Even some small business owners who are familiar with PR are belaboring under very common myths about the industry. In this article, I’ve debunked the top five most common PR myths in order to show you how PR can help you to market your small business more effectively.

Myth #1: PR equals press releases
The press release is the proverbial hammer of a PR toolkit – the tried and true method that companies continue to use to communicate their stories to media. It can be a very effective tool, but only when used properly.

Unfortunately though, today most companies use press releases as a way to mass-market a story idea. Most press releases simply state news, rather than considering what is actually newsworthy to the general public or a media outlet about the news. Always try to see the bigger picture; your press release should tell a reporter what implication your news has to the industry as a whole.

As well, companies that are inexperienced in PR send their untargeted press release to every single media outlet that they can think of and every single journalist in each outlet, without any real strategy or consideration of the journalist’s specific areas of interest. This “spray and pray” method has made the press release a much less effective tool for PR professionals. Journalists receive hundreds or even thousands of press releases via email every day so your message to media must also change in order for your story to stand out from the crowd.

Today, a more effective way of delivering your message/story idea to media is to use a pitch letter. A pitch letter is an email, which outlines the newsworthy story behind your news. I repeat, it cannot just state your news; your pitch must encapsulate why this story should matter to the media outlet’s audience.

Here’s an example: if your news is that your company appointed a new CEO, consider how this appointment will affect your business as a whole, the industry in which you operate and the local business community. Will your new CEO affect your local economy in a positive way? Will the new CEO bring strong experience or innovation that will help your company to transform your industry? If so, these are the strong newsworthy stories that you should be including in your email pitch in order to secure the most media coverage possible.

Myth #2: Effective PR can replace the efforts of a sales team
Sometimes I feel like I am stuck on repeat because of how often I explain this common misconception about PR: PR is not sales. It will not directly generate sales. Instead, PR generates brand awareness and credibility so that when your sales team approaches potential leads, they are already familiar with your company and product and trust in your brand. This will turn cold leads into warm leads, and will drastically increase your sales team’s efficacy over time.

Which brings me to my next point…

Myth #3: Using PR, my company will become famous overnight
Building a brand and creating awareness in a customer’s mind does not happen overnight. With most PR campaigns (especially those in high competition markets – like the US travel media market, for instance), companies can expect to start seeing media placements at approximately three months into the campaign. As long as the campaign continues, the number of PR placements will increase exponentially so you can anticipate steady growth over time.

This is why PR is most effective over a long period of time. My recommendation is to consider PR a basic necessity for marketing your business and outreach should continue on a regular basis, as long as your company is in existence. In other words, PR shouldn’t stop until you do.

Myth #4: PR is cheap
A common misconception is that PR is cheap. While this has a modicum of truth (because PR is much cheaper – and more effective – than advertising), PR is not by any means cheap. PR is a full-time job so companies must either hire a full-time, in-house PR professional or outsource to an agency, who will handle the PR outreach on a company’s behalf. Either way, your monthly costs will be in the thousands, not in the hundreds of dollars. When it comes to PR, you definitely get what you pay for.

Think of it this way: you need to spend money to make money. And the benefits of PR HUGELY outweigh its costs. PR can create more visibility, more credibility and more impressions than advertising at a MUCH lower price point. And unlike advertising, whose effectiveness stops when you stop paying for the ad, PR’s reach continues to grow exponentially over time as more and more media outlets become familiar with your company, product and brand.

Myth #5: PR is easy so I’ll just do it myself
This is probably one of the biggest myths about PR. Many business owners think that they can handle PR themselves to save money; after all, all you need to do is write a press release and journalists will be banging down your door, asking for interviews, right?

Not true.
PR is not just about press releases… or even about pitches. PR is about creating a consistent brand, writing well, communicating effectively, acting strategically, creating relationships with media, having extensive knowledge about your industry and the media outlets that you are pitching.

PR is a big job. As a startup, I’m sure that there are lots of tasks on your ‘to do’ list and not enough hours in the day to complete all of them. So allow the PR professionals to do what they do best and focus your energy on what you do best – running your business.

Jennifer Nagy, President of jlnpr, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry. At jlnpr, she works with companies to increase awareness of their property/travel product and get their story in front of the audiences that will have a direct impact on their bottom line. jlnpr works with international clients in the travel and tourism, hospitality, airline, cruise and meeting/event sectors, among others.  For more information on jlnpr, please contact Jennifer at or visit www.jlnpr.com.

image/courtesy careers.ox.ac.uk