Summary of RobertKCole’s Twitter postings for the period ending midday November 30. Highlights include: A storied week for women on the web – A vindictive individual decides to trash Stacy Small (aka @EliteTravelGal on Twitter) by adding seven bogus comments under three different fictional names to my blog post on the Future of Travel Agents; Women travel bloggers announce annual Passports with Purpose goal is to build a school in Cambodia; And PinkFriday.org raises lots of money selling donated goods with 100% of proceeds going to Susan G. Komen breast cancer research; Plus, Four Seasons proves it clearlyunderstands how social media can improve a destination experience.
Archives for November 2009
Smarter Travel Agents and Travel Agencies Rise from the Ashes
November 21, 2009 By 43 Comments
The travel agency community has sustained significant losses due to consolidation and the economic downturn. A new breed of smarter and more innovative travel agencies have emerged that understand customer needs, provide specialized travel product knowledge, and creating travel plans best fit those needs. These are the traditional traits of quality travel agencies. The difference is that these new agents have embraced technology and used it to expand their reach, engage their customers and grow their revenues.
My Twitter Digest for the Past Week 2009-11-16
November 16, 2009 By 4 Comments
Summary of RobertKCole’s Twitter postings for the period ending midday November 16. Highlights include: Retweets from a good hotel panel at the Pubcon Search Marketing Conference and Travel Blog Camp at World Travel Market; some angel investor insights; InterContinental and Design Hotels websites that provide some great examples of hotels inspiring travel using video; , and some Twitter Lists, Twubs and other techniques to follow the PhoCusWright conference.
US Hotel Performance – Time for a Baseline Reset?
November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
US hotel industry performance has not yet shown signs of recovery. Declines in all key industry metrics – occupancy percentage, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) continue to decline in 2009 when compared to comparable periods in 2008. Smith Travel Research (STR), PriceWaterhouseCoopers(PWC) and PKF International (PKF) all forecast that ADR and RevPAR will continue to decline in 2010. Reviewing peak period weekly performance statistics, it appears that the US hotel industry needs to prepare for “A New Normal” with lower corporate and group business and value oriented leisure travelers when supply and demand reach equilibrium.
How Google Can Help Simplify Online Travel Planning
November 5, 2009 By 1 Comment
The planning phase of the seven-step travel process is a hot area for travel startups that are developing innovative solutions to address a complex problem. Google, with 70+% share of US search traffic and many existing travel planning tools is perfectly positioned to improve and simplify the travel planning process. In the future, end-to-end planning of complex travel arrangements will result from enhanced profiles supporting trip-centric traveler personas and geo-aware itinerary sequencing tools. The introduction of hard and soft filtering will provide support for emerging Web 3.0 technologies capable of providing more relevant travel product recommendations.
