Hotwire has undermined its brand promise by removing the specific criteria from its hotel ratings used to differentiate hotel classifications. Additionally, by benchmarking hotels using competitive online travel sites with incompatible rating scales, Hotwire may inaccurately classify hotels. In the example provided, Hotwire staunchly defends its flawed rating process for a hotel that it rates higher than sister websites Expedia, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor. Worse yet, these policies and processes have caused them to lose their customer service focus.
Mad as Hell About Airline Fees – How Hidden are They?
September 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I’m Mad as Hell About Hidden Airline Fees and I’m Not Gonna Take This Anymore is the tag line for a coalition that is demanding that the US Department of Transportation requires airlines to prominently display all ancillary fees on their websites and to provide distribution to enable transaction of these fees through all third party channels. Upon closer scrutiny, several claims appear exaggerated, while the lack of specific proposals regarding HOW these demands can be effectively implemented ignores challenges involving business models and technical interfacing.
Story of Two Deaf & Blind, but Mostly Dumb Airlines
July 26, 2010 By 4 Comments
Flight arrangements for a recent business trip turn into a nightmare when Delta and US Airways exhibit consistent customer service failures highlighting unanswered phones, silent Twitter accounts, missed flights, botched refunds and inept ticket agents. In many cases, the carriers were simply deaf and blind when it came to customer needs and understanding of internal policies. In others, the airlines were simply dumb when it came to proactively resolving the customer service breaks that they had caused – with the exception of except for one lone employee.
Is a Facebook Like Button Click for Website Access Evil?
July 24, 2010 By 10 Comments
K2 Ski Company recently shut down its corporate website and directed all users to its Facebook fan page for an exclusive preview of its new 2010 ski line. Many organizations are getting creative to build Facebook communities, but in some cases, the techniques utilized, while innovative, may cause users to click a Facebook Like Button to access the website. Widely referred to as “Like-bait”, where should the line be drawn that separates clever marketing from something that undermines the value and intended use of Facebook’s Like functionality?
Say Anything… Fast Times at Social Media High School
April 8, 2010 By 2 Comments
Relationships are the foundation of social media. Relevance, engagement, honesty & trust are the four cornerstones when establishing interpersonal relationships. The same factors impact social media relationships. Parallels can be drawn between the perspectives on relationships provided in Say Anything…, the seminal coming of age film about the complexities of teenage relationships and the business-customer dynamics in social media relationships. Social media appears to have matured to a point where it is about to graduate from High School.
Individualization of Travel – ITB Berlin Convention
March 13, 2010 By
Text of opening remarks by Robert Cole when moderating the Individualization of Travel panel on March 12, 2010 on Marketing & Distribution Day at the ITB Berlin Convention. Key takeaways included travel is both an intensely personal and highly social experience. It is also a very complex multi-step process. A massive quantity of potential options exist, as well as dramatically different personal decision making processes. Now, social media now enables a transition from mass broadcasting brand messages to establishing relationships with customers and interactively communicating.
Multiple Persona, Trip-centric Travel Has a Name – EveryYou
October 21, 2009 By 4 Comments
Travel is a complex process that differs significantly from other online purchases. Traveler destination, hotel, airline and travel itinerary selection decisions are not only highly personal in nature, but also may be based on very different criteria depending on the nature of the trip being planned. By applying multiple persona marketing concepts against specific trip-centric attributes provides a multi-dimensional traveler profile that is far superior to conventional frequent traveler information maintained by online travel sites, hotels, airlines and car rental companies. EveryYou is the term given to the concept by blogger Tim Hughes in a presentation prepared for the Web In Travel Conference at ITB Asia in Singapore.
