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.
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.
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.
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.
Freedom of Choice in Expedia Contract Negotiations?
October 19, 2009 By 5 Comments
Contract negotiations between Choice Hotels International and Expedia have broken down, resulting in Choice brands being removed from Expedia’s websites. As negotiating power now favors Online Travel Agencies, hotel brands must maintain discipline to retain mutually beneficial terms. Seeing continued declines in both occupancy percentage and average rate, hotel owners may be willing to exchange future margins for immediate business volume. Hotel brands are challenged to maintain chain-wide pricing integrity and competitive positioning the economy improves. Hotel brands able to maintain strategic alignment with its hotel portfolio will have the best prospect to emerge stronger when the industry recovers.
