Speaking at Online Revealed Educational Exchange

I’m very excited to announce that I will be presenting as the keynote speaker at the Vancouver Online Revealed Education Exchange on March 13th, 2008. I will be speaking about the T-List project, the challenges of collaborating with a disparate group of bloggers, and the success of the Tips from the T-List initiative. The Tips from the T-List experience represents a huge opportunity for travel & tourism industry marketers and practitioners. I’m looking forward to sharing my social media experiences and hopefully providing the audience with some useful and practical strategies... Read more »

Facilitating the Dream with Kango - Follow-up

After I wrote the review about Kango.com I emailed Yen Lee and asked him some specific questions about getting product into Kango.com. Yen was gracious enough to answer my questions himself and provided some useful insight into how the sight may grow over time. Here are the questions and Yen’s answers: T4: How do SME suppliers add their product to Kango or perhaps the better question is how does Kango identify and add supplier product? YL: Two different answers to a critical initiative for us: SME suppliers will be able to add their product to Kango in the future through a self-submittal.... Read more »

Speaking in Florida on Social Media

I received confirmation last week that I have been invited to present as a keynote speaker at the Florida Association of CVB’s annual Destination Marketing Summit in Orlando. The presentation will be two hours in length and cover two segments; an introduction to social media and it’s impact on tourism marketing and strategies in using social media to market destinations to a changing user landscape. I’m really looking forward to presenting to this group primarily because: The use of social media and user generated content is a very timely subject. The audience is well positioned... Read more »

A Lesson Learned - Big Changes at VisitScotland.com

Earlier in February I wrote about the role of the DMO and the lesson learned from VisitScotland.com. That post received a number of comments back that added more depth to the conversation. Today there was an announcement from Visit Scotland that the VisitScotland.com website would be changing the way it does busy to better support the grassroots tour operators. Ofcourse, the small operators are ecstatic about the change and are praising the work of organizations like ReclaimVS.com who petitioned to have VisitScotland.com returned to public control. The big issue for many was the fact that... Read more »

Engaging SME Suppliers May Not Be About Technology

I had an interesting discussion with the President of the Finnish Chapter of IFITT and a PHD student from the Basque region of Spain about engaging small travel suppliers, primarily tour and activity providers, in the use of new technologies to help manage and distribute products. I was saddened but still encouraged to hear that both were facing the same challenges in their respective countries that I have been facing here in Canada and more specifically in B.C.. In my ongoing efforts to promote Rezgo.com as a tour operator software solution to small tour and activity operators, I have encountered... Read more »

The Role of the DMO - A Lesson From VisitScotland.com

There has been a lot of discussion about the role of DMOs and how DMOs should be implementing technologies for the benefit of stakeholders. In the struggle to maintain viability and revenues, some DMOs have turned to a sales model. How does this model affect the DMO’s primary mandate to market the destination? We need look no further than VisitScotland.com to see an example of a DMO whose priority has shifted from marketing the destination to generating revenues from commissions. There are many, especially stakeholders, who are not happy with the direction that VisitScotland.com has... Read more »

Technologies presented by Eric Basha at Enter 2008

The following three videos were presented by Eric Basha, head of Tourism at Microsft, at the Enter 2008 Conference in Innsbruck. Although many of these videos have been out for a while, I wanted to address each one and discuss them in the context of travel & tourism. The first technology that Eric presented is the Windows Mobile Tellme application. The most obvious travel & tourism use of this technology is for the booking of destination products that are signed up for the service. For example, making a restaurant reservation or booking tickets for a local attraction. The example presented... Read more »

Eric Basha Keynote Presentation at ENTER 2008, Innsbruck

The following seven videos are 8-10 minute segments of the keynote presentation by Eric Basha at the Enter 2008 Conference in Innsbruck, Austria. The presentation was excellent and provides some extremely valuable insight into the technological opportunities and challenges facing the industry. The thing that I found most relevant to small travel suppliers was Eric’s statement that we, as an industry, must engage and encourage SME travel suppliers to adopt on-line technologies and embrace single inventory source systems. The challenge is converting a group of companies (and individuals)... Read more »

Best Travel Marketing Secrets - A Tips from the T-List Initiative

This was originally posted by Jens Thraenhart at the Tourism Internet Marketing blog. Please be sure to leave your comments and secrets using the Contact Form on Jens’ blog. Tourism Marketing Blog contributor Claude Benard had the brilliant idea to reach out and ask experts to share their Travel Marketing Secrets and Tips - similar to the initative from Small Business Trends…but focused on travel, tourism, and hospitality marketing.The results will be shared on the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog, and will also be presented at the Phocuswright Bloggers Summit at ITB, in collaboration... Read more »