71% of NextGen Travelers Search On-line

PhoCusWright, in collaboration with Ypartnership, has just released a new survey titled “The NextGen Traveler” which examines the habits and perculiarities of the high tech traveler.  It is an interesting survey because it shows a corelation between the evolution of online travel technology and the effects that this technology has had on the general consumer.  Although it can be argued that this group most likely represents the early adopter component of the population, it is still valid to argue that if the technology has affected this group, it will most likely affect a larger... Read more »

Add-on for the FACVB Presentation - Using Flickr.com for Photo Management

I mentioned in my session at the Florida Association of CVB’s Annual Marketing Summit, that an effective way to manage your photos is to upload them to Flickr.com.  As an example, I have created a new account for myself and uploaded a number of photos that were previously only available in my Facebook profile.  You can access the photostream here.  Note that all the photos have a clearly described title, a good description, and appropriate tags.  Given this is a new account it may take a while for Google to pick up the updates, however, given that I have included the link in this post... Read more »

Presentation for Florida Association of CVBs Annual Marketing Conference

Thank you to the Florida Association of CVBs for inviting me down to Gainesville Florida to speak at the FACVBs Annual Marketing Conference. The Conference was a big success and many of the people who were in my afternoon session provided me with positive feedback on the presentation. I really enjoy doing these presentations because I think it helps to take some of the mystery and fear out of these relatively new and sometimes “scary” tools. For those who would like to print out or review the presentations, I have embedded the two presentations below. If you are unable to see them,... Read more »

PhoCusWright to Showcase Hottest Travel 2.0 & Mobile Innovations

The PhoCusWright Conference, for the first time in its history, will be featuring a special summit dedicated to spotlighting the hottest innovations is mobile and web travel technology. The inaugural Travel Innovation Summit will feature 24 handpicked companies from around the World who want to demo their innovations to some of the most influential leaders in the travel & tourism industry. In their own words: Early-stage, emerging and established companies are invited to apply based purely on their innovative accomplishments, regardless of organizational size, age, sector or location. PhoCusWright’s... Read more »

Responsible Tourism Awards 2008

I recently received a message from Alex Lyons at Responsible Tourism announcing that nominations are now being accepted for the 2008 Responsible Tourism Awards. It is pretty rare that direct messages like these actually make it through to the blog, but in this case, I really like the subject matter and I am passionate about the idea. In their own words: The idea behind the Awards is that all types of tourism – from niche to mainstream – can and should be operated in a way that respects and benefits destinations and local people. The Awards recognise individuals, companies and organisations... Read more »

Travel is doing a lot for sustainability

The main topic at this year’s Global Travel & Tourism Summit in Dubai was sustainability and what the travel industry is doing to promote it.  I was really quite surprised at the amount of discussion around how “we” collectively can make a difference and do things on a corporate level to reduce our impact on the environment and make travel more sustainable.  The cost of fuel was of particular interest especially with the large airlines that attended the summit.  What many seem to forget is that the travel industry actually only accounts for about 2% of the global carbon... Read more »

Android + Travel = Location Based Services

Mobile applications are not really my passion, but I have to say that after playing with my wife’s iTouch and viewing the latest videos about Google Android, I am truly excited about what the mobile web has to offer. I had a discussion with my colleague Phil Caines just today about AirG, a Vancouver based company that has developed a mobile social networking platform. It is very cool but I wondered how sustainable the model is given that mobile technologies will eventually support regular web applications. Phil’s argument was that our mobile market (North America, Japan, and Europe)... Read more »

So what would a Google + Expedia Look Like?

I realize I’m a day behind most of my blogging colleagues on commenting on the “Google eyeing Expedia” rumour that resulted in a subsequent rise in Expedia’s share price. For the most part I’m not a big fan of rumours, but it did get me thinking about what such a beast would look like. In November of last year Tim Armstrong from Google presented at the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando and stated in no uncertain terms that Google has no interest in entering the travel space. So why, less than four months later, would that message have changed so dramatically.... Read more »

Boarding Pass on your Mobile - Don’t forget to Charge

Continental Airlines is now testing the use of electronic boarding passes on mobile phones as part of a pilot project. According to the New York Times, the technology being tested uses a two dimensional barcode stored on a mobile phone which is scanned by a TSA (Transporation Safety Authority) agent and cross referenced with photo id. There is strong support for this technology because the two dimensional barcode uses a much higher level of encryption than the standard 1D barcodes (like UPC codes). The two dimensional barcodes can also store a much larger amount of data including (but not... 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 »

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