thetravelprblog

Thummit: when everyone really is a critic

While researching restaurant reviews for the Sunday Times - and by researching I mean spilling gravy down my shirt - a manager would often stop by and ask how everything was. “Fine” I would say. “Read about it on Sunday,” I would think. “Thanks,” I would say.

If it had been awful - if maggots had been playing in the venison stew - I would be itching to pull the trigger, to tell the world while I was still pulling on my coat. But sadly there was no way to actually publish a restaurant review directly from the table.

Well, now there is. Read on

Lights, camera, sell a holiday! Google’s research into online travel buying

Google’s travel team in the United States has just posted a recording of their travel research webinar from earlier this month. YouTube: Research Road Trip: A Traveler’s Road to Decision. The sound quality is terrible: it sounds as if contractors are working overhead. But there are nuggets for anyone interested in online travel buying behaviour across the pond. We can hardly be surprised online video is gaining influence with 15%  using video as part of their trip planning process, mostly via YouTube. Interestingly, consumers trust both professional and user content with “videos made by people like me” rating 59% on the trustworthiness scale compared to 47% for professional clips uploaded by travel firms. Google travel’s recommendation is to think about adding video to your efforts. Mine is more specific: set up a channel on YouTube, populate it with good quality video and establish programmes with suitable awards to encourage customers to upload their own. And by the way, it’s not just about sealing sales: customers are still gleaning information/inspiration even after they have booked their holiday.

Cunard upgrades a blogger for the QE2’s final crossing

I love this kind of story. Media consultant and journalism professor Juan Antonio Giner writes the Innovations in Newspapers blog. He is also a fan of the QE2 (he certainly is now). When he booked a berth on the final Atlantic crossing, he decided to set up a blog to chart its passage. Good idea? He thought so and pitched the plan to several newspaper editors he knew over martini lunches. They didn’t bite, not interested, choked over their olives at the very thought, but Juan Antonio has had the last laugh. His ship’s blog, QE2:The Last Crossing has scored such good page views he has discovered the modest riches to be reaped from Adsense and, get this, Cunard were so pleased with his idea, they have granted him an upgrade to a top suite. The QE2 casts off later today with Juan Antonio blogging from the best club chair in the lounge. “Another martini, sir?”

BA’s Highlife takes off without its passengers

I really like the look and feel of the new online version of Highlife, BA’s inflight magazine. Cedar and Reactive have done a stellar job. But where is the community? Where is the voice of the passenger? Where is the slightest sensation that this is anything more than a glossy magazine reworked in html and some lovely jpegs? Tim Hughes asks the same questions today over at The Business of Online Travel. To be honest, I can hardly feign surprise as I went to a meeting with BA at Cedar last year and brought up some of these same thoughts. There is a great opportunity here to engage with passengers but it looks like it has been booted into touch. I haven’t been privy to recent process but judging from that meeting, the chances of BA giving the public any kind of platform on the airline’s online property are pretty slim.

Leading Hotels of the World: a sorry situation

Can five star hotels afford to be superior? Some brands just seem to consider themselves above adopting a human and personalised form of communications. I never got anywhere with Orient Express, beyond providing a seminar on social media. I was pompously rebuffed by a marketing exec. from Pride of Britain. And Leading Hotels of the World are currently showing themselves to be utterly clueless in the art of contemporary corporate communications. The company’s immediate problem lies Read on

Bringing home the gold: Hotel bookings, WordPress, SEO content and analytics

I set up an online/offline programme for a hotel a couple of weeks ago and that coordinated approach is really bearing fruit. Compare last August with this and online bookings are already six times higher. Six times. And that is without measuring the increase in telephone enquiries for weddings and Christmas. I thought I would share some of the techie side here. Regular readers won’t be surprised to know WordPress lies at the heart of the new online presence. However it is used much more as a simple but very effective Read on

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This is a blog about travel, social media and PR written by Neil MacLean. Part soap box but also part techie playground, it is in a near-constant state of disrepair.

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