The Travel PR Blog

Crisis communications call for regular and accurate updates through every available channel. When British Airways relaunched its website recently I couldn’t help noticing the lack of RSS feeds. Now thousands of passengers are stranded in foggy Heathrow and many are complaining on camera about the lack of information. Sure RSS would be of limited use [...]

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While there is nothing unusual these days about an unhappy customer setting up a sucks website (as in yournamedcompanysucks.com), this story is worth a look because of the official company reaction.When it comes to managing your online reputation in an era of consumer generated media, no comment is almost always the wrong response. We [...]

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I love the idea of getting your customers to create advertising for you but, let’s be honest, they need encouragement. You could probably count the number of diehard fans who will promote you for nothing on the fingers of a single sloth. And that’s only if you have an exceptionally popular, heavily evangelised business. Like [...]

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Confession time. I have been playing away. Unfaithful to my blog. Dillying and dallying with Twitter. For anybody who doesn’t know Twitter is the bastard love child of IM and blogging, a web service which encourages you to post what you are doing right then and there, for broadcast to the world or just to [...]

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Oh look, Travelocity has finally launched its blog. I offered to do the same for Expedia in 2005 but no takers. It looks ok although the main body of the text is cramped.
They have called it the Window Seat. I am not sure about that. For search purposes I might have just made it the [...]

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I wouldn’t consider booking a hotel now without sounding out fellow travellers first. Who would? It’s not hard, then to see why Expedia would want TripAdvisor content on board. (I have been following the saga on Travolution). TripAdvisor is invariably my first POC for checking out hotels and despite the recent and unsurprising scandal [...]

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The BBC is doing its bit to encourage emigration not just by revealing how many Brits choose to live abroad but by interviewing only those happy to do so. Or at least that’s how it seems. The statistics make interesting reading, though they beg more questions than they answer (what are those pensioners up to [...]

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I have stayed at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong a few times and made use of most of its facilities, from the services of the seamstress housekeeping to the podiatrist on the top floor. But one facility I barely use is the tv set, other than to catch the news before breakfast. However, the hotel [...]

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McDonald’s is trying out kiddie gyms in place of its Play Places in some restaurants in the States. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, as long as they employ extra staff to heft the little fatties onto the exercise bikes. According to US Today, a child could burn 20 calories on a bike but that will [...]

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