Use Your Klout for Access to the Admirals Club

By Yoon Song May 7, 2013 Leave a Comment

Klout and American Airlines (AA) have announced a partnership that allows social media influencers access to AA’s exclusive Admiral’s Club.

A Klout score over 55 will allow you to gain access to 37 of the airline’s lounges in 22 different cities, and you don’t have to fly American to be eligible, as would normally be the case. Guests reap a variety of benefits, ranging from complimentary wine to shower suites at select locations.

If you fall a little short of 55, don’t worry! You are entered into a drawing for the potential to win prizes including all expenses-paid trips to Seattle, along with products from other brands that have partnered with Klout such as Sony, Chevrolet, and Microsoft.

Klout utilizes social media analytics to measure your online social influence. Upon analyzing 400 variables throughout your multiple social networks, it determines a score between one and 100, with 100 representing the most influential.

It’s become more apparent that the hospitality industry has a lot to gain from social media influencers. Getting the right people into their exclusive lounges means more traffic to their websites via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, along with increased brand exposure.

Other airlines in need of significant image boosts would greatly benefit from partnering with Klout to gain insight on what kinds of amenities an individual takes into consideration before booking their next flight. Other mobile apps that ease flyers and create a more positive association with their airliner have already seen some headway.

With the decline of amenities in most airlines due to economic restraints, companies must resort to other avenues of representation or else suffer complacency. What better way to strengthen bonds between brands and their influencers than to put them in the cockpit of their initiatives?

What kinds of airline perks would you like to see offered next?

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Social Media and Hotels: Four Seasons Leading by Example

By Debbie Miller March 3, 2013 Leave a Comment

Four Seasons has done an exceptional job integrating social media into their website and general marketing, and constantly continues to expand its social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Weibo and Pinterest as well as TripAdvisor.

Their corporate Facebook page has over 150,000 fans, while their Twitter feed has over 60,000 followers. With a Klout score of 70, it’s evident the brand places a lot of focus on engagement with guests and those tweeting about their hotels.

Spring blooms at Four Seasons Hotel George V Paris

Spring blooms at Four Seasons Hotel George V Paris

In addition to corporate pages and handles, Four Seasons also maintains individual hotel, resort and restaurant pages and handles as well as interest-specific interactive blogs and sites that are also connected to social media, including YouTube, Instagram, Yelp and OpenTable.

The corporate Pinterest account is also a stand-out amongst other businesses, hospitality and otherwise. They use the opportunity to showcase a lot of personality with their boards, with names including “chill out” featuring winter-related items, “wish you were here” showcasing various locations, plus “pinspiRED” featuring a variety of pins with the color red.

Staff members are also reaching out in new ways. For example, the concierge team at Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, recently launched their own website and Twitter feeds, with direct connections to individual team members through social media and email.

[Read more]

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Using Social Networks to Influence Travel and Hospitality Bookings

By Debbie Miller October 12, 2012 1 Comment

Social networks continue to have a rising influence on travel.

The below infographic from Monetate Marketing Infographics highlights some significant figures related to how reviews, website traffic and travel decisions are all affected by social networks.

Using Social Networks to Influence Travel and Hospitality Bookings

 


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Gogobot: Redefining Social Travel

By Debbie Miller September 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

Gogobot Logo

The web is full of social travel sites, though one in particular that’s setting a high bar is Gogobot. As on other sites, you can read and write reviews of hotels, restaurants and other establishments. And it’s totally free to sign up!

You can also keep tabs on your friends’ outings, find recommendations for destinations you plan to visit, and give advice on any travel topic, such as the best burger in San Francisco or what type of weather to expect in Paris in December.

Earlier this year, I was taking a first-time trip to June Lake and was looking for any must-visit stops on the way. I posted on Gogobot asking if anyone knew of anything worth checking out, and within minutes, received several productive responses.

Another unique component is that users can maintain a “passport” of travels and create digital postcards and scrapbooks of places you’ve been, supplementing nicely the ever-increasing magnetism of visual content.

Gogobot postcard

In May, the company announced it had passed 1 million registered users. Then, just two months later, they revealed they’d topped 2 million users, up 100% in just 60 days.

Gogobot is a San Francisco-based startup founded by MySpace’s former International GM Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Search BOSS. The startup opened up its public beta in early December 2010 and its growth has been astonishing, with a new member joining the site every 15 seconds, on average.

After just 18 months since launch, Gogobot announced reaching the milestone of 1 million registered user as well as some additional competitive stats. Recently, Snoop Dogg signed up along with Tom of MySpace fame.

Since launch, more than 5 million places have been shared on the service, with Gogobot’s mobile app and a partnership with Foursquare cited as a major driver of this growth.

Since unveiling the iPhone app in October, the number of reviews submitted by users has doubled each day, the number of trip plans created has doubled each day and the number of photos uploaded by users each day has increased by a magnitude of 5x.

The brand also regularly runs contests to encourage participation. Currently, they’re highlighting the “In the Know Contest,” in which a lucky Gogobot member will win an exclusive Gogbot prize pack for writing a hotel review!

Sign up for Gogobot today!

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How to Have Fun with Teens on Vacation

By Guest Contributor August 20, 2012 Leave a Comment

Are your kids are in their teens? Then you must be finding it hard to find out things that would be appreciated by them. It is a common phenomenon among teenagers to disapprove all the efforts parents are making to reinvigorate the magic that once existed in their relationship.

But don’t worry. We have a prescription that will ensure proven results, provided the users apply the right techniques.

Plan a trip to some exotic destination where your teen-age kids can indulge in some adventure and fun activities. This effort to bridge the gap between the two of you will be certainly appreciated by your kids and assist in strengthening the relationship.

First things first:

Parents have an in-depth understanding about the nature of their wards. While planning your next tour, you should first consider the nature of your kids and decide on a spot he or she will enjoy and engage themselves. If your kids are quite adventurous by nature, then you have plenty of options to choose from.

Hiking, bike riding trips, or to a destination where they can indulge in water sports will be ideal. If they are interested in the big metropolitan cities of the world and the urbane lifestyle, you can plan to hit some of the big metropolis of a different country. This will also help them to get an understanding of a totally different culture.

The bottom line is that whichever place you are planning to tour, it should be in accordance with your kid’s nature, if you actually want them to let their hair down and enjoy.

teen travel

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionsservice/5260693323/

Booking in advance:

It is always best to book your tickets, accommodations, sightseeing tours and other such aspects well in advance. Major tourist spots are always crowded with vacationers and therefore good accommodations are always filled up. It is best to buy the flight tickets, book hotels well in advance as well as your mission is to build up excitement for your teen.

Budget car hire online services are available from where you have the option hiring a rental car as well. This will allow you to move along a foreign city in accordance with your family’s own convenience.

To do list:

It is best to look out for destinations where you can actually engage your kids in a lot of fun activities. Adventure trips to mountainous location where the teenagers can engage themselves in fun activities like biking, hiking, rock climbing, paragliding, bungee jumping, river rafting and other such activities are always the best option.

Moreover, a serene location amidst the beauty of nature will also help parents relax. But always remember to participate in the fun-filled activities that can help strengthen bonds. You can even try to hit some exotic beach destination where the teenagers can indulge in activities like scuba diving or other water sports.

Since your primary aim is to arrange for a fun and frolic vacation for your kids consider talking to them, to understand what their desires. Even if you want to surprise them, try to understand their wishes by asking indirect questions and thereafter plan accordingly. Your endeavors would not be wasted for sure and you are going to have a nice vacation if you keep in mind these factors. Enjoy!!

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This post was contributed by Genelia Lopez. Genelia is a great travel enthusiast. She loves to travel abroad with her kids and spends most of her time writing articles on his personal traveling experiences.

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Ways Travel & Tourism Can Use Social Media

By Guest Contributor August 2, 2012 Leave a Comment

Just what can a travel brand do with social media?

Here are a few thoughts to spark inspiration and evoke conversation. This is just the tip of the iceberg!

Manage your brand and image

  1. Listen for mentions of your brand.
  2. Crisis communication.
  3. Uncover and get to know the influencers of your brand.
  4. Listen when no one is talking.

Gather industry intel

  1. Listen to how ‘the other guys’ are doing it.
  2. Pay close attention to the language of your target audience.
  3. Use social media as a means to research the market.

Build a community

  1. Foster interactive safe spaces where fans and friends can comment and engage.
  2. Tell your story through a corporate blog.
  3. Find personal connections and engage.
  4. Identify with your customers.
  5. Take advantage of user-generated content such as pictures, videos, and guest posts.

Create a Peer to Peer environment

  1. Initiate social recommendations versus simply giving them.
  2. Provide space for a forum or facilitate a tweet chat.
  3. Don’t ignore the customer review.
  4. Encourage and lead in crowd sourcing.

Be fun and rewarding

  1. Create Facebook apps such as location-based maps, quizzes, and games.
  2. Loyalty reward programs just for ‘liking’ your page will be seen and shared by friends of your fans.
  3. A Social Media VIP program is a great way to reward your biggest fans.
  4. Competitions with prizes like airfare or a sunny getaway will get lots of traction and shares when done well.
  5. Check-ins on apps such as Foursquare and Yelp are fun and useful.

Stand out and be noticed

  1. Instagram pictures shared by your guests and staff alike give you a personal and visual touch.
  2. Create compelling YouTube videos.
  3. Organize pin boards on Pinterest of experiences you offer.
  4. Use SEO to ensure you get the most and best traffic to your site.

Provide exceptional customer service via social media

  1. Respond to customer service issues as they come up.
  2. Recognize and respond to inquiries using the platform your customers prefer.
  3. Uncover your brand evangelists.

Make money

  1. Utilize a listening platform for sales & lead generation.
  2. Use Twitter to post last-minute deals and sell off otherwise vacant spots on trips or rooms in your hotel.
  3. Use Twitter and Facebook to push special promotions that you can easily track and manage.
  4. Implement a paid campaign or take out an ad on Facebook.
  5. Use keyword searching/targeted listening to find would be travelers who are looking for the very service you offer and strike up a conversation.

Often we tend to complicate strategy and overthink the must-dos.

It’s helpful to take a step back, and simplify our plan of attack.

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This post was contributed by Jenn Seeley. Jenn is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6 specializing in the world of travel. What that really means, is she monitors the happenings in travel and tourism where social media is concerned, watching for industry trends, and creating helpful content to share with an awesome community of professionals. You can read more of her content here and connect with her on Twitter.

 

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Family Travel Made Easy

By Guest Contributor June 23, 2012 Leave a Comment

Before Facebook and Twitter, families traveled based on limited resources. For adventurous people who love to explore, they took on the tasks of researching the destinations that might seem to fit their interests. They would also have to make sure all the accommodations were appropriate for their family, which usually resulted in a lot of phone calls and wishful thinking.

For the not-so-adventurous, families were confined to what they knew. Trips were often to the same spot time after time, like to the nearest beach. What gained the title of “tradition” was really often a result of not having more information about other places to go.

Family Travel

Family Travel photo via www.PreferredFamily.com

Then came the internet! And as the internet grew, so did our travel options. Suddenly it became easier to do your own research.

We can look up any city and what they have to offer.

We can arrange hotel reservations, plane tickets and car rentals all online.

Now we can explore everything this country has to offer from the Grand Canyon, to the world’s biggest ball of string.

Here’s the tough part, where do you start?

Before the internet, we asked our friends and family. Now? Now you have hundreds, maybe thousands of people at your fingertips! And not just local people, but also people that live where you may want to go.

Social media has given us the opportunity to connect with the world. You can not only get recommendations of where to go, you can get personal opinions on the best family-friendly places to stay, plus the best tourist stops to make.

Talking to so many people can result in finding out the little treasures a town has to offer, like that small diner that no one knows about, but serves the best clam chowder you’ll ever eat.

When you have an idea of where to go, check out the city, hotel or other relevant businesses for Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as hotel blogs. They’ll not only have helpful information, you might just come across a promo code or special discount. And in today’s economy, every family needs to save a few dollars.

While the internet has made family travel planning easier, social media has upped the ante to making it simple and even fun. Being able to find the best vacation for you and your family is a wonderful thing, but being privy to other people’s experiences can help you avoid the hazards you might not have known about so your family vacation can be a true respite.

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This guest post was contributed by Christine Horos. Christine is an outreach ambassador for AssistanceForSingleMothers.com, which is a resource that provides college admissions assistance for single mothers.

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How Airlines Use Twitter [Infographic]

By Debbie Miller January 20, 2012 6 Comments

More and more businesses are recognizing the value of Twitter for customer service. Businesses are able to publicly address issues, and remedy customer complaints out-in-the open.

Travel is often innately stressful, and adding flying to the mix has the potential to make it more so.

With that in mind, many airlines are now on Twitter and have pretty substantial followings. Travel 2.0 put together an infographic that provides great insight regarding how airlines are using the service.

Does any of the information surprise you?

Airlines on Twitter

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Foursquare Unveils City Badges

By Debbie Miller December 13, 2011 31 Comments

One of the factors that makes Foursquare appealing is the game component, which rewards users with points and “badges” for checking into certain places.

While this aspect is just for fun and doesn’t usually reap any actual benefits, most enjoy checking in to accumulate these “rewards” and compare with friends. Badges are rewarded in various genres, e.g., if you check into five different coffee spots, you earn the Barista badge; if you check into five different airports, you get the JetSetter badge; if you attend ten different art galleries, the Warhol badge is yours, etc.

Many restaurants are taking advantage of Foursquare and offering check-in deals and mayor rewards, which is awesome.

Last week, a new opportunity arose for destination marketing organizations: Foursquare unveiled city badges, rewarding users for visiting numerous attractions in certain cities. Thus far, the badges for London, Paris and Istanbul have been rolled out. By visiting the corresponding links, you can get an idea of the kinds of places you’d have to visit to earn each badge.

Foursquare cities badge

To discern the various locations that must be visited in order for each city’s badge to be unlocked, Foursquare looked at the tens of millions of places where people have checked in, along with tapping into the collective knowledge of Superusers. They’ve subsequently included well-known spots, local favorites and lots of options in between: everything from hotels, restaurants, museums, malls and more.

To find out the places you need to go to be a local foursquare expert for a certain city, head over to foursquare.com/4sqCities. Follow the lists, and, next time you make it to the city (or if you’re there already!), check in to five of the places to unlock your badge.

Foursquare city badgeThis is a great opportunity for destinations to get some unique marketing. By creating a city list for users to achieve that city’s badge, they are thereby:

  1. advertising for major city attractions [for free/comparatively cheap]
  2. getting free exposure whenever someone checks into each place, as their friends/followers are alerted of each check-in
  3. giving people an incentive to frequent your city and its hot spots
  4. setting up authentic promotional opportunities (free hotel night for people who have your city’s badge, maybe?)

If you’d like your city to be considered for its own badge, fill out Foursquare’s city badge request form.

For which cities are you most looking forward to seeing badges?

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Learning to Swim

By Debbie Miller December 5, 2011 14 Comments

EyeforTravel recently surveyed over 500 Asia Pacific (APAC) travel brands about their implementation of social media.

The results showed that, despite 68% of companies claiming to have deployed mobile and social media initiatives, more than half admit they’re unsure how to “define, achieve and measure success.” An overwhelming majority recognized that it was vital to experiment and invest significant resources in both social and mobile roadmaps, but equally apparent were a lack of practical know-how and a fear of failure.

It’s great that the necessity of social media is becoming more evident to major brands. Even though many acknowledge they may not yet know exactly how to execute, they do recognize it’s essential they learn how.

Experimentation is definitely important, in anything. This said, it’s important that the strategizing comes first. Learning how to manage these platforms isn’t as significant as knowing why, and that factor varies for every company based on each’s specific goals and objectives. The practical components come much more naturally when the latter detail is clearly defined rather than blurry.

A common pitfall noted was the abundance of social media platforms, languages and analytical tools. One  respondent said, “For all its potential, social media keeps me up at night. It feels a little bit like jumping in at the deep-end without arm-bands and being expected to swim like Michael Phelps.”

Fear of failure is certainly natural, but hopefully that’ll be a motivating factor. Failure is definitely one of my biggest fears, in many facets of my life; it was a huge factor in my postponing starting this site, yet once I got going and built up momentum, everything turned out fine. It’s just getting over that initial hurdle that’s the most difficult, and it’s awesome to see that travel brands are entering this phase so they can thereby transition to that next one: overcoming the fear.

From there, it’s a gradual buildup that comes from regular “studying” (reading relevant articles, staying in-the-know on current tech news and trends, etc.) and ongoing practical application. There are a lot of great online resources (such as Mashable), platforms (like HootSuite) and analytics options (like Google Analytics) that can be helpful once an initial plan is in place.

There is definitely a lot to learn in the social space, and the fact that it’s constantly evolving doesn’t help. That said, in continuing with the swimming analogy, remember there are many options between sinking, and swimming like Michael Phelps. Even Phelps started in floaties. Do not undermine the journey; Do not undermine the virtues of doggy paddling. Leisurely swimming. Playing Marco Polo.

You don’t have to jump right into the water and be Olympic swimmer. All you need to is jump in. Then eventually, begin to doggy paddle, learn the strokes, get comfortable in the water, and before you know it, you’ll be competing for medals in no time.

doggy paddle

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunnyfrogs/

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Lose Your Luggage? Not Anymore.

By Debbie Miller November 29, 2011 19 Comments

If you travel frequently, odds are you’ve had to endure a wait for your bags, or been paranoid about the possibility of them ending up in a city other than the one you’re in.

With that in mind, Delta Airlines has implemented a system for travelers to track their checked baggage. Via the airline carrier’s iPhone app, guests are able to monitor the whereabouts of their luggage at all times.

It’s very easy: once you’ve checked in your bags, simply take a photo of your baggage tag. This allows you, throughout the course of travel, to check in to see where your luggage is in real-time. You can also check whether your bags have been delivered and where exactly you can pick them up when you land.

This app definitely adds an element of comfort to travelers being able to consistently know exactly where their belongings are. The fact that it’s easy to access, via each’s own personal cellphone, makes it easy to manage, without having to worry about waiting in lines at a counter, etc.

delta airlines
Would this motivate you to fly Delta as opposed to another airline?

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