In the digital age, social media platforms have revolutionized the way we discover, experience, and share the world around us. Among these platforms, Instagram stands out as a powerful force in shaping travel destination choices. With its visually captivating content and vast reach, turning off business account on Instagram has transformed the way travelers research, plan, and ultimately choose their next adventure.
One of the most significant ways Instagram influences trav
How do action-less, people-less, laughter-less, romance-less, love-less videos emotionally engage and move us? Move us to book or buy?
VFLeonardo is an acknowledged leader in the art of visual storytelling, promoting their services to the travel industry and beyond.
Their recent webinar was called “Lets Get Visual: The Power of Telling Your (Hotel’s) Story Through Video.”
The webinar made some solid points, among which were:
• Video drives a 150% increase in organic search traffic
• We are a v
Costa Rica is known for its rainforests, beaches, nature and biodiversity. True, indeed.
But do you know that Costa Rica is the most innovative country in Latin America? Or that the Central American nation has celebrated well over a half-century of peace with no military forces? Or that it is home to a highly-educated society with thriving export and technology industries, and fast-growing foreign investment?
Costa Rica’s newly launched country brand, “Essential Costa Rica” (Esencial Costa Rica),
Or, Are Facebook and Twitter a Waste of Time for the Travel Marketer?
How surprising is this: In the second half of last year, fewer that 1% of visitors arrived at a hotel or travel booking site, "via a social media link or a link shared by by a friend," reports Hotelmarketing.com.
Does this mean hotels are wasting their time chasing the Holy Grail of Twitter and Facebook? Could be.
We love our friends' photos and status updates, the report goes on to say, and it's very true that social media
In a previous post, New Media Travel asked “Why Is Hotel Content So Boring?”
The point was that hotels, airlines, and often the entire travel industry, are inclined to present images of the perfect family: a leggy blonde mother, two gorgeous light-haired kids and a handsome, fit dad playing in the blue water.
Or, lest they offend anyone, their glossies and web images are full of empty hotel pools, empty dining rooms and empty lobbies.
Why?
Hotels report that showing a racially mixed family o
For a long time now we’ve been preaching how fun and engaging Twitter is…and yet questioned how effective it is when applied to the travel market.
Then along comes a report in HotelMarketing by way of an interesting account in SproutSocial highlighting three innovative travel industry success stories on Twitter.
Increasingly, Twitter, it seems, is playing a key role in the critical stages of travel: research, mid-travel engagement and post-trip reviews/feedback.
Of the 25,000 tweets analyz
Go ahead, type in “Perfect Family” in Google images. What do you see? Probably no one you recognize as a “typical” family. Pretty shocking.
New Media Travel once asked “Why Is Hotel Content So Boring?”
The point was that hotels, airlines, and often the entire family travel industry, are inclined to present images of the perfect family: a leggy blonde mother, two gorgeous light-haired kids and a handsome, fit dad playing in the blue water.
Or, worse, lest they offend anyone, their family tra
Reviews do matter. A report by SAS noted that positive reviews (less so TripAdvisor-based rank and brand), followed by lower price were the most important influencers of choice.
And lower price or higher ratings don't overcome the impact of negative reviews.
But even in America, it's possible that more isn't better.
Writing reviews is almost a national pastime. Writing reviews on everything and saying pretty much what we want and being rewarded by some sort of badge or other "atta boy" reco
How surprising is this: In the second half of last year, fewer that 1% of visitors arrived at a hotel or travel booking site, "via a social media link or a link shared by by a friend. So reports Hotelmarketing.com
Does this mean hotels are wasting their time chasing the Holy Grail of Twitter and Facebook?
Could be. We love our friends' photos and status updates, the report goes on to say, and it's very true that social media platforms and channels do develop loyalty.
The contests do lead to deep
It's a strange contradiction. We're told visuals drive bookings, traveler interest.
We hear that travelers looking to book will be compelled to do so by rich images that tell the kind of story we want to buy into.
But the visuals we typically see are sterile and empty.
VFM Leonardo, a leader in online visual story telling, reports on the top ten visuals shoppers want to see on a website before they actually book a hotel room or a destination.
The smart money tells us that travelers don't b
Too much visual information and not enough solid, reliable , trustworthy facts?
Not enough education and awareness building by luxury travel marketers?
Misidentification of the luxury traveler?
You'd think that the "rich and famous" would naturally be drawn to top hotel brands, names synonymous with luxury like the Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons.
But Luxury Daily in an article by Joe McCarthy, says it ain't necessarily so.
Apparently very few of the top 10% of the wealthy "have experience wi
If it's true that 1-minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, then hotels and travel destinations may have found the "holy grail" that converts the grazing online process of looking at hotels, to actually booking them.
And there isn't a hotel or destination in the world that isn't seeking the business alchemy that converts lookers into actual customers.
Generally, the hotel's website is held responsible for making this magic happen.
Of course service that exceeds the client's demands, locat
We reported frequently in New Media Travel that hotels notoriously use photos of empty swimming pools, restaurants and rooms in their marketing material for fear of offending potential customers. Their thinking is that couples without children, for example, will be discouraged by pictures with children in them, while families may be be turned off by photos featuring adults.
Enter Socialgraphics which claims the days of travel marketers having only the basic customer information they ask for, a
Tourism security professionals and managers often (and justly) complain that they are considered expendable due to the fact that the other parts of the tourism industry perceive them as adding nothing to the bottom line. In fact often tourism officials believe that security is simply and added and required expense that must be accepted, be that expense a burden. This month's Tourism Tidbits focuses on the other side of the coin, and emphasizes that not only is tourism security not simply a nece
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Here's another key question that I have been hearing a lot (both in emails and the comments on this blog) and give you a couple more examples of social proof (video testimonials). The question is this:
“What about traffic to my web site?”
In other words, how do you get people to your website?
This is a great question, and I am really pleased that so many of you are asking it – it shows that we have some really sharp readers. 
You see, in the beginning of the Internet, we were in the “build it and
When Travel Marketing Conferences Fall Short
I went to the recently held, high-powered Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) conference eager to pick up the latest in travel trends, and come back with content for an article on the forward-looking state of travel.
Half way through the two day meet I began to feel I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
Nothing was sticking.
That was confusing because the roster was star-studded; the wunderkinds of travel’s social media world and executive clas
The British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce is pleased to invite all members and friends to a Workshop on “The secrets of low-cost online marketing” at the Hotel do Sado in Setubal on the 26th January.
Click to know more about this event:
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| From NMT Images |
