Thu
Aug
19
Will You "Like" My Trip?
Mashable’s got the scoop on Delta’s latest Facebook foray — booking your trip directly off of the carrier’s Facebook page in order to share travel details with your friends.
It’s an interesting idea and a valid way to perhaps get more fans to its page. It also makes perfect sense from a group trip-planning perspective — “Check out my Facebook pages to see my flight times, etc.”
However, Mashable brings up a good point regarding the service: will people really book on Facebook or continue to comparison shop via online travel agencies? Will other carriers follow suit? Only time will tell…
-Sally
Tags
- Facebook - travel - sally
Thu
Aug
5
Thinking Hotel: From design strategist Maria Ana Neves comes “The Thinking Hotel” – a hub for innovative thinking and collaboration with locations sprinkled throughout major cities. She is actually opening a 24-hour experimental one this weekend in London.
Taking Names: In India, police officers are using Facebook to issue traffic violation tickets (we guess anything is possible). A page has been created where users can upload images of vehicles breaking the rules and cops then decide if a ticket should be issued.
What’s Your POV?: As their final project, two students from the Chelsea School of Art and Design created an anamorphic type installation that we love. Exhibit-goers can only read the messages standing at one particular angle.
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Lands Six Accounts: The New York Times today announced that six Unilever brands (Dove, Breyer’s, Hellmann’s, Klondike, Suave and M Booth client Vaseline) are creating Mad Men-inspired advertising vignettes. We can’t wait to see what La Draper would do for a Klondike bar. (via Sheldon Silver)
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—Lauren
Tags
- andrew - facebook - lauren - unilever - word. - m booth - travel - art - advertising
Wed
Aug
4
Free Internet with Hilton Loyalty? Sign me up!
Gadling reported today about Hilton’s latest move to attract more loyalty customers by offering free hotel internet to guests based on their Hilton HHonors rewards status.
As business travelers sometimes spend more time using hotel internet than they do their own office’s internet, this is a great way for Hilton to capitalize on biz travelers who at least attempt to keep expense accounts to a minimum. Sometimes the cost of internet for a week can be expensive as spending an extra night at the hotel — absurd!
Kudos, Hilton!
-Sally
Tags
- internet - travel - hotels - wifi - sally
Earlier today, Sheraton officially launched a new online experience, “Sheraton Guest Portal Powered by Bing” which intends to “help guests seamlessly navigate their stay” via a number of tools that will help tailor a guest’s stay to the specific location of the Sheraton hotel.
According to the press release:
The new portal was specially designed to provide guests with an intuitive, tailored on-line experience specific to their destination – like having a personal concierge in the palm of your hand. As part of the new online experience, guests will find constantly updated relevant content, specific to each Sheraton location, such as local maps and the top search results for area restaurants, attractions, special events and services.
It will be interesting to see the response to this new feature from Sheraton on their social media sharing and feedback platform, “Sheraton Shared Moments,” which allows hotel guests to share their hotel stay and travel experiences via various social media channels including Twitter and Facebook.
Will these changes help Sheraton’s satisfaction score go up? Should they be focusing more on face to face interaction and responding to review sites, rather than turning their concierge service over to technology? What do you think?
For more information on Microsoft’s involvement in the project, check out the Windows Team Blog.
- Rob
Tags
- rob - rob longert - travel - hotels - search
Tue
Jul
27
“ What’s the word HOSPITALITY without human contact? It’s nice to have the technology but when it all goes wrong, and it WILL go wrong, you BETTER have somebody to talk to.
Travel expert Peter Greenberg on How Tech is Changing Travel
Tags
- andreas - quotes - technology - travel - hospitality
Wed
Jul
21
As we know, everyone can be a citizen reporter these days and the perspective of customers is extremely important, because many of them can be influencers.
JetBlue is paying close attention to just that and through extensive monitoring and listening, they are doing a great job of keeping a pulse on the sentiments of their customers and employees. At today’s BDI conference, Jenny Dervin, Director of Corporate Communications, described some of the company’s past crisis situations and how they were handled; for instance, she highlighted the “Valentine’s Day Massacre of 2007.”
Dervin drove home the point that even after a company makes a mistake, customers today are okay with it as long as there is a sincere apology and an explanation that comes after the apology. Today’s consumers can sense sincerity, so when a company is authentic and genuinely concerned about their customers during and after a crisis, it can go a long way.
- Rob
Tags
- crisis - jetblue - rob - rob longert - travel - customer service
Mon
Jul
12
Since early June, Casa Velas, a boutique hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, began offering their guests a free social media workshop.
According to a press release on the Casa Velas site, the workshops “help guests create a profile, add friends, upload photos and ‘Like’ pages in Facebook; create a Twitter account and profile, follow and Tweet updates; as well as create and upload videos to YouTube.”
The idea came out of a survey of 300 Velas Resorts guests. According to the resort, “Seventy percent of respondents, ages 18 to 64, expressed a serious interest in social media; the majority desiring to share vacation photos, videos and trip experiences with friends and family on Facebook.”
The workshop seems like a great way to get hotel guests to engage with Casa Velas via social media by teaching them, and the hotel is doing their best to walk the walk with a relatively active Twitter account and Facebook page.
Would you want to take a course on social media on vacation? I might check it out, but based on their Flickr page, I think i would focus on the pool.
- Rob
Tags
- Social media - rob - rob longert - travel
Tue
Jul
6
Less than 10% of fliers are logging onto Wi-Fi in the air
As a frequent flier, this number doesn’t really surprise me. On top of the fact that in-flight WiFi is a tad expensive, flights are the only time when you have a moment to be disconnected. The friendly skies are truly a “BlackBerry black spot” and sometimes - whether traveling for business or for pleasure - we need to just disconnect (yes, watching a D-list movie on the new in-flight entertainment system counts as disconnecting…it’s mindless).
It would be interesting to see if destinations start covering the costs of WiFi for their online-focused visitors (i.e. sporadically providing special access codes on destination partner airlines via Twitter to their followers), encouraging visitors to either use the time to post photos/insights about their trip or do some last-minute research before landing.
-Sally
Tags
- airplanes - travel - wifi - sally
Mon
Jun
14
Virgin Asks Twitter Followers To Name Its 'Canadian Bird'
This is a great example of how brands can empower their fans through social media, not only in new offerings like new air service but also through customer service (I’m sure that non-attentive flight attendant was tisk-tisked).
Similarly, after writing a whiny tweet about Thrifty Car Rental this weekend (and subsequently followed by @ThriftyCarSucks), Thrifty reached out to me to see why my experience was not ideal (I’ll be REALLY impressed when I get a free day economy rental for filling out the complaint form online).
But back to the lead of this story with Virgin America’s Canadian Bird…I’m routing for Flying Zamboni or Plane Gretzsky for SURE…
-Sally
Tags
- Virgin America - travel - twitter
Wed
Apr
21
It’s really interesting to see brands figuring out how they can best leverage the newest buzzworthy social media tool, and in this case it’s Foursquare. This partnership with the History Channel, to promote the new miniseries America: The Story of Us, is one of the best I’ve seen. When you check in to specific spots, Foursquare will tell you a fun historical fact about the very place you’re standing and award you a special History Channel badge. Great for history buffs and trivia nerds alike, plus it will likely inspire users to check out the miniseries for even more fun facts.
I’m also a big fan of the way the Financial Times is leveraging the platform, by giving limited-time free subscriptions to the online version of the newspaper to Foursquare users that are “mayors” of certain spots. That’s one way to break through the paywall!
—Alyssa
Tags
- Alyssa - brands - foursquare - mobile - travel - journalism
Fri
Mar
19
word. daily. (march 19, 2010)
The Fresh Code: Yes, the name sounds like a lame 90’s boy band. But The Fresh Code is something that would be beneficial to veggie buyers (and anyone looking in the M Booth fridge). TFC is an intelligent barcode that disappears over time. Once it’s gone – the veggies should be too. Even more interesting is that this system could actually be used to provide sliding scale pricing for vegetables based on their freshness.
Wooden Mirror: Ever think you could stand in front of a piece of wood and see your reflection? Neither did we. But, artist Daniel Rozin developed the Wooden Mirror, also known as a mechanical mirror, which is comprised of 830 square pieces of wood, control electronics, a video camera, and computer. When you stand in front of the “mirror” the wood panels move to reflect your motion and image. No word on if the mirror will make you look fat. You can go see some of Rozin’s other pieces at Bitforms Gallery until March 27th. 529 West 20thStreet
Zero Star Hotel: An actual Cold War bunker designed to look like an actual Cold War bunker has been certified as the world’s first-ever zero star hotel. The Null Stern Hotel started out as an art installation, but it became so popular that the creators decided to run the no-bathroom, no-color TV establishment full-time.
Click here to let us know that you’d like to be added to the mailing list for the monthly edition of “word.”
—Andrew
Tags
- andrew - word. - travel
Mon
Mar
8
10 Years....10 Bucks...Thanks, JetBlue
Thinking of hopping on a jet tomorrow (March 9) or Wednesday (March 10) but haven’t booked your flight?
In case you have the sudden urge to travel to Buffalo, Rochester, or maybe even Burlington, JetBlue is offering $10 fares for travelers who book tonight by 11:59pm CST to tout its 10th anniversary in the air; to be fair, you can also go to cooler (or shall I say warmer) destinations like West Palm Beach.
For those of us who can’t request vacation days with less than 24 hours notice, JetBlue will be tweeting all kinds of giveaways on 3/10, so hopefully we can take advantage of this milestone anniversary in that regard: @jetblue.
-Sally
Tags
- Twitter - travel - Sally
Tue
Mar
2
South Africa Wants You to Diski Your Way to FIFA
In a brilliant online move, South Africa Tourism has partnered with the “dancing while traveling” phenomenon Matt Harding (a.k.a. “Dancing Matt”) to promote the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
You may know Matt from the videos of his ridiculously embarrassing dance moves that got him tons of sponsored trips around the world to dance in high-profile places and post his dancing videos online. South Africa Tourism signed him on board to encourage online users to submit videos of themselves dancing the Diski - a silly dance inspired by the slick moves of South Africa’s soccer team. The best Diskier diskies his or her way to a World Cup Soccer match in Cape Town, sponsored by South African Airways.
Matt’s video - already taped - airs on YouTube this coming Friday (March 5) and instructs viewers on how to dance the Diski as he travels through portions of the surrounding Capetown area.
Just another example of a high-profile destination understanding how to have a little fun and put its best foot forward…while diski-ing.
-Sally
Tags
- YouTube - travel - Sally - video
