“Family travel” is defined as any form of leisure travel that includes children. Fully 44 percent of all leisure travelers took at least one “family vacation” last year, and it’s interesting to note that the incidence of family travel is significantly higher than the incidence of households with children (roughly one-third). This difference may be attributed to the growth in multi-generational travel as a result of the aging population.
Following is a snapshot of today’s family travelers:

- They are equally likely to take both weekend trips (73%) of four nights or less including a Saturday, and extended trips (71%) of five consecutive nights or more;

- Beach/lake destinations rule, selected by fully one-third (33%) of all family travelers last year; fully one out of four (26%) took a theme park vacation, and one out of ten (9%) visited an all-inclusive resort;

- Seven out of ten (69%) took a vacation to celebrate a life event last year (a “Celebration Vacation”), with milestone birthdays and anniversaries topping the list;

- One out of five (20%) is a grandparent, and two-thirds (67%) of those who have reached this life stage took at least one vacation with their grandchildren last year;

- Family travelers are more likely to have taken a vacation in their local area (less than 50 miles from home) as an alternative to vacationing in a destination that would have required traveling a greater distance (aka a “Staycation”);

- Three out of ten (31%) took a “last minute” trip last year, departing an average of just six days after deciding to take the trip;

- All (99%) have access to the Internet at home, and practically all have gone online to get information about travel suppliers (89%) and make reservations (87%);

- Fully nine out of ten (90%) have a page posted on Facebook, and one out of four (23%) has visited a blog to seek or preview information about a vacation destination or travel service supplier;

- One third (32%) are interested in taking a cruise vacation during the next two years;

- Children play an active role in planning vacations in half (48%) of all family travel households;

- The destinations they are most interested in visiting on vacation include the Neighbor Islands of Hawaii (73%), the national parks (71%), Honolulu (69%) and Orlando (59%);

- One out of seven (14%) is interested in purchasing a vacation home, with one out of ten (7%) interested in purchasing a timeshare;

- Fully one out of four (24%) has stayed in a vacation home or condominium rental as an alternative to conventional hotel/resort lodging on a vacation last year.

Read More at HotelMareting.Com

But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged down in uniformed policies and simply aren’t thinking outside the box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of their company’s happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world.

There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed down the key elements that companies should focus on. Here are 10 tips for corporate bloggers hoping to make a positive splash in their communities.

1. Establish a content theme and editorial guidelines:

When creating a product or service, you must be able to define the value that it’s bringing to consumers. In the case of a blog, you need to clearly define the focused theme that your team will follow. Choose a blog name and theme that fits well with your company’s expertise, but don’t be afraid to branch out into a larger space. Your blog should provide pertinent information for consumers interested in your area of business.

Once you’ve chosen an area to cover, create a set of editorial guidelines that your bloggers will follow. Guidelines can include appropriate verticals and topics to cover, as well as how and when posts should be written.

A clear goal and theme for your blog will make it easier for users to know what to expect. For example, Dogstuff, an online shop for canine gifts, toys and supplies, hosts a blog called Dog Blog. The blog is simple and to the point, and it’s more than evident that the blog is about dogs. The theme is specific enough for readers to understand what they may find, but it is such a broad topic, that almost limitless posts are possible.

2.Choose a blogging theme and process:

Choose a team of core bloggers to begin your blogging adventure. Select individuals that are knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would like to cover. Also, it’s key to choose people who write well and have a great online presence.

Train your bloggers on the editorial guidelines and decide what type of writing and editing process you would like to put in place. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. Figure out the level of comfort you have with your blogging, editing and publishing process and implement a procedure that works well for your team.

3. Humanize your Company

A company blog is an opportune place to let down your hair and get to know your customers. Think of it as a conversation between people, not between a brand and one person. In order to have a conversation, you need two people — a blogger and a reader.

Give your corporate bloggers the freedom to be themselves. Encourage them to have their own personalities and writing styles. This type of diversity is more representative of your company than any monotonous tone that you could manufacture on your own.

Always keep in mind that your blog is about people connecting and conversing with people, not a corporation. Throw away that “corporate” concept, and you’ll be ahead of most.

4. Avoid PR and Marketing

If maintained correctly, your blog will act as a repository of real analysis and opinions provided by your company’s fine employees. The type of insight and expertise that a blog can demonstrate is far more useful than any PR pitch that you could post. Stay away from trying to sell your readers. There are appropriate venues for that, and your blog shouldn’t be one of them.

Continue to add to the conversation, adding value for your readers. Your opinions will be priceless. And for the times that you don’t have an opinion on an important topic, gauge your community’s opinion by taking a poll or interviewing key people.

Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, constantly adds value to its community through its blog () by providing posts on topics that their core followers would appreciate. Some of the most recent posts were on how to do a handstand, protect the lower back, and explore a new city.

Readers will get a taste of the massive knowledge bank available at your company. Take your mind off of marketing, and you’ll find that the analysis that you provide sells your company better than a press release ever could.

5. Welcome Criticism

Oftentimes, corporations shy away from opening up their websites and blogs for commenting and interaction, because they are afraid of the harm that criticisms may cause. Make it a policy to welcome criticism, thinking of it as an opportunity for feedback and improvement. There are lots of ways to deal with negative feedback, so don’t be afraid to open up to your community.

Read More At Mashable

With the quickly changing profusion of opportunities, many hoteliers are encouraged to invest precious money and time into completely unfamiliar venues. So, where must the marketing dollars go to get the highest ROI?

The appropriate and engaging use of visual imagery is one of the most important investments you can make in your hotel’s marketing budget; and there are a plethora of ways to utilize this imagery to engage, bond and guide your potential guest into making that important booking. As explained by Laurie Babin in the Journal of Advertising, “The potential of imagery is both potent and provocative, especially when one takes into account that the forms of mental impressions include all five senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight.” In other words, it is possible for a person to experience a sensory stimulus without the stimulus ever being present (the “potent” part). The more senses stimulated, the greater the chances of a guest conversion and the extra benefit of better storage in the guest’s long-term memory (the “provocative” part). With great imagery, your guests can feel as though they’ve touched the velvety-soft pillows, smelled the gardenias outside the window, and tasted the béarnaise sauce on the extra tender steaks. This is what they need to feel in order to bond with your hotel, and to bond instantaneously. Images that convey facts alone aren’t nearly as compelling.

People are visual beings. If you think it’s mainly women who choose hotels based on imagery, think again. (Caveat: medical summaries are approaching. If you are not interested in such a genre, please skim through lightly, understanding that the author – an eye doctor/hotelier – believes this to be some of the most compelling aspects of the article!).

As reported in the NeuroReport (Sabatinalle, Flaisch, et al), activity in the part of the brain called the extrastriate visual cortex (as measured by MRI imaging; hang in here…) is greater when either of the sexes view emotional relative to neutral pictures. The MRI indicates the speed of decisions when presented with emotional visual stimuli – it is a measurable response in the brain. Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly to many), men make their choices when looking at pictures much more rapidly than women.

What does this mean for your hotel? If we liken this to “speed dating” for your hotel, the point may be more obvious. If your target market is the male business traveler, keep in mind that in general, males take approximately 2.5 seconds to make a decision to continue reading (or not) when visual imagery is involved (according to a study by Xerox in conjunction with The Loyola College in Maryland, U.S.A). Therefore, images must not just convey facts—they must involve the extrastriate visual cortex by including subtle, yet emotive features. In other words, such emotional stimuli may mean that the traveler makes the choice to be a guest at your hotel, but may not fully understand the reason for his or her choice (the extrastriate cortex is not a conscious level of the brain). Much like “speed dating” or other short bonding experiences, one just “has a feeling that it is right”. But these “feelings” are scientifically based, and measurable.

As explained by EVP, Creative Services of WD Partners, Lee Peterson, “Business owners often focus on the rational benefits of their brand out of necessity… speed, convenience, accuracy…but rationale works best when blended with great care with the emotional benefits of a brand….comfort, relaxation, trust….from our experience, no brand will reach its full potential until both are well attended to.”

So, hoteliers are faced with the challenge of providing both the rational and emotional benefits of their brand, and to do so in as short of a time frame as possible.

Interestingly, for leisure travel, women are the predominate decision makers – taking an average of 29 days and performing 12 searches and visiting 22 different travel sites prior to making their vacation bookings. With this sort of detailed evaluation, you will want to be sure that your visual imagery matches or exceeds that of your competitive set. According to the TIA (Travel Industry Association), the vast majority of reservations are still made at the visual gallery or one click later.

As if hoteliers don’t have enough to worry about, a terrifying new trend is becoming obvious. Because downloading imagery takes time, hoteliers and webmasters must be aware of this new threat – the ever-shortening attention spans involved in downloading visual stimuli. Research from web performance giant Akamai produced in conjunction with PhoCusWright, indicates that in a study of nearly 2,800 U.S. travel buyers, 57% will wait THREE seconds for a hotel web-site to download before abandoning it for other sites. Even worse, Generation Y (ages 18 – 24) expects travel sites to load in TWO and a HALF seconds. With the ever-popular multi-tasking trend, many of these potential guests will pull up other site while a slower one is downloading, dumping the slower one for one that pops up faster.

Read more at hotelmarketing.com

Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, stated that ITA’s technology opens new possibilities for the company to “create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online”.

The deal will allow Google to pursue the creation of new flight search tools that will enable users to find better flight information more easily on the Internet.

ITA Software’s QPX software uses algorithms to combine and parse multiple sets of flight information from airlines, including pricing and availability data, to create an up-to-date database that can be searched across.

On its decision to go with this acquisition, Google stated, “We think we can make more significant innovations and bigger breakthroughs in online flight search by combining our engineering expertise with ITA Software’s than we would by simply licensing ITA Software’s data service.”

At the moment, Google says it doesn’t have detailed plans to share about how new flight search tools will be triggered or appear on Google results pages, or how they will be monetised.

The transaction is subject to normal pre-merger notification procedures in the United States only. ITA Software’s European revenues aren’t large enough to warrant European regulatory review.

Current offering

Google currently offers two travel search features. First, its flight tracker search feature enables users to see flight status for arriving and departing US flights. When users type the name of the airline and the flight number into the search box, Google will return updated flight information from flightstats.com.

Second, it offers a travel search feature to help users looking to book travel. For example, search for [New York to SFO] and Google offers the option to specify a date range and choose from a variety of online travel services to see results.

Both features are aimed at improving search quality and neither is based on any financial compensation to or from Google. Neither feature relies on data from ITA Software.

Get the full article from eyefortravel

Related article: Google to Buy Travel Software Maker

While there’s virtually nothing official on the record for this project, Kevin Rose recently said it exists, and now more and more people close to either Google or Facebook have been confirming that Google indeed has something along these lines in the works.

Answering a question on Q&A service Quora, former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo claims Google Me is real. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.

They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.

Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.

They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.”

It all makes sense, but, unlike in most other endeavors, Google has been quite unsuccessful when it comes to social networking – Buzz started out as a privacy nightmare, and Orkut, while successful in South America, never really took on globally. If Google really is building a Facebook competitor, will it just be what Buzz was to Twitter – a solid copy – or something entirely new?

Get the full article from Mashable.com

The white paper, Best Practices for Maximizing Your Hotel’s Online Revenue & ROI, written by Kathleen Cullen, provides results from actual hoteliers who shared their experiences and areas of focus as it relates to Internet marketing and help for hoteliers to establish a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy. It takes an in depth look at Website design best practices, effective marketing strategies and the importance of understanding analytics. The white paper also reveals practical ways to avoid common pitfalls often seen in hotel Internet marketing.

“This white paper provides the results from actual hoteliers who shared their experiences, areas of focus as it relates to marketing, key metrics and best practices,” says Inspire Resources Founding Partner Kathleen Cullen. “The goal is to provide an educational resource whereby hotel professionals can review the white paper and use it as a tool to assess current strategies, understand the areas for improvement and create a plan to action.”

The paper is broke down in three categories: Websites, Marketing and Measurement. Each category includes the survey findings related to the respective topic, as well as recommended best practices and implications for each. Some of the most interesting highlights of this study include the following discoveries:

· 70% of properties see their greatest returns in online investments

· 40% of respondents do not have a social media strategy

Get the full article from HotelMarketingStrategies.com

Additional source: Vizergy

1. Choose Your Audience

Who do you want to reach on Twitter? Be specific and limit your scope to the demographic you really need; trying to reach everyone isn’t a great strategy. If you’re a B2B company, for example, you’ll probably want to reach other businesses and the people that represent them.

Here is a quick example: Look up at least 10 of your customers on Twitter (a quick name search on Google can turned up their Twitter profiles). Once you’ve found some, look at who they’re following and who they talk to. These people could also become part of your audience. Look at how they describe themselves and what terms they talk about. Use those keywords and terms to find like-minded people.

The goal here is not to find everyone you’d like to interact with (that would probably be next to impossible), but to find people who might fit into your audience. Try to pay attention to who has influence in your audience. For example: who are people talking to, about or retweeting? Who do they seem to ask for advice? Once you have a decent group, move on to step two.

2. Understand How They Speak

It might sound like I’m giving you clichéd advice to “listen,” but clichés exist for a reason. You need to understand how your audience talks, what they like, and what they share. Below are some solid steps to get you started.

* Look up what people are saying about your company. Are they saying good things or bad things? Are they asking for advice about what product or company to choose? Are they giving feedback about their experiences after the fact?

* Do the same for your competitors. Note if your competitors are jumping in or influencing any of these conversations.

* Notice the way your audience talks. Are they generally formal or informal? This will be very different depending on the companies you are tracking and the people you attract. It’s always good to match the tone of your audience.

* Look at what your audience shares and retweets. What kinds of links and articles do they like? What kinds of terms and ideas get them excited or annoyed?

* Note any hashtags or other ways your audience connects. Look up those hashtags to see if they have any real traction (if they’re all spam or if people are really using them to connect).

3. How Much is a Twitter Lead Worth?

This is a bit more theoretical but it’s an important step that many companies forget. The reason you’re involved with Twitter isn’t just to say you’re there, it’s because you’re looking for a good return on investment. So what is it that you’re after? It might be as concrete as sign-ups and sales or as ephemeral as buzz and brand awareness.

Depending on your goal, try to figure out how much each person is “worth.” This almost certainly won’t be an exact number, but you should get a general idea. For example, if you’re doing B2B sales and a sale is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you’re going to have a very different strategy than a company with millions of users that makes its money from advertising.

4. Set A Goal and Track It

Setting a goal is just the start of your strategy, you also need to track it with metrics. Choosing metrics does not just mean tracking your follower count because the count isn’t always a totally accurate measure of how many people are paying attention to your account.

There are obviously different approaches depending on the size of your fan base. If you have a large audience, you might not be able to put a lot of time into each lead. Your overall goal will likely be about brand awareness and creating buzz for your company. You should consider metrics that capture overall influence such as retweets, blog posts and clicks.

If you have a targeted audience, each lead probably carries more value. You overall goal will likely be to generate new leads. You should consider metrics like sales, email sign-ups, @messages, direct messages and clicks.

Get the full article from Mashable

Key findings from The “Consumer Response to Travel Site Performance” study conducted by PhoCusWright and Akamai include:

- Three second rule – 57 percent of online shoppers will wait three seconds or less before abandoning the site

- Younger travelers are less patient – Generation Y and younger travelers are less patient than older travelers when it comes to page load times. 65 percent of 18-24 year olds expect a site to oad in two seconds or less

- Prevention is key – A third of travelers would be less likely to visit a site after experiencing technical problems like slowness or errors on the page. Business travelers are slightly more likely to have a negative reaction

- Loyalty is not forgiveness – Active loyalty program members are more likely than other travelers to indicate that they would not likely be influenced at all by technical glitches at 34 percent. However, the remaining 66 percent are actually more likely than others to have strong negative reactions.

- Travelers tend to be multi-taskers – 59 percent of consumers do something else when waiting for a travel website to load. Nearly one in five (19 percent) open another travel site in a new window when made to wait.

- Hidden fees may cost you – 43 percent of online shoppers have abandoned a booking because the final product price and/or fees were higher than they were willing to pay

The study also examines travelers’ reactions to technical issues. Findings reveal that many travelers are guided by their previous experiences with a particular website, and for just over a third of consumers (34 percent), a technical glitch will lower their likelihood to visit a site again. Business travelers and loyalty program members are less tolerant of technical problems, and are slightly more likely to have a negative reaction to them. Research shows that these groups of online shoppers are also the most valuable customers for online travel sites. Thus, the stakes for site performance and streamlined, transparent transactions are even higher for companies targeting these segments.

“Online travel is a fiercely competitive marketplace with many powerful brands all vying for the same consumer. Think about how irritating it is to stand in a line at a physical store – people hate to wait. When they are online, they don’t have to wait because there is another travel site just a few keystrokes away,” said Carroll Rheem, Director, Research, PhoCusWright. “Additionally, travelers have an inherent penchant for intensive shopping because travel is not an everyday purchase – it’s expensive and experiential. Therefore, travel companies that do not invest in speed and reliability essentially drive customers to their competitors.”

“Today’s shoppers demand a fast, engaging and secure online shopping environment when searching for an airline or hotel,” said Aaron Hynes, Managing Director of Technology, Continental Airlines. “This study confirms that there is a direct correlation between consumer satisfaction and site performance. By leveraging Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator solutions, we have been able to deliver a compelling site experience that is fast and reliable, and will keep our travelers coming back to our site when booking for their travels. In fact, since partnering with Akamai, Continental has seen significant improvements in page performance by 40 percent, which has greatly contributed to an increase in our conversion rates and sales revenues. The improvement in page load times has also contributed to our recent success by winning the Gomez most improved award with the largest decrease in response time from the first half of the year to the second half.”

In addition, findings state that consumers not only have varying patience levels, they also react to waiting differently. As with page loading times, the study finds significant differences when looking at results by different age groups. Younger travelers are more likely to engage in other activities – with 56 percent of 18-24 year olds waiting for loading compared to 77 percent of seniors. These results suggest that a poorly or slow-performing travel site can drive valuable shoppers away.

“Whether our customers are accessing our homepage or searching and booking for a hotel room on our site, we must ensure their experience is the best,” said David Godsman, Vice President, Global Web, Starwood Hotels and Resorts. “Akamai is helping us to achieve our goal of optimum site performance for our end users. The numbers of monthly site visits and conversion rates have risen steadily since leveraging Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator. As our site performance improves, our customers are spending less time waiting for the site to load, less time waiting for search results and can more quickly navigate the site and purchase their travel, increasing our look-to-book ratio. Also, by leveraging Akamai’s globally distributed network, we can spend less money and effort in infrastructure related tasks, enabling us to re-direct our resources to eCommerce development activities that improve our online experience.”

Get the full article from hotelmarketing.com

Travelport’s recent survey of 12 countries found that mainland Chinese (followed by Indians and Hong Kongers) are the most inclined to use social-networking sites to research business travel, and the third-most likely to do so for leisure travel. This strangely productive use of social-networking sites is apparently uncommon in America or Britain.

China has more internet users than any other country, with over 380m at the end of last year. Clearly a significant number use the web to plan and pay for travel. Another recent survey last year found that about 20% of Chinese tourists look for travel reviews on social-networking sites, while yet another suggested that as many as six out of ten read web-based travel forums. Thirty million Chinese booked travel online last year—80% more than in 2008.

All this would appear to imply that companies eyeing up tourism opportunities in China need to work out how to appeal to web-savvy customers. As we have previously noted, the world’s travel businesses are looking towards China for future growth. Even as the global industry struggled last year, China’s tourism revenues grew by 9%, and the number of outbound trips climbed slightly.

Some foreign travel websites have sniffed an opening. Minube, a Spanish “social travel portal” that allows users to describe and recommend locations (for which they may even be paid), launched a Chinese site in April. But generally the omens aren’t good. Foreign social networking sites like Facebook have flunked in China so far, losing out to local competitors with a better understanding of netizens’ proclivities. Among travel sites, meanwhile, the Chinese website Ctrip takes the lion’s share of online booking revenue: foreign sites have conspicuously failed to break in.

Little wonder that an international carrier like Lufthansa should choose to work with a Chinese social-networking site such as Renren (previously called Xiaonei), nicknamed by some the “Facebook of China”. If companies like Lufthansa manage to graft themselves onto China’s burgeoning internet travel scene, their bottom lines should benefit. And so, Gulliver dares to hope, should the rest of us when Chinese tourists bid down prices. Apart from being increasingly web-savvy, Chinese consumers are also notoriously price sensitive.

Get the full article from economist.com

Supplementing the site’s more than 35 million reviews and opinions from real travellers around the world, the wisdom of crowds on TripAdvisor is now enhanced by the wisdom of friends, delivering personalised recommendations.

“As the world’s largest travel site, we’re thrilled to continue revolutionising the travel industry by providing our community with exciting new access to their friends’ valuable advice about travel,” said Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. “With TripAdvisor Trip Friends, our 34 million monthly visitors can tap into their friends’ wealth of travel knowledge with just a few clicks, making holiday planning more fun, social and personal.”

How TripAdvisor Trip Friends Works

When researching a destination, hotel, attraction or restaurant on TripAdvisor, users who have logged in using Facebook will now see a list of their friends who have been to that location, as identified via TripAdvisor’s Cities I’ve Visited (CIV) application on Facebook Platform. Travellers can tap into their network of friends for more details, by directly messaging their friends, or by posting a message to a group of friends, to gain the unique travel insights from those who know them best. CIV has been one of the most popular travel applications on Facebook Platform for nearly three years, with more than five million monthly active users, and highlights over one billion destinations that CIV travellers have visited.

“Travellers using TripAdvisor Trip Friends will be amazed to see all the places about which their friends can offer highly relevant, personal travel advice-from that extra tip about the best place for croissants in Paris (your friends know how much you love croissants), to insights on the best scuba spot in Belize (through TripAdvisor Trip Friends, you discovered that two of your friends recently returned from an awesome scuba trip in Belize). This feature will turn great trips into fantastic ones, with convenient, personal input from people you know best and trust most,” said Kaufer.

“Facebook has always provided people with an easy way to connect with friends around the world, whether from Internet cafes or through sharing photos,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network. “By integrating with Facebook, TripAdvisor is enhancing the exchange of trusted referrals, travel do’s and don’ts, and good stories from abroad, and making the travel experience more relevant and social to each person who interacts with the site.”

Get the full article from HotelMarketing.com