This is something I have done in the past – talking about the history of hotel systems and amenities, and where we are today.  It’s likely horribly self indulgent, as well as terribly boring…. but coffe is such an afterthought, in so many situations, it deserves, at least, it’s own post.

We can start with my background in coffee:  I drink it. I drink quite a lot of it. I quite enjoy it.  I have a burr grinder. The burr grinder changed my coffee life.  As counter-intuitive as it is, I now understand why artisan roasters refuse to sell ground beans.  ”But the market is there for it”, my simplistic free market capitalist economy mindset cajoles my caffeine addled nerves… but self respecting roasters know their bean isn’t honored by letting it die a slow and lonely death as a tired ground in a depressing bag.

So… this is where we engage my hospitality mind, and wrestle with my pragmatic operations side, vs. my guest experience and brand equity side.

My last installment about the history of hotel minutia rambled on about hotel telephony: from PBX to modern software in place of hardware, and how it went from revenue stream to bungled system, all the way to how it exists today – a glorified in-house intercom (which marketers try to dress up with LCD screens, ad nauseum).  The story of coffee, however, might not be as interesting… especially to those tech & social fans who follow me (other than the giddy, amped ones who just placed another order for more caffeine related products from think geek).  To those fans – hopefully my rollicking, coffee fueled post will be the little bouncing ball over the karaoke lyrics.  Have fun.

First Step: Shout Out About It (even if others don't care)

People keep pontificating on the “check-in”, and what it means for most people, whether it will be relevent enough to stick around, or if it will fall into shadow like so many past “darlings of the moment”.  Well… I commented first *HERE*, and saw that consumers might think they are *not* a winning proposition here, and even Read Write Web claimed the death of the Check-In in 2011, and it was supposed to be a simple sentence.  In fact, I started by saying, “Here, I will make this simple…”, which is not only a bit grandiose, but sort of pompous as well.  I will try to relate my opinion with logic, instead of emotion… but it is still just an opinion.  I am just sharing a few thoughts on LBS (Location Based Services).  I would love to know what you think?

Check-ins aren’t going away, for the time being, because they are part of vanity and branded narcissism. People brag, everyone else ignores accept for supplicants and giddy fanboys. Check Ins are part of the “ME” culture… the issue is whether or not they will ever be really important. Aggregate check-in data for business *IS* interesting, but carving the path to relevance may include suffering the thorns of droll personal information that acts as spam, or the hot air of arrogance that chokes our lungs. I see the network, overall, quieting down on Facebook because the content generators form powerful cliques who don’t notice everyone else hiding them or just not paying attention because looking at their wall is a rollcall of constant chattering. To most people *I* know on Facebook, Check-In’s are spam. So are events. So are causes. So are messages. It’s all spam, and people are really getting tired of it, so they’re checking their pages less, posting pics less.  In fact, Facebook has made so many personalization features to combat the fact that Facebook, in itself, is spam, that these features are beginning to erode the entire concept of community (as you know from my post about Eli’s Ted Talk here, and this PDF 2010 talk)  As to the FB Check-IN:

We all come with baggage, so do the young Geo Location Based Apps

Facebook people didn’t opt in to the “check in” feature so much as have it forced on them, while giddy users of foursquare opt-in, and are voracious users of the real world board game… because they chose to be part of it. For Facebook users, it’s just more of the painful grind of the “me”.  Another thing to deal with – ignore, respond to, or hide. Is it possible that people are tired of the “me me me” stage of 2.0, and a more social semantic web will wipe out the relevance of the combined GPS individual user info that we are talking about? When people get over the individual importance of their check-ins, the real importance of the process will be noted: it’s not about the people checking in, it’s the brands that have been checked in to. The marketing opportunity isn’t with the individuals themselves, and soon we will move past trying to find influencers vs simple nodes.  I like weak ties, personally.

Where people are isn’t as important as why they are there. The next stage is communing around the places, and understanding that the individual person is simply a node in a much vaster network (Know Your Role, Know Your Place). The individual check-ins are irrelevent. It’s the thing they’re checking into, or around, is what’s relevant, and that means the real world is marketing your business by default. It’s viral, and it’s not something you pro-actively manage other than to run a ethical, fantastic business.  You don’t market to these people checking in to your hotel or business…. they are already branded in some loose sense as they are there. If you are doing your job, they will love it…. and it’s the simple fact that aggregate social user info like reviews, coupled with aggregate (I love the word aggregate) location info – nothing to do with the individual – will simply build your brand.  Fire your marketing department.  I am joking.  Calm down. I saw the ops guys in the back clapping.

The Swarm is what matters to marketers, while individual users matter to operations.

In fact, unless someone is famous or popular in some sense, the individual will have zero relevance, at least on a social network that isn’t a location based augmented reality app.  Famous people will give more credibility to places, events, etc… but for most of us little people, the future of our phones is that they just start clicking away when we are moving around (the issue is whether you will be able to opt-in to that, or opt-out of that?), and that aggregate data will be anonymously extrapolated to tell a story.  I know the privacy nonsense comes up again… I am all for individual privacy.  I just think it’s a red herring.  Kids these days… have traded privacy for notoriety.  We have traded privacy for apps that make us superhuman, in some senses. Read all about my privacy thoughts here.  Is the idea of volunteering endorsement of a brand that far fetched?  We do it every time we check in on Facebook or Foursquare, Gowalla, or any of the others endless check-in options.

Make sure to tag your friend with you, while you check-in, and ignore them.

I just can’t imagine individual user activity to be that important, where most of the time people see it as spam on Facebook.  I will post an informal test soon.  So I could see where it lapses. But the technology of recording or registering with locations will amplify, and that location data will aggregate to create a narrative about real world businesses, online.

I think they aren’t going away, but it’s certainly going to evolve and become something totally different. Active single user activity will alter and it will be more passive and automated.

But I am rambling.

Once we stop being so full of ourselves, the check in will take on a new role. Until then, we wear them as literal badges, as bragging rights. I am *HERE*. Look at me.  Like an expensive pair of jeans or some silly handbag.  I love trying to be mayor of my favorite hiking trails, so there I am, in nature, searching for a signal so I can let people know, “Wish you were here”.

It’s gonna be around for quite a bit, methinks.  Maybe we’ll be lucky enough (dry sarcasm) to simply have our credit cards automatically check us in when we are at the airport, or out to dinner.  Maybe currency will be your star rating, or an onsite review is added value to your bill for the restaurant, so you can have a real dialog with management about your experience and help the brand improve, and help manage it.  It’s going to evolve… it’s just how much it will scare us, and how we will want to respond to that, and control it.

This is the most important thing regarding Facebook & other online communities that very few people are talking about.  I note here (June 2010) that hidden streams destroy any legitimacy to this network, & eventually Facebook will have to change their practices.

Now, Move On’s Eli Pariser has written a book called “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You” -

“The Internet software that we use is getting smarter, and more tailored to our needs, all the time. The risk, Eli Pariser reveals, is that we increasingly won’t see other perspectives. In The Filter Bubble, he shows us how the trend could reinforce partisan and narrow mindsets, and points the way to a greater online diversity of perspective.”

We need to reinforce the wobbly foundation before it comes crashing down.

Here is his TED TALK.

Here is his talk from PDF 2010, as well – “Eli Pariser, the president of MoveOn.org, answered the PdF 2010 question “Can the Internet Fix Politics” with a warning about how the hidden personalization features of search and newsfeeds were subtly destroying the notion of a common public space.”

Smart people are actually writing about what I wrote about.  Dangit, I *knew* it was important.

It’s never about *me* per se, but it certainly is my hope that my ideas and the exchange of information gets out into the public domain and is found, in some way, relevant and meaningful.  If it sparks discussion, that’s all I want.  In this case, Eli is way ahead of everyone else… and it’s just nice to know I am on the right path about these complex issues.  Or maybe it means I have way too much time to be esoteric and ponder.  Whatever the case, consider this my endorsement of his book.

If you would like to read more about Facebook and it’s growing pains, attention as equity, overposting (an obvious experiment I have been running on my accounts so as to not destroy the biz pages I admin. *hopefully that explains a *LOT* of how I use and interact on Facebook*), follow the next link. There is another article, among many more, on my professional blog (so lame to say that) regarding Narcissism and the challenge of Facebook.  In case you missed it above, here is the link regarding Hidden Streams, and how they completely erode the functionality & impact of Facebook’s network.

(Thanks to Kristine Johnson for sending me the PDF 2010 YT that introduced me to him)

Let’s talk about the future.  Let’s talk about where things like social communication technology, genetics, computer and network science are going to go.

So, without further ado, Ray Kurzweil:

Kurzweil’s new documentary “Transcendent Man”, “probes his breathtaking, possibly balmy, vision of the future.” You can read more about it in this Economist piece at this link *HERE*.  Time runs an amazing piece on him RIGHT HERE (thanks Katie Clapp!).

What’s more, Michio Kaku, our pragmatic, skeptical, modern day science magnate (or hero? or Sagan-esque lightning rod for science to light up the public’s minds?) who proffers forth a more conservative view of our immediately future into the years that lead us to the 22nd Century.  Internet enabled contact lenses that tag everything in site, telekinesis will be commonplace, but it’s not all just sci-fi.  The Economist covers this in their Futurology (2) article here.  His new book is called “Physics of the Future”.

Assuming you got here because of our industry, we travel and hospitality professionals forget we are dabbling in technologies that not only resolve significant problems for the human race, but which can also completely alter what it means to be human, to begin with.  We are in the first moments of a revolution – one who’s major accomplishments may not even be on the horizon of our life’s timeline.

Even at this point, superhuman technologies bolster our frail frames and help us to walk, to breathe, and much more.  Even now it would be difficult to gauge where a human ends, and biogenetic, biotech, or bionic extensions begin.  It’s interesting to think about…

…….to remain human, we may need to become more human than human.

Now back to work! =)

Hello friends, travel and hospitality people.. I have abandoned you for too long!  Well, my mind has been racing, and I am trying to put all these pieces together… how will it all fit?  How will interaction by the brand influence, connect, or impact the future of the social graph legitimizing and strengthening search?  *That’s* not even the important question – The real question will be how will a search built off network science control and influence brands?  Will there, finally, be a thwarting of the spam through human powered relevance ranking?  Will poor management styles, lack of interaction, or opaque manipulation of the consumer made to be transparent in regards to the brand?  These are small beans compared to the impact of wikileaks on the future of human government.  If you want to catch up on the *REALLY* important stuff, listen to this NPR Fresh Air episode with Bill Keller, from the NY Times, on the impact of Assange and Wikileaks.  But back to our silly little vertical.

Google search is inundated by spam – even their CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that “The Internet is a Cesspool“, and at the time 2 1/2 years ago, he insisted it would be brands that sorted out those murky waters.  I think that’s part of it, such as a brand interacting with the social graph, while publishing meanginful content to an interested audience that actively supports or bolsters the brand’s online relevance and presence.  But where Schmidt agreed the future of meaningful editorialism or content was in question, I think it’s the tapping into of the social graph that will sort all this out.  People will always try to game search, but the amalgam of a human powered network will wield sorting relevance like a skilled warrior, making antiquated algorithms look clumsy and slow.

The spam problem for Google is multi-layered.  First is the obvious gaming with SEO keyword spoofing.  For those that get brand related Google Alerts, you will recognize these as those random blogs republishing old content, press releases, interviews, etc, often misquoting it or ramming it into other, unrelated nonsense.  It’s a scam where you automate the publishing of online content to try to game search engines to appear more relevant than they are.  They are called content farms. Here is a BRILLIANT article on the “pollution of google” and an impending tragedy in relation to this. Another aspect of this pollution are the legitimate sites that aren’t out and out farms, but still try to game search engines into becoming relevant.  So it’s not just the egregious ones that are obviously spam, but you have sites like Huffington Post doing anything to appear at the top of search results – like their infamous “What time does the Super Bowl start” post.  In fact, it was this post about “Classic books we’ve seen being read” that made me swear off of Huffington Post.  One or two are classics, maybe, but it’s just shameless gaming of SEO.  It’s sloppy, and it’s sort of pathetic.  What I loathe more than anything else are the content laden sites that immediately populate every search, but are insipid and cluttering up of *legitimate* search.  You will quickly understand what I am talking about when I mention all the arbitrary wiki’s with stub pages that lead to nowhere, or worse yet E-How and their littering of irrelevant search the net over.  Oh, How I HATE EHOW (search that line and you get ehow articles on how to accept hate)!

So basically, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc are starting to realize the algorithm is not bulletproof, and it won’t carry the internet into the more semantic stage that is coming up.  The entire landscape of the internet will change in the next couple years, and it will be this innocuous (which is up for argument) layering of the social graph into your experience.  The algorithm can’t work and you *MUST* use human power to create meaning and relevance online and with searches.  Otherwise the ad model will fall apart, and no one will trust the search engines, and we won’t be able to catalogue or find anything*.  So now the “social search” is on the horizon (or – here).  It means that the internet will be consistent and familiar.  An article from wired explains Google’s social search here, but the best bet is to watch this video from Matt Cutts, famed google search guru:

“Privacy”

Basically, advertising is always going to be around.  While people talk about privacy, I realize I rather have a relevant ad than one that has nothing to do with me.  This is a step towards that.

For example, Facebook is now “personalizing your experience” as you move from site to site, aka Facebook is trying to monetize their product by creating a more seamless social experience in regards to marketing. You can turn it off…. But honestly, there’s always going to be ads or irrelevant and non topical spam in your face. Wouldn’t you rather know what your friends reviewed on yelp rather than random strangers in random areas, or when you visit CNN or BBC you can see what a colleague read, instead of the scattershot “most popular” stories. Even better (for the consumer, not just the advertiser), an advertisement becomes relevant. Banner ads are targeted to your likely interests. Instead of seeing an irrelevant baby diaper ads (if you are young and single), maybe it shows you a link to a cool wine bar you might like.  Maybe it shows a concert a friend is going to.  It’s a much more intuitive way to facilitate the online experience, and where end users find inefficiency and frustration, it is this precise movement towards open browsing that has people screaming “Privacy”.  Frankly, I don’t think people even understand what privacy means.

This issue of Scientific American deals with some fairly amazing thoughts on modern privacy – whether social networks bring around the demise of privacy, among many other topics.  I always harken back to 1999, when Scott McNealy, from Sun Microsystems, said “Privacy is over. We haven’t had it for years. It’s a red herring”.  In my opinion, it’s completely misunderstood.  While most online people, especially the younger audience, are cultivating attention to the best of their ability, there’s an obvious exchange of privacy for constant information about our network.  It is something that seems to be developing naturally, and the benefits have been happily accepted, regardless of people’s concerns about privacy.

If you want privacy, stay off a computer, don’t get on a router, and don’t sign into any sites.  Even going online from an IP through a router will divulge information about you.  If you think privacy is the issue here, you shouldn’t turn anything on. Period. It’s the only way. Otherwise, might as well unfurl to the future. Now I am not saying that you should wantonly ignore your right to your own private lives, but be aware part of the internet improving is a slight exchange of your personal information.  All things being equal, I think it’s an exchange I am more than happy to make.  What’s more, the thing buffering my idealogy or indignity of civil rights is this one thing: by in large, 99.9% of us are beyond dull, irrelevent, and completely uninteresting.  Privacy is only a concern for those that need it.  the majority of us will never be relevant enough for privacy to be an issue.  We need to have some perspective and stop thinking *anyone* in the world cares if you checked in on foursquare, or commented how nice your vacation is.  I happily inform you (happy in that it’s freeing) that you simply… are not.. that big of a deal.

This is simply how it’s going to work.  It won’t be big brother silently judging you, although countless eyes will be aware of you – friendly ones crinkling into a smile as they effortlessly share their lives with you.  Of course, it’s not that we shouldn’t discuss and worry about privacy, but it’s a fact of life there will be a trade off – a tiny bit of inconsequential information about yourself for the ability to plug into “the matrix” and access the entirety of human information that has ever been documented, in a meaningful, relevant, and efficient manner.  Of course, we are sorry your ex saw a picture of you and your current beau on vacation.

Measuring Interaction

It’s great to be at this point.  It means the web will become more meaningful, but my issue is that there is still no way of really figuring out the impact.  It’s coming, and it will sort itself out.  But some of us ask questions, and keep busy with helping to understand the phenomenon.  For example, a property I am involved with had a few minor mentions on Facebook.  These are open profiles without privacy restrictions, so it is on public record and no issues of being prying or invasive.  I thought about it for a bit, and cannot see any issue with posting these link.  Look at these posts on Facebook, then consider the reactions, the conversation, about the brand, etc.

A jazz musician with 1300 friends mentions playing at the Allison.

Local Mom with a few friends passively mentions lunch at the Allison

Local Dad takes pics of dessert, and positive community reaction

The Future Starts Now (& has been happening for some time)

The “social search” side of this conversation is simply to lead us here… where I have my real questions, and where I would love your input.

I want to know what the value of those Facebook posts are, right there.  It’s obvious that social has massive equity, because they are beginning to dismantle the typical SEO methodologies like algorithms and static keywords in lieu of fresh content legitimized by the interaction of the social graph.  It’s pleasing to know we have taken the right direction with engaging the social network and building our brands while attempting to participate in and control our image and the conversation (in a modern sense, as best we can).  These 3 social Facebook interactions are undeniably more meaningful than a cold impression, but until there is some better method of tracking and measuring these comments, all we can do is be aware of them.  Twitter has a few tools, but nothing that leads the charge out of the impression model.  I am hoping we can eventually create something that would be able to track people as nodes or hubs or weak ties in geographic regions instead of simply looking at ip’s or url’s.  I am not looking to the old world marketing of finding an “influencer” so much as understanding the natural interactions as they ebb and flow in relation to your brand.  For more on Network Science, please read this informative and important article, “How Network Science Can Speed Up Your Success 10 to 20 times.”  It’s way ahead of it’s time, and it’s the next step in letting the argument of privacy jump the shark.

Our level of engagement is going to be more important in the future in a way that we can’t measure or perceive right now, and we are laying the groundwork to be heads and shoulders above other hotels in revelance and footprint.  Just as some hotels are *still* reeling from missing out on the SEO boom, some hotels & brands that think social is a joke will be in the same boat when the semantic web gains a stronger foothold.  It’s just – *how* will a brand’s engagement alter or impact a socially engaged search?

How Can You Learn More?

Next month, in San Francisco, there is a conference regarding Social Media Strategies for North America.  It is put on by Eye for Travel, one of the most respected Hospitality & Travel conference planner in the business.  It’s the 2nd & 3rd of March at Hotel Nikko.  There will be some of the best in the hospitality and travel business talking about these sort of issues and more.  It’s a chance to surround yourself with incredibly experienced and smart people about all these pressing issues.  I am really excited, and thought I would alert anyone about it who may come across this.  Sign ups are still going on *HERE*.

*One final thought if you actually have a little extra time.  This is a fascinating presentation (slow to start) on everything being cataloged as “miscellaneous”, because the established order of ordering is failing. It’s down here all the way at the bottom because it’s about an hour, and not completely relevant.  Fascinating, nonetheless.  It’s about relevance, which is obviously relevant in a discussion about relevance.  But who am I to assume it’s relevant to you?  Well, that was the social search graph is going to take care of.

———————–via Wilbur Hot Springs and their new blog on Tumblr.——————————

Our first post on Tumblr! I like it so far! We are still learning some things, but be sure to click the underlined links… those are the stories this whole post is about! =)

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This stuff is vital to think about, and we are thrilled to see the NY Times & Economist reporting on these oft overlooked impacts of modern living.  What’s more, this is just beginning, and to all our fans who tire of the madness and pace of this modern world… it will subside.  At least, the conversation that is being had will lead to more of us connecting, sharing, and living… without the drone of tiring tech.

This is relevant to you – to us – and to everyone else….. Please share this with your friends, family, people you love, and… especially… the people who need it. The problem is that the people who need it most will take the least amount of time to read and understand it.  So the duality of human condition marches on.

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1) Studying attention & memory as it is effected by the technology & pace of modern culture. Being off-grid & in nature repairs our tech-hysteria & dependence:

“But the trip’s organizer, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, says that studying what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains — in particular, how attention, memory and learning are affected — is important science.

‘Attention is the holy grail,’ Mr. Strayer says.

‘Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.’”

2) Being over-attached to tech is harmful — and we pay a price.  It is changing the way we behave, interact, and exist within a moment.

“Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.”

“These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopaminesquirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.”

“The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for millions of people like Mr. Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.”

“Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room.”

“‘The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other,’ he said. ‘It shows how much you care.’”

That empathy, Mr. Nass said, is essential to the human condition. ‘We are at an inflection point,’ he said. ‘A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.’”

3) “Stuff” doesn’t make people happy, while experiences create a long lasting, woven tapestry of happiness– more and more people are asking the simple question, “But will it make me happy?”  We often mindlessly do what the rest of the crowds are doing…. But is it fulfilling?

“S. STROBEL — our heroine who moved into the 400-square foot apartment — is now an advocate of simple living, writing in her spare time about her own life choices at Rowdykittens.com.”

“’My lifestyle now would not be possible if I still had a huge two-bedroom apartment filled to the gills with stuff, two cars, and 30 grand in debt,’ she says.”

“’Give away some of your stuff,’” she advises. “’See how it feels.’”

4) The final thought, from the Economist, is going to hit everyone a little close to home.

Why Americans cannot enjoy their holidays - and how we don’t *really* get away anymore. Not only do we give back nearly five hundred million vacation days back each year… when we are on vacation, we aren’t really on vacation.

“Even when Americans do take time off, they find it hard to relax. Having holidayed for many years with the family of a Wall Street lawyer, your columnist’s slumber has all too often been disturbed in the early hours by the murmur of writs, affidavits and threatening letters being dictated by phone to New York from Provence, Tuscany and other otherwise tranquil locations. It may be that without this unremitting industry the lawyer and his family could not have afforded quite so many hops across the Atlantic. But it seems pretty clear that something cultural—that famous Puritan fear of idle hands and easeful nights—is at work as well.”

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These are profound thoughts, and shatter many a world view.  This is a much more grounded, yet holistic, approach for understanding how we exist within our moments, our families, our communities, and more.  Not unlike the subtle commentary of The Tao Te Ching (that link leads to the *ENTIRE* Stephen Mitchell Tao translation) to walk the centered path….

We need to re-center, and reconnect with what is truly important…

No, not our phones. Our – selves, our loves, our lives.

…. And maybe multi-tasking and constant professional vigilance isn’t proving anything to anyone, except that we silently suffer in unknown, embarrassed, agreement.

Admittedly, it’s refreshing to know that our way of life hasn’t been too far off… and while I just realized Burning Man has a cell phone signal available on the playa,Wilbur Hot Springs is still the same off-grid, unplugged, 100% solar, pure escape. Your phone wouldn’t work even if you wanted it to.

We are quickly becoming one of the only places you can truly reconnect with your hidden human without the external noise (be it yours, or someone else’s) that confounds the intimacy needed for self-actualization.

It’s exciting to know that more people are going to look for the experience we have always provided… but it should also assure those of you concerned about our future that it provides every reason to stay precisely as we have for the last 30 years.

The future is what you know… to shed the complexities of earthly possessions, and flow like the springs into connecting with every corner of your mind, body, and soul!

Please share if you think these values are vital… or if you know people who simply need to step back once in awhile.  I sure do.

Thanks for listening. =) Be healthy, at peace, and well!

The concept of creating a need, or unecessary want, to encourage a mindless consumer to buy a product is dehumanizing.  To make someone feel “less” without a certain product is not only disingenuous & manipulative, it’s somewhat disturbing.  It’s a big problem – it is creating a cycle of mindless consumers that bolster evil marketing which creates even more mindless consumers which create .. ad naseoum.  The majority of us act like complete morons when it comes to trusting these people? Is that politically incorrect to say?  It scares me how stupid most of us are.  As Joe Rogan says, “I know I’m stupid, and I’m smarter than almost everyone I meet.”

What we do in hospitality and travel isn’t supposed to be that kind of marketing… at least for people who are proud of their product and imbued with brand loyalty, etc.  When someone loves their hotel and job…. I think it’s more about connecting people with what you have to offer.  It’s less about creating need, and more about finding the people with a legitimate connection or potential bond to what you have, and introducing yourselves.  This is when it isn’t marketing, and it’s just community… which is why I think the word marketing has been chewed up and spit out by the skeptical Generation X’ers.  It doesn’t exist in a positive way, anymore.

Community Manager, Communications, Brand Manager… all of this will cover community and old world marketing. I can’t wait until we move past that archaic word and talk more about the overarching responsibilities of a brand to operate ethically and have a dynamic conversation with their guests… something that involves every employee and every advocate of your brand.  It’s not just a print ad anymore.  There’s so much more to it.  People are so distrusting of the marketers’ burnt bridges, they have to make fun of themselves in ad campaigns (like Chipotle’s new billboard presence, where one reads “We wanted to talk about how great meat is without hormones or antibiotics, but the ad agency said to keep it short).  Isn’t that neat?  They are listening.

It’s complex, and I get down on the concept quite a lot.  I know it isn’t meant to be negative, but the old world of force pushed “impression” model marketing is, in a word, depressing.  That’s changing… and it’s exciting to see how targeting and relevancy will increase with technology.

This was meant to be a coffee break, and I am already rambling.  So without further ado… Bill Hicks.

“Oh he’s going for that anti-marketing dollar… that’s very smart.”

“Ooooh… the anger market.  Anger does great in times of recession. That’s a great market.”

He was, in a world of overusing the word, *brilliant*.

a) It’s fun to have a palette cleanser & short post in the middle of these wayward missives about the philosophy of modern business. The lack of verbosity should be a treat for all of you.

b) I know it’s “sales manager” but “hotel sales manager” fits.

c) It is sort of dead on. For most industries. Wow.
Enjoy.

As some of you were made aware in my interview of Shana from Tourism Queensland, I am chatting with some of the EyeForTravel speakers for the upcoming Travel Distribution Summit North America in Chicago this October 2010. The interviews are not only meant to be insight into the world of social media, mobile, and modern technology’s impact on the ever-changing landscape of the hospitality and travel business – but a dialog to help one another answer questions, as well as help get new ones asked.  These interviews aren’t necessarily light reading – these are the people at the top of our profession taking the rare chance to go in depth into some very heady and complex issues.

EyeForTravel has long been the go to source for travel news, events, and analysis, and are experts at bringing some of the most intelligent and thoughtful minds, as well as conversation, into the overall discussion of hospitality & travel. Hopefully, this conversation between Susan and I will add to that pool of information.  In fact, I don’t see how it cannot because if there is one true, legitimate and *bona-fide* professional who can use the word “guru” without sounding like a spammy internet marketer…. it’s going to be Susan Black.

Of course, many of you know Susan, of Black & Wright.  She is tireless, relevant, and, if you have been following the world of travel news and discussion, a name that is, and should be, hard to miss.  Her twitter account, @SusanTravels aggregates some of the best information in the industry, all the while working with clients on long and short term projects, planning and attending conferences, keeping up to date on current events, managing a hectic but rewarding professional and personal life…. as well as even taking time out for the likes of me.

That’s unbelievable, and it’s quite the honor to have her time and bend her ear. Our interview was incredibly casual, friendly, and meandering, while still focused on the issue at hand – What in the heck is going on with travel, tech, social media, and our industry! Susan had a lot to say… now it’s up to all of you to listen!  If you aren’t sure who she is, the picture, after the jump, should remind you!

Susan Travels

Robert Cole called you “The Ubiquitous Susan Black”, in that you are, literally, in as many places as your name is.  You are a rare gem in our world – in that you have a solid professional history in travel, so within social media, you aren’t just some newcomer with no perspective (all too common nowadays).  It’s refreshing to have learned, long time industry pros using social media instead of just another “guru” spouting noise. Tell us a little about your history in travel, prior to being engaged in this new world communication.

“I have been in the industry for a very long time – and I always hesitate when I give how long long because people immediately begin to think I am Methusleah.  But I have been in travel, starting in travel publishing, since back in the early 80s. So it’s been a really long time, almost 30 years; I didn’t spring from this ‘full blown and fully grown’.  I went through the more traditional travel route of working as a publisher for travel trade publications for many years, and getting to know the travel industry and their issues and their challenges, particularly with distribution, both on b2b [business to business] and b2c [business to consumer] side, from a number of different clients’ perspective.  First it was the corporate travel arena, I worked in news  magazine and corporate travel magazine.”

That is about when you entered into the online world?

“I switched over in the early 90′s to the leisure side, that was going through tremendous changes at that time, mainly the shift over from travel agents and more traditional types of distribution to the very, very early days of online. As a matter of fact, my first website was launched in 1994, which was called VacationPackager.com, right after the floppy discs and all that stuff. I was like, ‘WOW the internet, that’s kind of cool’.”

“Vacation packager took the database from the official tour directory that I was publishing, and took this relational database, and if you wanted to know about vacation packages like golf tours in Scotland or fishing tours in Costa Rica, it would tell you about the company, and give you all sorts of background info on the company – it was early, early search, pre-everything.  We sat on the homepage of  Travelocity – we actually preceded that site – but we sat on their homepage as a vacation package button for about 2 years, and did about 6 or 7 iterations of vacationpackager because we finished one we would say ‘No NO!.. what they really want to know is the itinerary.  No NO! They want they really want to know is comparisons, pricing, can you book it?’  We would do partnerships with a lot of tour operators and things, so it was quite a learning experience in a very short period of time.  From coming up with my first flying GIF thing ‘ooh look at that, the plane flies! How cool is that?’, to user, early days of usability and we started off as an advertising vehicle. There was no such thing as performance based, there was no such thing as search, there was no such thing as CPC, there was no such thing as anything.  I know I sound like the dark ages.”

Why did you get online so quickly, so early in the game?  Why were you so ahead of the curve?

“I loved it. I saw so much promise there. Remember, I worked for a relational database, a directory. You can’t get really sexy with a directory, but their really useful. And then to have all that information and sorted online, it was exciting. But yes… it was the day of the dialups, and it was the day of.. we had bandwidth issues.  I remember we had conversation about disabling the “back button” [We both laugh]

Sounds like you were a voracious “sponge”?

“I learned about it early on, and I learned it from someone who knew quite a bit in travel [professional friend of Susan's to remain anonymous].  I went to every single early show at the time; there weren’t many –  Jupiter had something, and Forrester had something. Whatever was around, I went to, I read *EVERYTHING*.  I kind of ran in circles like Rich Barton and Terry Jones, and all the early pioneers – it was a small circle…. A tiny little cirle.  We all kind of banded together – mainly the OTAs; the hotels weren’t really on board at this point.  PCTravel, BizTravel; just a lot of people that aren’t around anymore.  But it was a really interesting and exciting period.  Now, I was interested, not so much in the e-commerce point of view, but the power of an advertising point of view – that it was very targeted, that there was a lot of intent.  Again this was pre google, pre search, pre everything.”

“So that is kind of my background on all of this.  At the same time Eye For Travel started, back in 1999, I started my consulting practice, and started “E-Travel World” as part of a larger vision of intersecting industry and the internet, part of adtech, e-healthcare world, e-auto world, e-b2b – you kind of get the picture. That is when I first started with Forrester Research – first with Mari Moto, then with Henry Harteveldt and it’s when I first got to know the significant players and all the new applications in online travel in an intimate way because I needed to program them, and really needed to understand the differentiators and understand what they did.”

Hotels have always gotten beat up with tech. We are always 10 years behind: from updating property management or telecom systems (remember installing wifi, everyone?), to the early online days where most of us missed the boat with SEO; and now in our current state where we  struggle with branding and messaging in a climate that has the consumer model flipped.  Even some Travel Agent Publications are still trying to figure out how they missed that boat that sailed so long ago.  It seems more and more that knowing about the tech isn’t enough, and how to handle and integrate the tech is just as important as understanding the technology’s importance or existence.  Did you find that immersing yourself in this world of new contacts and applications, as well as being able to immediately practically apply them, sped up your understanding of their impact?

“Because I had a consulting practice at the same time, I was able to integrate and apply the new fangled applications to the needs of my clients.  It really was a terrific platform, and a way to learn about all these new things, crazy things like “search”.  I mean, as I said I read everything, went to a tremendous amount of conferences – I drank the Kool Aid. I mean – this will really date me – I remember when I saw the first business fax that came through. I was like “Oh my God it’s Star Trek, it’s Buck Rogers, it’s everything’.  So I always believed in what was next – that there will be a next, and that there were applications out there that would be exciting – even if it wasn’t adapted completely at the time, but that this is such a powerful tool – especially as bandwidth grew and it became easier.  At first, I saw that people were going on online chat rooms, and AOL chat. I was like ‘damn, everyone is going to these places’.  People were spending hours and hours abandoning TV and bars to sit online and participate in this interactive content.  That interactive content got me excited… I couldn’t believe I could chat with someone about a topic that was interesting to me with someone around the world.”

“Now, with the transition and movement to more transparent social media – I know now who these people are, I have met them person to person, face to face, or met them through someone trustworthy, it takes on a whole new dimension. I know who I am getting my information from, and I won’t end up quoting some oddball.”

And you don’t always need to know them, because some of these sites hold these transparent profiles that provide a little veracity and relevancy. Not as scary as the old anonymous days of the web…

“This comes with more of a linkedin, and more of a contextual conversation.  If within LinkedIn there is a conversation about distribution, or revenue management, that is relevent.  They may be people I don’t know, but when we belong to the same group and talk about contextually relevant information – I don’t necessarily need to know them, but if they belong to the same group or membership but we’re talking the same contextually relevant information.”

“With Twitter, again, the last word there is contextual and relevant. You look for the relevancy – I use it as an uber editing force.  Here’s a whole bunch of people who are interested in the same thing, in this case online travel, as I am, and they have the time to edit things so to say, ‘You may be interested in reading this, or you may want to see this you may have missed’,  and it may be someone you may not know personally, but it’s someone big in the industry.  So I find it as one big ole whopping editing opportunity for me, and that’s the value I see there.  And the value of conversation, but again I use it more in terms of ‘I would have missed that, thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

“Let’s say I have a subject like the recent acquisition of ITA by Google.   I can read what’s in the press, everyone can.  But there are some industry leaders who’s point of view I might specifically like.   I have a choice – I can call them up, that will take about 16 years if i could ever get them.  I could send an email; equally — they are busy, so am I.  I can maybe google them and maybe they have written something, or not.  And how many am I going to do for that.. 10, 20 30? Well that’s going to take all day, or year, or forever?  Or maybe I can join a conversation by putting in “ITA Software”, see what pundits have put something there, links to their blog and pick and choose what to look at, all in about 3 1/2 minutes.  I find it useful to get relevant, contextual information from sources I may or may not now that I do trust that have things to say that I may have missed.”

“Really, the strongest application to my world with Twitter is in relation to conferences.”

I have been blown away by twitter and conference usage.  You have people live reporting, you have other people commenting, contrarians yammering (like myself), even light hearted banter as people get slap happy near the end of the day.  It adds so many dimensions to conferences.

“It forges new relationships and contextual relationships.  How many times have you been at conferences and … sitting next to someone at lunch you *may* talk to someone, or sitting next to someone you *may* chat, or find the badge of a company you really want to engage with – but what are the chances that you could really form a deeper understanding of someone’s views?  Things you very probably would have missed from people you probably didn’t know you needed to know.  It helps connect people that I need to know.  This is how I morphed into it – it’s not linear. It’s a whole amalgam of different experiences of the travel industry, past present and future.”

How do you think the traditional travel background has faciliated your understanding of the online channel?

“What’s unique about where I am in the industry and with my development, is that – and there aren’t many of us, and I’m not bragging, but it’s just kind of an observation – there aren’t that many that came from a traditional travel background. There are almost no more suppliers, or in my case publishers, who dealt B2B in travel that knew *that* world pre-internet – pre-1995 – as intimately and played in that area *and* as actively as the “post beginning of internet” group. They *may* have just been in a different place early on – online advertising, etc. Not specifically tied to travel, just in a different place. There are few people who have come from traditional travel backgrounds who have immersed themselves as I have in this “online space”.  I am in this very bizarre position where I know people, and I maintain my contacts very actively with people from.. you know.. the 80′s, the 90′s; then I have this whole new group of folks I have known from the late 1990′s to today.  The first 15 and the last 15!”

It’s old world versus new world.  There is an obvious crisis of experience with modern travel professionals.  There are so many people saying they have experience in travel and the industry, marketing or hospitality, when they don’t really have a frame of reference to the industry, how it works, etc.  Sitting on twitter doesn’t necessarily make someone an expert.  So we need people like you to stand out. I hope I help.

I had the social media bug in me before the tools were around.  It was something called a rolodex.

Hey, I remember those.  I remember management hiring people they didn’t like just because of their Rolodex.  It’s still fairly powerful.

“Yeah I had a pretty powerful Rolodex – I even remember using the early Plaxo tech, and tools so you could scan business cards in, and leverage as much as you could off of those cards.  But yes, I have been a big, BIG believer of true, I will call it applied, networking. It isn’t enough to have a Rolodex, but it’s what you do with those connections – how you monetize it, how you use it, how do you partner with it, and understand and leverage those relationships.  It’s ‘who I know and what can those networks do.’”

Which is absolutely what the travel business *is*, or *should* be.  Those real world business connections are the strongest and most reliable, because you trust one another’s accountability and have experienced one another’s  professionalism, rather than something more passive like “liking” a tweeted story from Facebook.  I assume most of that rolodex was earned in tried and true professional relationships rather than the looser connections of social media?

“It’s a kind of an interesting background where I was a publisher primarily dealing with marketing distribution challenges from traditional travel companies.  It was mainly leisure, but again, before that, with hotels through meetings and corporate travel magazines, then through consulting and putting together conferences.  I was learning about a lot of new applications and applied intelligence – ‘how this works for everyone else’ – up to becoming a practitioner and seeing the fundamentals and day to day and how it really works and translates to the bottom line, and how people actually make money from it (or not) – back to running conferences and being a consultant.”

“That’s what I like to do; I like the diversity, I like to be out there, and cutting edge and seeing the next big thing.  You know, when you are in operations or operating within a company, it’s very hard, especially if you have 17 direct reports, everything falls on you, and life gets in the way.  I am in, out, back and forth – but have been consulting the last 6 years. Most clients are short term, but a few are long enough term where I am able to see something from beginning, middle, to the end.. and through execution.  So it’s been sort of a wild ride in this field – starting in the early days when you would place a print ad and hope for the best.”

I am an operator, and so I have always been skeptical of marketing.  It’s weird because of the way the social media sort of laid waste to the traditional marketing model. I get that “new world” model – and, of course, it’s not going to replace the old world of marketing – but I was always like “Impressions??!?! I know a guy who had a paper route – 200 houses or one dumpster.” [Ed note: joke attributed to Mitch Hedberg].  But now, the kind of data you get with analytics and the reports you can pry out, you can gauge your success in a much more concrete way.

“We have always talked about CRM, segmentation, performance – for years we have been talking about that.  It gets easier and easier with these new additions to the marketing arsenal.  I agree – it doesn’t replace things; it works better in an integrated way, in tandem *with*.  Social media doesn’t replace traditional online advertising, it works better *with*. If you are combining it with an email program, you will have better outcomes.  We have been talking integration since the 1980′s, as long as I have been in this.  Now we have the tools and we now really have the opportunity through our tracking and performance base to see how everything works together.  The intelligence and reporting is getting so much better and easier, we can really optimize different areas of our program based on what effects we see.  I think that’s the future.. it’s not social media over mobile over traditional over *this*, the answer is ‘YES’ – it’s everything.  But it is everything that is measurable and optimized working in tandem with one another.

“Seeing how these companies are segmented, the real challenge is to help them work with the tools so that it is optimized so everything becomes integrated. It isn’t marketing vs distribution vs operations; it really becomes part and parcel to each departments.  Those are, kind of, the issues today – sorting out the internal structure and breaking down the walls; it’s where the challenge and opportunity is today.”

“We’ve got all these tools, but who uses social – is it marketing, is it operations, is it customer service? Who is it?  And the answer should be ‘Yes’, but also ‘How?’, and ‘who’s in charge, and what happens’? And that’s just one teeny tiny aspect. And you can put that to *everything* – to email, to mobile, etc.  But figuring that out is the challenge, or ‘opportunity’.”

“When I first started putting conferences together, we always separated tracks by marketing and distribution.  I would argue, today, that it so archaic and irrelevant, it’s ridiculous… They are one in the same.  Marketing is distribution, distribution is marketing. Yes.  Is “search” distribution or marketing? YES! Of course it’s distribution.  Is “Google” media or commerce? YES! Is “Expedia” media, or commerce? Yes!  So all of these distinctions of what’s marketing, what’s advertising, and even branding has morphed with performance based distribution.  That also translates to offline distribution.  A lot of traditional distribution folks or marketers, it’s a very confusing or challenging world. The lines were very clear… ‘this is my world, this is your world.’  Now the lines are blurring, and it creates opportunity of course, as well as deep, deep challenges.  30 years in the same industry, it is remarkable to be active in the transformation of this arena.

Like these challenges with Social Media and Marketing.

“When travel companies are disappointed in social media, they have taken it on its own, and kind of left it in left field. They haven’t integrated it with everything else, and haven’t taken a look at their distribution and marketing goals, and are left trying to figure out how to measure it or understand the true value of these initiatives. The same thing happens with mobile.”

I see that with hotels – quite desperate to be part of the “shiny new toy” and use the hep buzz words. “Oh we need to get social media going – let’s do it!”, but overall, most really don’t get it.  It’s frustrating to the new entries into this new world.  You can get something up and running cheap and easy, but traditional marketers don’t understand it or can’t get parity between normal campaigns and the social realm.  It’s obviously effecting traditional campaigns, but it’s still a challenge to measure.  What should these old world marketing people be asking as they try to comprehend this very new world of social marketing?

“I think it’s based on marketers saying, “How does this fit in with my overall goals”. Here are my goals – it’s being clear with everything else they do with marketing and distribution.  ’Now that I have taken the time to say what our brand is, what our differentiator is, what our goals are, how I am measuring them, what I am doing – where does everything fit in with this ecosystem that I can measure and know what’s supporting it.’”

You wouldn’t randomly start to use Marketing or PR.

“No one would say, ‘I am not going to do PR because it doesn’t fit in,’, you ask ‘How do I do PR to support this?’.  You wouldn’t just do PR for the sake of it and see what happens.  Unfortunately, social and mobile and others are not yet reviewed this way, which is really unfortunate.  They are often measured at a totally inappropriate, and abstract, type of measurement.  You wouldn’t do that with anything else – why would you do it with social media?  You need it to be inline with goals.”

How do you think this will evolve? What is the future for us?

“I think the future is that we will finally learn to integrate all these things once we feel more comfortable with social, or mobile, or online marketing.  We will see new impacts and aspects with the Google / ITA merger, more new transitions and mergers, and new big players will enter the market like Facebook / Tripadvisor and Apple with Itravel.”

“Once we learn more about the power of that, I think the big opportunity will be integrating all of these lessons and tools, and creating them to be workable strategies that anyone – from the smallest hotel to global companies – will be able to utilize and leverage for their best use.  First we need to understand them, play with them, try them out, and have early successes and failures – then integrate them into what we understand in terms of both distribution and marketing.”

“In that, it doesn’t really matter what the next new big thing is, because we have a process in place to help it exist in the current ecosystem.  The greatest opportunities will be if marketers keep their minds open, and know that there will be blips on the way.  The whole integration helps with obtaining the goals.”

Since you mentioned them, who do you think will be the big players in the next five years.

“I think the big players are going to be different from the big players of “before”.  I don’t think it will be the traditional OTA’s, because they haven’t changed all that much.  Especially if you listen to Phocuswright and Forrester, it’s still ‘when you wanna go, where you wanna go’? –  It all looks the same.  I think it’s going to be, truly, a more intimate look at how people want to get their travel, and I think it’s going to be Google, Facebook, Apple that will now come onto the scene in a really focused way, with the resources and power behind them to find out a different way of distribution.”

Facebook partnering with Tripadvisor is interesting. Tripadvisor seems to be giving up on “native content” vs allowing Facebook users to contribute.  I think it hurt Yelp, and I have seen a huge jump in restaurant reviews on TA – but it’s all really fluid at this point.

“With the like button, with Tripadvisor, and different applications… they will find their way.  You can’t just dismiss the powerhouses of today just because they don’t have the right applications. That would be like dismissing Google in the past because the algorithm was a little off.  You have got to understand that these companies have the bandwidth, the smarts, and the money – and travel is one of the largest if not *THE* largest online opportunity, vertical, and once they have their sights set on it, they will figure it out.”

In working with EyeForTravel, you always seem so enthusiastic and geared up for the events.  Why does it energize you the way it does?

“I think these conferences take you out of your everyday thoughts, and opens up a window to what other companies are doing.  It allows you to see case studies, it allows you to see what’s real versus what’s vaporware, or what’s not. It really allows you to have a dialog.  What we are doing on the phone right now is a dialogue.  It enables marketers and distributors to see what is working now, and what will work 6 months down the line.  It separates the ‘hype’ from the ‘happening’, particularly the newer things like mobile, social media.”

“It saves a lot of time, energy, and effort if you are going down the wrong path, like not taking advantages of current opportunities or believing in hype that isn’t actually working.  Especially with the changing landscape and how quickly this stuff morphs, and the importance of the players today… it helps you see what you should be looking at, and what you should ignore.  I mean, two days at a conference to get all of that –  to save hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, of investment time, of executive time, to really have this immersion & dialogue – I cannot imagine how people could afford *not* to come.”

It’s funny… you can study it all you want, but unless you are completely immersed in a culture, you aren’t going to learn the language.

“There’s a reason people have these off sites – in a normal business day there are too many interruptions, there’s too much going on in the day to day.  You need this time to focus, you need it for your business, you need it for yourself – It’s necessary, it’s mandatory!”

Susan Black will be Chairing at the Eye For Travel North American Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, the 13^th & 14^th of October, 2010.  You can look at the agenda here, and a list of all the speakers here.  It includes 4 separate focuses within one conference:  Online Sales & Distribution, Revenue Management, Mobile Travel & Tech, and Social Media Strategies. Register here, or contact rosie@eyefortravel.com for more information

http://millvalley.patch.com/

It is a REALLY interesting new content distribution model for community / municipal news… sort of like the old neighborhood rag (of which many still exist in paper form, like the Sunset Beacon in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco, etc).  It will obviously include some incredibly relevant local advertising, specials & deals, etc with topical, specific content about that city (and it’s surroundings) in Marin.

It’s a great idea, and I am surprised it has been more popular yet… but AOL is doing this ALL over, and I bet it’s one news model that actually works. It will be like a small town bulletin board of relevant info.  Instead of the dying model of distributing massive amounts of national content into a boiler plate layout that is then branded for smaller cities (IE national news written on a non community level that is then branded into specific markets), this will be producing content that is markedly relevant and vital to the community the site publishes too.  It will finally create a relevant content distribution model that will quench the locals needs, while still allowing them to consumer national and international news from their existing pillars, which are still fighting confusedly about why they are crumbling.

Just like the telegraph didn’t kill the newspaper, and just like the radio didn’t kill the TV, or social media won’t kill traditional marketing….. this model finally understands that two models can co-exist side by side.  In this case, the models that are still struggling won’t impact this new approach in any way, and it is likely that we will see more of these grass roots approaches to impacting, relevant news to a geographic area.

Well done AOL. Can you believe you are ahead of the curve? Cheers and good luck.

And if the upshot of all this means I can find the police blotter quicker, easier, and more consistently for a quick chuckle every couple days… solid.

I like hypercommunal news a lot. Hyper-locality, hyper-relevancy, well I am just hyper.