This Argophilia post by Phillip Butler starts the conversation: Who is the big bad wolf of hotel marketing?  Simply put, there isn’t just one –  OTA’s, Franchise Fees, Internet Marketing Fees, Booking Engine Fees.  This is one leaky ship.

Here is my response, but I am more interested in what all of you have to say?
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Great read. Thank you much. =)

I always thought of the OTA’s as something that filled the gap during the off line to online distribution evolution. They were a stopgap solution. They are now becoming unnecessary, and getting in the way of commerce because they are becoming obsolete, where they used to promote some level of commerce for our industry. Distribution has changed… and their role will phase out. It won’t be in the next 5, maybe 10…. but this will all change. I adore how people revile when you suggest the guy on top won’t be there forever.  The fact is, nothing is forever, and new paradigms unfold.

Another big bad wolf, on top of franchise fees? Ridiculous internet consulting firm charges by hourly consulting model.  Buuteeq is doing some good with simple pricing plans… it makes a lot more sense, and you aren’t nickel and dimed for the internet marketing group’s mistakes or on the job training.

Lastly…. commissions to booking engines. Including the franchise fees, as well… Engines like Synexis get promoted by franchise and flag brands, which then take a cut. It’s incredible how much money is lost to an engine that simply helps facilitate online booking. Eventually, the hotels will realize the money lost can be recouped quickly by building and designing a proprietary engine of your own, off a template, for the hotel to own, outright. That can save 20K – 100K+ a year.  I imagine a management group could justify the development fees to an owner group, based solely off the last 3 years of annual or commissionable fees that the property made to the booking engine company.

Would anyone have any idea how much it would cost for development of a competent template, and simple engine with solid UI – that includes a mobile component? Is that $100k or more?  I know… you can always spend more. =)

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.

I)  Thoughts from Paul Burditch, owner of an excellent Luxury Hospitality PR & Marketing company, Burditch Marketing Communications, in regards to hotels in San Francisco, and a decision *not* to allow dogs at a property:

Travelers who come from all over the world know San Francisco to be a dog paradise – it should be given certain treatment so that it is welcoming, & visibly warm & fuzzy feeling.  If dogs are not allowed, we will have a responsibility for a fair explanation of *why* we do not allow dogs, especially in light of the entire industry moving that direction.  Most San Francisco hotels allow dogs, and the national parks and Golden Gate National Recreation Area are one of the most popular places for dog walkers & dog fans in the city.  Dog owners who stay nearby will see many dogs on the trails, or at Crissy Field, and throughout the park system.  This might not only have negative PR implications, but it will be a negative impact on those that see dogs throughout the city, parks, and out our back door.  Almost all hotels in San Francisco allow dogs including the top boutique companies Joie de Vivre (ed note: kaput), Kimpton and luxury properties like Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, St. Regis and others.  San Francisco is one of the most dog friendly cities in the country, with the parks being a perfect place for dogs and owners to enjoy. To not allow dogs is going against the bigger trend in dog policies here in San Francisco.  A no pet policy is antithetical to the prevailing opinion of most Americans and pet owners in the country today.  There are 78 million dogs in the U.S. and 39% of U.S. households own at least one dog. With the abundance of dogs throughout SF and the parks, a decision to disallow pets will have obvious negative PR implications.  At this point, it’s almost assumed that they are allowed, and “no” is never part of a good guest experience.

II)           FINANCIAL DATA:

At one unnamed property: “We’re at $24,475 in dog fees through October YTD.  It’s a one-time $75.00 fee (most fees are much less, but balanced against the full cost of dog sitter or kennel if guest were to leave them at home), regardless of length of stay.  The audit report only gives posting totals, so no way to track Room Night production.  I’d make an educated guess of 550 – 600 total Room Nights YTD.  The total doesn’t breakdown evenly when divided by $75 because we had a few in there we only charged $50 because their res was already OTB when we changed the fee and a few we charged $100 because they had more than 2 dogs. It is our opinion that these guests would have stayed elsewhere with their pets, and we would have lost the room nights.  This does not account for incremental revenues. [ed note: this is from a peer who doesn't know I am posting this. It's anonymous, but if ANYONE has ANY concern at all re: financial disclosure, I will take this down].

Incrememental revenues = selling branded or logo’d hotel merchandise to dog owners – whether homemade local treats or a rubber ball with your brand stamped on it.

III)          Articles, info, data:

a)    Tripadvisor Pet Travel report.

“In a TripAdvisor survey of more than 1,100 pet owners in the United States, nearly half said they plan to travel with their animal within the next 12 months.”

b)   Pet Friendly Travel  – via Bella Dog magazine, also talks about airline fee frustrations, and more:

The majority of pet owners surveyed (61 percent) said they travel more than 50 mi. (80 km.) with their pets at least once a year, with 38 percent of those pet owners stating that they travel as often as once a month with their pets.  Pet friendly travel still is almost exclusively for dogs, with over half of the pet owners (61 percent) saying that they choose to travel with their dogs (33 percent of pet owners travel with their cats).  (Source:  Bella Dog magazine)

c)    According to the U.S. Travel Association:  “Pets make great travel companions. Over 49 percent of U.S. adult leisure travelers consider their pet to be part of the family and 18 percent of U.S. adult leisure travelers usually take their pets with them when they travel. (Source: travelhorizons^TM, July 2009”)

d)   Forbes: pet friendly hotels were due to market forces demanding it -

Why the change of heart? Travelers with pets are a huge market, and one that is untapped at the luxury level. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Travel Industry Association of America, there are 62 million dog owners in the U.S., and 29 million of those hit the road with their dogs in tow. The latest American Express Leisure Travel survey, released in October 2003, found that 13% of its respondents described an ideal vacation as one that is “pet-friendly.”

e)    Hotels Dogs Travel (via HotelMarketing.com) -

The nation’s pet boarding industry has figured out it doesn’t take much persuasion to get pet owners, often guilty about dropping their dog or cat off at a kennel while they head off on vacation, to pay extra for pampering: In the last five years, spending on pet services including boarding and grooming has more than doubled to $2.5 billion, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association in Greenwich, Conn.

f)     Hotels renting pooches to guests without dogs via Time.com

These days, the coziest hotel trend has nothing to do with plush mattresses or comfy slippers. It’s about catering to guests who had to leave their furry, feathered or finned family members at home. This spring the Fairmont in Sonoma, Calif., added a dog to its staff, a chocolate Labrador named Zeus who is tasked with such things as welcoming guests in the lobby and going on hikes with them — or what is referred to, in corporate jargon, as “interactive guest appreciation.” (I have seen this in many JDV hotels as well. This trend started after studies showed that petting a dog or having a pet around reduces stress and increases health)

g)    Fairmont’s doggy ambassador delights guests (same as above, but more info)

h)   “Top Dog Hotels” via USA Today (same Tripadvisor rankings from above, but a little more about the hotels and amenities)

i)     Recent press release for Bernardus in Carmel Valley via SF Gate PRWire (the fact that someone does a press release is typically because the new amenity has relative strength or equity to the brand and bottom line)

j)      Kimpton’s Argonaut with their “Howl-O-Ween” dog costume contest (something that drives room nights and community around Kimpton property)

k) 15% of people are allergic to dogs (not including the 30% of asthma sufferers who are allergic), while 40% of people own dogs. With stringent cleaning methods (or just normal ones), i have yet to hear of an allergic person with a problem inside a room, let alone ever knowing whether they had been place in a room previously occupied by a dog.  For those truly allergic, they usually mention it, and it’s never an issue to accommodate all those concerned.  What’s more, hotels have been dealing with chemical sensitivity and allergies to things like down, etc, for years.  One more thing won’t be a major impact or operational issue.

l) Dogs that travel with people are typically incredibly well behaved, and often better and more quiet than children.  We also know weight limits are not necessary, because a) most large breed owners don’t travel with their pets, and b) a chihuaha can do as much, if not more, damage as a larger breed.  But if that rare bark is a concern to owners, remember  that acoustics won’t be an issue – a crying baby is louder than a dog in most acoustic tests: http://www.controlnoise.com/storage/dBSoundproofingChart.pdf

IV)         Conclusion

We have seen a lot more conversation on an internal industry level and an external marketing level because it has become so much more popular in recent years.   Opening without a pet-friendly policy, only to allow it later, would create PR issues because it is difficult to recapture initial interest after telling people that you are not dog friendly.

Observing and mulling all the above data and information, it seems pretty obvious what the right choice is for your guests, and your hotel.  Any complications, of which there are few and it’s very rare, is what needs to be discussed further.  I have a couple dog policies I can share, if you need them…. but overall, we feel strongly that a pet friendly policy should be approved for any hotel looking to drive revenues and capture new markets.

Hope this helps guide the decision making process.

Here’s an article on Room Key, the hotel brand search engine.

Upshot (summary via TNOOZ):

Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group have combined to establish the joint venture under the leadership of CEO John Davis, founder of the Pegasus hotel distribution and technology service.”

And here is Barb Delollis from USA Today with a Facebook post that sparked some awesome conversation.

This is my commentary from that Facebook post (which, as it happens, is by far the most interesting post I have seen on Facebook in years, and no… not because of my response).

I am excited about Room Key for many reasons…. I hope the below is succinct but helpful in understanding why this is an exciting move forward…..

It’s not a better solution, but that’s okay. It’s a flawed solution that has monopolistic traction – and this entry from Room Key is simply the start of their traction. It’s like Google Plus vs Facebook….. just because Facebook has more traction doesn’t mean it’s a better option.

It’s all new tech, and layered diversification coupled with competition in the early decades of online travel distribution means that the booking process is exhausting and varied…. one site has not, and will not, *EVER* serve *every* single on of your needs.

If you can honestly say you book solely on one site, and one site alone… more power to you, and that’s a rare thing – a branded OTA travel consumer. Travelers that use OTA’s are deal shoppers, so the idea that they would use one site and stick with that due to loyalty is odd, when it’s myopic only to consider one site with the scores of other’s available. A real travel consumer isn’t going to stick to one OTA, and that process of shopping around has become somewhat of a liability…. and an exhausting one. In the last 5 years, the only thing that OTA’s have done is to train the smart revenue managers to yield such that the best available rate is *ALWAYS* directly on the brand website…. in this, you maintain as much rate integrity and control of inventory as possible. That being said, the gestapo like extortion and bullying from OTA’s like Expedia has backfired, and savvy travel consumers are starting to be trained that the best deal is ALWAYS on the hotel website. OTA’s know this, and they are losing consumers due to it.

Room Key is a brand new product that is put together by some of the biggest players in the hotel industry ( Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Wyndham Worldwide, Choice Hotels, Marriott Hotel, InterContinental, Hyatt Hotels as well as Pegasus), and it’s a new product that is *BRILLIANTLY* devised, the UI is quite easily the best online booking product that exists, currently (although KAYAK’s mobile app is stellar). It is filling a sorely needed gap in a crowded space – a simple, concise, uncluttered way to easily find hotel rates and book without the pain of being upsold on value ads and overwhelming options. The OTA’s like Expedia or Travelocity are dinosaurs, and this new option is filling the space that travelers are clamoring for.

I understand your comments about being a consumer, and wanting the simplest option – what you are forgetting is that OTA’s had a chance to offer the simplest options for booking, but have failed in an overarching attempt to increase revenues by destroying any functionality or user experience on their sites. This is all new technology, so the best travel experience hasn’t even been developed yet. Just because one of the OTA’s has a monopoly doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for the consumer. This is the first attempt at our hotel industry to create that experience.

Room Key is coming at the right time – it mimics Google in a light user interface that is concise, simple, and clean.

The other side of this is how Google will lay waste to the uneven and disjointed online travel world -

Google Search + Google Travel + Google Flight + Google Hotel + Google Plus (in searches) = dominance & sheer terror for the existing landscape of online distribution.

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.

A ghostly voice:

Consumer privacy issues are a “red herring.” — “‘You have zero privacy anyway,’ Scott McNealy told a group of reporters and analysts Monday night at an event to launch his company’s new Jini technology. Get over it.’”

That was in 1999.

Subsquently…. resultingly….. These privacy conversations kill me. If one wishes for privacy, one shouldn’t leave the house, nor ever go online.

It is completely within the best interests of a hotel to protect a guest’s privacy… we go to significant lengths to do so. To suggest otherwise is misinformed and ignorant.  It is the hallmark of our success, among other things.

This issue isn’t about a hotel’s sensitivity to privacy. The issue is our current preoccupation with the concept of privacy. No one has any idea what “privacy” means. We have relative freedom, and our lives are relatively unobstructed and we are able to do as we please. But leaving the house – you are subjected to the largest shift in communication history, coupled with modern technological achievements that have, together, completely negated the concept of privacy. It doesn’t exist anymore. In fact… younger generations shed it as a by-product of the lifestyle they seek… a reminder that, shortly, it simply isn’t going to be an issue for people that will be controlling the world soon. How can we really expect any privacy, anyway?

It’s a fun conversation about a word few people really understand…. but whether or not we need to be sensitive (hotels, in fact, are sensitive) is moot. The point is that privacy is ending, and to some extent we are willfully giving it up as a biproduct of being able to access these amazing tools of the internet age.

Think about apps…. how much did you think about all the permissions you granted those people to access your app for free? Sorry to say, that app isn’t free:  you are releasing your privacy as payment. It’s happening at an increasing rate, and it’s soon going to be an arcane conversation for future pondering. It really makes me laugh that these people are on Facebook, posting constant information, and worried about privacy. They worry some professional acquaintance will see something off color, when they have completely given their entire lives worth of information to facebook…. talk about a crisis of perception.

Hello Nero, your fiddle is lovely. I think it’s a lyre, but history is vague. Also, Rome is burning.

Facebook isn’t free. Privacy doesn’t exist there… there’s equity in your information. Why else would it be valued at 50B? So we give up privacy constantly. In exchange for ESP like connection to friends and supercomputer like access to facts and answers…. I give up much, happily.

When the concept of privacy was far more quaint.

But if I can go to a website and spend $30 and know someone’s address, info, etc… I just can’t imagine anyone really taking privacy seriously. Mcnealy was right in 1999. It’s the nature of our culture cannibalizing itself. It’s not a hotel that people have to worry about.

It’s not big brother. It’s us. We are what we fear. Big Brother is every single one of us with a camera and being in the right place at the right time. What reasonable expectation of privacy would one have when everyone is connected to a camera that immediately uploads online? Our police cameras can’t compete with the aggregate real world social net that is taking down people, and corporations, and governments and nations.

Hotels, arguably, are among the most sensitive organizations in the world when it comes to respecting all levels of it’s guest’s / patron’s privacy. It’s not our responsibility, however, to be blamed for the growing pains involved with the greatest shift in human communication’s history.  Unfortunately, until we resolve these issues…. everyone will grimly fantasize about being important enough to be stalked. It’s not that I am that cynical, it’s just that I know we may not be *that* interesting.

It's not big brother, it's us - the sea of anonymous watchers.

Until we realize this, we impede the advancement of a more ethical, and humane, human population.  I am sorry your petty, arrogant privacies feel threatened.  I already mentioned, unfortunately, that in the grand scheme of things… none of us really matter. In light of that, let’s celebrate our connections and stop babbling about meaningless issues of ego.  Let’s advance….  see you there.  Until then, you are stuck arguing about lost concepts from vestiges past.  Evolve.

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.

Here we go!

A professional acquaintance proudly showed me the TIG blog post on Hotel Marketing today.  Honestly, for a hotelier, being posted on Hotel Marketing.com is pretty much as famous as it gets.  Maybe that says a lot about our industry, but it’s like TMZ catching you being an idiot at a club.  I am not kidding.  You celebrate!

The full article, found here, is about Google Places Instant Search… and their domination and growth within the Travel Search market.  Well it just got me thinking how much is really going on… and what sort of trip we are going to go on to get us from “here” – archaic UI on horrid OTA sites – to “there” – the future of a semantically aware, capable, thoughtful web.

Something I don’t stress below is that I am talking mobile throughout the entire article, because at this point mobile is desktop search, and desktop search should basically be mobile & at the very least local (even with the grasping of an IP’s GPS to know where you are). The upshot being that they are one in the same.  If you aren’t mobile, you are going to fail, because we basically want to get to the point that both work equally, as efficiently, and interchangeably (there are already apps that let you “slide” your desktop’s browser tabs into your mobile phone for when you are on the go).  Hyperlocality is the future.. and if you don’t know where your user is coming from, and where they are – you are losing out on vital information that means lost revenues across the board.

In regards to TIG blog article about Places… they certainly have come a long way in a short time.  It used to be Local Business Center, “Google Local” to the consumer.  Then they changed it to “Places” to compete with mobile marketing like Yelp and Foursquare – and Facebook.  As Facebook partners with Tripadvisor, I think you are going to see google move into it’s own generated content – reviews, etc.  The Yelp deal with Google failed, while Facebook users are generating content from the for Tripadvisor reviews.  That means Google has very little native content while Expedia waits in the wings to partner with Facebook.

But Google just bought ITA for their travel plans, and they have all these small apps like Google City Tours and their labs in the “Maps” and Google Earth….  there is so much independent development throughout Google that deals with Travel, the vertical they establish will immediately make them the industry leader.

The OTA’s are dinosaurs at this point… they’re going to get blown away in the next couple years.  I see Facebook positioning, but don’t get their plan. Even with a smart plan, and the likes of Expedia / Tripadvisor, I don’t think people use Facebook with the thought of commerce or being a consumer… so I am not sure where that’s going.  They have some big hurdles.

But Google Places + Maps + ITA + their travel sector with their grasp of mobile and domination of search…. something amazing is going to come out of that.  Google is launching a “stratified” social network that will be less insular and more open than Facebook, crossing websites evenly instead of being a closed system…. that comes sometime next year.  It is true they could keep aggregating content, which falls in line with their plan to store the world’s data – but I imagine they get more serious about their own content because of it’s value.

The changes happening online right now are fascinating – if you have any thoughts or opinion I want to hear it.  It’s time to be a Futurist – be Nostradamus.  Anything can happen at this point… we’re simply pontificating on eventualities.  It won’t be until the end of our trip we can see the destination. =)

Another trend that seems obvious is that most successful social media programs are not operated by these fabled “gurus”, but by industry veterans who have worked incredibly hard and somewhat tirelessly garnering the knowledge and connections that they now have at their disposal.  Gregg is in this category as well – orchestrating countless bloggers and travel industry experts / agents from all over the world, all from an office in Canada.

FLIGHT CENTRE

First, before we jump into the interview, let’s give a background to those unfamiliar with Flight Centre.  Andre Sammartino said it most concise:

“Flight Centre revolutionised the retailing of international air-travel in Australia by shifting to a model where profitability was driven by volume rather than margins. Initially they built a price advantage by bypassing ticketing wholesalers, seeking out less well-known airlines, and also by arbitraging price differentials across markets.”

A complex and somewhat topsy turvy history, Flight Centre has had multiple periods of growth and contraction since its 1981 inception.  It is now focusing on globalization of the brand, something you can safely suggest they will be successful with – they are already the #1 travel agency in Australia, as well as the largest Australian brand on Twitter.  All is not simple in travel, the online world, and brand evaluation, however – and disintermediation is effecting Flight Centre’s entire model of business.  There has even been a tumbling stock price since it’s 2002 peak; but rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated – they have scored quite well in recent months, however, showing profits that have been (forgive my pun) soaring.

MR. TILSTON

Some of these efforts and successes can be attributed to Gregg Tilston, who has a targeted, thoughtful plan to help with the further globalization of Flight Centre.  Gregg is the implementation & standardization gent for the overall social strategy for Flight Centre, and then loosely organizes and controls real world travel agents and gives them the ability to market themselves on different internet channels.

“We direct front line staff with the education that ‘once its online, it’s there forever’ – but we really want them to have the tools to promote themselves. These agents have their own business, and speak on behalf of their personal brand and physical storefront, but don’t speak on behalf of the corporation.”

It’s a very interesting model – Flight Centre can source viable content at their leisure, while still having endless entities providing meaningful content that can be used whenever they want, as well as allowing linking opportunities, and more.  It ends up being very powerful, because they are a content publisher, on some levels.

“We have multiple forms of distribution – Corporate, Brick and Mortar storefronts, as well as home based associates that work from within their communities, in their areas of travel expertise.  This has been the model in Canada, and now we are really opening it up worldwide.  What’s most exciting to me is that we are in that “cloud”, and that it is decentralized.  Taking from recent events, if a volcano blows up, the show still goes on.  Even in a worst case scenario, we will still exist in the real world, and because we are decentralized, we will also exist online.  At Flight Centre, we do not have one server room.”

By mandating that the worldwide network of travel consultants affiliated with Flight Centre use their personal voices to blog, engage, and expound the virtues of the company, it’s people, and simplicity of booking – they garner endless content, attention, and availability to get the upper hand in this rapidly altering field.  By being everywhere at once (be it Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and the peripheral “voices” worldwide), they create an accessibility heretofore unknown in the travel world, and garner an almost “hyperlocality” when it comes to being able to find experts for any region or vacation destination.  Going global means rooting yourself locally, a powerful lesson to carry with you into the future of your company.

Gregg started his professional career in Sales & Marketing IT solutions, but overtime felt detached from the field.  After reading about crowdsourcing, he stepped outside of his comfort zone to engage himself in something very fresh, cutting edge, and exciting – and took a job with a start up, where he learned about online content and messaging.

“I was tried in the fire”, admits Gregg.  ”But it ultimately prepared me to deal with the fluid and changing world of social media.”

“I really owe a lot to Sean – we all do.  He is an amazing man,” meaning Sean Sutherland, Global E-Commerce Leader for Flight Centre [Twitter].  I had a conversation with him about Flight Centre; about the way they were moving the company forward, and about these very specific challenges that a brick and mortar company faced when trying to become this ubiquitous social company.  Every one from Flight Centre had worked in the front lines of travel, so it is a smart, experienced group of professionals.”

Gregg was brought on in March of 2009, where he rapidly developed [read that: sank or swim] and implemented an intriguing, efficient model for their social media program.

“We use a ‘hub-and-spoke’ strategy.  There are the hubs, like the Flightcentre.ca website, or our blog.  The spokes are about all the content hosting sites all around the world.  It is incredibly helpful with linking, and getting more eyeballs on Flight Centre – without any cost for server space.  My mandate, because we were originally a brick and mortar business model, is to show the value and presence of the front line staff.  It’s obvious that we need to demonstrate precisely *why* someone should use a brick and mortar business –  we are a group of front line travel agents that really exist, and we are building a base that doesn’t always understand that benefit.”

By utilizing Flight Centre’s legions of travel agents throughout the world, the sheer volume of generated content greatly helps to bolster their online presence.  Some businesses are still incredibly concerned about allowing employees to represent the brand in an online space, while Flight Centre mandates that all agents must blog about their vacations.   By utilizing the powerful techniques of blogging, or social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and video services like Youtube, Flight Centre anchors itself firmly into an online space, while still representing what makes the brick and mortar brand so powerful – it’s travel specialists.

“When this new user base comes to us from a blog, youtube videos, etc., they start to realize that this real world business has real people that really care and are really *available*.   Our competitors are OTA’s, but we’re real and human.  There is also Carlson’s and Amex, but they don’t “get it”.  I am surprised they haven’t put more of an effort in this. It’s really surprising.  But our people work hard to “get found” on Google, and we have really smart ways of engaging our audience. The blog is split into many parts, which shows relevance, both online and how we exist locally offline, which garners solid SEO and content that generates interest and accessibility to Flight Centre. We have been proving the validity of this model all over Canada.  Now as the global social media manager we take stalk of other channels and see how to leverage these regions and begin our implementation.”

This model is very exciting, because it has been built, tested, and proven.  As they expand globally, Flight Centre will have a relatively simple implementation, especially in that it’s flexible enough to enter the complexity of working with multiple languages and cultures.

“We can lay a framework down, but there are so many nuances and idiosyncrasies it becomes important to engage the micro level because you have cultural and linguistic differences that can create a big disconnect when people are implementing top level strategy without understanding these issues.  Sometimes the “z” is “zed”, just to point out an obvious example.  You need to make sure to connect with your potential clients in a way that’s familiar to them, that’s obvious.  It also is an issue for SEO, when you have words that are used or understood differently.”

One key to Gregg’s success has been the dynamic between him and the executive team above him.  We see this in social media, quite often.  Part of social media is opening yourself up, becoming transparent, and letting go of control.  It’s not for everyone.  Conversely, the more you try to manage social media like it’s traditional marketing, the less genuine and earnest the brand appears.  Social Media is not a print ad.  The most successful businesses have been ones that allow a relative amount of freedom and fluidity in managing the “social hemisphere”, so to speak.

“The day to day at Flight Centre is a lot about improvisation, as well as being trusted. Without Sean, this couldn’t work. He trusted me enough to give up control – and it’s important to know I haven’t taken some controlled voice or impersonal brand persona.  In fact, I am cheeky and really having fun with it, while just being myself.   It seems to work very well. It’s fairly simple; don’t overpost, annoy, or frustrate people.  Simply engage them and act like a professional.”

THE BEST TRAVEL JOB EVER

In developing this job and contest for their social media channels, Gregg found endless lessons to pass on to other businesses, and he is currently working on wrangling a case study out of their findings.  For those that don’t know, The 
Best Travel Job Ever was a contest to engage social networkers into competing for a job as a travel blogger.  Some of the content that came out of it was AMAZING, as you will see with their contest homepage.

“We had a number of surprises.  The original concept for the contest was “The Faces of Flight Centre”, and simply trying to find people to create Flight Centre branded content with their blogs, etc.  I was in web development when I started – again this was all Sean; it wasn’t marketing, it wasn’t sales – it was just an idea.  It came together really quick – from brainstorming in December to our launch on the first of March this year.  We were looking at different contesting platforms – and nothing had what we needed, so we built what we needed on our own.  It was actually quite funny, because the contesting platform CEO’s would try to sell their product, and instead of being upset that we didn’t buy from them, they were curious and engaged because of what we did.  They were like, ‘oh wow that’s a great idea, and so’s that’, etc.  It was fun to watch happen.  Right after our launch, we were credited with doing a great job, and got a lot of positive feedback.  But we went up “against” a Doritos contest that was launched at about the same time.  Their contest was to upload a video to youtube in which they “named a chip” — and it was the bane of my existence.  Doritos knocked it out of the park, and I was left —  waiting  – asking ‘when are my people going to upload?’. I was incredibly nervous. But all the people I work with were saying, ’Doritos is looking for people to submit a video to name a chip, we are looking for travel bloggers, people that wanted to travel and video blog their adventures’. It was different.”

Of course, this powerful new tool of social, and engaging your branded audience, isn’t apart from, or polar to, traditional marketing tactics.  In fact, it’s vital to create parity between the two.  They might be two entirely different things, but as we have seen time and time again, they buttress one another, and enhance each respective goal.  Not only that, even social media can be “made” by traditional media – there are many ways to get something to go viral.  In this case, a print ad led to a TV spot:

“In the end, it was the traditional 6 pm and 11pm news.  We got the spot from the news guys at global because, on what I assume was a slow news day, they saw a print ad with a “blurb” about the Best Job in the World.  They contacted Henry’s Camera, who suggested they contact me at Flight Centre.  That became the tipping point, and catalyst, to jump start our campaign. We got a TV spot that gave us endless press that we didn’t expect, then we spread the news content and shared it with everyone. Our goal was 100 contestants, and we thought we would get around 35 who would opt-in.  Well, we had 110 contestants, there were 178,000 google searches, and we ended up with a page rank of four out of ten on a net new zero site.  Contestant’s friends and networks were promoting their friends content that was also *us*. We obviously did our best to offer viral components – when people saw uploaded travel videos, the egotistic element of ‘I can do that so much better‘ came into play.”

But again, it comes down to the community pushing the content, and that viral component of a meme – the idea that a good idea simply spreads organically because it is a good idea – took off.  It’s often that social media “gurus” take credit for what is simply the network effect – but there’s a certain aspect of the momentum completely out of your control. It’s vital to understand it’s not your plan, your interactions, or your implementation that is responsible for your success…. it’s the network.

“I give the community, the community contestants, the followers, and the friends all of the credit — they did it. It wasn’t [Flight Centre] at all.  Our demographic – we knew it was going to be 18-25 year olds – that was our target.  When we went to look at the database, 50 % of opt-ins in the database were 30 year old and plus, meaning that we actually got the aunts and uncles and families – the actual, “viable” consumers – per the more “traditional market thinking”.  For us, all these groups are vital!  Our initial thought was that we would brand these 18-25 year old contestants for life –  and then we ended up with this HUGE database of REALLY important consumers.  The overall contest has some fantastic hard numbers – we have the ROI for the skeptics and it was of obvious benefit.  But it was more about the ‘magic’ for lack of a better word. The ‘je ne sais quoi’ – about why these new communication tools are so powerful. The tools aren’t always perfect, but it’s huge.”

One of the exciting aspects in experimenting with social media’s online channels is that sheer immensity and overwhelming, awesome humbling that happens as it takes off.  For Flight Centre, everyone in the organization felt it – you realize you are part of something much, much bigger than your brand, or your idea.  The other curious bi-product of social media campaigns, and all of social media, is that people utilize it in ways that are never to be expected, and connections happen in the least probable of ways.  It’s the nature, and strength, of weak ties.

“We actually got three new hires for Flight Centre – because of the engagement these people identified with us more than the contest, and actually connected with us, our culture, and our ideas.  They got excited to be part of our company, and they came to us.  ’Backchannel’ connections and conversations among contestants and the public were happening, and ‘connecting’ happened, not because of their entries or the contest, but because everyone was excited about the common interest of travel.  Even though she didn’t make our final selections, one of the entrants, Alicia Taggio, became a brand advocate and hosted a tweet up in Ontario, and we skyped our official selection of the winners.  The community was way, way bigger than we ever could have hoped, and they all had endless depth.  It was humbling, and it denoted that we were doing things right. It’s really moving, and very exciting to think about. It’s the cheapest tool we never realized we had.”

CHALLENGES IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Even now, Gregg is dealing with the complexity of the power of social media.  In a recent PR opportunity / experience, social media demonstrated it’s dark side (also proving most internet users are panicky and reactive without needing any real information).  In this case, complaints about the treatment of elephants in Thailand created collateral damage to Flight Centre when it was mistakingly attributed that they had something to do with the treatment of the elephants (marketing collateral depicted some people riding Elephants on vacation, which is apparently a “no no” in that elephants are not treated very well by those business owners). You can read more about that situation here: Flight Centre fends off social media attacks.  It was exceptionally well handled, to the extent that the petition that was started became moot within a couple days of Flight Centre’s response to the concerns, even getting the Executive GM to add a response on their Facebook Page. It gave Gregg an opportunity to show how Flight Centre is listening, and was a fantastic moment of brand management and perception.  They were able to recover from that problem with grace, accountability (even if it’s not supposed to be yours to take), and interactivity.  By being engaged, it changes your corporate culture, but it also, humbly, carries you into the future of business.  A little less heavy is this quaint example from our interview,

“Recently, a popular “mommy blogger” in Australia, commented on our logo “Captain”, and his hat.  She said something like, ‘I don’t know if he really is the captain, but I think he’s drunk, and the passengers are screwed’.  The cap on his head was at some ‘jaunty’ angle, and it was a harmless comment that did negatively associate our brand with drunkenness and lack of safety.  Harmless, but serious. So we photoshopped a jaunty cap on top of her avatar on Twitter, and sent the picture to her, saying ‘We promise we’re not drunk, but the hat is fun at that angle.. see?’.  She thought it was adorable, made it her profile picture, and did a whole blog post on the engagement we had.  Her blog is “Not drowning, Mothering“, so through our legitimate, interested, earnest – and a bit cheeky – engagement, she’s a life long fan.  One of my favorite things, earlier in my career, was cold calling, because you take this potentially annoying, negative relationship or expectation, and change it – and own it – and control it.  That Mommy Blogger is an honest evangelist, and it’s created new relationships; what started as a somewhat harmless, humorous knock on the brand is now a friendly, positive relationship.  Again, this is Sean giving up control, and giving up control is not easy. One thing I love about it  - first in Canada, now in this global role – there are endless opportunities to take something and really run with it. It’s Sean, but it’s also baked into the culture of Flight Centre.”

GOING GLOBAL

“We spent last year building and testing this model, and now it’s mature enough that we are evangelizing about what we are doing, and how it can work for other people.  We are starting to put case studies together, with Hootsuite, and I am getting ready for my world tour! [laughs]  We are getting ready to deploy what we built in Canada and implement with every region across the world, looking to get the support from, and connect with, the staff – it obviously benefits them as well. Scaling is vital, and it will be interesting to see this template layered into place after having practiced it and standardized it from Canada.  The regions need someone in place that supports it, and I am getting a great response so far.  The challenge of building a global strategy is about the speed of the internet, to some extent; we can be incredibly nimble as soon as something begins to trend, but a big part of “nimble” is having this global team in place – which means we can be online 24 hours, you have to be online 24 hours.  Now we have Australia that gets 8 hours, U.S. 8 hours, Canada, etc, so we can cover the entire net, engage people, and never lose a beat without losing our sanity.  Brand Nirvana is 24 hours by 7 days around the clock monitoring so that we can pick up on these trends and manage them the best we can.  Right now, we are monitoring twitter out of Canada, and that gives us a lag time; it’s sort of funny being the Top Australian brand on twitter – in Canada – and 12 hours out.  Next on our plate is our “2nd honeymoon” contest; we are reaching out to an older demographic this time.  It’s been a challenge to reverse engineer the best travel job. Part of it came together in the last few months, end of May. I was looking at “Zoomer” mag on my parents table, a baby-boomer magazine.  The idea is engaging, and creates a small partnership between families – kids and extended family vie for their own family – it’s a natural network to tap into.  The challenge is still, ‘How am I going to help these ‘zoomers’ go out and crowdsource the 18-30 olds’, but it may happen naturally.  The biggest challenge is that I have had to build a lot of the strategy on a shoestring budget. I haven’t done *one ad*, at all.”

Gregg Tilston will be a speaker at the the Eye For Travel North American Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, the 13^th& 14^th of October (next month), 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 contactrosie@eyefortravel.com for more information.

In ending these interviews, I am always intrigued why people take the time to connect, network, and share the information that ends up at these conferences.  As busy as Gregg is, I am sure there are other ways he could efficiently use his time…. so I asked him about the draw of Eye for Travel’s conference:

“What I like about Eye for Travel? It’s a great mix. I have nothing but love for these other conferences, but a lot are consultants simply pitching their wares. But this event is a mix of panelists that are really implementing and DOING IT and working in it. It’s very legitimate, and it’s a lot of do-ers.”

Well said – See you there!