Let’s ask some questions.

We are guinea pigs, at the first 1% of these powerful new technologies that have rapidly, exponentially, grabbed hold of our lives in the last 5 or 6 decades. In the last 10 years, with the last 5 being the real growth, connective communication technologies have completely obliterated old systems, such that we have few ground rules to go along with our lack of understanding of how these things effect / affect our world, communities, families, and our health.  To consider this revolution with some historic perspective, consider how the printing press altered culture & society, then imagine what the long term impact of social tech, considering it is a two way platform, and humbles the printing press as a vestige of our enlightenment.

As technological guinea pigs, we may ask what the impact is.  Where is this going?  Let’s cast aside our preferences or predilections…. some love to be connected, some love to hate being connected, some can’t admit they are addicted.  But instead of having a personal or emotional conversation about how “connected” you feel to a “smartobject”, let’s consider the science behind how those objects are impacting you. This stuff is vital to think about – it’s just the beginning of awareness about these oft overlooked impacts of modern living.  To all those who tire of the madness and pace of this modern world… it will subside.

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 our human condition marches on.

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THE DATA & STUDIES

Email depresses me.  There *is* a lonely, hollow joy as I whittle it down – for me, there is a banal exhalation in deleting spam emails while using the W.C. first thing in the AM – metaphoric and literal expelling of crap.  To feel joy over something so mundane and non-compelling feels empty. My giddiness is quickly vaporized with the realization that I get satisfaction from deleting emails… not due to deleting them, as much as not actually having to reply to them.  Replying to emails makes me depressed…. and of course, it’s part of life, and I am guilty as hell for creating email. Please do not ask my friends. I would call it hypocrisy if it wasn’t simply technological immaturity.

Well…

1) Email “Vacations” reduce stress, increase productivity, and increase concentration.  People who don’t look at email = healthier and doing better. Interesting.

Our dopamine receptors evolved over millions of years to look out for any foreign movements or things out of place… constantly searching the horizon for new information that might imperil our clan.  Well… that’s to protect ourselves from certain death during the caveman days… it certainly helped us survive.  But that evolutionary trait wreaks havoc on us when we can’t remain task oriented for long enough to ignore the “ding” or new email count number.  Here is the actual UC Davis announcement of the study.

“Heart rate monitors were attached to computer users in a suburban office setting, while software sensors detected how often they switched windows. People who read email changed screens twice as often and were in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from email for five days experienced more natural, variable heart rates.”

“We found that when you remove email from workers’ lives, they multitask less and experience less stress,” said UCI informatics professor Gloria Mark.

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 dopamine squirt — 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) Studying attention & memory as it is effected by the technology & pace of modern culture. The findings suugest 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.’”

“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?” Mr. Kramer says he wants to look at whether the benefits to the brain — the clearer thoughts, for example — come from the experience of being in nature, the exertion of hiking and rafting, or a combination.”

“Mr. Atchley says he can see new ways to understand why teenagers decide to text even in dangerous situations, like driving. Perhaps the addictiveness of digital stimulation leads to poor decision-making. Mr. Yantis says a late-night conversation beneath stars and circling bats gave him new ways to think about his research into how and why people are distracted by irrelevant streams of information.”

“As they near the airport, Mr. Kramer also mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’ ”

“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”

4)  “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?

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

“‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)”

“Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness. (Academics are already in broad agreement that there is a strong correlation between the quality of people’s relationships and their happiness; hence, anything that promotes stronger social bonds has a good chance of making us feel all warm and fuzzy.)”

5)  Not a study, but a narrative reaction to the impact of these technologies on the fragmentation within this pace of life (via The Economist): 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.”

The final thought, something to dwell on, turn off the computer, and reconnect with:

6) THE JOY OF QUIET from the New York Times.

“In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

Internet rescue camps in South Korea and China try to save kids addicted to the screen.”

“When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content — and speedier means could make up for unimproved ends — Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister.”

“We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.”

“Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.”

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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 tech bubbles – balance and moderation.  We ignore constantly because it is quite un-American a concept  But the idea of scaling back touches on subtle commentary from the The Tao Te Ching (that link leads to the *ENTIRE* Stephen Mitchell Tao translation) about walking a 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.

I already do this during the day, knowing an emergency someone will call and I am at my desk.  It has absolutely made me more productive.  I don’t take days away, buthalf days for sure.  It’s made me feel better too, because I see more getting done, rather than being inturrupted constantly.

This will settle itself in time.  We are at a precariously anti-science moment in American politics, but it will be impossible to ignore these findings as they come along.  I believe they are akin to the subtle awareness that dawned on our culture when we understood smoking was dangerous and unhealthy.  In a few years, I believe social companies will face the same level of accountability and regulations that tobacco or alcohol groups face today. Some may scoff at that, but then again, when you are deeply addicted to something, your brain doesn’t operate properly and makes subtle justifications to further enable your addiction. Good luck with that.

I am not going to choose to not be reachable for two weeks. I will approve comments when I return. Although, there won’t be any, because the attention span we have for personal fulfillment is almost nil.  Good luck indeed.

Of course, the hypocrisy of using tech to badmouth doesn’t escape.  It’s an epoch of duality, one might say.  Let’s add a little more to the mix…

I give you Louis CK’s “Everything is amazing and no one is happy”

I wonder if they did this with the automobile for the first 20 years? Year of the auto year of the auto…. “year over year, there has been a 300% growth in auto usage”.

It frustrates me that these numbers don’t take into account the correlation of adoption of new technology, rather than what they seem to be suggesting – that last minute bookings have exploded. That increase in mobile bookings isn’t because the market is powerful, it’s just a brand new revenue stream that didn’t previously exist. These people were standing at pay phones looking through the yellow pages a few years ago. click

That being said, I am still curious as to the psychology of a “mobile booker”. I know omniture is looking to break out tablets from their analytics, because the booking pace is more like a traditional laptop…. but people who book over their mobile / pda / smartphone are typically, if I am not mistaken, last minute bookers? There’s a joke through the industry about whether you really want to deal with the kind of guest who books a room at the last second.

Sounds like drama.

Joking aside, I can’t wait for data about the type of person that books last minute, and in the long run, how to tell whether that guest is actually worthwhile. The psychology of last minute booking is very interesting to me. If *ANY* of you have any data on who these people are, and why they choose what they choose, I would love to read some more. I know there’s growth, but who are these people that haven’t booked their hotel room? Seriously.

So what is their motivation? I couldn’t care less that people are adopting new technologies to facilitate bookings – what I want to know is what those technologies can tell us about the people that are booking. For example, Omniture makes it plainly clear that Apple users are consumers, while Android users do not purchase as readily… it is like 10 to 1. Do you think a last minute mobile booker will book because of a easily accessible golf package (or any package). I just don’t know if I trust that someone booking via a mobile device is compelled by a “special”, or it is their panicked exigence of needing a room immediately?

In the future, of course, this will all be resolved because before the guest even knows they need a room. We will know enough about a customer through their personal history, location, their mobile device’s data, and active sentiment analysis which will lead to an overall pulse of consumer “predisposition”. We will eventually know precisely how to target them before they are even looking up the hotel.

Now *that* is guest service… reducing stress and confusion by pleasantly reducing options. Isn’t that *so* like the future?

Booking a room night will involve intuitive guest management that actually includes freedom from choice, to reduce stressful confusion, as an amenity?

So… how are you going to win these “best-of” lists?  It will happen when you understand the future of social media in hotels – and when you understand that PR & Marketing need synch with all operations, including departments they may not always interact with.  In this post, we will consider how the future of PR & Marketing will (and should) fit into the world of Human Resources.

 

As an employee, if you don't get why you should help market your hotel, then you just might be the guy in this picture.

To start – let’s chat about the Academy Awards. An apt analogy (This is where you begin to “sip off the firehose”, as Robert Cole perfectly put it) -

The Academy Awards have something called “rank choice voting”.  What that means is that it isn’t just “whoever has the most votes”.  It’s a system where you can vote for your favorites, but you can also vote down movies you hate.  Prior to two years ago, it was normal voting.  A very good example of why normal voting doesn’t work is the year that The English Patient beat out Fargo, in 1996.  History has judged Fargo to be one of the most brilliant cinematic narratives of all time, perfectly accomplished, while the English Patient is a grand, sweeping, love story that is somewhat derivative, not that well written, and a movie that was produced by “demographic targeting” – trying to appeal to specific audiences by using specific conventions to maximize profit.  I mean no offense to anyone that enjoyed the latter film, but the reason it won that year was for a couple reasons:

1) Many members of the academy didn’t go to college, and many didn’t finish high school.  The Academy’s insecurity regarding their collective intelligence is such that they will always cowtow to the film that appears “grand”, and will shy away from films that appear “stupid”.  Fargo’s “verite” accent of the Dakota dialect/accent made it seem less intelligent than it was, so the academy voted for the romantic sob story.  That is a debatable conlcusion, of course, but it wasn’t even the real reason it lost…

Aaand this is where things get interesting…….

2) The real reason English Patient won was because there was no rank choice voting.  When you tally total votes from Academy Members, you are tallying the votes from anyone and everyone that works in the movie industry. More often than not, a huge, sweeping film, shot in multiple locations requires a GIGANTIC staff, and that crew has personal self interest at heart.  Larger budget films have a larger cast & crew, and they all pine for career advancement & greater success.

Buddy Ackerman knows almost anyone in film will do *ANYTHING* to get ahead.

The best way to advance one’s career in Hollywood is to win an Academy Award.

IE: The films that have the largest crew used to win because that entire crew would vote for their film, hoping it would help them advance.  In fact, very often the worst film in the lineup *did* win, because even against their better judgement as “artists”, they simply want their film to win.

This is also why 1998′s Titanic won, vs As Good as it Gets, The Full Monty, LA Confidential, & Good Will Hunting.  The latter of which were all phenomenal films, the former… not so much.  But Titanic won, simply because it’s crew was larger than any other crew.

In the last two years, rank choice voting changed the game, and it’s no longer a full tally of all votes.  You vote for your first choice, and then have a choice to vote for two others. This means you can deliberately leave out the film you find the worst, actively downgrading it.  It completely changes how the vote is tallied.  For example, Hurt Locker and The Artist won the last two years…. where it would have undoubtedly been Avatar and (probably) War Horse.

Back to hotels:

All these “Best of the Bay”, “Local Annual Best” lists are *NOT* rank choice voting.  That’s why a less than stellar chain burrito place beats out the little authentic burrito place, or why a chain sandwich joint can beat out a local deli (in response, many papers have actually created a “no chain” nomination policy, or “independent” and “chain” categories). In lieu of this, it might be wise to consider yourself the large budget film with the huge crew, and engage staff via “HR PR”, and help employees understand how hotel awards will help their respective careers.

Now let’s talk about a hotel’s user base on social media….

It is said that, of the 100% of people socially online, 90% consume content and information without creating content, while 10% are active and participate in social media.  The other issue is “impressions”, and how few of your fans are online at any given time.  Even if you have 5000 fans/followers, there could be only a couple hundred “impressions” of people logged in at the right time to see your content.  Even if 10% of a couple hundred fans/followers see your post, and jump off to another page to “help out” and vote – further login requests, or need to create an account for voting, will further erode participation.

In all likelihood, this hotel might not have a chance.

I think social media is going to turn into a new telephone.  You don’t call your guests every 15 minutes and talk about yourself, but you do answer the phone and answer questions or help with requests.  Twitter is basically texting in lieu of a direct phone call, so that normal people can connect with a hotel or brand in a quick way, *at the guest’s leisure*.  Often, people will use twitter to speak to a hotel….. asking if you have rooms for a specific date, or if we are near a certain winery, etc….

Guests text, because it is not only at their leisure, but at their convenience as well.  That convenience is for them, and certainly not for *US*, because it means we have to be hyperaware and available nearly constantly.  This is also why I think Twitter will end up as part of the guest services dashboard, so employees will always be staffing our social accounts, 24 hours a day).

So… cial

So social media is about *THEM* (guests) accessing *OUR* hotel brand, and not the other way around.  We can be delightful, and playful… and post topical, and relevant stuff.  But for the most part, it’s for a little brand building, and mostly about being available. Think of it as a concierge desk.

That means, however, out of a fan base of nearly 5000, you may get a smattering of people or so to vote for a “best of” list.  What’s more, in theory, asking people to do you a favor could damage the brand and our connection to our clients more than it could help – think of it as overusing your email blast list.

SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

Employees of the hotel.  Employees are the answer!

Of course, we don't expect employees to drop everything. *But* the future is this gent "liking" a post during down time at the belldesk.

I have said this for some time, but I think PR / Marketing needs to cross into HR, and possibly create a streamlined communication style for disseminating all this information about brand, the opportunities, etc.  In fact, I think the next job descriptions should include an agreement that a) employees will not aggressively slander the brand online (complaining about working a back to back on your facebook page is innocuous and fine, but nothing egregious), and b) that employees will actively participate in online social initiatives, helping to bolster the brand and create or add to relevance, both for social impact and search engine optimization.  Now that the semantic web has started (aka a web that isn’t just automatic algorithmic curation, but socially engineered to use human powered clicks to create more meaningful relevance), the power of a single, individual click or post will pale in comparison to the collective curation of 100′s of people.

So, in this sense, it becomes a responsibility of the employee to create their own success, like those self-interested crew members from big budget films, and help the brand/hotel by voting for it whenever and wherever possible.  This will not only help the hotel, but if we frame it right to the employees, they will understand how it will build equity in their careers — coming from a hotel that won the proverbial “best picture” category will only add to their future salaries and opportunities.  Asking our guest fan base on social networks to do work for us isn’t necessarily negative, although it has never yielded powerful results (unless it’s a *huge* brand, but the same principles are at work: very few are energized, but with a bigger base they will end up with more interaction).

But again, social media is about EVERYONE ELSE…. and not necessarily about the hotel.  It’s not what guests can do for us, but what we can do for our guests.  That, of course, is the model of our business, and it’s as it should be.

THE FUTURE?

So, the future will be a network of extremely connected employees who react to the monthly update of social iniatives, posts, videos, etc, so they can take the few minutes out of their day, and as part of their job, click the “like”, the “plus one”, “thumbs up” buttons, and vote for their annual favorites in the local publications.

Until ranked choice voting happens for these “best of” lists (which it won’t, because the papers know this is basically a hollow marketing effort – and creating further barriers to access will make the voting even less relevant), we are happy to be the big budget film with the largest crew.  Of the overall circulation for these “best of” lists, the amount that participate is paltry, and often the winners, even in major markets, have relatively few votes, and win by less than two or three.

I think we know who the winner is! If you got to this point in the article, it's you... and your hotel.

That’s my two cents.  I think we look inward at our staff base to propel us forward, and stop relying on the hopes that we can energize guests to click buttons for us.  Let’s think a little deeper about whether your guests are the type to vote, or if it is your brand’s position to beg at your guests.  Simply put, it might be low class to pander.  I am not saying to completely give up on guests for this marketing, but it might behoove us to shift our attention to something we can actually control and manage – the stock of employees that make your hotel go.  Help them understand that their job changes lives, and has great impact…. and if they help to make the hotel successful in every possible way, their future career will reflect those successes with better opportunities.

How do you become accessible to emerging tourist markets? —->Brazil, China, and India?  That’s just the powerhouse economies, and we shouldn’t forget Mexico & South America or other parts of Asia, and Russia.  I have been watching China fairly close, and although money is there, it sounds like they are price sensitive and no frills. In exploring Emerging Markets, I have found some wonderful insight from the Economist and NPR.  I am including those links and info at the bottom. So the question is: How do Hotels, and the rest of Travel, connect with these massive economies and new travel markets?  I assume you could add Bebo, et al to your social initiative, but many places have censors and blocks, or others are hard to penetrate online or off.  Have fun thinking! GREAT info after the jump

The Below is all distilled (copied) from the Economist articles…. it’s not my words again until the last couple sentences, which should be pretty clear. But I just honed in on what I felt was really relevant, but I encourage EVERYBODY to read the articles (and get the Economist, it’s indispensable).

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Will the Year of the Dragon bring brand new tourists to your doorstep?

http://www.economist.com/node/21530139

Chinese people often spend as much as 8% of their annual discretionary income on a single trip, far more than people in other emerging markets, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). And the market is growing fast. BCG expects the number of Chinese who have ever rented a hotel room to triple in the next decade. Home Inns, a budget hotel chain which caters to the new army of travelling businessmen as well as to domestic tourists, has grown from one hotel in 2004 to nearly 1,000 today. It plans thousands more.

For now, most travellers use local bricks-and-mortar travel agents. Only 14% of China’s 500m internet users have visited a travel website, according to Douglas Quinby of PhoCusWright, a travel consultancy. This is partly because they lack credit cards, or enough money to go anywhere. But it is also because real-world agents woo customers by offering refunds for cancelled trips and generally going the extra mile. That said, the travel industry has gone digital in other countries—online booking is cheaper and allows easier price comparisons—so it will surely catch on.

http://www.economist.com/node/6928888

The country’s $232 billion travel market is mainly domestic and hugely under-developed. A few short decades ago, Chinese citizens could not go anywhere without permission. Now members of the new middle class are eager to explore the far corners of their great nation.

The World Tourism Organisation reckons annual visits abroad from China could rise to 100m within 15 years. And Wang Shan of CContact, a British tourism consultancy, says that 150m Chinese are already affluent enough to take holidays abroad.

http://www.economist.com/node/17722582

**Chinese tour operators are notorious for bargaining down travel and hotel costs. A 2008 study by the European Travel Commission, an industry group, estimates that Chinese tourists reserve more than a third of their holiday budgets for shopping. It is “very difficult”, the study laconically concludes, for established European tour operators to compete with rivals whose transport strategy may involve a “Chinese-speaking waiter driving a minibus”. Even Mr Zhou admits that Chinese travellers are “hard work”, not like the “disciplined” Japanese. (ED: DULY NOTED)**

“And Wang Shan of CContact, a British tourism consultancy, says that 150m Chinese are already affluent enough to take holidays abroad.” But chinese use traditional storefront travel agents… and traveling to the US isn’t easy yet.

And from our friends at NPR…. this one blew my mind. That market for wine is just getting uncorked. =)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=147007259

“Trying to solve the China puzzle is the most exciting part of my job right now.”

U.S. wine exports to China grew by 42 percent last year, and similar increases were noted in other Asian nations, according to figures released Thursday by the Wine Institute in San Francisco. It nearly doubled 2010 export numbers as more winemakers are seeking to crack a relatively untapped market.

The Chinese economy has doubled in the past seven years, and low-end estimates say there are 1.5 million millionaires. With a population of 1 billion people in China, Gallagher figures only 18 million of them can afford fine wines.

“That sub-segment grows every year,” Gallagher said. “The long-term opportunity is to get the rest of those billion people. We have our work cut out for us.”

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Hey, it’s me again!

Even wine is getting into the act. I think the Willamette Valley should add their hat into that ring.  Think about how this effects your industry and your business.  Think about trade and tourism with a country of 1 billion.  The Markets aren’t just emerging anymore, I am pretty sure they have emerged.  Now, let’s watch them grow, and see how this new world economy can finally find it’s balance with everyone participating in a reciprocal and even free market.  Now just to have the US find our balance…..  what’s a free market?  For fun, I will end with this Mort Saul bit – “capitalism was great. ask your parents about it”. =)

Here is my response, but I am more interested in what all of you have to say?
—

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. More after the jump…

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.

My commentary (after the “more” if you are seeing that… just click for the full post) 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.

More website dicussion after the [More] tag!

Facebook lost 5-6 Million members in the US in May 2011, mention of $100 Billion IPO comes same day.

Facebook Today

Facebook – what was a fun little site, the entire business world has turned into the Holy Grail. This is troubling, because it’s not the site that is amazing, but the new social comm technology that connects people.  I crunch some numbers here, and it’s obvious people aren’t interacting with brands on Facebook. Why are we losing sight of this? It’s just a platform, and membership does not attest to equity.  Equity is where the internet is happening, and the internet is not happening on Facebook.

Facebook might have a $100 Billion IPO, for Q1 2012.  Why would they let this ridiculous evaluation slip the same day it is announced that they also lost 6 Million people in May, via WebProNews.  Gizmodo says 5 Million. A Facebook insider says “nearly 6 million”.

It seems interesting, especially because one would hope that a whopping $100 billion would drown out the measly figure of 5-6 million members.  It’s notoriously difficult to cancel an account, so what’s going on?  Was the drop a culling of the notorious spam that poisons social media?  Is it businesses finally deleting their profile they built before the advent of pages? I know of a couple that have done so in the recent weeks. It’s a bigger, more frightening, trend than this.

Read More……

The Social Media World watches as Groupon readies an insane IPO

I know LinkedIn. LinkedIn was a friend of mine. You are no LinkedIn.

I want to have a quick aside, and remind you that we all know Groupon is insolvent.  In fact, it’s safe to suggest that Facebook is aware that the social media darling is in crisis, having the market panic about feasibility as they approach an IPO.  An important IPO – one that tests the waters in a much deeper way than LinkedIn, a relatively conservative and successful no brainer in this 2.0 world.  It is also fair to acknowledge that whatever consumers do not know about Groupon, as Wall Street eyes Groupon’s likely failure as a business, other businesses are beginning to have a deep awareness of its flaws, which I documented here (with endless citation and evidence), but Techcrunch excellently explains it here.  Businesses wariness to sign up, coupled with Groupon’s balance sheet, makes that look like another disaster, and this is only valued at $20 Billion, one-fifth of the murmured Facebook IPO.  Do you think Facebook is watching Groupon’s “road-to-IPO” closely?

Facebook is failing, but it depends on how you want to define that.  At User Interface? At listening to consumers? At facilitating connection, communication, discussion? Helping create a consumer environment for our businesses?  This is something that is going to be defined by every individual angle – social media, individual people, business… but it’s safe to say they are failing everyone.

The Filter Bubble Problem

Mark's savvy with the Press knows no bounds.

Facebook has made made it so you can hide everything you dislike about the site.  You can hide people or pages, you can hide causes, games, specific api’s that post, specific phones, and more. These are the filters that Eli Pariser speaks about – the filter bubbles driving us apart, creating a homogenic environment, and limiting true connection and democratic discourse – and the resulting ethical issues involved.  These filters are meant to be a response to Facebook users’ dissatisfaction of the interface and lack of proper privacy controls. Users tire of mindless advertising and spam; being inundated with extraneous applications or attempts at monetizing the user base are finally wearing thin.  These filters are simply a way for you to shut down the site little by little, bit by bit. By developing these tools, Facebook has expressively admitted that the whole network is spam. I spoke about these hidden streams, overposting, and attention curation as equity, and you know that I do not consider Facebook a network in the traditional sense of the word.  If I don’t know who has hidden my business, then I don’t know who my network is, and therefore it is essentially defunct.

Could you imagine the statistics on overall users or pages hidden?  Have you ever hidden anything on Facebook?  I think it is completely unstable as a network, and assume Facebook will at some point have to unhide everything to fix some of the problems of “community”. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to post about Facebook again, but it isn’t just about narcissism and the challenge of pages.

Monetization

Facebook doesn't seem to work with dollar signs

Facebook is constantly altering their UI & architecture, so as to generate constant cash flow. These attempts at creation of revenue wholly disregard the individual users’ privacy & bungles the process constantly.  Beyond Zuckerberg’s slip ups, and horrid PR, Facebook adds confusing, unstable layers to a flawed structure/network that is based off of variably meaningful geo-connections. Social connections should *obviously* include *immediate* social circles, but the strongest online connections are based off interest, and do not necessarily involve family or educational institution, the latter which connects similar classmates across broad social, economic, and political backgrounds. Until Facebook figures this out, their dominance is tenuous. You cannot create a solid network based off of loose interests. Topics/Subject matter drive content creation, and content creation drives social networks.

Facebook’s slapdash and immature attempts at monetizing a site with enormous architectural flaws have made it a broken network, and now they are bleeding users…. there are so many meaningful, topical driven sites, that people simply don’t need it anymore. With the rise of topical boards, Facebook is moot.  You can still check in on your grandkids, or your college ex-boyfriend’s family on Facebook, but most people seem to feel more comfortable generating content in like minded communities, which also includes Tumblr and Twitter.  Tumblr has stolen an entire generation of younger kids, Twitter has mid 30′s parents and professionals who don’t have the time for the vacuousness of Facebook, or the time to figure it out.  This is where Facebook’s content is being generated – elsewhere.  Everyone still has a Facebook account, but you may be interested to know where the internet is really happening.

Where The Internet Happens

No, not those kind of boards.

The internet happens in the open.  It happens in an unregulated environment that business has little interaction with.  Foodies have Chowhound or Eater to talk recipes, cuisine, and what’s hot.  Sports fans have their dream team forums or ESPN boards & an entire industry of social sites.  Movie fans engage in sites like IMDB, Netflix, and Rotten Tomatoes, all rabid posters writing shining reviews or debating camera angles.  Entertainment blogs have members on sites like TMZ or Gawker, where posters gab ad naseuom about the plastic world of their interest.  These people *might* share on Facebook, but often the people that you know in the real world aren’t interested in the same hobbies or activities.  Techies on Techcrunch or Engadget have devoted commenters espousing their applicable fanboydom.  Relevant social sites like Mashable or open forums like Yelp Talk cover a bevvy of topics and retain interest from users.  Traditional national and local newspapers cover the entire gamut of local events and allow a wide spectrum of commentators with insane devotion (sometimes literally).  This doesn’t cover the existence of any millions of hobby or enthusiast boards for everything from offroading (based off the specific make and model of your truck) to knitting clubs or book clubs on small blogs or local sites to large sites like Amazon or Ebay.  Even boards like 4chan create content and relevance that makes other sites pale in comparison.  All this is an indication that social media has blossomed in a way that makes Facebook completely irrelevant.  The walled garden, with too many privacy holes in the fence, leaves a lot to be desired, and users are finally leaving Facebook for greener, rolling pastures.  It’s an apt analogy.

For example, my business is travel and hospitality. My entire industry is suffering devastating groupthink – and every conference or social media mention is about Facebook, driving revenue, ROI. I wanted to mention them, but don’t want to damage the conference economy built around Facebook.  I will just say that I know there are those of you out there nodding your head (ed note: thank you for the emails).  Do you want to know how I can be so brazen about this, and why your company’s efforts on Facebook are misguided?  It’s painful to admit, but the real internet and real consumer isn’t on Facebook, and never planned to be.  As soon as they are on Facebook, they are a sister or a grandmother or a college chum.  But when those same people leave the site – they are consumers on flyertalk, tripadvisor, yelp, and any other consumer site referencing the interest they have at that moment.  Someone can be on Facebook loading vacation pics one moment, and that can have zero relevance to the fact they are a consumer searching reviews for a hotel on Tripadvisor, a moment later.  The two are not related.  ”Consumers” do not exist on Facebook, because when people are on Facebook, they shed the role of consumer (or at least they think they do, which is all it takes).  A friend told me to be patient, but he was speaking to me about being patient in the business realm, that the facebook user will eventually be “born” a consumer.  Well, I am not so sure the users have that sort of patience, and looking at their fickle migration patterns of the past, coupled with their distrust of Facebook management, I don’t think my patience will have anything to do with it.

Our Groupthink and What Your Business Needs to Ask

It's not pretty when it happens, and sometimes we can't see it.

The groupthink throughout industry is to talk about how to leverage Facebook, and not whether it’s truly worth the effort or has intrinsic value. Everyone is so self interested that they won’t admit that it’s not the wonder it appears to be. The general rule is that you have to be where people commune, but it doesn’t mean it has to be anything more than a landing page.  I went so far as to ask fans of some of our hotels what they thought of brands on Facebook. Informal test of 4 hotels was unanimous – everyone overposts, and it is tantamount to spam. The more you post, the more people hide you. Great… you got 5 comments!!! Then it’s likely, as 90% of people are lurkers, that even more hid you. You are losing attention every day with your Facebook pages.

Outside the US, along with Twitter, Facebook has been the only available tool with the reach to successfully organize people, and the result has been powerful and moving and undeniable.

But, inside the US, it has been co-opted by brands and marketing agents who attempt to exploit it and utilize it for business. This is all at the behest of Facebook, who is trying to monetize the hell out of the user base and define and reinforce the concept of “user equity”.  Of course, businesses haven’t taken the time to realize there is almost no ROI, and when there is – it’s rare and far between. Why did they lose 6 million people in May? Is that real people, or is Facebook flushing out the coffers of spammers that are littering every corner of that network? Outside of this loss of users, how many existing accounts of the 700 Million members are spammers or multiple accounts? Dead accounts? How do they measure usage?

Define a successful campaign on Facebook? Define a successful business situation in regards to Facebook? Is it about money? brand building? interactivity? I have heard minor successes on Facebook, but no consistent, overwhelming victories as you may have heard from sites like Twitter.  You know what would happen if any single hotel took their page off Facebook? Absolutely nothing.  Facebook is a pass through. They interact with your brand on other sites like user generated review and rating sites, or topical boards where they can get advice from like minded people with expertise enough to answer tough questions.  Uncle Harry or your high school prom date isn’t likely to be able to do that for you.  People “like” and move on in Facebook, it’s a throwaway, passive activity; otherwise people don’t “like” anything because they don’t see the point, or don’t trust the process, even if they actually like something.  It’s obvious there’s a flaw in this system as a trustworthy & equitable model for making business decisions.  Facebook’s compulsion to legitimize the ad model structure of their social business has marginalized the ability for people to meaningfully connect. This erodes trust, and now people are finding other places to commune meaningfully online.  People are still using Facebook in a personal manner, so they wear brands like fashion, for status. They aren’t interacting with the brand so much as showing it off as they might Gucci sunglasses or a Prada purse.  There isn’t the compulsion or awareness by normal Facebook users to create commerce, or interact with businesses as they would on a review site, or topical network.  The closed network based off random, extinct, geographical connections (school, etc) stifles ability to congregate and commune around brands or specific concepts. The groups and pages don’t work properly, because they were an afterthought to the original intent of Facebook.

Is what your organization puts into Facebook worth what is coming out of it?

The End of Facebook

Heaven's to Murgatroyd, Facebook may exit stage left, even.

So far it’s been difficult to cultivate a social network into a successful long term business.  You can’t build a social network, just ask Google. A small network goes viral, then that network spends years garnering users and destroying the site in the race to monetize it, until users move somewhere else. Facebook went viral overnight, but this doesn’t mean it’s a successful platform for business.  Until they can offer a meaningful way to show real return or effeciveness, we are wasting labor and marketing dollars on a black hole.  The reason they aren’t sharing any of their data regarding site usage is because they know it would hobble their $100 Billion IPO.  The data and trends obvious in their private data, coupled with the social world’s IPO craze, it’s seems obvious they know the time is now, while they are jumping the shark.  Their talk of IPO is nothing more than a cynical money grab.  As Groupon will start the beginning of the 2.0 bubble, Facebook is desperate to cash in before it’s too late.

The sad part is that all these social media conferences and advertising or PR firms, coupled with the rest of big business, have so mindlessly invested endless money and time into developing their presence, they won’t be able to see the forest for the trees….. there is an entire economy that exists around Facebook, and people will have too much self interest to admit it’s time is passing.  They will hold on dearly, for fear of having to make new presentation slides, or build yet another business profile on yet another network.  Consultants will be frightened of being exposed for how much money they charge for administering Facebook.  Operators won’t want to change a thing because they finally got the facebook action committee meeting in place, or the hierarchy of responsibility for posting and replies.

Many people are vested very deeply in Facebook’s success, and I fear that our inherent self interest will allow this IPO to happen without a hitch…. a massively inflated and dangerous number representing an inflated faux economy that could collapse harder than a previous bubble we all should know and remember.  In fact, it’s going to happen.  Groupon is the start of it.  All that conversation about Groupon’s insolvancy and filed IPO papers – Facebook knows this.  The collapse will bring greater scrutiny, deeper questions, and demand for much more reporting and numbers in regards to the site.  As for now, Facebook stats are piece-meal, unsubstantiated guesswork, and Facebook is very secretive with all their usage stats.  Once real data gets out, do you suppose that it will bolster the evaluation, or bring it back down to earth?

I think the answer is all too obvious.  So Facebook is getting ready to cash in because they know they have peaked, and the other side of the mountain is a long way down.  It’s a precarious time for our economy as well as my personal hospitality and travel world.  Will we keep our heads down and keep espousing the genius of Facebook with empty stats and minor successes, or will we be big enough to move on, and realize that another time is passing?  I doubt we will be big enough.  But I hope this helps to create more of a dialogue that gets us there… ultimately one that protects the future of our economy.

Edit 16th June 2011:

A friend sent this article, “Older users likely to connect with businesses“. It is unfortunate that we are defining “connection” or interaction as something as passive as pressing a button. Users are tired of privacy issues, sure… but they are also tired of 90% of businesses doing Facebook wrong – not allowing user comments to appear on the wall, nor interacting and commenting on their posts.  It’s an RSS feed, and that’s spam, and it’s being hidden, and you have lost their attention.  When businesses realize the problems with Facebook, the lack of results, and the fact we burned most of bridges in trying to connect with users, ad sales will plummet, and the bottom will fall out.  We are still in front of the Groupon IPO, and lessons can be learnt from the Pandora debacle from today. Show’s over, says VentureBeat, as Pandora skids hard.  Stay vigil and stay aware, fight against groupthink, and engage your company with open-minded discussion regarding your next move.

UPDATE 30 Sept 2011:

Ed Note:  Google Plus’ Open social graph will quickly make Facebook’s walled garden irrelevent.  I quote  Terrence Lui:

“Those of you reading this right now should realize something. You have a fantastic lead. Everybody who depends on Google to run their business, and there are a lot of them, and is ignoring Google+ right now is a fool. You are in on the ground floor of something that will fundamentally change what is now the foundation of the internet.

So take advantage of it while you can. Stake out your place on the high ground. At some point very soon, the crowd will wake up to the fact that Google is serious about all of this and the flood will come.”

But I think the most compelling and damning evidence is this:  Twitter has seen more growth in the last 9 months than the past 5 years. It is vital to be aware of this fact.  Since May, Facebook user base growth in the U.S. has completely stalled, while these other networks are growing faster than ever.  I am basically done protecting my industry from the mindless groupthink.  Let’s let those who are listening gain the high ground.  Let’s let the vacuous & self interested, fall by the wayside.  Good luck out there guys.