PPC tip #5 – Know and engage your audience:
Inspire interaction with your ad by making it stand out from the competition.
Research what competitors are doing and make sure your ad is different.
Day Nine of Ten – Online marketing tips for travel
November 26, 2009 By 2 Comments
My unsolicited social-media advice for Continental Airlines
November 25, 2009 By 9 Comments
At 13:34 EST yesterday, I ranted in a post that Continental Airlines’ social media response to the Aug. 8 Rochester, Minn., tarmac incident, in which passengers on Continental Express flight 2816 were marooned for almost six hours overnight on board the aircraft, was lame.
Within 30 minutes, without referencing the Tnooz post or providing any context that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation had just tagged the airline and two others carriers with precedent-setting fines, Continental tweeted: “We continue to work with our partners & others to reinforce our Customer First commitments. We will comply with DOT’s consent order.”
What does this impersonal, legalistic tweet, brimming with marketing-speak, actually tell Continental customers about the airline’s approach to customer service and passenger rights?
Not much.
Lastminute.com says the most useful thing to spend marketing money on is analytics
November 25, 2009 By 3 Comments
Ian McCaig, CEO of European OTA lastminute.com, is arguably one of the more upfront and realistic executives on the travel circuit and his latest appraisal of the industry isn’t for the faint-hearted.
He was recently quoted widely as saying 2010 will still be a tough year for many companies in travel, despite a chink of light at the end of an extremely dark tunnel of recessionary gloom.
Spain will struggle next year, France and Germany are best placed of all European countries to emerge quickly, while the UK will attempt to soldier on.
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US Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End November 21 2009
November 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending November 21 2009.
Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.
RoomAtlas – look what a retired banker and his son can do in their spare time
November 25, 2009 By 14 Comments
RoomAtlas is a map-based hotel search site and is the plaything – in their own words – of the recently retired former-banker Roger Middleton and his son.
The site aggregates information for almost 55,000 hotels around the world on a single Google Map and streams in TripAdvisor reviews and information about each property.
All well and good so far.
Day Eight of Ten – Online marketing tips for travel
November 25, 2009 By 1 Comment
SEO tip #4 – Internal linking:
Sites with many destinations and deep content structures should link to key areas/pages from stronger pages within the site, such as the homepage.
This passes the link strength effectively through your website.
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Social media gap: DOT fines airlines on tarmac delay — Continental Airlines what say you?
November 24, 2009 By 4 Comments
The U.S. Dept. of Transportation set a couple of precedents today as it fined Continental Airlines and ExpressJet Airlines $100,000 for their parts in causing passengers on Continental Express flight 2816 to be marooned on board the aircraft at Rochester International Airport in Minnesota for almost six hours in the early morning of Aug. 8, 2009.
Mesaba Airlines, which didn’t operate the flight but was responsible for its ground handling at the airport, also got whacked with a civil penalty of $75,000.
Continental joined Twitter Aug. 2 and has had little to tell its customers and Twitter followers about the incident other than to post a press release Aug. 21, expressing gratitude at the time that the DOT recognized that the ExpressJet crew tried to get the passengers off the plane.
Richard Branson resorts to New Jersey location for cooking school
November 24, 2009 By 1 Comment
Hey, Richard Branson is coming to New Jersey and is slated to open a resort, restaurant, cooking and wine school in Peapack-Gladstone, according to the New York Times Diner’s Journal.
This is about the most exciting thing to happen in New Jersey since the last Bruce Springsteen concert. As the song goes, “I’m On Fire” about this.
“The long unwinding road starts at Natirar,” according to the resort’s website, and we hope Sir Richard will be a frequent dinner guest there.
Mobile gets seaworthy as Oasis of the Seas uses iPhones for Royal Connect
November 24, 2009 By 1 Comment
The USA Today Cruise Log reports that Royal Caribbean’s new 5,400-passenger Oasis of the Seas will feature iPhone rentals, which will enable cruisers to keep in touch with one another onboard and to track their wandering kids.
Passengers will be able to rent these Royal Connect-branded phones, which facilitate onboard calling and texting, for $17.50 each starting in January, and about 800 of them will be available for rental in the initial rollout on the new ship.
Such a system is said to be a cruise industry first. So is the Oasis of the Seas, which is the largest passenger ship in the world.
FlightCaster launches public API and licensing model
November 24, 2009 By 3 Comments
Predictably, FlightCaster, which attempts to alert travelers about flight delays before they occur, introduced a public API and a licensing model to enable developers, online travel agencies, airlines and travel management companies to integrate FlightCaster into their own applications.
Developers can get more information about the API at http://api.flightcaster.com/.
FlightCaster’s value proposition is that travelers — and corporations — have an insatiable desire to figure out if passengers are likely to spend five hours on the tarmac or if their flights will be canceled.
