Marketing
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman: phony reviews will cost you.
In a previous post I discussed some of the good and bad aspects of TripAdvisor reviews, including possibly phony reviews that overexaggerate the positives or negatives of hotels, restaurants, and various travel activities, often to the point of ridiculousness.
Now New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is cracking down on some businesses that have been giving themselves five-star reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, CitySearch and Yahoo.
Nineteen companies — including a charter bus company as well as non-travel-related businesses — have been ordered to stop writing or contracting for phony reviews of themselves and to pay a total of $350,000 in fines.
Schneiderman estimates that by next year one seventh of all the reviews on social media sites will be fakes.
So-called “reputation enhancement” companies are at the heart of the problem, hiring cheap foreign labor… Continue reading
A Generator Hostel in Berlin. Photo from Generator Hostels.
Recently I talked about the new breed of luxury hostels that are popping up around Europe and appealing not only to younger travelers — as hostels traditionally have — but to baby boomer travelers as well.
Now the excellent travel site skift.com has a piece interviewing Josh Wyatt, director of hospitality and leisure at the company that owns Generator Hostels, the leading brand of luxury hostels with eight locations and more on the way. It’s definitely worth a follow-up to hear what he has to say.
For starters, as the skift.com piece points out, Generator is “aggressively targeting” higher-income older travelers by offering a number of guest rooms for singles and couples that include private bath.
For instance, the 154-room Generator Barcelona, which opened this past spring, has devoted more than a fifth of its rooms to singles… Continue reading
The exotic Seychelles of the Indian Ocean. Photo from Seychelles.org
I’m going to hazard a guess that most readers will not know where the Vanilla Islands are or what they are. At least not under that name.
The “Vanilla Islands” is actually a brand name used for marketing tourism to the seven Indian Ocean island countries of the Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, Maldives, Mayotte, Reunion, and the Comoros. Most baby boomers will certainly be familiar with the Seychelles, Madagascar, Maldives, and Mauritius, though they may know less about Mayotte, Reunion and the Comoros.
I think it’s a wonderful idea for island countries spread widely across the Indian Ocean to join together for marketing purposes. (The brand name was established in 2010 and the grouping has since grown from four to seven.)
One of their goals is to reduce paperwork and join together in other ways to make it easier to visit… Continue reading
Baby boomers are filling their bucket lists — and spending money doing it. Photo from ROW Adventures
I came upon this observation from an unnamed pharmaceutical industry consultant, so I can’t give proper credit (though it appeared in the always provocative Bo Sacks media newsletter):
“No form of advertising is a safe, perpetual source of revenue, no matter how flush the advertiser or how desirable the audience. Because advertising has to change behavior, not just look good or get attention.”
His or her immediate point was that pharmaceutical ads aimed at doctors usually try to convince the physicians to change drug brands rather than cement a brand they currently prescribe to their patients — because for various reasons that’s where the potential profits lie — and I’m sure it’s an accurate observation…in many cases.
But it struck me as not necessarily true about travel advertising — … Continue reading
In a previous post I wrote about “gramping” — grandparents camping with grandkids (but cheating a bit by bedding down in a lodge) — a name coined by an inn in Ohio.
A king-sized bed lures baby boomers in one of the “glamping” tents at the River Dance Lodge. Photo from River Dance Lodge.
Now comes “glamping” — a term that’s catching on as a clever contraction for “glamorous camping,” a combo that doesn’t always spring immediately to mind.
Glamping seems tailor-made for baby boomers, who may love the great outdoors but also tend to favor somewhat softer accommodations than, well, hard ground dotted with annoying pebbles.
Glamping, however, involves (at a minimum) tents with real beds inside — what’s not to like?
“Glamping” has been around for a while, though perhaps not by that name. The English used to go on African safaris in tents that… Continue reading
Jester the Weimaraner puppy and Instagram marketer overlooks the Queensland coast. Photo from Brisbane Times
From time to time I like to call attention to tourism bureaus and marketers using creative visuals to reach potential visitors.
A recent example is Bushmills in Northern Ireland painting faux people and animals on abandoned houses and shops to make it appear the town is more prosperous than it actually is. And with tourism increasing, it seems to be working.
Now Tourism Queensland (Australia) is using a six-month-old Weimaraner puppy named Jester to spearhead a new Instagram campaign intended to depict what life is like for typical Queenslanders.
Queensland residents are encouraged to send in their photos for Jester to post on Instagram between September 9 and 15. (Lacking opposable thumbs, Jester will be aided in this endeavor by regional photographer and a park ranger, but he will apparently be barking out his… Continue reading
If Niagara Falls is on your “bucket list,” Expedia may get you there. Photo from Niagara Falls State Park.
You may have seen the Expedia.com TV commercial in which a man stops random passersby, questions them about their dream trips and inquires, “If you were asked to drop everything right now, would you go?” and suggests that Expedia is ready to buy them a ticket and send them wherever they want — if they go now.
The ad is titled “Find Your Spontaneity,” a teaser for Expedia’s current “Trip A Day Giveaway” promotion.
Some say no, they just couldn’t do it today. But one man, whose dream is going to China, does agree to leave that night — and the next image we see is him standing on the Great Wall, not quite believing his good fortune.
The first thing that bothered me about this ad is that unless… Continue reading
Chinese tourists are arriving in big numbers. Photo from Reuters
If you start to see Chinese-style rice porridge appearing in your hotel’s breakfast buffet, don’t be surprised — it just means that hotels are catching on to the skyrocketing spending power of the sheer numbers of Chinese tourists now washing over American (and other) shores.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Chinese tourists spent more than $100 billion worldwide last year, up by more than third since 2011, during the course of some 83 million trips out of China. That’s more than any other nationality.
While the bulk of those statistics reflect travel within other parts of Asia, the U.S. is also seeing an influx of Chinese visitors — some 1.5 million of them in 2012, spending nearly $9 billion here. That’s an average of $6,000 spent per trip — also more than any other nationality.
The rise… Continue reading
I’ve long had an ambivalent feeling toward the reviews on TripAdvisor, the extremely successful user-driven website that provides readers’ takes on everything from hotels and restaurants to museums and travel activities.
TripAdvisor rules that newly renovated hotels should get a clean slate on reviews.
Like many baby boomers, I find the reviews can be extremely helpful in sorting out the travel-related chaff from the wheat — a long as I can first sort out the chaff from the wheat of the reviews themselves.
It’s not uncommon to come across restaurant reviews, for instance, that are the diametric opposites of each other:
“Ate at Luigi’s last night, and it was the greatest meal I’ve ever had — maybe the best that anyone has ever had! Love those meatballs!”
And, right below it: “Don’t listen to anyone who likes Luigi’s — this place is the worst! Worst food, worst service, and… Continue reading
Downtown Bushmills — is it real or is it faux? Photo from theworld.org
Here’s a story I love.
As reported by eTurboNews, a travel industry news reporting service, the northern Ireland town of Bushmills is “faking prosperity” in an effort to draw more tourists.
Bushmills is best known as one of the temples of Irish whiskey, but it has fallen on hard times of late, resulting in a fair number of abandoned homes and shops and a drop-off in tourist visits. Besides its four-century-old tradition of whiskey making, Bushmills is a gateway to the Giants Causeway, a dramatic natural formation that resembles stepping stones leading into the sea.
So the town has called on “cosmetic enhancement,” as eTurboNews describes it, a facelift of sorts for a dozen or so boarded up buildings that had become a blight on Bushmills’ main street.
Known as the “Brighter Bushmills Project,” the enhancements… Continue reading
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