The Tracking Tourism team is currently in Berlin attending ITB and, courtesy of PhoCusWright, the conference organizers, attending the PhoCusWright@ITB conference and Bloggers Summit. All in all, a fantastic chance to meet with the great and good of travel and analyse where the industry is, where it is going and what the heck can be done about it.

And what a day one it has been – social media optimism, mobile as critical to business strategy, a new word “moxie” for the vocabulary – oh, and a dash of economic apocalypse.

We’ll have a series of posts over the next few days looking in detail at some of these themes, but we thought we would kick off with a quick report from the opening day, including the Bloggers Summit part of the conference.

Wise words from Philip C Wolf

The briefing from PhoCusWright’s CEO, Philip C Wolf, is always a highlight for me, and this year was no exception. With a self-confessed “keen sense of what’s hot and what’s not” he proclaimed 2009 as the year of 4 Ms:

• Money - not just lack of it, but also in terms of low interest rates and “bottom feeding” investors

• Media - “its all rough and tumble right now” with pay per click and user generated media really impacting travel distribution models.

• Mobile - “2009 is the year when mobile platforms become a strategic business imperative” (quote of the day in my opinion!)

• Moxie - (for readers outside of North America: verve, pep, know how and guts). The business acumen to “be comfortable swimming against the tide”

As Philip explained, it takes lots of moxie to control costs in the operating plan, while simultaneously investing in capital expenditures/innovation. For if companies only play defence then at best they may preserve their business entity – “but what if you work really hard to preserve something that is out of sync when the tide starts rising?”

Philip was careful not to dwell on bleak economic scenarios. His focus was primarily on identifying opportunity and “the big rewards for gutsy innovation”. He explained the signals of recovery that his analysts are looking out for.

The views at the ITB Convention Future Day was both more apocalyptic while actually reinforcing some of Philip’s sentiments.

You don’t even want to hear the worst case scenario…

I guess “Tourism in Times of the Global Financial Crisis” was never going to be uplifting. In the course of his introduction, Professor Max Otte, author of “The Crash Comes” managed to depress the audience into shell-shocked wide-eyedness with promises that “there are lots of bombs still to go off”, that the global banking system is technically insolvent and that in the worst case scenario of global depression “all bets are off“.

Professor Lipman of the UNWTO tried to raise spirits but somehow “as the economy goes so goes tourism” didn’t achieve the desired bounce. He did however express the goal to get tourism on the table as part of the G20 stimulus package discussions, due to its critical role in two way trade.

Some good news to be had the fact that a lot of the fundamental shifts in responding to the customer in travel have already been underway for some time. Meaning those who have already invested in understanding what the customer wants and building business models that enable them to deliver on that are in a stronger position. But as Dr Auliana Poon of Tourism Intelligence International warned:

“Customers have long memories… destinations and companies not on track with what the customer wants will fall by the wayside… customers are deciding”.

People still want to travel – I loved Dr Dieter Semnelrioth of the TUI’s analogy that “25 million Germans are sitting on their packed luggage.” But the early bird offers are not working, bookings are down – operators may move straight to last minute deals, eroding margins. As we have heard previously, customers are not trading out completely, but they are trading typically down (though it is the middle ground, 3 stars, feeling the most pain).

“Transformative” was used a little too much for comfort – the point being that there remain opportunities and that to quote Dr Poon “this recession will force us to live differently and travel differently and travel differently.” But transformative sounds kind of apocalyptic to me – after all, isn’t transformative what they said about the Black Death?

However, the themes mentioned at the PhoCusWright session earlier – particularly Moxie and Money – also made an appearance at an earlier presentation by Rolf Frietag, delivering the results of the largest worldwide travel survey in the form of the ITB World Travel Trends Report.

Put simply, if you have the guts to invest in the present climate, then there are great opportunities – construction costs and interest rates are low but you’ve got to be able to ride out a recession potentially lasting until late 2012.

I (Vicky) have lots more notes from this session, with each sound bite more depressing than the last – but for all our sakes I will handover to Stephen and the cheerier travel bloggers and their discussions on social media in tourism and travel.

The Top Social Media Trends for Travel and Tourism

The bloggers workshop sessions explored what blogging folk from within the industry believe are the top social media trends for travel and tourism.

Asked to choose a main theme for the coming year, the panelists opted for:

* More Twitter
* Better understanding how to use social media
* Increased use of social media as a PR tool
* More Twitter
* Employing a social media guy

These issues were then put before the audience to vote on what they thought of these prognostications. Despite the endorsement of Twitter from the panel, I seemed to detect a degree of skepticism in the hall and Twitter got lowest audience votes on key trends – suggesting perhaps that people feel the need to drive philosophy change and strategies, rather than simply focus on specific applications.

The discussions moved onto practical applications of social media within travel organisations. Klaus Hildebrandt reminded the audience that businesses didn’t used to be able to see how the web could deliver revenue – they finally saw that it comes with investment and effort. To get buy in to social media is to highlight the business cases, the good examples of how to add this to strategy.

Kevin May of Travolution cited the Queensland Dream Job as the perfect example of an integrated destination campaign using both traditional PR and social media marketing.

Stephen Joyce summarized the workshops with the sensible conclusion that “your customers are talking about you anyway. How are you, as leaders in your organisation, going to step into the conversation in the most meaningful way?”

However, while PhoCusWright is following a deliberate policy here of focusing on the can-do in the programming of the conference on the basis that wallowing in gloom isn’t really going to help any of us, I think there is still a world represented here at this conference that is a) frightened at what’s to come and b) has bigger fish to fry than considering the best way to use Twitter.

As a Twittersceptic (note not a Twitter-phobe!), I thought the more practical suggestions from the panel included:

• The role of mobiles will increase (more on this in a coming post)

• Using 2.0 for PR in a more savvy way and integrating this messaging with traditional forms of PR will grow

• Feedback 2.0 – tourism providers might start to listen to what their customers are saying across multiple channels.

• Context rather than content will become important – you need to get to the real info you want, not wade through interminable irrelevant guff.

• ‘We must do our homework’ – Companies must take a hard look to define what goals they want to reach, what target groups do we want to reach?

• Traditional metrics for online activity are inadequate for measuring social media.
• New metrics such as ‘volume of mentions’ will become important in judging success.

We look forward to tomorrow’s PhoCusWright@ITB09 conference.

Well, a week or so ago I was in London for World Travel Market. The following week I was supposed to be in Los Angeles as a guest of PhoCusWright for their 2008 Conference. Unfortunately, work here got in the way and so, instead of the sunny streets of Hollywood, I have been in Scotland instead.

However, from all accounts, the PhoCusWright Conference delivered its usual insight and I thought I would use this blog to highlight some posts from fellow bloggers and other online reports from the conference that caught my eye.

Before I do so, I should mention that I was fortunate to be a guest blogger at the Phocuswright Conference in Berlin earlier this year and so I’ll say a quick word about their conferences as background. For those of you who have been to one, you know what they’re like. But for those of you who haven’t and feel that the conferences that you are currently going to seem to have the same old people with the same of things to say, then I think the PCW conferences might be a nice surprise. I found the level of discussion there much higher and it struck me that this is the place to go to hear from the most senior people in the industry how the travel and tourism sector is progressing.

So, I’ll start with my impressions (second hand) of their Travel Innovation Summit which showcased before the main event solutions and innovations “that significantly impact travel planning, purchasing and trending.” The presentations can be found here and an overview (also second hand!) can be found on William Bakker of Tourism BC’s blog here.

I sense in William’s post a slight sense of being underwhelmed by what was on offer and that’s a sense I share (William, if I’ve got you wrong, let me know!). But, on reflection, I think that being underwhelmed is possibly not the appropriate description – most of the innovations are solid if unshowy examples of how people are exploring niches and looking for new opportunities. So instead of looking for something revolutionary, it is perhaps more appropriate to look at these products as evolutionary.

That said, some of the themes I picked up from the presentations were:

• Consumer interfaces are increasingly trying to become more human – think visuals (TV especially)
• User generated content continues to be key
• Aggregation also remains key – whether that’s of UGC, fare data or a combination of the two and more.
• There are niches to be explored – whether its for the smaller end of the market like Rezgo or for train travel, adventure holidays, or vacation rentals.

A first-hand overview of the ‘winners’ of the summit can be found in Jaime’s post here.

The Uptake Travel industry Blog has an excellent overview of the themes of the conference ‘proper’ here and they seem to reflect notions that I have come upon in different places on them same theme. In summary:

• Look east for new customers (’cos it’s going to get a bit grim if you just rely on your usual markets…)
• Travel is seems to be increasingly embracing TV images as part of the pre-booking experience
• Mobiles really are finally becoming more significant to travel.

Interestingly on mobiles, a session I went to at WTM recently suggested that although mobiles are rising in importance, they are not yet being used for financial transactions in the travel industry but mostly in making the process of travel less painful (more destination info, barcode check-in, that kind of thing).

So, what do I make of all this? It seems that there is a greater air of caution for obvious reasons among travel innovators at the moment. The industry seems to be still changing quickly but it it seems more of a period of organic ‘natural’ evolution rather than left-field innovations suddenly seizing centre stage.

However, despite only experiencing PhoCusWright virtually, it seems to me that the innovators are still miles ahead of many of the players in markets closer to my home in Europe (I know, I know, there are exceptions, especially in London). What this surge of innovation says to me is that, even in this dark economic period, there are people out there thinking really creatively about how technology can make customers’ experiences better.

But I fear this is a spark that is still more conspicuous by its absence than presence in many areas. Despite the low and free cost of many of these technology services, I suspect too many people in the more local tourism sector will miss out.

I think the reason for this is that without exposure to the evolving technology in the context of its creators’ objectives – such as improved user experience, improved travel research processes, better customer experience through ease of booking – the ripple-out from the source gets more and more focussed on “must have” technology for the sake of it. In other words, the its reason for being gets forgotten and it moves from something that intelligently serves the customer to something that a site feels it ought to have but isn’t too sure why.

That risks leaving local tourism businesses continuing to try to play technology catch-up in the difficult years to come, rather than understanding the fundamental customer experience issues that technology was supposed to solve.

But if Web 2.0 has meant anything, it is that the technology exists to enable us to share and learn from each other, meaning that ignorance becomes more of a personal choice rather than an enforced state of affairs. The links in the post to PhoCusWright and associated commentary mean that you can experience these innovations in context and apply their insights and attitudes to your business.

My post last week was a bit of a moan – probably something to do with winter returning to Scotland and the general state of the world.  So, I thought I would balance out some of the negativity with some posts on people that are really getting things right.

Firstly, I would like to point you to William Bakker, director of eBusiness at Tourism British Columbia. As an area marketing agency, I think Tourism BC has one of the most sophisticated and advanced operations I have seen and the following paragraphs encapsulate one of the reasons why:

“We have conducted focus groups, phone interviews, card sorts and/usability tests to find the best way to organize the content on each website. We start with research about how our target audience in a particular market approach their trip planning; their mental model. We adjust our taxonomy where needed. For example, in North America a farm accommodation is called a ‘guest ranch‘. In the UK it’s called a ‘cowboy ranch‘ and in Australia a farmstay.”

What can I say apart from, ‘Wow!’  Although this approach might seem sophisticated to some, I recognise it as actually very simple at heart.  It’s the approach that says you should remember that your customers are human and need to be researched as such to get the full picture.

I particularly liked William’s comment about language.  This is something I think might be overlooked by a number of businesses and organisations but is vital if you want people to recognise what it is you are offering.  In some instances, you might get a clue to this if you are able to analyse searches made from within a site that have ‘odd’ terms but I think that the larger issue of language and its use is probably best started with real live people in focus groups.

Its an approach we always take in our tourism research projects as well – we recognise the immense value of quantitative data (whether that’s web analytics or traditional surveys) but feel that the best value is derived when you go that one stage further to probe the human element and combine it with the quant. I think this usually leads to a far more sustainable outcome.

You can read more at William’s blog here.

Another post that caught my eye was from the Karin Schmollgruber’s interview with Angela Zechmann(Director of E-Marketing and Internet for Salzburg Area Tourism) at the blog Fastenyourseatbelts.com. The interview is about about the Salzburg Area Tourism’s efforts to attract a younger audience to the area the site www.onebigpark.at and, in some ways, continues the theme from British Columbia that you need to understand that different audiences need information in a language specific to them.

But the other thing that made me sit up was that I was reminded of a conversation related to me a while ago about Austrian tourism to the effect that their ongoing research revealed that the country was having difficulty attracting young people.  I am not privy to the data for Salzburg so will assume that their research also suggests that, for mainland Europeans, Salzburg means Mozart and pretty mountains and, for people from the UK and the US, the Sound of Music – none of which suggests to me a largely younger profile of visitor (Angela, Karin – let me know if I am way off the mark here!).

And it’s not only a case of identifying an issue but doing something tactical about it with a considered Web 2.0 to help fulfil a strategy to encourage younger people back.  In other words, it’s a piece of joined up thinking and a good example of the intelligent application of 2.0.

The original is in German here and one of those rather odd internet translations for you non-German speakers can be found here.

My eye was also caught by this post at Phil Caine’s Tourism Tide on the potential conflict between Yield Management and Price Transparency.

To some of you, this might sound at best an arcane venture into a world far beyond your business.  I would disagree as it concerns something fundamental to all business – trust and transparency.  So, for example, reviews on tripadvisor at the moment just have people discussing the condition of an establishment.  What if those reviewers ever started comparing prices with one another?

Well, there are already moves that way in the accommodation sector with the likes of Farecast. This added-value price comparison site is essentially doing for the accommodation sector what price comparison sites have been doing for the transportation sector for a while.

For many establishments thismight not seem an  issue but, from experience, I know that accommodation prices can fluctuate at certain parts of the market and for much the same reasons as at the top end of the industry – such as sellers want to make a buck without having to pay an intermediary.

To that end of the tourism sector that thinks this is some far-off fad, let me say that this will happen whether you like it or not.  It doesn’t matter that you think of intercontinental air jouney is a big ticket item and your accommodation offering as small ticket item – customers will apply the same standards of transparency of value to both. Looking beyond the lowest common denominator horizon will help you prepare for changes like this.

Finally, I think the Canada-e-Connect Tourism Strategy Conference 2009 might just be the place if you are looking for intelligent debate and insight into how best to harness the new opportunities.  I don’t think the program is finalised yet but, judging on the people behind it, it won’t be looking at ‘lowest common denominator’ stuff but instead offering something for those with more vision.

In those sessions I have talked about Web 2.0, blogging, web measurement, Travel 2.0 (click for a definition), engaging in the conversation with your customer and that fact that there has been a monumental shift in how potential consumers seek, evaluate and trust information.

But from San Francisco to the Scottish Highlands, London to Swansea – as businesses absorb the implications of what this means, they generally express with some horror the exact same question. “Just how long does all this stuff take?”

And of course, it’s an absolutely killer question, right at the heart of how successfully Travel 2.0 techniques are adopted by businesses. “Just how do I blog, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tripadvisor etc etc and still run my business…. How do I commit enough time to make this work, but not so much time that every other aspect of my business stops?”

Like any other marketing or business function, you should invest time according to how important the results are likely to be to your business. The Travel 2.0 space is a perfect one in which to experiment and keep experimenting as you maximise results. Yes it is time consuming, but that isn’t reason enough to not get involved. The internet is now absolutely critical to travel – it is mainstream, not niche as these statistics show:

In terms of specific advice, I can only answer from my personal experience:

1) Narrow down the options:

Start with research (this post tells you how). You can’t be everywhere, nor do you need to be. Are there certain sites, communities, blogs or Flickr groups etc where your business, sector, interests or competitiors are already being actively discussed. Are there places where the key thinkers/players in your field are already meeting. Are there places you simply like to be?

You do not have to do this completely manually, as the above post shows, there are free technologies that will bring this information to you.

2) Understand your target market online:

Don’t assume that Travel 2.0 is only about young, trendy advance adopters of technology. Participation in social networking, for example, mirrors the age spread of the online population as a whole. Tripadvisor and to some extent Flickr are becoming a mainstream part of the travel selection process.

However, different sites, tools and communities do attract different profiles of people. Just as its worth paying attention to whether other people in your field are spending their time online, its also worth thinking carefully about where your potential customers are too. Hitwise, comScore and Alexa are provide some free information that help answer this.

3) Know why you’re there:

Are you there in order to create awareness of your business, demonstrate your expertise, deliver better customer service, spot opportunities and threats, learn from your peers, network, spy on the competition?

Understand the point of why you’re investing your time and just how important that is to the business. If you are driving new business and delivering better customer service, you may even be able to see quite quickly that this is so important an activity and delivery such results that you should shift resources (say a marketing assistant) away from off-line activity and into the Travel 2.0 space.

I am increasing coming across young marketing assistants for whom blogging, being active in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc is a large part of their job. (Travel, public sector and charities are sectors where I have seen examples of this).

4) Assign a cash value to your time:

Engaging with the Travel 2.0 consumer is far higher in time costs than actual marketing spend. Whereas it easy to understand that a marketing campaign that cost £10,000 and drove £1,000 of business was not successful, you can’t make that correlation for time spent on MySpace until you understand the cost of what you invested.

I know, for example, how much running this blog costs me as a cash equivalent to my time – I also know that it represents a worthwhile use of my time (because I join up the dots and where possible track where new opportunities originated from).

5) Review regularly what is and isn’t working:

Web 2.0. Travel 2.0, social media – call it what you will, remains incredibly faddy at an individual site/community level. Facebook saw its first dip in traffic earlier this year and us travel bloggers, who move from community to community in pursuit of the best place to really interact with each other, are examples of how fickle visitors to individual communities can be.

There is no single best place to spend your energies – it should and probably will be a least a few sites/activities at any one time. But finding the optimum combination for you will be an ongoing experiment and will change regularly. Review frequently (using web analytics, research or good old fashioned talking to your customers and peers) and adapt!

This is my strategy and it perhaps sounds excessively calculated. In fact, I enjoy investing my time and energy in the communities I participate in. I find it personally rewarding as well as good for business and I have made many friends and travelled to wonderful places (for real, not just virtually).

The reason I need a strategy to manage my Web 2.0 efforts is simply because the opportunities are endless whereas time and energy are not.

Calling those juggling champions

I know for a fact that there are a number of people out there who successfully juggle running travel and tourism businesses with maintaining blogs, leading great industry discussions online, while answering the needs of their own and a broader swathe of potential customers in a range of communities. Guido, the Happy Hotelier is one, Rene at Greater Speyside another, so is Claude Bernard and Don at Get a Room.

There are more of you than I can mention and most of the blogs I link to on the right of this page provide examples of fantastic time and Travel 2.0 gymnastics.

Perhaps you will share with us how you do it?

I really enjoyed reading all the posts that were submitted and I’m pleased to be able to share my top-picks here – I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

Always the last to know…

This is a great post from the Get A Room Blog (or should that be a great plea?) for hotel guests to talk the hotel itself when there is a problem, before talking to the whole world.

As Don writes: “Just give them a chance. The last thing they want is for you to be unhappy… After all, the hotel’s goal is to welcome you back again.”

While I’d disagree with Don that it’s not the raves that make it on to online consumer sites like TripAdvisor (see this recent Tracking Tourism post) – I do otherwise completely agree with Don’s thinking in his post. As Rene Looper, a former hotelier, recently said in a comment here: “If you had a great time, tell TripAdvisor – but if you had a problem, tell us”.

Shock horror, a consumer-to-consumer site makes it to the pages of this decidedly b2b blog!

Aside from the fact that I like this post and Barbara’s Hole in the Donut blog generally, I’ve chosen this as I think it embodies consumer thinking in these hardening economic times.

Read how a devoted traveller, who has literally travelled the world, discovers for the first time the attractions that are right on her doorstep.

And as we’ve highlighted in this blog previously, all the statistical evidence coming in from the US suggests that in these times of potential recession, it is not just Barbara who will be looking at the tourism opportunities in her own back yard this year!

Social media sites, hype and non-takeover stories. Surely not?

Kevin May, editor of the Travolution blog, ponders just why it is that WAYN (The Where Are You Now community that claims to be the fastest growing travel and lifestyle social networking community website in the UK) seems to attract a disproportionate amount of attention in the travel industry for a site of its size.

Read Kevin’s post to see if some of that hype is justified.

Space Tourism in Cape Breton?

Finally, for those of us in Scotland who’re hoping that space tourism will have its birth here, Kim Kinrade reports in the White Point Manor blog that the Canadian government is still looking into the funding $45 million as its share for a rocket launching facility in Cape Breton, which would see the birth of “Space Tourism” in the province of Nova Scotia.

Mmm – does this mean Scotians old and new will be duelling in their spacesuits at dawn?

Previous picks from the Travel Blog Carnival

If you’re interested in reading more from the Travel Blog Carnival, see Darren’s carnival pages over at TravelRants.com. You can also find out how to submit your own posts for review.

After the great success of the first ever travel industry bloggers summit, at the PhoCusWright Conference in November, the next PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit will be taking place at ITB Berlin, March 5-6, 2008.

With 10,000 exhibitors from 180 countries and regions, ITB Berlin represents the full spectrum of global tourism at all levels and a great location for the first Europe-based travel industry blogging summit.

PhoCusWright is currently inviting applications from qualified (see details) travel industry bloggers to participate in The PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit@ITB Berlin. More information about the program can be found here.

Even if you don’t blog yourself, or you’re still thinking about how blogging might help your destination or business, the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit is worth checking out if you are planning to attend ITB.
One of the best parts of the Bloggers Summit in Orlando – which I am thrilled to see will be repeated in Berlin – was the panel based workshop which brought travel suppliers, DMOs and other travel and tourism companies together with the blogging community for a direct and lively discussion.

The room was packed to bursting point in Orlando, so in Berlin there will be two workshops. These will be open to all ITB Berlin attendees and I believe will also feature a panel made up of Tips From The T-List bloggers (we are very pleased thatour blog, Tracking Tourism, will be able to take part in this).

The PhoCusWright schedule gives the following details about the workshop:

“Workshops: Blogging With the Long Tail of Tourism
Presented by Tips From the T-List
Wednesday March 5: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Two workshops will show how an active, content-producing network of bloggers can have a growing influence on your customers’ online spending habits. The workshops will give valuable tools to travel suppliers, DMOs, OTAs, and other travel and tourism companies that are looking to engage the blogging community and help focus user-generated content for their benefit. New innovations in blogging will be covered as well as a number of user-generated content trends. There will be an expert panel of travel marketers and technologists from around the world providing two interactive sessions.”

Get more details on The PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit@ITB Berlin here.

Read more about ITB Berlin

Finally, a revised version of the Tips from the T-List Book which will be updated for ITB Berlin and available for download at www.tipsfromthetlist.com.

Naturally, this trip involved hotels, planes (and in my case trains). And as I recently wrote here about how social media sites like Flickr and You Tube are changing the behaviour of visitors and I thought I’d share this classic example from my own experience, because I think there are lessons to be learned for tourism businesses.

When I was invited to the Internet Marketing Conference, I started my search for a hotel at the recommended conference hotel’s website. I wasn’t overly impressed, so next stop Trip Advisor.

A mixed bunch of reviews, but with a recurring theme – bad bathrooms. I really hate a dingy hotel bathroom and the hotel had done nothing to reassure me the fears were needless, so clearly the conference hotel wasn’t for me.

And so I started a search for my perfect hotel in Stockholm, beginning with scanning the reviews in Trip Advisor. In just a few moments, one hotel with great reviews caught my eye – the Hotel Rival.

Here are some examples of the comments:

“Just returned from a 2 night stay at the Hotel Rival in Stockholm, chosen largely based upon reviews in Trip Advisor. It was just as nice as we had anticipated.”

“My husband and I stayed here for two nights at the end of September. We loved it and my husband said it was his favorite hotel ever!”

“Just returned from a stay at the Hotel Rival. It’s every bit as hip, cool and luxurious as everyone says.”

“I chose this hotel because it is the No1 most popular on Trip Advisor and I was so pleased I did.”

Notice a theme? People are mentioning in their review that they chose the hotel because they read the reviews. Then they are validating their decision by informing others that they made the right choice. Without realising it, I did exactly the same thing when I added my own review earlier this morning.

Super-charged word of mouth

Hotel Rival is getting great reviews, because people booked on the strength of the great reviews and are “passing it on”. Supercharged word of mouth in action – and despite the fact that none of these people are likely to ever meet.

Once I’d read the reviews, I was excited – maybe this was the hotel for me. Could I afford it? Next stop Expedia, where there was a great deal.

Did I book? No – not yet.

Next I visited the hotel website – music (a big minus point for me – I’m at work, people will be wondering!) but excellent apart from that and lots of information about the practicalities I needed to know.

So, did I book? Again, no – not yet.

I thought I’d get some independent views from my trusted community on Flickr, the photo sharing site. Even before I added my own shots, there were a massive 132 pictures of the Hotel Rival – reflecting its photogenic-ness and quality of product. I looked at a selection of pictures from different photographers, showing different rooms and aspects – clearly, this place was something special.

Decision made. I went back to Expedia and booked. And over the coming weeks before my trip, I continued to look at pictures on Flickr and read reviews on Trip Advisor – even though the decision was made and I had pre-paid via Expedia.

Do I do this for every hotel? Of course not – a Travelodge (which I frequent regularly on business trips) is a room by the right road and not something I fret over for longer than it takes to print directions.

But this was different; it was turning into a quest for an experience. In my scouring of info about Hotel Rival, I was turning into a tourist, not a business traveller. I was enjoying the anticipation before my stay had even begun.

Because of its great product, social media sites are generating vast amounts of word of mouth for Hotel Rival and are driving business.

Is this online buzz being harnessed?

So, is Hotel Rival (and potential other sites lucky enough to be in this position) really doing enough to capitalise on this online buzz?

I don’t think so. (But if you’re reading, please feel free to disagree!)

While Hotel Rival has hundreds of blog mentions, it has no blog of its own where I can continue a dialogue with it and happily act as a champion.

It has some of the best reviews on Trip Advisor, but has not taken advantage of the free feed that Trip Advisor offers, to import these into its site and share them with pride to potential customers.

Many of its customers made their decision on the web and like me were posting great images and reviews online before they’d even left the hotel – as a manager, I’d reconsider the 99Kr per 24 hours of Internet access (roughly £10) that is being charged to let them do this.

Because they have their product so very right, I came away wanting to tell the world how clever I was for having chosen this hotel. I know I am not alone.

Any tools (from a photo album uploader to a group on Facebook) that Hotel Rival chose to invest in would be utilised by its fans (sorry customers). The result would be that it could therefore use its word of mouth more strategically in supporting its business development goals, rather than being a haphazard beneficiary of good will.

The lesson for all businesses with a great (or even an improving product) is monitor this buzz and goodwill and thing how you can harness it. Understand where you are being talked about and what is being said. And good or bad, plunge into the conversation in an authentic way.

If, like Hotel Rival, you have real champions out there – work with them to achieve you marketing goal. They’re your fans and they want to have contact with you – and your potential customers will trust them more than they trust you!

The Tracking Tourism blog is one of about thirty tourism blogs from around the world to be featured in a new book.

brings together the collective intelligence of dozens of influential travel industry bloggers from around the World. The book was launched as a printed version in November 2007 at Canada e-connect and PhoCusWright, Orlando.

It is also available as an eBook which you can download for free from this blog.

Why an “offline” book comprised of the best “online” travel blogs?

As publisher and tourism technology blogger Stephen Joyce explains:

“Well, quite frankly, there is a lot of information about internet marketing and e-strategies in travel and tourism online, however it is very hard to find, especially when it comes to evaluating the source. Lots of great information is published by practitioners that write about their experiences on their own blogs – instead of academics writing about internet marketing concepts in textbooks that are very quickly outdated. Not to discount the value of textbooks and whitepapers, we felt a compilation of the best travel blogs and their best marketing-related posts would bring another dimension to this fast moving subject. In the end, we want this book to add some value to the global hotel and travel industry, but it should also be just a little bit of fun. Bottom line: it’s an experiment.”

Having now sat down and read the book myself, I’d like to add to Stephen’s comments by mentioning that a printed book is a perfect way to extend the knowledge contained within tourism industry blogs to a wider readership. The range of expertise and original thinking contained within the book is seriously impressive.

For example, want to know how hotel brands are using Facebook (or indeed what Facebook is)? Chris Clark’s post from the VacantReady blog is featured in the eBook and gives a great introduction to the subject.

Steve Wright from the Brand Canada blog talks about the two most important questions in evaluating a tourism experience – a great post on how quick and simple research can still benefit your business.

Tourism website optimization – making your site searchable and findable – is covered by Fabienne Rabbioso of Untangle My Web. While Claude Benard of Les Explorers covers everything from user generated content to blogging and online PR in his fascinating interview with blogging maestro Karin Scmollgruber of Passion PR.

So, get your copy of Tips From The T-List

These are just a few of the posts you will find contained within the Tips From The T-List Book.

As Tracking Tourism was a contributor to the book Stephen Joyce has given us permission to make the entire eBook available to our readers here, so it give me great pleasure to be able to share it with you:

Click here to download the free eBook version of Tips From The List

It is a big file (A large PDF at 1.2mb, opening in a new tab/window) so if you do want to link to the eBook from Tracking Tourism – please link to this post so I can measure the traffic, rather than simply linking to the PDF direct.

Much appreciated!

The people that made the Tips From The T List book happen

Publisher is Stephen Joyce – blogging at: Travel and Tourism Technology Trends

Editor in Chief, Jens Thraenhart: Tourism Internet Marketing

Editor, North America, Mathieu Ouellet: Radaron

Editor, Europe, Kevin May: Travolution Blog

Editor, Asia Pacific: Yeoh Siew Hoon: The Transit Cafe

And or course, the 34 bloggers whose posts featured!

Interested in finding out more about the T List of tourism bloggers? If so I’d suggest a visit to the Facebook T List group

Other posts relating to the Tips from the T List Book:

Thoughts from the first ever travel industry bloggers summit

Yesterday I joined tourism industry bloggers from around the world as part of the first ever travel industry bloggers summit, at the PhoCusWright Conference, Orlando.

The bloggers summit was an opportunity for those currently blogging and those destinations (and tourism businesses thinking about beginning blogging) to participate in workshops and discussions.

Tourism industry blogging is beginning to take off and can have powerful benefits for businesses. The well attended workshop sessions explored what those benefits are.

As Kevin May, blogger and editor of Travolution explained to workshop participants, “A blog is incredibly cheap to set up, if not free. If you are trying to differentiate yourself, for example with a niche or unique product, a blog becomes search engine friendly very quickly.”

Steven Joyce of the Travel & Tourism Technology Trends blog highlighted the communication opportunity that blogs offer for businesses. “Blogs are really story books. For small operators that do something unique, it is an opportunity for them to tell their story the way they want to tell it. A blog post is an individual’s perspective on their experience and a reader shares in that. Things that are interesting and engaging when they pull people in.”

There were some great examples of destinations and businesses that are really getting this right. William Bakker of HelloBC.com, British Columbia’s marketing board, gave a fascinating example of how they as destination marketers are tapping into the long tail of tourism experiences through blogs and user generated content.

William’s team has integrated first staff blogs and then public blogs into the main destination site, highlighting appropriate (moderated) blog content alongside their main site, as you can see in the example here.

William explains the benefits of the approach, “Now we can really tap into the tourism experiences that we don’t have the resources to cover ourselves. Incorporating the blog content alongside our site content gives a nice balance of official and user generated content and it allows us to really to represent tourism experiences that are off the beaten track.”

The way HelloBC has effectively recruited an army of unpaid fans to extend their content and marketing messages beyond the scope they could possibly deliver alone is a terrific example of the harnessing user generated content as part of an authentic marketing conversation.

A major concern from the travel industry audience was how do you manage the potential negative aspects, such as those that appear on review sites – do you really want unfavourable comments or feedback appearing on your blog? The panel of bloggers agreed that transparency and authenticity is essential and that complaints have always existed and been managed in the hospitality industry.

Jens Thraenhart of the Canadian Tourism Commission and the Tourism Internet Marketing blog explained , “Every bad review is an opportunity. It’s the art of turning it around. If you have your blindfold on that is lost for ever. The same as you would manage a complaint at the desk, you manage it online and you commit resources to that.”

Steve Joyce agreed, adding, “Every comment is the start of a conversation. Every positive comment I thank the commenter. Negative, I thank the commenter and continue the conversation. It is an extension of the customer service that already happened in the travel industry”.

A final benefit about tourism industry business blogging (and this extends to engaging in social networks) is the free market research opportunities it offers. Ram Badrinathan, travel analyst with PhoCusWright in India commented that, “blogs are proving consumer to business feedback without conducting research. You get feedback direct to you. You can integrate that into your product.”

This is an interesting point. Blogging and activity in social networks is not going to replace the need for research, but it can enhance it, because it offers a direct opportunity to hear and participate in conversations about your business that previously happened behind closed doors. Encouraging these conversations into the open means you will learn more about your customer’s thoughts and their experiences of your brand and product than ever before. This knowledge gives you power to act as appropriate.

Do you have to blog yourself for your business to benefit?

Blogging takes time, requires passion and isn’t for everyone. How can tourism companies use bloggers without blogging themselves?

HelloBC shows that you can incorporate the blogs of others. It was also suggested that you encourage those taking press and familiarity trips to blog about their experiences, thereby dramatically increasing the content online about your business.

There is also clearly opportunity to engage with existing bloggers, though this has to be done with sensitivity due to the transparent and usually unpaid nature of blogs.

As Steven Joyce explains, “Integrity has to be a part of it. There are different way of approaching bloggers and leveraging coverage, compared to traditional travel press. How do you invite bloggers and get them involved? In most cases they’re looking to be appreciated for what they do. They’re looking for acknowledgment that its valuable.” Just like the press, they’re looking for original content, but press releases simply don’t cut it. Blogging is about genuine stories, not PR releases.

Understand what others are saying about you

To conclude this quick post from sunny Orlando. The way customers are consuming information and marketing messages is changing. Again and again at this conference, marketing is being described as a conversation, rather than the old one-way process of pushing information out.

Blogging and engaging with social media can enable tourism businesses to hear the conversation (market research), participate in the conversation (marketing strategy) and act on the conversation when required (customer service and general management). Powerful stuff.