Jeremy Head - travelblatherer

Breathalyzers to be installed in French bars?

According to a report in the New York Times legislators in France are considering the mandatory introduction of breathalyzers in late night bars and clubs after a spate of road accidents.  I'm sure this idea has been tried before in France (about a decade ago.) The result? People in nightclubs found a new form of entertainment... drinking even more before blowing into the breathalyzer to see who could get the highest readings!

Anyone who's lived in France (as I have) will know that drink-driving is rife. As a student there I was amazed at how my French friends thought absolutely nothing of driving home steaming drunk from the pub.

Do you trust Trip Advisor?

I've been talking to a lot of people about the future of travel guides what with seminars, having a new guidebook in print and going to a recent Booksellers' dinner. Some people - me included - have been forecasting the death of the listings sections. What's the point of me stomping round 50 hotels and writing reviews that will finally get published months later when there are up to the minute assessments on-line for free from Trip Advisor in particular?

According to the site's own stats it now carries reviews and info on over 300,000 hotels.

But hang on a minute... who is writing all this stuff? Start reading the reviews and it's easy to get dragged in... you forget that people posting them often have ulterior motives. You rarely get a 'just OK' review... people only ever take the time to post if they LOVED somewhere or HATED it (or worse still they work there and want to get it up the ratings.)

Nancy Keates writing in the Wall Street Journal has done some fascinating analysis on Trip Advisor, interviewing a range of users - sparked by her experience of staying at a hotel ranked number one in the Trip Advisor ratings which was right next to an 8-lane highway. It's a long article with lots of useful tips like: Study the reviewer as much as the place they're reviewing. Do they travel a lot and post often? The jackpot according to Nancy is finding a place you've stayed in and finding a reviewer who gave it the sort of review you'd have given yourself. That way you can (hopefully) trust their opinion.

But seriously... if you go through all the steps she suggests you could spend hours trawling the site for credible reviews that work for you... Do you have that kind of time? Last time I used Trip Advisor I spent ages comparing reviews... forgetting which places I'd thought might be OK in the process... it was time consuming and at times frustrating.

Here's an idea... shell out for a guidebook...  written by someone who has reviewed countless places before and can make a proper comparison based on years of experience. Trip Advisor is a great tool - I do use it myself, but only as a secondary opinion. I'd be really wary of basing a trip around it. Free isn't always best, sometimes it's worth paying for dependable information.

 

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Fly slower, use less gas, save money!

Well, I don't know about you, but as the cost of fuel climbs ever higher I'm increasingly careful when I'm driving - minimising harsh acceleration and cruising at lower speeds. OK, so I might arrive half an hour later if I cruise at 70 rather than hammer along at 90, but in the grand scheme of things does it matter that much? There were some fascinating stats in Time magazine this week (19th May edition).

NorthWest airlines calculates that by flying 10mph slower on a typical transatlantic flight it will arrive just 8 minutes later but will save 162 gal. (613 L) of fuel during each flight.

Similarly, Southwest Airlines plans to reduce speeds, adding 1 to 3 mins. to its flights this year. The saving? A whopping $42 million.

It would be nice to think some of these savings would be passed on to passengers... Fuel surcharges now account for 30% (sometimes as much as 50%) of the cost of a ticket.

Travel Publishing Seminar learnings 3 - Content is STILL king (and one day people will pay for it!)

One other speaker who really caught my interest was Genevieve Shore, Penguin’s digital director. She made some great comments about the importance of creative talent. As someone who gets paid to be creative with writing, it was music to my ears.

Regardless of what medium you use to publish - good old books, ebooks, web, mobile devices - it doesn't matter how clever your technology is if the content it delivers doesn't do the job it's supposed to do. That requires thought, composition, creativity - stuff that is unique. Genevieve refered to Kevin Kelly's excellent commentary about how content in the world of the web needs to be 'better than free.' Kevin's stuff is fascinating.

It frustrates me a great deal that due to a few early philanthropic souls - those pioneers of the web deciding to share everything for free - we are now stuck with this perception that if it's on-line it must be free. I don't get this. Both I and Genevieve commented on the importance going forward of micropayments. People are prepared to pay for stuff even online (I really believe this) if it really fulfills a need for them. Take the example of Lonely Planet which I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago. It offers downloadable PDF files of chapters  from some of its books for relatively modest payments. If that encourages exponential numbers of people to buy then ultimately it will be more lucrative than selling the complete guidebook at a far higher price to far fewer people.

Joel Brandon Bravo from What's On When threw in a useful observation later in the afternoon about this too. He pointed out that whilst people expect to get stuff on-ine for free, they are very familar with paying for stuff on their mobiles (think ringtones, games etc) and of course there's a ready made billing platform in the phone bill. Maybe the short term future for paid for content is on mobile devices?

Travel Publishing Seminar Learnings 2 - How come Time Out Marrakech was such a winner?

OK. I finally got time to sit down and distil stuff from the interesting presentations at the Bookseller seminar about the future of travel publishing which I hosted last week.

I found Alex Ingram Waterstone's Travel Buyer particularly interesting - perhaps because I know little about how travel guides are actually sold in-store. There used to be just one period each year when book retailers really pushed travel guides in the UK. That was November and early December in the run-up to Christmas. December is still by far the best month for travel guide sales. But Spring is increasingly important for city break guidebook sales nowadays. Useful info if youabout publishing deadlines here.

But... what really hit me was his comments about occasional titles that just suddenly come from nowhere and sell a truckload. This is not common in travel guide books (compared with say fiction where suddenly a new author is 'discovered' and shifts 100,000s of units overnight.)

So how come a city guide to Marrakech: Time Out Marrakech was so popular they ran extra promotions for it the way they normally only do with sexer categories like fiction and had to keep ordering more stocks. Why?

Well, he reckoned it was that a low cost airline (easyJet) suddenly started serving the route. Time Out was the only publisher offering a city break guide to Marrakech.

What does that say to travel publishers?

1) You need to think really laterally about external trends that might have an impact upon travelling habits. What's going to make people travel somewhere new? And why?
2) Sometimes it's worth taking an educated punt on what the next 'hot' destination (or trend) might be
3) Get close to low cost airlines if you sell city break guides. I touched on this in my presentation at the seminar. If you book a flight with easyJet to somewhere they offer you discounted hotels, car hire and currency at the end of the booking process. How about a discounted guidebook too?