Travelblather

It's called Travelblather for a reason! It's all about people commenting and discussing and sure, sometimes disagreeing too. Please do feel  very free to comment - whether you've commented countless times before or never left a comment up to now. There are no special requirements for commenting. If you want to say something... say it! However - whilst I seek not to moderate comments and let the debate flow, I do reserve the right to very occasionally remove or edit comments. A few things that will quite probably get your comment removed or edited include: 1 - If your comment is clearly an attempt to simply promote a site or product, it will probably get deleted. 2 - Links within context and added to provide clarification or an example are great, but if your comment is clearly an attempt to just gain a link with no context or reason for it, it will probably get deleted too. 3 - Bad language... let's keep it clean! 4 - Harrassing other commenters or myself. You can disagree but don't be disagreeable. 5 - Anonymous comments. I don't allow them. You have to provide your name and email. Ideally it would be really great if you could provide a link to a profile or website too. 6 - Comments close on posts older than two months. I have this set up because these are the ones that are more likely to get spam comments. If you have any questions or suggestions concerning these guidelines, feel free to email me.

Welcome Tom Power for a guest blog post. Tom runs a rather nice boutique tour company called Pura Aventura which specialises in tours to Latin America and Spain. It's on a theme I've touched on before... but, coming from an operator rather than a journalist the perspective is different. Would anyone take him up on his offer? I know he'd love to know your thoughts and, of course, so would I...

What if, rather than asking travel journalists to take a trip with
us, commission a story and write about it, we simply offered free
holidays to travel bloggers?

I’m polling opinion here and would really appreciate your thoughts.
I can’t help thinking that there’s a potentially great idea here with
potentially great vulnerabilities. Where do you think it falls?

This is where I’ve got to:

1) Selective: we’d have to be picky about the blogs we select,
that’s hardly controversial. We would want to associate ourselves with
blogs that have decent reputations and rankings.

2) Prescriptive: we would want to define the number of posts and
links back to our site. Probably in the order of 4 posts pre-trip, 1
per day on the trip and another 4 on return. Presumably it is
reasonable that we expect an output in return for our investment.
Anyone see any issues with this?

3) Controlling: what are the acceptable limits of editorial control?
What if the blogger just hates the trip and is relentlessly nasty? (I
should say that I have full faith in what we do and I can’t think of a
time that it has happened to a customer so am not by nature worried.)
However, what if a blogger is the only one in a group to dislike the
trip? Do we retain editorial control? What would be the acceptable
limits and lines?

4) Profiling: our holidays are generally taken by people later in
life, median would be in the 50s I guess. If we were to send a blogger
on this walking holiday to Chile
for instance, would that work? Are there bloggers who would broadly
match the profile of our existing customers? Does it matter? Are travel
bloggers generally outdoors types or do they sit in still rooms lit
only by the glow of computer screens?

5) Boring: is this an offer which regularly drops into the laps of
travel bloggers? This isn’t my idea, I’ve nicked it from a Springwise
newsletter (cool business ideas from around the world), I think they
saw it being done in New Zealand. Is anyone else offering similar here?

6) Toe treading: and this is one for the TravelBlather and Travel Lists and many, many others I’m sure. Professional travel writers. How does this idea sit with you guys?

7) Fine print: the trip would usually not be 100% free as we don’t
tend to include international flights. If you had to buy a flight to,
say, South America, in order to claim/earn your trip, would it still
appeal?

I've been doing quite a lot of research around social media in the last few weeks - in particular because I was presenting at WTM. If you're interested, my presentation Social Media for Travel Marketers: Unpicking the 2.0 hype is available to view on Slideshare with detailed notes too.

One of the issues that I find particularly interesting is the way that whilst brands are desparate to engage with social media - social media is making brands increasingly redundant.

Marketers see social media as the next great opportunity to grow their businesses. And it's not hard to see why when you consider that Facebook now has 350 million accounts worldwide and Twitter is growing exponentially too. Some 40% of online sales are influenced by social media already (McKinsey stats -  more of this kind of stuff in the presentation).

But these very tools that travel marketers want to embrace are in some ways killing the brands they sought to build up - with vast expenditure and effort - over previous decades. Back in the old days pre the social web, big companies couldn't
communicate with all their customers on an individual basis. So they
sought to create 'personalities' - to put a friendly face on the front
of their products and companies so people could 'relate' to them. Sounds weirdly ridiculous doesn't it? But it kind of worked. The
whole discipline of brand marketing was born - humanising a faceless
company. Often they'd use 'brand personalities' - so Michael Jackson
endorsed Pepsi, Rutger Hauer came to personify Guinness and Nicole Kidman is the face of Channel No.5. Here were
real people - people like us (remember the Bisto family?) or else people we'd like to be like.
Absolutely tons of cash was pumped into this kind of marketing. (Interestingly I can think of no examples of travel brands that did this.
Can you?)

But
it was all broadcast. "This is what we want you to believe about our
company and its products" was the message. And your could control the medium so it was no problem - TV, print ads, advertising billboards. But social media isn't one-way... customers can talk back, customers can broadcast for themselves. It's a multi-channel conversation and anyone can join in.

I often think of social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) as being a bit like the pub. There's chat going on about all kinds of stuff. It's between like minded people and friends usually, it's relaxed and informal. They could well be discussing how cheap their new mortgage deal is or where the best resort for family holidays in Spain is. But can you imagine some bloke in a suit from say Halifax suddenly intervening with a sales pitch for his mortgages or a travel agent jumping into the conversation to suggest their latest deals for family holidays to Mallorca? (Despite the fact that the information they have to offer could actually be of genuine interest.)

Absolutely not. And that's the problem.

The old days of broadcast marketing, building a brand and pumping out your message could well be over.

So how does say First Choice or Thomas Cook get themselves into that chat in the pub about everyone's next family holiday? Could you ever see a place for a big travel brand to engage in these far more conversational and personal on-line environments?

(I have a few ideas which I'll share... but I'd be fascinated to hear what other people think!)