Seven Things To Know About Expedia’s Award-Winning FriendTrips Facebook Campaign
Expedia’s famous “FriendTrips” Facebook app/game was awarded Digital Marketing “Best of Show” at the 56th Annual Adrian Awards competition. The award was presented to Expedia Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of Expedia, Inc. The award event was hosted by Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI), the Adrian Awards honor those who have created exceptional advertising, digital marketing and public relations campaigns in the hospitality, travel and tourism industries.
Amadeus Identifies “Four Big Effects” That Will Shape The Future of Travel In Asia Pacific
Amadeus Asia performed a study on the asia pacific market about its travel industry growth potential growth for next two decades. The study has been conducted by taking inputs from three sectors: Travel service providers, travel industry associations and travellers. Seven key markets were analyzed as part of this study – Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Singapore.
Best Practices To Manage Reviews In Google+ Local Pages – By A Google Employee
Google+ Local is a godsend feature for local businesses. It’s a feature within Google+ for businesses to establish their online presence. It’s extremely important for (at least, local and small) businesses to create a Google+ Local page. The page should be kept up-to-date in terms of description, address, contact details, pictures, videos (if any). The one thing that adds power to this entire equation is – Reviews.
50+ Airline Fees Changes Noticed In 2012; Detailed Study On Ancillary Revenue
Airline fees are on a rise and there is no question to that. In recent years, a price increase has always been followed by another price increase and so on. The main cause of this chain reaction is ancillary fee that is added to the base price of the airline. Irrespective of whether a carrier is LCC or full-service, ancillary fee is levied by them. Nowadays, its not a question of “Who doesn’t charge ancillary fee?”, rather its a question of “Who charges lesser ancillary fee?”.
6 Things Travel Companies Should Know About Facebook’s New Graph Search
Today, Facebook rolled out a new feature called “Facebook Graph Search“. Mark Zuckerberg sees this new feature as the third pillar of Facebook, next to News Feed and Timeline. This new feature will help users in mapping out relationships with people they are connected (or not connected too). Facebook calls this mapping as ‘Graph’. Users will be able to do a natural language search on this relationship mapping, hence the name – Facebook Graph Search.
Digital Concierge Arrives For Hotels, Futuristic Guest Experience Scenarios
Earlier in Travopia, we wrote about next generation customer experience scenarios in hospitality industry. Some of these scenarios are turning out to be real day by day. The latest addition to this list is the launch of “iRiS Lobby” by iRiS, a leading technology company that builds innovative products for hospitality industry. iRiS Lobby is an app that can be displayed both on an iPad and larger format touch-screens.
Kentucky Fried Chicken’s 26 Year Old Initiative Goes Viral In 2012
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), the famous eatery brand has been doing a particular thing differently. That is employing people with hearing and speaking disabilities. We shall refer them as differently abled. KFC, an83 year old brand has been doing this since 1986, that’s for the past 26 years. In 1986, KFC started employing differently abled people in Malaysia. The restaurant was a big hit, itwas a clear win-win situation. After this success, KFC opened two more restaurants that employed differently abled people.
QR Code Is Old Technology, Augmented Reality Based Print-To-Digital Emerges
Even before the QR code concept is fully adopted in travel industry, QR code has started losing its shine. QR code dominated (and still) the print and digital medium of communication by all airlines, hoteliers, car rental companies etc. ‘Shortened-URL’ was seen as an alternative or equivalent of QR code. But, technically these two are different and each has its own merit and demerit. Now, Augmented Reality (AR) is considered as the new QR code.
Google Flight Explorer – Focussed On Inspiring Travellers; Travopia’s Recommendations
Google has been continuously moving the bar higher and higher in travel industry. Last week, Google launched Flight Explorer, a mildly refreshed version of Google Flights. Flight Explorer can be seen as a wrapper built around existing Google Flights. User will be able to search for flights and see the fare for three months in a bar chart. This is the core feature of Flights Explorer.
Apple Working On Head Mounted Display (Glass) – What This Means For Travel Industry
The only thing that is constant in this world is – Change. We could not agree more on this statement. Looking at the various technology spins that happened in the last decade+ years in travel industry, this statement will remain relevant for years to come. Among all technology advancements, lets look only at consumer gadgets that influenced travellers and travel companies. These are primarily – desktops, laptops, mobiles, tablets. With every introduction
What Travel Companies Should Know About Microsoft’s New Social Network – So.Cl
Social media has become synonymous for “revenue”. For travel industry, social media is a god send (with some complexities to manage). Currently 22% travel companies use social media as a revenue generating tool and by 2016, half of the travel industry will be using social media as a revenue generating platform. So, the point is – social media has become indispensable, at least for travel industry. The good news is, companies are reaping benefits from this channel and the bad news is there are lot of complexities in achieving it.
US Car Rental Industry Outlook, Trends That Are Changing The Game
Car rental industry took a plunge in 2009 due to the economic recession wave. The primary reason to this is the hit in airline industry which affected the airport pickup/drop centric car business. Car rental companies were forced to think outside airport pickup/drop business. In 2011, car rental industry slowly emerged out from recession and the years 2012 and 2013 are looking very positive for the industry.
Do Travellers Book Hotel From An Airline Website? Answer is a strong YES
In travel industry, the one question that can never be certainly answered is – Who eats who? By ‘eat’, we mean the marketshare. We will keep things simple and say that – In the year 2000, Online Travel Agencies (OTA) took a major marketshare from offline Travel Agents, and now (post 2010) Airline websites are posing a serious threat in taking over marketshare from OTAs. This is seemingly becoming evident in the last couple of years.
Airline In-Flight Communication – Past, Present and Future
In the year 2000, internet connection inside a flight was a dream. Hold on. Lets be fair in saying that terrestrial internet as such was a big thing then. After the dot com revolution in 2000, one of the focus of airline industry was to bring internet connectivity in flight while on air. Boeing sensed this opportunity and launched a service by name “Connexion” in 2004, but it apparently wasn’t successful due to various reasons.
Travopia’s Interview On Indian Travel Industry
Last week, Travopia was interviewed by Alberto Correra, a travel industry expert in Italy. The interview was centered around Indian Travel Industry and it was posted in Alberto’s blog in both Italian and English. Here in Travopia, we are posting the English version of the interview, unedited / as posted by Alberto. Read below for the interview.
