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Archive Category: Tourism

European Travel Commission targets travellers from China, launches portal

Brussels-based European Travel Commission (ETC), a non-profit organisation focused on marketing and promoting tourism to Europe from long-haul markets, and European Commission (EC) have announced the launch of Travel Destination Europe and the portal in China.

This launch marks the first step in the recently strengthened cooperation between ETC and the EC to promote Europe as a travel destination in long-haul emerging markets and the recognition of China as one of the most important opportunities for outbound travel to Europe in the coming years.

“With the launch of our new Chinese web portal, visiteurope.com, today we declare our common initiative to focus on the Chinese market promoting Travel Destination Europe,” said Petra Hedorfer, president of ETC.

Promotional activity will begin in China through the visiteurope.com portal, with a series of campaigns initiating in 2012 focused on ‘Europe’s Ultimate Journeys’, designed to promote the most relevant pan-European tourism products to Chinese visitors.

Pedro Ortún, Director for Tourism, CSR, Consumer Goods and International Regulatory Agreements at the EC, said that the approval of the Visa Code for the Schengen area and the recent adoption of a harmonised list for supporting documents to be presented by visa applicants in China will certainly help in attracting more Chinese visitors to Europe.

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Orbitz’s contest to let “fans” nominate favourite do-gooder on Facebook

Online travel company Orbitz has initiated its Gift It Forward Facebook contest, letting its Facebook fans to nominate others for the good things they've done.

The contest allows Orbitz Facebook fans to nominate a deserving neighbour, co-worker, family member, or friend for a luxury vacation to Mexico.

Gift It Forward is a great way for deserving people to be recognised for their actions, said Chris Orton, president of Orbitz.com.

Grand prize winners will be announced on or about December 22.

Contest

To nominate someone for “Gift It Forward”, one needs to visit the Orbitz Facebook page and complete a short form describing why the person nominated deserves to win.

After submitting the form, the nominator must inform the nominee that they need to “Gift It Forward” and nominate someone else for their entry to be valid. Orbitz will award six travel packages to the nominees and their nominators for all-inclusive luxury trips to Mexico. Orbitz will also award fans with pairs of round-trip airline tickets throughout the contest just for submitting a nomination.

Nominations are accepted now through December 9.

Orbitz will select 10 finalists based on a combination of relevance, quality, and creativity. Orbitz Facebook fans will then vote for their favourite story.

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Amadeus to help revenue managers dynamically monitor market trends

Amadeus has added a new feature in Market Pricing to its hotel Revenue Management solution. The Market Pricing component gives hoteliers an insight into competitor rates, sourced from the major web rate shoppers.

The new offering combines publicly available rate information from both major web rate shoppers and the Amadeus system enabling hotel revenue managers to have a holistic view of the market through the analysis of price trends, price fluctuations and benchmarks. The focus is on enabling hoteliers understand and react quickly to the complex factors that influence markets and customers’ behaviour, and respond rapidly to optimise the hotel inventory and rates.

According to Amadeus, Market Pricing is an industry-first competitor rate analysis tool, helping revenue managers to dynamically monitor market trends.

Key benefits:

• Provides users with a unique view of the marketplace to analyse both direct competitors and activity in the city destination.
• No other RM solution takes into account market demand and market pace in their price optimization.
• Extensive content: rates are imported from the major web rate shoppers.

“In this highly competitive industry, there is a growing demand for intelligence products that permit hoteliers to track market trends and react quickly,” said Jérôme Destors, director, Amadeus Hotel IT. “Using advanced forecasting models combined with detailed booking data and market trends, the Amadeus Revenue Management solution innovates with unique technology evolution giving hoteliers another competitive advantage to maximise their hotel revenue contribution.”

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Pennsylvania Tourism Office signs exclusive deal with Foursquare

The Pennsylvania Tourism Office has signed an exclusive deal with Foursquare that allows users to obtain “PA Lock & Keystone” badges by “checking-in” with their mobile devices at Pennsylvania restaurants, museums, retail shops, historic landmarks, state parks, wineries and other tourist attractions.

The Pennsylvania Tourism Office, under the state Department of Community and Economic Development, is dedicated to inspiring travel.

Last year, Pennsylvania became the first state to partner with Foursquare by populating the network with more than 200 state tourism attractions and creating four custom badges. Since the launch, and subsequent retirement of those four badges, visitPA has amassed nearly 90,000 followers and adds approximately 150 new followers daily. To date, over 67,800 Foursquare users have unlocked a PA badge providing tips and recommendations for travel locations and allowing users to earn rewards and discounts using their mobile devices.

According to Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary C. Alan Walker, Pennsylvania is the first and only state to create exclusive branded badges on Foursquare, leading to the attraction of thousands of followers to the state’s tourism website – visitpa.com.

“To keep the momentum going, we have partnered again with Foursquare to launch the new Lock & Keystone badge, and are working with our local tourism partners to market this new initiative,” said Walker.

The Pennsylvania Tourism Office is partnering with the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, Lycoming County Visitors Bureau, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, Bucks County Visitors Bureau, and Crawford County Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote the new Lock & Keystone badge.

To earn the new badge, users need to follow visitPA on Foursquare at www.Foursquare.com/visitPA.

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The City of Sydney’s iPhone App to let users capture a 12-sec video

The City of Sydney has launched a new iPhone App to encourage people to capture a 12-second video from their 2011 New Year’s Eve celebrations for inclusion in a short film to mark Australia’s biggest event of the year.

The initiative is part of a Tourism Australia and City of Sydney joint venture called Project :12 to promote Sydney to the world.

The free App allows users to edit and upload a 12-second video which will then be edited into a short film and distributed online within hours through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. People are also encouraged to share their dreams for 2012 in eight words or less.

“An increasing number of people use smart phones and rely on Apps to find information and interact with each other. As a council we want to make sure we are providing the information that people need in the way they want to receive it,” said Lord Mayor Clover Moore. “Our App gives users real time notifications of vantage points, road closures and events. People can also find out about crowd capacities, ensuring a safe and great night out.”

The City is also hosting a photo competition and people can enter by uploading photos from the night via the App or the City’s website.

The App includes an interactive map of the best vantage points for the 9pm Family Fireworks and Midnight Fireworks Displays, information about events happening around the city, tips on how to plan the night and easy entry to a NYE photo competition.

In August this year, Tourism Australia launched a new campaign, 30 days in Oz, targeting young travellers in the UK. The initiative, consisting of 30 one-minute online videos, attempted to capitalise on the combination of advocacy and online video in order to showcase inspiring destination content.

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Thomas Cook in discussions with its principal lending banks

Thomas Cook Group says it is in discussions with its principal lending banks with regard to its facilities during the seasonal low period of cash in the business.

The company is in discussions as a result of deterioration of trading in some areas of the business in the current quarter, and of its cash and liquidity position since its year end.

“While the company currently remains in compliance with its financing covenants, it also intends to seek agreement from its lending banks to adjustments that will improve its resilience if trading conditions remain difficult,” stated the company.

As a result, the company will delay its announcement of its full year results until these discussions are concluded.

The company also mentioned that it expects to report a headline operating profit for the year ended 30 September 2011 broadly in line with previous guidance.

The company would not be issuing its full-year results as planned on Thursday. The company’s shares plummeted 75 percent yesterday.

Thomas Cook Group also reassured holidaymakers that it is business as usual as it announced fresh discussions with its banks on £100 million in extra loan facilities.

Last month, the group reached agreement with its banking group to amend the terms of its existing bank facilities to increase financial flexibility for the group. In addition, it signed a new short-term committed bank facility to provide an additional £100m of headroom around the seasonal cash low point at the end of December this year. The group that time shared that the existing credit facilities comprise a £150m amortising term loan and a £850m revolving credit facility which mature in May 2014.

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Encouraging signs for Britain’s tourism sector

Few days after receiving £27 million injection of funding, national tourism agency VisitBritain has witnessed another encouraging sign for Britain’s tourism sector.

According to the agency, international visitor numbers and spending in the UK have risen in September. As per the IPS figures, the nation witnessed 2.53 million arrivals with record numbers for holiday visits (970,000). The overall visitor arrival trend for 2011 remains relatively buoyant and is on track to exceed 2010 figures, highlighted the agency.

Visitor spending for the month was up seven percent on the low of September 2010, with £1.5 billion coming in to the UK economy from overseas. Building on the record spend seen in June and July, overall spend per visit is up four percent from the previous year and has resulted in record earnings across Britain of £13.2 billion so far in 2011.

Sandie Dawe, chief executive of VisitBritain said the tourism sector can continue to grow over the next few years and it will be further strengthened by the image boost that hosting next year’s Olympic Games will bring.

Earlier this month, the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt shared that VisitBritain will benefit from a further £27 million of funding to help promote Britain in key overseas markets in a concerted effort to drive greater numbers of visitors to the country over the next four years. This will be in addition to the existing £100 million match-funded marketing campaign being run by VisitBritain, and means that over the next four years inbound tourism to the UK aims to attract an extra 4.6 million visitors, spending an additional £2.3 billion across the country.

This initiative is part of the GREAT campaign launched by the Prime Minister in September to show the world that Britain is a great place to visit, to live, to invest and to do business with.

“This additional funding means we will be able to run the largest tourism marketing campaign in our history,” said Dawe.

Dawe added, “Our targets are ambitious, but inbound tourism is already Britain’s third-largest earner of foreign exchange and we know more can be done.”

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Rising to the challenge of ever-increasing customer expectations

IN-DEPTH: By making the most of the data and information available about their customers, travel companies have a unique opportunity to deliver truly differentiated experiences and make travel not just more convenient, but more enjoyable, too.

By Ritesh Gupta

Various sectors including the travel industry have been embracing customer-centric strategies to fuel competitive advantage.

But despite possessing a vast amount of data and information on their customers, it is being highlighted that travel companies are not making the creative leap from insight to innovation. And one of the main obstacles in reaping full benefits from such initiatives pertains to customer information being fragmented across multiple operational systems.

As pointed by loyalty marketing and customer relationship management specialist ICLP, listening to customers is a starting point, of course, but not always enough. The company has highlighted that customer-centric e-tailers like Amazon have, for example, introduced many customer relationship techniques that demonstrate the power of suggestion. The proven success of recommending purchases and activities, based on previous interactions, shows how easily the customer experience can be personalised to encourage loyalty. Significantly, the e-tailer ‘recommendation’ technique also shows how to offer products that customers might want but just not be aware of yet.

So overall, what’s at stake?

Companies need to rise to the challenge of ever-increasing customer expectations. Traditional points and miles alone are no longer strong enough to drive customer loyalty. If brands fail to innovate consistently, and fail to find ways to differentiate their customer relationships from competitor offerings, they risk losing vital customers, according to ICLP.

Customer centricity

The exciting thing is that travel suppliers have a rich amount of data about their customers. They know when and where they are going, how long they are staying, how much they are spending, etc. Harnessing this data to develop knowledge and insight about a customer’s value and needs means that travel suppliers have a unique opportunity to deliver truly differentiated experiences and make travel not just more convenient, but more enjoyable, too.

There are several data sources and these include web analytics data; CRM, email & marketing automation databases; Call centre data; online survey data etc.

The travel industry has been working on initiatives to implement individual point solutions to deal with each channel. Unfortunately, while an individual touch-point experience may get better, it’s still not going to address the need for consistent, high-value experiences across any touch-point. And, it is adding more complexity to the overall mix.

As highlighted by Travelport in one of EyeforTravel’s reports this year, the customer-centric winners in any industry are the ones that have an enterprise data warehouse strategy and governance mechanisms to ensure quality integrated data exists, that master data management is in place that has clear definitions of what a customer is, what a supplier is, and so on. All too often, the daily demands of the business encourage bad data behaviour; behaviour that leads to the creation of a multitude of customer data marts and questions about where exactly the version of truth about a customer exists.

Customer centricity slices across a number of key functional areas: marketing, sales, IT, distribution, operations, all the touch-points, etc. Because of the complexity involved with all the functional areas, it is critical that the CEO endorse the concept and drive adoption across his or her leadership team. The best way to ensure accountability is to tie it to metrics and bonuses. This infers that you need a way to measure results and measure how senior leadership drives evangelism, execution and results through their individual organisations. Implementing shared key performance indicators that are consistent and mutually supporting across the enterprise are one step towards breaking down organisational silos.

Loyalty

Customers have also, however, become harder to reach and more connected via social media.

Airlines and loyalty programmes must understand what customers want and constantly seek to adjust the proposition to meet customer demands and expectations.

According to ICLP, brands need to embrace the complex, interconnected benefits of the evolving social media world. Brands that understand how they can play a more significant role within their customers’ social communities can create greater emotional connections. Brands must find innovative ways to add even greater value in these channels to increase their customers’ loyalty.

Indeed presence within a customer’s own social media space is a great opportunity for businesses to build loyalty with their most influential customers. The measure of getting this right is primarily finding the optimum mix of location, channel and timing. When done well this can create the perfect mix of right product, at the right time, in the right place. The result is highly relevant communications at a low cost that will maximise customer satisfaction and grow loyalty.

“Persistence of your brand in a customer’s daily life is growing at a fast rate as companies work out how to create commercial opportunity from the growing social platforms. We believe that this will be a continuing trend as it is cost effective, relevant and customers are choosing this as their channel of choice,” The Mileage Company’s Iain Pringle recommended in an interview with EyeforTravel earlier this year.

Customer recognition

Customer recognition across the growing number of possible channels/interaction points is extremely important, not only for optimising marketing strategies/tactics for each customer, but also for enabling the travel provider to correctly value both the absolute and relative financial value each customer brings to its business.

As multi-channel recognition solutions are put in place, the next phase of improvement will include tying CRM data and information systems together to allow travel marketers to offer a specific customer a consistent, yet tailored, customer experience across all contact points based on the customer’s current value, projected future value, and specific needs and preferences.

Travel companies are recognising the value of bringing together customer transactional information and marketing/contact history and making it available across the company to improve customer intelligence and decision-making. Optimisation solutions such as contact optimisation and media/channel mix optimisation are rapidly growing areas of interests in a variety of industry verticals, including travel.

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Facebook contest encourages travellers to explore their European heritage

Visiteurope.com has launched its new social media campaign and contest entitled, Follow Your Roots: Visit Europe.

Hosted on visiteurope.com’s official Facebook page, the contest invites fans to explore their European roots by sharing a family photo and description of the photo.

“Large populations of European descendants are found on nearly every continent,” said Jan Rudomina, chairman of the European Travel Commission US Operations Group. “Our goal with this contest is to encourage our fans to explore their European heritage through photos and letters in an effort to inspire travel to Europe.”

Beginning today, fans of the visiteurope.com Facebook page can upload their family photo and brief description (200 words or less) describing the person(s) in the photo and the significance of following his or her roots back to Europe.

Voting will occur November 28 - December 5 to determine the top 10 finalists. From December 6 to December 8, a panel of judges from visiteurope.com will select the grand prizewinner from the list of finalists based on creativity and relevance to the contest theme. The grand prizewinner will be formerly announced via Facebook on December 9.

Follow Your Roots: Visit Europe is the third social media contests taking place on the European Travel Commission’s social networks over the course of the past year as part of a new digital and creative campaign to promote Europe as a tourism destination to the US traveller.

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£1m campaign to inspire Brits to take a cottage break in England

VisitEngland, the national tourist board for England, and holiday rental agency cottages4you have formed a partnership to promote cottage holidays in England.

The two entities are to jointly launch a £1million multimedia marketing campaign on Boxing Day.

The multimedia campaign is set to run through March 2012 and will focus on inspiring Brits to take a cottage break in England.

A new television advertisement has been created aimed at families, and will particularly focus on cottages located in the countryside and on the coast. This will be supported with newspaper advertising, online advertising, direct marketing and radio.

All campaign material will carry the cottages4you.co.uk web address, along with the VisitEngland logo. cottages4you is a trading name of The Hoseasons Group.

VisitEngland’s head of marketing Tim Holt highlighted that the self-catering sector is important to domestic tourism – 5.2 million overnight domestic holidays were taken in a rented property last year generating £17 billion in tourism spend.

Nick Rudge, vice president sales and marketing at The Hoseasons Group said: “After a great couple of years, there’s no doubt, with both the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, next year is going to be a major year for English tourism.” Rudge added, “No other holiday gives you the freedom and flexibility of a cottage holiday.”

 

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