Camel Treking in the Sahara, Photo by Mike Henderson

Rich media, social media and consumer generated content are big areas of opportunity for travel and destination marketers. Instinctively and anecdotally, we know that videos, photos and first hand stories and reviews are the best way to sell an experience.

That’s because travel is about getting out and experiencing the world, be it something new and adventurous or familiar and comfortable. We endure long plane rides, arduous mountain passes, or bumpy camel treks through the sahara night snapping photos, creating stories, sharing experiences with friends and loved ones that build lasting memories.

Those memories last a lot longer than the shoes you were wearing, the camera you bought to capture it all and even the trinkets you bring back to commemorate it.

“it turns out that one of the best things people can do is invest in experiences rather than in material things,” says Elizabeth Dunn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in an Interview on NPR with Liane Hansen. “So it may be better to treat yourself to an exciting concert or a little weekend getaway than to remodel your home.”

The reason, Dunn says, is that, “we adapt to things very, very quickly – much faster than most people realize.” With a purchase, that adaptation nullifies the objects value, wile adapting to an experience makes it part of you. Dollar for dollar, that ends up having a better ROI on a personal level in terms of happiness.

It’s no wonder people seek out the content that brings experiences to life for them when researching and planning travel. Engaging consumers, providing simple and easy ways for them to share their stories as so many travel and destination brands and marketers are doing can have a significant impact on the perceived value of the experience.

Are you using the value of experience to elevate the value of your brand? Have you seen a great campaign that drew you in? We’ll surely be seeing a lot more in the near future.

-Mike

An amazing mass of people documenting their booking process can be found on Facebook… one friend posts a comment “wow… I would love to go here” with a link to a photo album from a travel blog. Later that week more comments come out with videos, photos and links to hotel and airline deals found during their hunt. Pretty soon an announcement that they are waiting in the airport and a few weeks later images, videos and comments are posted and shared about the vacation.

When you break down all of the different user types; savers, spenders, thrill hunters, etc.  they all follow a similar path. They visualize a trip, organize their options, take a vacation and then contribute the experience to friends and family.

The Travel Buying Process:

From a digital marketing perspective this process contains three key questions that should be considered:

1. What stage is the potential consumer in?
2. What social needs drive behavior within the stage?
3. How can technology play a role in facilitating or enhancing the stage?

By asking these questions and understanding what stage your target is in we have a better chance at creating relevant technology and marketing that empowers the traveler and gives them a more natural and intuitive experience.

Example:

Going back to the Facebook observation you can see that photography played a role in the visualize stage. The user found a piece of content that caused them to post “wow… I would love to go here.” Developing galleries that inspire and promote a specific experience, i.e. relaxing, unique, thrilling, and allowing these to be shared across Facebook would be one small example of this process in action.

One to One Travel uses this approach to both develop and validate new technologies and marketing tactics ensuring that our points of engagement with customers are in alignment with the natural purchase process.

- Rob

Such was the topic for #Mrktchat two weeks ago. We were grateful for the opportunity to host and steer the conversation to something we, as geeks, gadget lovers and die hard skiers and riders, wrestle with all the time.

As expected a couple of good points came out of the discussion.

Active Engagement: Several participants had direct experience and success with scavenger hunt type activities, though these don’t always need to involve mobile apps…

and

It’s hard for core skiers and riders like us to realize, but many ski resort visitors are not all that engaged with the sport. They may be there for other people in their party, or simply get their fill of the skiing by lunch time. For them, more active mobile social engagement might get them to engage with skiing more, or engage with secondary amenities at the resort like shopping, dining, and events.

Info and updates: Pushing out snow, event and operations updates is a great thing to do. A number of resorts are doing this, and a number also have a separate twitter account for that kind of content. Whether or not you need two twitter accounts is specific to your users and their needs/wants. You can usually come up with a good strategy after a few weeks of testing. Though things change pretty fast, so next season, all bets are off.

Passive engagement: We like to market the turns first and the tech second because we feel that the things people will remember, the things that the tech exists to support, is the mountain experience.

Problem: Not all ski resorts have the reception for mobile. Though this will probably change in the coming seasons.

we also need to be conscious of the fact that many tech soaked skiers and riders might be looking for a more offline onsnow experience.

When trying to engage travelers, skiers and snowboarders with mobile social technology, finding the right balance between interaction and distraction is key. Thanks to the group for letting us (Mike Henderson and Rob Gaedtke) moderate. We always come away from #mrktchat with a different perspective. Great chatting with you! Here’s a link to the transcript of the chat.

-Mike

Conditions 100%: This is clearly the most important info feature for skiers and riders, particularly those who are at a winter destination like Tahoe, British Colombia, Park City, UT or Colorado where there are multiple resorts to choose from that may have different conditions.

Web Cam 82%: We want to know what it looks like. Numbers, stats and graphs tell a lot about a resort, but web traffic clearly shows that skiers and riders want to see what’s going on in real time. Having this available from a mobile phone is a big deal.

Mountain status 71%: Not every lift and run is open all the time. For ski destinations, visitors may have favorite runs, lift, or areas of multiple mountains. Resorts need to tell them what is open both to attract them and keep them from being disappointed.

Contact 76%: Directions 53%, Roads 41%: Consumer apps like Yelp, google places and others put this info right up front, so it’s a no-brainer that a ski resort mobile site would too. Road conditions can be a deciding factor of where to go and how to get there, so it’s good to have that available. There’s no better source for road info than the state DOT website so it’s best to just link out to them or feed in the content if possible. Finally, if you need live human help, click to call is a must.

Social: A few of these sites have links out to social media profiles, but none feed in the updates. Twitter and Facebook can be more top-of-mind places for customers to track updates. We see this as part of both the Alerts and Contact features of the matrix. Including links, content or both from social sites gives users the option to connect how they prefer.

Tickets 24%: and Deals 12%: It’s surprising that so few resorts post their ticket prices to the mobile site. Pricing can be a deciding factor when heading up to ski / ride and making that information available should be a priority. Additionally,  adding deals and specials content to a mobile site could also attract visitors doing research from a mobile device.

Maps 29%: This is a no-brainer for us as many visitors are looking for info they can use while they’re on the mountain – and it saves someone from tossing a trail map into the trash at the end of the day. A viewable and downloadable trail map that someone can revisit from the smartphone while on the lift is an easy and useful addition to a mobile website.

NEEDED: Two things we are not seeing often that should be mandatory are mobile site redirects and links to both the mobile and full versions of the sites. In our opinion, the term “mobile” website is already a lost term and websites should simply display in the best available format. Adding a sniffer that detects from what platform the user is accessing the site and then displaying the best content available is the best solution. Additionally, adding links to switch back and forth help give the user some control should they prefer one over the other.

Overall, resort mobile sites need to be presented in a manor that is intuitive, easy to navigate, provides key information for a mobile user and takes into account fat, cold fingers.

What’s your favorite resort mobile site? This list wasn’t meant to be all encompassing, but it’s a start, and I’ll update this post as I add more to the mix.

• Heavenly
• Alpine Meadows
• Homewood
• Solitude
• Sunday River
• Vail
• Mt. Bachelor
• Keystone
• Breckenridge
• Whistler/Blackhomb
• The Canyons
• Beaver Creek
• Windham
• Ski Nevada
• Stowe
• Killington
• Jackson Hole

-Mike

But what if you want to create a more complete real time travel diary without spending the whole trip with your eyes stuck to your phone? Here are a few ways to log and document your travel experience without missing the light show at The Eiffel Tower.

Posterous
Posterous is a simple multimedia blogging tool. Though there are iPhone and Android apps, you can do everything you need via email. Just write your post, attach your media and send. It’ll be uploaded to your own custom URL. Don’t worry about connectivity if you’re in a remote desert, or a foreign country. Just find a place to poach WiFi and let your phone upload them all at once. Posterous will update a bevy of other social outlets automagically, so you can notify your mom, your significant other, your boss and your Jr. High science teacher all at once.

WordPress
Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world, though it does a lot more. The Wordpress applications for iPhone and Android let you post text, video and photos from anywhere. You can create the content and post it later, so you can snap a photo and get on to the next museum in a hurry. You can also get an address to post via email.

Evernote
If you’re looking for a more private alternative to a travel blog, Evernote is a good way to go. It’s a personal note taking system that mirrors across multiple devices and the web. You can create content when you’re offline and it’ll update when you get connected. You can then access the content from the web or your computer and take the time to craft the content into a more thoughtful blog post, or make the notebook for your trip public and sharable. It’s a great way to archive your content and get it beyond the confines of your smartphone.

Twitter
Sometimes it’s best to be brief. Twitter is great for that. If you are on a trip where you’ll have good connectivity, you could use any number of twitter apps to create a travel log. Most apps connect with third party services that let you upload photos and video. When mixed with your tweets and organized with a unique hashtag (eg. #Mike’sTrip) you can quickly create a simple, easy to consume travelogue.

Foursquare
If you just want to share where you are and quick snipits of what you’re doing, Foursquare works well. With Foursquare you also get the added benefit of businesses who reward customers for checking in and the potential to connect with friends who happen to be there too. Though you won’t find much foursquare action in Morocco…

Gowalla
Gowalla is similar to foursquare but more aligned to trips and travel documentation. Gowalla has Trips that are organized by location to help users enjoy their time in town. It’s kind of like having a tour guide on your phone. Again, this is best for domestic trips to big cities, not a rustic tour through the deep south.

On The Road
Saved the best for last here. There is one app that does it all. On The Road is a great tool for finding things to do and cataloging your progress when traveling. You use the app to create notes, checkins, and photos, then the app uploads them to a unique page at ontheroad.com where your friends and family can view and share your content. I haven’t spent much time with this app, and the Android seems to be a bit different from the iPhone version, but this seems like the best concept for using a mobile device to document travel without getting bogged down in the process.

The app encapsulates the whole travel process really well from discovery of activities and places (iPhone only), to creating content, to sharing that content after the fact and storing the memories to remember them later. The online Trip Book page shows a google map with route and placemarkers, a clickable master timeline, and the photos, and notes from the trip. Here’s a great example of a Trip Book page of an overland tour from the UK to Cape Town South Africa.

Note: In our opinion, a good travelogue app has to have certain functionality for it to be really useful and for interacting with it to be fast, easy and unobtrusive to the experience:

Offline Sync: In remote destinations or foreign countries, constant connectivity is not always an option. Offline sync lets you create content and upload it later.

SMS Updates: Can you post updates via text message? Sometimes this is the easiest option.

Multimedia: Can you post photos, video and/or audio?

Cross posting: Be able to post from to multiple platforms/networks.

Email updates: Ability to update by email.

Archive: Create a discrete archive of the trip.

Location: Can you add geolocation data to the post or even venue checkins?

Save money, bid higher

CPC costs are down across the board for travel keywords. We agree with Google’s recommendation to up your keyword bids to attain better positioning.

• CPCs for travel ads have fallen by an average of 4% YoY for the first five months of this year.
• Hotel CPCs have fallen by the greatest amount – an average of 7% YoY.
• It is likely that CPC’s have continued to fall as fares and rates are slower to recover than capacity.
• The drop in CPCs reflects the fact that the auctions are less competitive as advertiser depth* has
• Declined by an average of 2% YoY for travel.

Fly vs. Drive

We’ve always known that the drive market and fly markets had differences in preference and budget, but the Google data shows that they also have different search habits when researching travel. Take advantage of this by running drive market campaigns earlier and fly market campaigns closer to seasonal peaks.

During this time period car queries peaked the earliest, on June 23rd. WoW this represented a 9% increase in query volumes and 4% in click volumes. As it can seen, individual travel products behaved differently during July. Both air and hotel queries peaked after the schools broke up for the summer, at the end of the month.  -Jonathan Cranmer

Thanks to google for sharing this data. We spend hours and hours going over the data generated by out clients campaigns, but adding in the collective information from the global ecosystem paints a different, bigger picture. Read the whole report @ the Google Barometer Blog: Summer 2010 Whitepaper: “A Paper Of Two Halves.”

-Mike

One to One Travel and OTOinsights have collaborated to present our latest customer experience research findings for eight international travel sites, including Expedia, Travelocity, Thomas Cook, Opodo and Lastminute.com. Our research focuses on booking processes, usability issues, design and branding.

With one in four people looking to spend less on their travel by as much as fifty percent this year, travelers are flocking online to find the best deals. More than ever, it’s imperative that travel companies capture the growing online bookings market by providing an optimum online customer experience.

Join us for this free webinar where we discuss this latest customer experience research and conclude with a best practice guide on how you can create the best customer experience for your customers. Webinar attendees will also receive a copy of this report free of charge.

When/Where:
Session 1:
Time: 11:00 am EST
Date: Thursday, May 13, 2010
Join this webinar @ https://onetooneinteractive-events.webex.com

When/Where:
Session 2:
Time: 2:00pm EST
Date: Thursday, May 13, 2010
Join this webinar @ https://onetooneinteractive-events.webex.com

If you have any trouble registering for this webinar please contact rgaedtke@otoi.com or call 775-332-3000 x3243.

Layar’s Plan to Monetize Augmented Reality [mashable.com]: Let’s say you’re at Disneyland. There’s a ton of information on where to go, what you need to see, and what you can do available on the website. Smartphones and mobile sites put that in your pocket. Layar and developers like Mouse Reality are letting you parse that information using the real world as a canvas.

Laryar is an augmented reality app that layers information on the screen of your Android or iPhone on top of a live view from the camera. Developers can create Layars to be displayed on the app like the Tweeps layar that shows geotagged tweets and the Upcoming layar that shows information from Upcoming.com, which are both free, or the new Disneyland or Walt Disney World Layars which cost $3.45 each.

It’s easy to know where you are and what you want to do, but it’s not always easy to connect the physical world with the information about it online. Augmented Reality apps like this, including Layar, Google Goggles, Yelp and others, will let you use the real world as a key to extract the right information from the digital world.

The Thrilling Potential of Sixth Sense Technology [ted.com]: Check out this TED talk from inventor Pranav Mistry. By the end of his demonstration you’ll have a different vision of the future of mobile computing.

Mistry invented a wearable computer that, “projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets us interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or our interaction with the object itself. ‘SixthSense’ attempts to free information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.”

Even better than layering digital information on top of your view of the real world is the ability to use the real world as an interactive computing surface. Think about integrating this into helmets for navigating cities by bike–or ski resorts. Imagine being able to seamlessly tag real world objects and be able to store, sort and retrieve that information later; taking a photo, simply by marking a place and time rather than using a separate camera; being able to view metadata about real world objects in real time…

Travel brands and destination marketers should see huge potential in combining real and virtual experiences through innovations in augmented reality and semantic technology in the next few years. This is just the beginning.

-Mike

It’s inevitable that most travel brands will see seasonal downswings in web and search traffic, but there are things you can do to level it off and put your brand in a better position when the season comes back around.

Year Round Content for Seasonal Brands

Seasonal search traffic is centered around things like weather, traffic and season that brands can’t control, but landmarks, cities, events, and activities get good search all year even though the specifics may change by the season. Having the best source of content is the best path to web traffic.

Regional Events & Attractions: Even if you’re just a ski resort without a robust lineup of summer time activities and services, there’s always something going on in nearby resort towns. From concerts and shows to races and sporting events, being a year round resource for fun things to do in the area keeps your brand at top-of-mind and builds your SEO for general regional search terms. This also gives you the chance to remind summer travelers that there’s a reason to come back in the winter.

Season Countdown: A decent strategy would be do deny the existence of summer altogether and start a season countdown as soon as the bull-wheels stop turning. Give your customers their fix through the off season with articles, videos and imagery from ski season all through the summer. Just because there’s no snow on the ground doesn’t mean that we’re not still thinking about snow.

Ger them fired up early: As soon as the first cool evening hits at the end of summer we all start thinking about ski season. Stoke the pre season fire by compiling photos and video footage into a best-of reel and release it as new content.

Stay Social: Keep up with a consistent social media campaign even in the off season. Update customers on news, and website content, happenings at the resort and other updates that can be a resource for the community.

Good SEO for seasonal websites

This section contributed by Greg Slama, Manager, Contextual Marketing

Based on the two ways to promote seasonal content on a homepage, the ideal method is clear: use a modular homepage, much like what is used in the retail industry.

SEO benefits of a modular page

Authority: Since search engines view a websites top-down hierarchy as the a way to identify the most important hubs of content (keyword categories), it is important to consistently represent these within the nagivation of the website

Content Prioritization: Allows for the prioritization of seasonal content in the most prominent areas of the webpage without dropping key content themes from the homepage (e.g. if you drop the navigational link ‘ski resorts’ from your homepage it is likely that ranking for the given term (or term set) may dissipate and/or create ranking difficulties as the ‘money’ season comes into play

Link Popularity: It is natural for most websites to have a high percentage of links pointing at the homepage versus internal pages, switching the homepage path can eliminate the link popularity built up for your most link heavy page. Even if done correctly, through a 301 redirect, the link ‘juice’ can be diluted creating variability of your website strength versus those you are competing for rank against. Although 301 redirects are the best way to transfer traffic and link popularity to a website when a URL must change, it is usually best to keep URL paths unless there is a significant benefit anticipated from changing (e.g. shorter URLs, keyword inclusion, pushing priority topics closer to the root)

If it is a must to switch landing pages – some practices to consider are:

• Keep navigational links constant
• 301 redirects!
• Keep all homepage iterations in the root – dropping them into a deeper level makes them less ‘important’
• Expedite crawling upon switches by using social media assets and Twitter to announce your ‘summer’ or ‘winter’ content has arrived (think real-time search)

-Mike

Allowing branded content to be re-purposed and shared across multiple channels is something that One to One Travel has been pushing for years, and it is great to see a large volume website incorporating that strategy into their business model. This is part of a larger web 3.0 strategy shift that allows a true online ecosystem where content may be housed on a central platform and seamlessly distributed to many channels in many formats. Companies like TripAdvisor who facilitate this will be well ahead of the competition.

Read more about the new feature

- Rob