Happy Hotelier - Where to Stay in Berlin?
March 4, 2008
I finished part 2 of of my post Preparing for the Travel Bloggers Summit on Happy Hotelier.
As it is a very lengthy post I will give you here just my conclusion:
Finally I found a moderately priced place to stay in Pension Elite through Booking.com. I have not looked into Priceline.
My conclusion is that the aggregators like Hoteltip, Hotels Combined.Com and VibeAgent are becoming stronger and offer some help, but you need the reliability of a real OTA and you cannot book something without having checked out the property on Tripadvisor.
So to my view it is still much more of a hassle than would be necessary to DIY hotel bookings if you want something special, especially when you have time constraints or are a notorious late booker like myself.
PS Who is taking care of the comments here? None of the comments that I see are visible in the blog!
Can small Social Media players compete with the Facebooks and MySpaces?
March 4, 2008
Attending the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit is a great opportunity to learn and share. I admire all the bloggers who will participate, many of whom wrote articles for the first Tips from the T-List book. I am hoping to talk about many of you about the niche social network. We all know about the Facebooks, the MySpaces. the VirtualTourists and the TripAdvisors, but I would like to know your opinion about niche social networks. As I wrote in my introduction, I recently launched a niche social network focused around Travel and Friendship called Canadamigos Network. It’s target market is mainly comprised of Hispanics around the world interested in Canada and Canadians interested in Hispanic culture and destinations. The site encourages content in both official languages of Canada in additionto Spanish. Canadamigos was quietly launched in late December and to date has grown to over 600 members from Canada, the US, Latin America and Spain.
Why launch a niche social network site? Looking at what had been happening on the Web in the past little while and understanding that if I did not add Web 2.0 tools to my business I could be at a disadvantage I started blogging for the Hispanic traveler in my BlogdeCanada.com blog. This led naturally to social media. I had been using the Ning platform as a member of Turismo 2.0 and realized that this platform could be the one to use for my own social network site. I looked at the costs (and mostly thought about the time I would surely need to dedicate to the site) and finally decided to jump in with both feet. This first year will be a kind of Beta phase during which time I will try to determine whether the project is worth the investment or not, i.e. whether the site can make money or not.
One of the incentives for a small online business like mine is the idea that marketers may be interested in very focused targeted niches. Blogger David Wilson wrote in his Social Media Optimization blog an article entitled “Niche Social Networks Will Continue To Be Hot In 2008“ that I found encouraging:
“The niche social networking market is exploding as thousands of sites have sprang up to cater to specific interests, backgrounds, professions and age groups. Nightclub frequenters can converge at DontStayIn.com. Wine connoisseurs have formed Snooth.com, and people going through divorce can commiserate at Divorce360.com. While small in numbers these sites form intimate communities of like-minded people. And that is what attracts advertisers.
Overall, ad spending on social-networking sites is expected to grow 75 percent next year, to $2.1 billion, according to eMarketer. Of the $920 million spent this year to advertise on social networks, 8.2% went to niche sites, up from 7% in 2006. In 2008, niche sites’ share of ad revenue is expected to grow to 10%.”
“The smaller niche networks allow advertisers to focus more on ads tailored to these specific audiences.
“Companies are learning that these smaller communities may reach people that are more valuable to their brands. It will someday feel more like information than marketing,” Jeremiah Owyang, a social-networking analyst at Forrester Research.”
In the case of Canadamigos.com, I see two challenges. 1) Maintaining the integrity of the site while growing it’s membership and making sure that there is always relevant content being posted and 2) tapping into marketers who are looking or may be interested in niche vehicles to promote their destination or tourism business to influencers and “low hanging fruit” consumers.
The first challenge is a matter of time. The second challenge also involves time, but it will also be a matter of education and salesmanship. Many small destinations (DMO’s) and some not so small may still be in the dark as to how to use social media to complement their marketing efforts. Furthermore, working with conventional ROI models, they may have difficulty quantifying a social media initiative (unless it’s a straight adveritising/impressions deal). Finally, there’s the issue of time and resources. The ideal arrangement would be for DMO’s or tourism businesses to not only advertise on the site, but more importantly to participate by adding content, communicating with members, etc, developing relationship with them. But this takes time and human input. Someone needs to look after the store. Quoting David Wilson: “The first social media step that many companies take is to launch a blog. The problem with this idea is committing to producing content on a consistent basis. A company’s blog that hasn’t been updated for weeks or months is perceived worse than a company that doesn’t have a blog.” DMO’s and tourism businesses (that are not already considering) will need to create new positions like “resident blogger” or “chief social media officer” (Wilson)
I look forward to barinstorm with all of you during the summit and thank you in advance for your input.
Saludos,
Jaime
Carlo Alvarez Spagnolo - Texting all over the Words
March 3, 2008
First, I’ve been asked to write something about myself. Here you have a short bio.
Half Italian half Spanish, (relatives from Calabria and Cadiz) living in Barcelona. After a Biology degree, I studied Marketing and eCommerce. I’ve been working for 15 years in the Hospitality Industry. I started working at holiday resorts in Algarve and Costa del Sol. Then I ‘learned by doing’ hotel marketing at Keytel, after that I leaved ‘brik and mortar’ business and moved to Internet, working for two most bigger OTA in Spain: first in Atrapalo and after that in eDreams were, in both sites, I was in charge of Hotel business. Now I’m Operations and Contracting Manager at Interhome.
About my blog (sorry, in Spanish). I started a few year ago (my first post was in 2004), but it was during last year when I get involved and increased frequency of posts. I do not take so seriously my blog, for me is just a way to learn and share things about hospitality, marketing, travel 2.0 and social. Now I’m looking forward to have the opportunity to meet other bloggers at the Travel Bloggers Summit and to give me a new chance to learn about future while it happens. See you there.
One of the most helpful travel planning tools - Google Maps
March 3, 2008
Tomorrow I fly to Berlin - hopefully to arrive on time Wednesday morning to attend the summit’s first event at 10:30 am. One of the tools I have been using to plan my trip is Google Maps. I have used Google Maps on my sites before (mashups) and I found the took very easy to use. Since I’ve never been to Berlin I started researching the city and adding my findings onto the map I created. Then I found out that I could also make use of other Berlin maps created by other people (click on popular maps) as well as some from Google itself. While on my Berlin map page I can click on Google’s Featured Content and Places of Interest and from there I can click on Bars/Clubs, Banks/ATM’s, Coffee Shops (very important for Latte lovers like me), Major retail, etc. Once I click on one of the categories, Google overlays the map with hundreds of spots. For example, I looked at coffee shops and I found that there’s an Inernet Cafe very close by at Sömmeringstrasse 40 (the hotel is at number 24). The result is a very helpful map where I can see the airport in relation to my hotel and my hotel in relation to the ICC. With Google maps I have been able to more or less visualize where I will be and what spots I will be able to visit during my stay.
Regards,
Hotel alternatives aggregators
March 3, 2008
In my opinion the long tail phenomenon is impacting the media, entertainment, books and travel industry the most. Philip Wolf, our CEO and the analyst team were discussing whether long tail in travel is a company or strategy. The hypothesis is to say that a eco-friendly lodge in Cape town is a long tail company. But his point which is valid, is that long tail is a strategy not a company. So Travelocity can execute a long tail strategy. Anyway among the see of long tail products two I find interesting - couchsurfing and home exchange. The home exchange concept actually was part of recent cameron diaz romantic comedy flick “The Holiday”. The concept is self explanatory. Aggregators include Homeexchange, Internationalhomeexchange. The homexchange claims 12,000 members. Home exchange actually addresses a growing consumer disenchantment with hotel environment and the need for authenticity in staying.
That need is also address by sites like Couchsurfing where one can bunk out in registered members. The hosts have the option of rejecting the prospective guests. My friend in Bombay actually had two interesting guests. A swedish journalist in Bombay to do a story on guess what , the new Indian export Indian cinema or dumbly called Bollywood. This experience works both ways, because it allows for true interactions between the cultures. The tourist experience has made the traveler disconnected from the local citizens. The absence of dialogue results in tourists seeing a country through its past ( musuems), physical spaces (natural landscapes) or stage cultural experiences. Rarely through the eyes of the citizens. Now the Internet is building enabling trust networks to emerge to connect the traveler with local residents.
Welcome to The PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit from PhoCusWright
March 2, 2008
I want to welcome all participating bloggers to PhoCusWright’s Blogger Summit in Berlin. What a great event this is shaping up to be with 30 bloggers from 13 countries attending. This event is designed to be an opportunity to get some of the leading travel industry bloggers in the world together to share ideas and learn from each other as well as to share your best practices and ideas with travel industry professionals from around the globe at the blogger workshops. I really look forward to meeting all of you on Wednesday and sharing a few beers on Thursday night to review the event and talk about how to improve it for our next effort, which will be on November 18 at The PhoCusWright Conference in Hollywood California, USA.
Thanks so much to the T-List team, especially Phil Caines for all the coordination of this event.
Please note - the two meetings in the media center are open only to the list of accepted bloggers and we are completely full (overbooked actually). If you plan to join those meetings, get there on time, as there is very limited space in the conference room that we have been assigned by Messe Berlin.
See you Wednesday,
Bruce Rosard, VP Sales and Marketing, PhoCusWright
Netflix Recommendation engine contest and relevance for travel
March 2, 2008
I was browsing through Wired magazine at Istanbul airport enroute to Berlin and came across an engaging article on the race to build a recommendation engine that is 10% better than Netflix’s. Netflix has a sum of $ 1 million and race has narrowed to 5 teams, one of them being Princeton Alums, others are with AT&T. Anyway one of the more recent entrants is Maths Wiz living in England who is at the forefront of the quest. I am no expert in semantic websearch or human pyschology, but Mr. Potter’s approach ( whose identity was secret) is to integrate the discipline of mathematics and human pyschology. The approach I would guess of arecommendation engine is to data mine the the ratings and movie purchase history of individuals and suggest titles close to what customers interests and needs are. That same principle even for travel. The Internet doesnt differentiate between a search of Richard Branson and Ram Badrinathan typing Luxury holiday in africa. But there are increasing number of travel companies integrating recommendations, profile data to display results closer to your individual expectations. I guess it is a journey. Travelocity allows you to sort reviews based on your lifestage cohort - married with kids, startups like Vibeagent building recommendation engines. But my questions is will Expedia, Trip Advisor come out with a competition for superior recommendation engine for the travel industry!..
Les Explorers / Claude Benard Bio
February 29, 2008
Well, you want the classic Bio, look at this:
Claude started his career in tourism as a technical sales manager for a tour operator in Marseille (France) and worked with the network of travel agency in the south of France.
In addition to his work, he completed training at the University in Business Administration Université de la Méditerranée (Aix-Marseille II) 1992
He then spent 6 years as sales executive at the Envergure / Louvre Hotels group, especially for the brand 3 stars “Bleu Marine”, where he do a lot for this brand and learn a lot about hotel & travel industry.
It is at this time he discovered the tremendous potential of the Internet for the marketing of hotels and tourism.
He then became the sales and marketing manager for a regional hotel booking engine for the Marseille Chamber of Commerce.
He is now an independant consultant for hotel and tourism industry with a dedicated focus on independant hotel, Travel 2.0 and travel social media.
Claude has managed his blog Les Explorers for 2 1/2 years and a start a new blog www.hotelitour.com
Statuts Updates : Claude is wondering why he is the only french blogger who is present at PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit 
Statuts Updates : I look forward to meeting with all the bloggers and some interesting Cies.
Feel free to send a message if you want to meet me or call me 00 33 6 60 70 79 72 or 00 49 6 60 70 79 72
I’ve never been to Berlin. So, how have I planned my trip?
February 29, 2008
This will be my first time visiting Berlin. Though I am familiar with some of its history and I am aware of its reputation as a creative and dynamic Euorpean capital, it has never been on mine and my wife’s top ten desinations we want to visit or revisit soon. Since this will be a business trip, my wife had no input in the decision to go other than making sure our schedules allowed for my absence. She has also asked me to do some shopping while I’m there. What made me decide to go to Berlin is simply the opportunity to participate in the Bloggers Summit, meet and network with other tourism bloggers from around the world plus the opportunity to visit the massive ITB show.
This being a tourism blog and event, I thought I would share my travel planning process. Being time crunched as most professionals with families in North America are, I did not want to spend to much time researching hotels and flights. So I first checked on Expedia Canada, which I have been using to book travel since it was launched in Canda many years ago. I had two criteria to work with - price and proximity to the ICC but not too far from central Berlin. Naurally, my search on Expedia produced hundreds (or what seemed like hundreds of results). So on my first try (several weeks ago) all I accomplished was to confirm that the trip was within my business trips budget. But that first time I did not have time to look at the hotels in more detal. A few days later while I was on Facebook I figured I would ask my Facebook friends, many of whom are in the eTourism space and have travelled everywhere, to recommend a hotel in Berlin. I asked for something cool but not expensive (meaning less than $250/300 per night). My question was sent to about 30 friends but I only got about 6 responses. I did check out all of them. One was too low end (but very cheap), another was too expensive, and the others were either booked solid during ITB, not in the right location or did not appeal to me.
So then I went to Google and searched for Berlin to try and find a DMO. I only looked at the top five or six results of course and ended up on Berlin.de While I did not find the accommodations section helpful, I did like the site to explore what Berlin has to offer a new visitor. I decided to go back to Expedia and made a note to visit Berlin.de after I booked my flight and hotel. Given my time constraints (I never have enough time) I researched some hotels on Expedia as fast as possible looking at their location on a map having already determined where the ICC is (I started a Berlin Google Map for my own use and to share with other fellow bloggers). Once I had a candidate I would search on Google.ca or Google.de for the name of that hotel in order to visit their site to see if they had better rates and to get a further idea of what the hotel might actually look like. Then I went back to Expedia and searched for a few flight hotel combinations (similar prices but different flight schedules - some via the US, some via Europe). And that was that for the day. Still had some time to make a decision and book. Mind you I did check with some airline sites directly, but I found it easier and faster to do it on Expedia. I also checked out the IHG site because my own sites are affiliated to IHG and because I have a lot of loyalty points from Priority Club. The IHG properties for the most part had no available rooms. One thing I thought about, but felt it would take too much time was to check out TripAdvisor, so I skipped it.
Finally, another few days later, when I realized I better book or risk not finding a hotel I logged on to Expedia Canada and booked the package - flight (Continental), hotel (Berlin Econtel), travel insurance and $15 calling card pin.
Having booked the trip I have been going back to Berlin.de a few minutes at a time here and there to research the city and start planning what I will do with the one day and a half I will have to be a tourist in Berlin.
What do I conclude from this experience? That if I don’t have much time to surf, research or search, I will stick to a large player whose brand I trust - at least for the basic elements of the trip - flight and hotel.
Cheers,
(by the way, I don’t have a Flickr account and don’t really want to set one up - so forgive me if I don’t post a picture - I am use to the “other” platform and learning about this one as I go)
Vicky here from Tracking Tourism
February 29, 2008
Greetings from Scotland and the Tracking Tourism b2b blog.
Having just finished live blogging from Scotland’s Tourism Innovation Day yesterday (where Stephen was really earning his keep as workshop host) I’m really happy to start turning my mind back to ITB.
I must say, having looked through the people I want to meet with and interview, the sheer scale of ITB seems pretty overwhelming. If I achieve one thing, I want to talk with Incredible India and find out how their destination development is going ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. With Scotland hosting the games in 2014, and of course the 2012 London Olympics, I truly believe India is a destination to watch. Not least because like Scotland, Ireland, Mexico and Isreal, they also realise the importance and value of Diaspora tourism.
Also on my ITB hitlist is the Faroe Islands. Here at Highland Business Research we love islands. We were proud to research and develop the tourism strategy for Shetland, recently voted one of the world’s top island destinations - and Faroe is intriguing because it is so near to the North of Scotland, yet so utterly distinct in culture. I’m keen to understand their tourism USPs and how they balance tourism with a unique and remote way of life.
I’m also really looking forward to visiting Berlin itself. Berlin holds great memories for me. Stephen (my husband and Tracking Tourism co-author) lived there when we were students and it is the first place I ever encountered where beer was cheaper than coffee. Stephen introduced me to the marvels of CurryWurst (which I look forward to repeating) and I’m pretty sure my German still extends to asking the way to the stadium and buying train tickets to Leipzig. Hopefully ITB is in a stadium
Naturally, most of my goals for ITB are worthy, serious and highly travel and blog focussed. But if we get a few hours to play, I’m hoping to see Cabaret - in Berlin, in a Cabaret. How cool is that? Any musical loving bloggers want to join me, as there are seats on Thursday night?
I’m also really looking forward to the bloggers summit and the workshops. Florida PhoCusWright was a terrific experience and I’m hoping both to share some of that and learn some more from you guys when we meet in Berlin.
Forgive any typos as its past my bedtime - and I look forward to engaging with you again (in person or by blog) next week!
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