Blog homeOther travel ecommerce blogs have written about the impact of new media on PR etc…. and how to handle it. One of the best articles and discussions has been written by Neil MacLean and published on the Travolution blog.
I am not in a position to have any great insight into what you, as a travel company, should be doing to promote your product….. but what I can do is give a few examples that have happened on this blog and why I think they are good, bad or ugly.
The good
- Orbitz wrote a nice comment that provided useful insight into the size of their website (on the How significant is total number of pages to a travel website). As a result, I let them off putting a couple of linked search terms in the comment.
- Stephen Joyce comments on this blog fairly often. What may surprise you is that he is one of our main competitors. That is fine by me and he is more than welcome here. Do you actively engage in conversations with your competitors - in public?
- CorporateFX, a financial company, wrote a guest post outlining how exchange rate hedging works. Hopefully they received some benefit from it - and we all learnt something. I did.
i.e. you help me, I will help you. As simple as that. Even if you are a competitor.
The bad
- LateRooms.com and their Weymouth Sand hotel. OK - they didn’t approach me to write about it - but it did come via my desk as something I could write about. In the end I thought they were trying too hard - too much PR and not enough substance FOR THIS BLOG. (Although sufficient for local press and hotel specific blogs). See their video on YouTube
- HamptonInn from Hilton - they tend to write a comment with the first half being somewhat interesting but the second half just pure promotion. I am happy with that - I just delete the second half of the comment. Moral of the story - try to write sensible comments or I will just edit them. To see an example of an “unedited” sales comment from Hilton - go to this thread on Hotel-Blogs (Sorry Guillaume). This hotel should know better. The thing is, they have a nice YouTube video called “Ballad of a Traveler” - but I never featured it because they tried too hard
i.e. don’t try too hard. Be human. If your comment isn’t something you would want to read - then don’t write it.
The ugly
- Webcredible and their forthcoming “User experience in online travel” seminar. 2 weeks ago I signed up for this “invitation only” event (right after it was announced). Today I found out I wasn’t invited as they were oversubscribed (boo hiss). It seems it took them 2 weeks to tell me it was full…. they are probably filtering their invites (perhaps by who is most likely to buy consulting from them). Now all they have done is upset me. Am I likely to write about their event or their research now? Nope. Perhaps they don’t care.
i.e. don’t upset me. You don’t want to see that.
Have a good weekend all.
If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you for reading!
