Travel Trends - Staycations!, Soundwalk

Why go to Florida? Buy a TV instead! - Everyone in the travel industry is currently cringing at the word 'staycation'...blame it on the media, I suppose...now industries outside of travel are jumping on the staycation bandwagon. Check out this recent email I personally received from Circuit City:

Subject Line: city life: Great staycations + an exclusive Wii Fit tell-all

And a shot of the email:


And, for your reading enjoyment, the entire article...A great escape is closer than you think.

Come on Circuit City, don't make the travel industry come down to your store and start roughing up the teenage employees. Drop the staycation line before someone hears you.
http://www.circuitcity.com/

Soundwalk - I remember seeing the library of Soundwalk audio tours at Barnes & Noble a while ago, but completely forgot about the product until Techcrunch featured the company again because of their new Louis Vuitton Soundwalk of China series. Soundwalk is 'a cinematic experience, a way to explore and understand a new culture and others' with a 'mix of fitting music, sound effects, interviews, and sound clips'. To say this is a simple podcast would be an injustice. Soundwalk is an impression collection of phenomenal narrators...my favorite is the Original Jazzy Jay on the Bronx Hip-Hip Walk...music, lyrical storytelling and soundeffects that are so perfect, you could just as easily enjoy the walks from home, rather than the corner of 46th St. and Broadway. Now, the Louis Vuitton series talks the Soundwalk to a whole new level, with a very rich (no pun intended) website experience featuring the luxury that is LV. Check out both the sites and delete those old podcasts of Paris you have sitting in iTunes.
http://www.soundwalk.com/

Delta Launches 'SiteSeer' Video Section

Delta Air Lines has launched SiteSeer Travelcast, a series of free, downloadable travel shows that aim to connect with passengers and highlight the travel experience of the airline's employees.

At launch, the travel videos, located at http://www.delta.com/siteseer, featured seven cities, including New York; Seoul, South Korea; and Mumbai, India, as of press time. Delta planned to launch a total of 10 videos. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Similar to some other airlines (Virgin Atlantic), Delta's new 'SiteSeer' Travelcast delivers online destination videos from real Delta employees. The travelcasts, which can be viewed online or downloaded to an iPod, take the user on a short tour of a Delta-serviced city. The videos and content are good quality, but it will be interesting to see if Delta expands this offering with more professional videos or takes the larger step and begins allowing user-generated videos on the site.