Follow-Up: .travel

During a previous post on the Interactive Trend Report, we mentioned the recent news about the .travel domain becoming widely available to the 'larger' travel industry. While most blog subscribers read my original post, you probably missed the comments submitted by EnCirca Preseident Tom Barrett...unless you went to the blog.

So, for all of those reading Travel 2.0 via email or RSS, here are the comments from Tom and my response to the original post about .travel.

regarding .travel: the game has barely begun!

I disagree that the game is over for .travel. The game has barely begun! You are correct that search engines and .com have powerful inertia. However, the internet has a lot of growth...and change to come.

Destinations gain the most benefit with .travel. With an address like Arizona.travel, the destination brand is in the forefront and the targeted industry is explicit. Most DMO's are too late to the party to get this with .com.

The real problem with new extensions like .travel and .jobs is that folks are unrealistic about the time it will take for these to gain critical mass (this includes the investors of the new registries). But for those who go ahead and advertise the new extension start reaping the benefits right away.

best regards,

Tom Barrett
EnCirca

--

Hello Tom,

First and foremost, thank you for your comments about the post. This is exactly the kind of dialogue that the Interactive Trend Report was designed to produce. Opening up the conversation among our peers will help grow the entire industry’s knowledge on these important topics.

Next, major kudos for using the tools provided by this blog (comments) to join the conversation. This is exactly the type of case study we have been discussing on this blog…how the travel industry can take advantage of blogs, wikis, UGC sites, etc. to promote, brand and defend there marketing programs.

You disagreed with what was said, decided to speak up and defend what you believe in, all in a very respectful and helpful manner. Plus, you signed your name at the bottom…completely transparent…fantastic! You could have easily left the post as anonymous, however it certainly would not have carried the same weight or be as beneficial to the conversation.

As a side, I am curious to know how you learned about the post. Are you using a certain blog tracking tool?

As I said in my original post, I do believe that the idea behind any .whatever extension works well on paper. In theory, the idea that any .travel domain name instantly creates recognition in the consumers mind should work.

However, who would own the domain name grandcanyontours.travel? Or miamihotel.travel?

Without extremely strong regulations for who owns the .travel domain name as well as a comprehensive public educational program…which the individual organization does not have the resources to implement…adoption of the extension will be simply a step to deter squatters.

And now that the domain registration process is being opened up to any ‘significant participants’ within the travel industry, the recognition that the .travel extension carried will be reduced further.

At that point, if .travel is not an inherent distinguisher for the general public, why not just go with .com? Granted, I might not get the exact name I wanted, but with these new regulations, the chances of getting that .travel domain are reduced as well. Plus, if you factor in the nearly $100 cost for each .travel domain, a (as low as) $1.99 .com domain looks like a tremendous value.

I personally believe that .travel could work, but only with significant changes to the regulations and a thorough educational campaign.

As the .travel process continues to more forward, I encourage you to provide updates to the Interactive Trend Report. I, as well as the readers, would be interested to hear about the progress.

Thanks!
Troy

Study Finds Online Reviews A Powerful Tool

Do travel and other consumers use online reviews? Yes. Are they willing to pay more for high ratings? Yes. So says a recent study that found consumers were willing to pay at least 20% more for services receiving "excellent" or 5-star rating opposed to those receiving "good" or 4-star ratings. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Ok. If you're already a subscriber to this blog, chances are you're already drunk on the user-generated-social-media-web-2.o concoction Troy and I have been eagerly serving. But in case you happen to be someone who has never researched a trip online or purchased something on E-Bay and Amazon...YES it's true! All the hoopla about user generated content and reviews maybe right after all.

According to a recent study conducted by the Kelsey Group, 25% of consumers reported using online reviews for a service delivered offline and a significant portion of these consumers subsequently "converted" by either eating at a restaurant or staying at a hotel. More importantly however, consumers are willing to pay 20% more for brands receiving extremely good reviews from like minded consumers. Again not a very big surprise. But as more destinations start building "fan" sites such as GoSeeOregon.com, GoSeeArizona.com and GoSeePortland.com, this study is yet another validation that we're on the right path. Now the challenge before us all is how do we sustain our communities?

Travel Trends - .travel, JetBlue, Privacy

.travel To Open Up Registration (Read, we need money) - Like a few of you, I received an email this week from EnCirca or the company one of the companies behind the .travel domain extension. The email basically stated that as of December 21st anybody with a travel related business can apply for a .travel domain name. The email itself was pretty comical, with lines such as 'anticipated December 21 Land Rush for .travel' or '.travel domain names are ideal for search engine marketing.' Good stuff.

While the .travel domain idea looked good on paper and in theory, it has not worked as designed in the real world. People have not caught onto the idea that a domain extension such as .biz, .travel or .jobs is the same as .com. Seriously, most people cannot even grasp the concept of .net, let alone .travel or .asia. With search engines becoming more than just a simple website, but an embedded action in our thought process for locating information, the need for a certain domain name and domain extension is dwindling.

Now, if you are like the Arizona Office of Tourism, you might own a few of these key domain names...such as arizona.travel...just to prevent someone from squatting or worse, using that domain in an undesirable manner. But you can call off the plans to switch over your whole advertising campaign and interactive strategy to yourdestinationhere.travel. It's already over...before it really got started.
http://encirca.com/

JetBlue Goes Wireless - As we have discussed previously on the Interactive Trend Report, the next big frontier for in-flight entertainment, or annoyance depending on your point-of-view, is in-flight wireless access. Earlier this month, JetBlue announced a basic pilot program (no pun intended) to test wireless access aboard one of there Airbus A320 jets, dubbed BetaBlue (how clever). While this service will be a reality for airline passengers in the near-future, it appears that JetBlue's wi-fi still has a few bugs to be worked out. But, with American Airlines, Virgin America, and Alaska Airlines all preparing to launch wireless access during the next year, you are not too far away from checking your email from 40,000ft. Or at least checking your favorite blog...this one!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/

People Don't Truly Care About Privacy - A very good post from Seth Godin, discusses the some of the latest news surrounding the idea of internet privacy and privacy in general, and why people don't really care about it. To quote from the post:

There's been a lot of noise about privacy over the last decade, but what most pundits miss is that most people don't care about privacy, not at all.

If they did, they wouldn't have credit cards. Your credit card company knows an insane amount about you.

What people care about is being surprised.

Exactly. Facebook's attempt at targeted ads encountered vocal opposition because the private information being collected was being used in an irresponsible manner...i.e., they surprised people. We all know we are being watched, just don't remind us of it.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Who is Clicking on Your Banners...Probably a middle-aged, sweepstakes-loving, Midwestern woman who likes junk mail and the Packers

Advertising is the bread and butter of the web, yet most of my friends claim that they never click on ads, typically using a peacock tone that signals their pride in being ad-averse. The geekier amongst them go out of their way to run Mozilla scripts to scrape ads away, bemoaning the presence of consumer culture. Yet, companies increasingly rely on ad revenue to turn a profit and, while clicking on ads may be declining, it certainly hasn't gone away. This raises a critical question: Who are the people that click on ads? >>Full Story

Thoughts// Okay, so maybe they are not all Green Bay Packers fans. But according to some recent data from AOL they are probably middle-aged women from the Midwest. This story, which highlights those findings, asks the question how and why social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook rely so heavily on this type of advertising for revenue. And, since we all seem to 'hate' ads, who actually does click these ads?

While this conversation is very interesting on its own, it does lead nicely into another conversation I have been having internally over the past few weeks...what type of measurement stats should we be monitoring? If the majority of the clicks are coming from one, single demo, how valuable are those clicks? If the clicks don't lead to a conversion, should you value those clicks the same as ones that do?

To steal a quote from the article 'the ad world is obsessed with clicks because they can measure those.'

As more and more reasons mount to move away from the page view statistic (see online video, AJAX) and as this trend begins to come into the mainstream (see Nielsen/NetRatings dropping the page view stat in favor of time spent) we as marketers need to begin looking at different metrics to help measure the effectiveness of our campaigns.

Tangible statistics or, as Mo's team at Travel Oregon likes to say, engagement statistics such as (for a DMO) guides / brochures ordered, time spent on pages, time spent on key pages, search terms, downloads, email database sign-ups, blog stats or account-based pages used in conjunction with visitors and unique visitor metrics can begin to reveal a more realistic picture of who and what your website consumers actually are and what they are doing.

With that kind of information and data, you can actually start advertising and marketing to your target audience rather than everyone.

Travel Trends - Delta, Sweden, Ad Agencies, TripIt

Planeguage from Delta - Delta and Delta.com, who have been rapidly adopting to some of the latest interactive trends since emerging from bankrupcy, (see Delta SiteSeer Challenge, Delta SiteSeer Video and Under the Wing) have just launched a series of short, animated videos titled 'Planeguage.' The videos put a humorous spin on some of the most common challenges/hassles of airline travel. You can view the first video above or, if reading via email/rss, view the video online.

Personally, I think the videos are fantastic, from the intro music to the characters to the stories, and the spots appear to be a great way to create a viral marketing campaign around the new Delta brand. Notice that the videos are already on YouTube, and in the case of the one above, have been viewed 10,000+ times. While the videos themselves are entertaining, it will be interesting to see if consumer response is 'that is creative and fun' or 'so they are telling me they have no room on there planes.' Communicating with consumers online, what a tricky endeavor.
http://blog.delta.com/

Community of Sweden - Always under the radar, those Swedes have been busy. Visit Sweden has just introduced what it is calling the 'Community of Sweden', the ' the official online community for Sweden,' where visitors can 'share and enjoy photos, travel stories tips and more from friends in Sweden and all over the world.' Think of it as it MySpace for people who love traveling to Sweden. As numerous DMOs begin to experiment in the UGC / Social Networking space, look for more of these communities to begin appearing. Hands down, the best feature of the site is the fantastic flash map / update tool on the homepage. Great execution on the map.
http://communityofsweden.com

Forrester: Web Shops Not Ready to Lead - During the recent HSMAI Internet Marketing Strategy Conference, which I attended last Monday, one of the topics brought up by the attendees was what the ad agency of the future looks like. The popular answer was that the ad agency of the future has a deeper understanding of the interactive world with a solid background of 'traditional' advertising. While several interactive / online agencies are getting closer to this ideal situation, it would appear...according to this report...that we still have a while to go.
http://www.adweek.com/

TripIt Is In Sync With You - Semantic Web here we come. Travel planning service TripIt...introduced to the blog a few months ago...has launched a new service that will automatically sync your travel plans with your calendar such as Office, iCal, Google, etc. So, no more manually entering your travel dates into the calendar, TripIt does it for you. Just as a refresher, the 'hook' of TripIt is that you can forward your confirmation email to the service, which will automatically create a complete trip itinerary for you. Convenient.
http://www.tripit.com/

New Mexico Ad Campaign Poll - Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in our New Mexico Ad Campaign Poll, which asked the members of this blog to voice their opinion on the recent story about the New Mexico 'alien' ad campaign.

If you missed any of the posts you can read them here: New Mexico Ad Campaign Posts

Now for the results:

Does the New Mexico Ad Campaign effectively promote the state?

Yes - 5 (26%)
Yes, but it could have a stronger New Mexico focus - 4 (21%)
No - 0 (0%)
No, but it does stand out from other ads - 10 (52%)

It would appear that we all agree that the ads stood out from the typical travel marketing message, but the group is split (9/10) on whether or not the campaign effectively promoted the state.

It looks like we will just have to wait for the results of the campaign to pass a final judgment on it's success...like the rest of the travel industry in New Mexico.

Putting the 'I' in Viral Makes Web Ads Infectious

Go munk, elf or scrooge yourself; everyone else is. Viral campaigns that ask consumers to add their own picture or voice to a person or animal have yielded substantial results for brands like OfficeMax, Purina and Careerbuilder. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Not totally travel related but a recent article in BrandWeek recently examined the popularity of ads that compel consumers to add their photos or voices into campaigns. Apparently we're all egotistical because these campaigns are extremely popular! Consider:

• Burger King's "Simpsonize Me" has generated over 77 million page views and 40 million photos have been "Simpsonized"
• 9.5 million elves bearing faces have been created on OfficeMax.com (ok, I'll admit I created mine just for this blog!)
• 1 million "doggie emails" have been created on Purina.com

While these campaigns are definitely fun and create good buzz for your brand, I am wondering if there are conversion studies that gauge how they impact the bottom line? For example, I was a huge fan of the "Snakes on Plane" promotion where your friends get a personalized (pre-recorded) phone call from Samuel L. Jackson...however, I never saw (nor do I intend to see) the movie.

Score One for Consumers....

Under mounting pressure from its community and various consumer privacy groups, Facebook has moved to scale back its ambitious plans to publish accounts of its user’s purchases and other commercial actions publicly to their various friend groups. As of late Thursday, Facebook users must now proactively consent to alert friends whenever they take various actions, such a renting a DVD or purchasing a pair of sneakers. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Would you like your social network of friends alerted about every recipe you've saved on Epicurious.com, every flight you've booked on Travelocity or every movie purchase on Fandango? Facebook's controversial new ad platform "Beacon" was supposed to do just that...essentially telling your friends about your "vote of confidence" for these brands; and yes, these brands have a partnership with Facebook.

Sound big brother to you? More than 50,000 Facebook users did. In the face of a flurry of protests by both users and privacy groups, Facebook has scaled back the program. Users now have to explicitly give permission (opt in) before their purchases are announced to the world.

I suppose we could forgive Facebook for this misstep. In the midst of a meteoric growth in terms of users, third party applications and not to mention it's "media darling" status, perhaps Facebook forgot the carnal rule of digital marketing...it's PERMISSION based!

Travel Trends - My Location, Talking Outdoor

When Outdoor Talks Back - A great post from MediaPost's Mobile Insider blog talks about a deal between outdoor giant Clear Channel and Bluetooth content provider Qwikker that will allow thousands of outdoor ads to talk to your phone. Basically, if you and your Bluetooth enabled phone come close enough to a certain ad, say a subway transit board, a signal will be sent from the board to your phone, asking you to interact with the ad...perhaps via a download or message (similar to the popular RFID ads used by Mini earlier this year, pictured). But before your start avoiding bus shelters and subways, remember that this type of technology will be (more than likely) permission based. Now that is an interactive ad.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/

Google Maps Launches My Location - Earlier this month, Google Maps...who are slowing mapping everyone and everything...launched another product offering called My Location. My Location will allow cell phone users, with or without a GPS-enabled phone, to see a real-time representation of their location on a (Google) map. Sounds good, might be interesting. But the real benefit for Google is the integrated advertising opportunity that this technology creates.

Let's say you use Google for mobile search (or online search) and they know you have searched for a pizza restaurant in Scottsdale. So, the next time you are physically near that pizza restaurant, Google sends you a text message coupon for that restaurant. Or if you are near a certain store, Target for example, Google can send you an ad or message relating to that store.

Considering the shear amount of usable data gathered by both providers and application creators (such as this one) as well as its wide-spread use, this type of mobile advertising could create some extremely targeted advertising opportunities for marketers.
http://www.google.com/mobile/

I Never Thought I Would Say It, But I Can't Read This Ad

As I was reading a few online news sites the other day, I came across this ad for the Italian Government Tourism Board.

Thoughts// While the creative execution is fine...what troubled me was the size of the text at the bottom of the ad. I can't read it...and I am 27 with good eyesight. Granted, I run my monitor at a 1280 x 800 resolution (that means my text is tiny), I would still think that the majority of people have a tough time reading this ad. Let alone if they actually wanted to read the text.

So, the lesson here is to think about the monitor size of users viewing your ads. Not everyone is using the same screen size as you or your designer.

There you go, I never thought I would say it, but...I can't read that ad.