Aug
30
Open Forum
Filed Under Foreign language learning, Marketing, Reading | Leave a Comment
There are interesting articles, discussions and videos to be found on the website of American Express’s Open Forum. It’s dedicated to small businesses and since there are so many of them in the tourism and hospitality industry I thought you may find them interesting. It features a number of sections: inovation, life-style, managing, marketing, money, technology, and the world. Each of them is packed with information, points of views, little secrets of successful people, etc.
To get a taste for the Open Forum, try reading Richard Branson’s “Brand Secrets They Don’t Teach in Business School” or Anita Campbell’s “Incubating Innovative Women Entrepreneurs“.
BTW – this is not an advertisement for the credit card company! The articles are suitable for learners of English as they are easy enough to understand, interesting and informative.
Aug
3
Since some of you are interested in travel technology, I thought you may be interested to know that there are 12 seminar presentations from the 2010 Travel Technology Europe Show on the show’s website. They range from topics such as optimizing online marketing and EU legislation to technology and travel trends. Definitely worth watching!
While you’re there, you may also like to watch a recent webinar: “The Use of Social Media in Travel”. The speakers were Justin Reid, Head of Online and CRM at Visit Britain, and Simon Jones, Director of Marketing at Digital Visitor. It’s excellent!
Aug
1
Why do you?
The PhoCusWright’s European Consumer Travel Report suggests reason number one why European travellers visit particular travel-related websites is positive previous experience. This then is followed by reasons such as best prices or offers, brand trust, comprehensive information and photographs – in various orders depending on the travellers’ country of origin.
As you can see in the image below, the research focuses only on three Eropean countries. Does this justifies the use of the adjective European? Isn’t such report title misleading? You can’t really make generalisations about Europeans based on only three European countries! Especially with so much variation among them! Imagine the variation in reasons for visiting websites if all European countries were studied!
Titles too general are always misleading. In this particuar case the title also suggests that the other European countires don’t count or they are not worth researching as data for France, Germany and the UK are obviously enough for a serious business to understand the European market. Reducing Europe to three countries is thus also demeaning!
Scientifically such generalisations are definitely not acceptable.
Source: PhoCusWrite (1/8/2010)
Jun
20
There’s nothing like Australia
Filed Under Culture, Destinations, Marketing | Comments Off
Tourism Australia has come up with a new campaign for promoting the country. I suppose you still remember ‘Where the bloody hell are you’ campaign. Compare the new video to it and say which you think works better. And if you’d like to learn more about the campaign, there’s information provided about it here (http://www.media.australia.com/en-au/mediareleases/default_4416.aspx) The press conference video explaining the rationale is to be found here (http://www.media.australia.com/en-au/4444.htm) and the promotional video here (http://www.media.australia.com/en-au/4443.htm). And the new website is here: http://www.nothinglikeaustralia.com/index.htm. Enjoy it.
Oct
17
I’ve come across two lectures that you may want to watch. They are lectures by Dan Ariely given at Ted in 2008 and 2009. They are inspiring and I though you may want to check them yourselves.
More about this author in Wikipedia.
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