Scott Woodhouse, CMO of Travellr.com contacted me in early March to invite me and my readers to participate in a private beta test of Travellr.com, a new website he has launched.  What I really liked was the fact that Scott was proactive and created a beta code “t4blog” before he contacted me.  For all you other Web 2.0 marketing types out there, this is a great example of how to engage with a blogger effectively. I released the...

Earlier in the week I asked the following question on Twitter: Question: Who owns customer data? Supplier, Agency, Customer. I would like your thoughts on this? The discussion first came up at the Enter 2009 Conference in Amsterdam where I argued that we, as an industry, need to spend less time hording customer data and more effort in developing a mechanism for sharing customer information in a more efficient way and for the benefit of the...

I mentioned in my session at the Florida Association of CVB’s Annual Marketing Summit, that an effective way to manage your photos is to upload them to Flickr.com.  As an example, I have created a new account for myself and uploaded a number of photos that were previously only available in my Facebook profile.  You can access the photostream here.  Note that all the photos have a clearly described title, a good description, and...

It’s not very often that small travel agencies have any kind of advantage over their much larger and better funded counterparts, but when it comes to Social Media they have a distinct advantage.  Small agencies whether they have one employee or many tend to be better prepared to handle personal requests and offer one on one service.  Large agencies, especially OTAs, are generally more focused on volume and, although many have excellent...

I was commenting on some photos on Facebook when I noticed that a couple of my fellow blogging friends, including the Happy Hotelier and Chris Clarke, had added a new application called Jetsetter, developed by VibeAgent. Although the interface is nothing spectacular and the profile candy is a little large for my liking, the application itself is very simple and fun. In their words… Are you a Jetsetter? See how many miles you’ve...