Successful hotel marketing recognizes the paradigm shift between engagement and interruption. In the present market, travelers want information and memorable experiences—not hype and persuasion. Furthermore, they want what they want on their own terms and timelines as they organize trips and activities that are often spontaneous and rarely linear. Racing along on a [...]
Understanding geographic scale is crucial to developing destination-marketing strategies that bring visitors back again and again. At regional levels, marketers need to think about destination branding using points of interest as part of a package that draws attention to the destination whole. At local scales, marketers need to treat points of interest as integrated [...]
There's a lot to learn from Legos. Despite being small and deceptively simple, they combine quickly to create incredible structures like skyscrapers or Jurassic dinosaurs. The miracle of the Lego is not in its complexity nor in its size. It's in its ability to work seamlessly with other little objects to form wholes that [...]
"What marketing" is the time-tested technique of informing visitors of opportunities prior to their visits. Traditionally, "what marketing" employs print publications and websites. More contemporary and rapidly evolving "What else marketing" employs newer technologies such as smart phones, social media, and QR-codes. "What else marketing" strategies increase commerce at the Point of Purchase (POP)—the [...]
Understanding the concept of “emergent properties” is the difference between succeeding and floundering in a fluid technology marketplace. In the end, it is not surprising that the Apples, Facebooks, and Googles of the world develop birds to advance the economies and emergent properties of flocks. If we continue with the aforementioned analogy, interactive maps [...]
Cruising is growing. 20.3 million passengers cruised in 2012—a 7% increase over 2010. This figure is expected to grow to 23.7 million within five years. 12.5 million were North American—heading primarily to Caribbean posts of call. Occupancy rates exceeded 103% demonstrating that demand outpaces supply. Last year twelve new ships set sail with guest [...]
An Accenture survey found that two-thirds of all participating organizations planned to ramp-up their open-source investments. These findings compared with a Zenoss survey, which noted that 98 percent of all enterprise companies use open-source software in some capacity. The writing is on the wall According to PC Magazine, a survey of 300 [...]
It would be comfortable to think that "open source software" can't do what "real company software" can. But, that would be shortsighted, verging on bunk. Open source solutions not only do what proprietary solutions do, they do things better for a laundry list of compelling reasons that are long as your arm. Let's consider. [...]
The future will emphasize downtime and leisure activities surrounding events. According to Midori Connolly, co-founder, CEO for Pulse Staging and Events, “People are becoming interested in hyper-local opportunities [markets]. We were just at a conference in Tunica, MS, and they took us to this famous little cafe that serves fried pickles, and we heard a [...]
CRM is a generic model for managing interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. CRM works great for selling hardware, car batteries, or pet foods. Destinations need something that is more specialized. They need what we call an integrated DRM (Destination Relationship Management). Next-generation DRM organizes people, teams, tasks, and prospects in the same [...]