e-Marketing

Only 2 days left to the inaugural flight of the new super-plane Airbus 380 from Singapore to Sydney by Singapore Airlines. The new double decker Airbus A380 is due to make aviation history with it’s first commercial flight on October 25. The flight will be between a return flight between Singapore to Sydney.

Creating buzz, giving back, being the first, and leveraging the Internet were the recipes for Innovation for Singapore Airlines. So many companies talk about innovation, but this has been a flawless execution with taking a bit of risk.

Due to the demand from aviation enthusiasts to be first to fly on the revolutionary plane Singapore Airplines have come up with a novel way to distribute the tickets fairly - auction them on eBay to be paid with PayPal! All the proceeds from the sale of tickets on the first flight will be donated to charity. eBay and PayPal will subsidise the fees and ExxonMobil Aviation are donating the fuel for the flight to ensure the charities get the maximum benefit possible. The money will be split equally between, Singapore’s Community Chest, The Children’s Hospital (Randwick and Westmead), and Médecins Sans Frontières.

The auction on eBay ran for two weeks from August 27th to September 10th, attracted over 26 million hits from over 160 countries, and generated over US$ 1.9 million for charity.
The auction was one of the largest charity auctions, and among the most complex, ever held on eBay, and the largest it has operated across the Asia-Pacific. Some 366 auction items have been listed over the last 2 weeks, including seats in all three classes, in singles, pairs and blocks.
The eBay pages hosting details of the Singapore Airlines A380 First Flight Charity Auction recorded over 26 million hits during the auction, with Australia, Germany, the US then Canada making up the most visitors to the sites. Data suggests internet users from over 160 countries visited the auction pages at some point during the auction.
Throughout the two weeks of the auction – conducted on eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace – around 2,000 bidders pre-qualified by paying a security deposit, while several thousand others registered, so far buying 638 seats on both legs of the flight. A record was achieved for the sale of the first Singapore Airlines Suites package on the Singapore-Sydney flight, which sold for US$100,380 (S$153,000). The bargain of the auction was a single Economy seat from Sydney to Singapore, which sold for US$560 (S$853). The Suite Packages include a 1:100 (2 by 2 meter) model of the A380, a flights paid trip to Singapore Airlines headquarters in Toulouse, France to witness the delivery of the first Airbus A380, VIP transport to and from your flight on the A380 including first class tickets from anywhere in the world to Singapore and limousine transfers between flights.
One Singaporean purchased three Singapore Airlines Suites, two Business Class seats and an Economy Class seat on the Singapore-Sydney sector, paying US$56,000 (S$85,280) for the six seats.
Australians made up the largest nationality of successful bidders (15%), followed by Singaporeans (11%), Britons (6%), Americans (4%) and Germans (3%). The other 60% come from all over the world. Successful bidders ranged in age, from a San Francisco man who will turn 22 on the day of the flight, to a 76 year old from Vancouver, Canada.

Here I am with my friend Michael Stellwag, eCommerce Director for Singapore Airlines (North America) at the iMedia Summit (toggether with Andrew Brooks from Value Click) discussing this online auction.

Have a look at this video where Singapore Airlines CEO Chew Choon Seng takes the CEOs of Airbus and Rolls Royce on a tour of its first Airbus A380.

I was talking to my old buddy Mike Wylie, former VP of E-Commerce at Wyndham Hotels (during my Fairmont days), and now CEO of his own Internet Marketing Agency Standing Dog. Mike and I created the HSMAI Hotel Internet Marketing Committee back in 2003. Over the past two years, he has been enjoying his time on his own, and got quite creative in helping his clients. He received requests from his clients to help with monitoring of blogs and review sites, such as Tripadvisor, so he built an application to do it.

He is calling it ReviewAnalyst. For sure, there are other services out there, like Chatter Guard at steep $175/month (compared to the $99/month that Review Analyst is charging), or Google Alerts or Technorati Watchlist - but they don't provide the analysis behind the information. I think, it is a great service as far I can tell, but the most important point is still that the hotel should work very hard to nurture happy customers and avoid negative postings; and react immediately if a negative review comes up.

I spoke to Mike a few weeks ago. Here is an excerpt of our discussion:

TOURISM INTERNET MARKETING BLOG: What is ReviewAnalyst?

MIKE WYLIE: Review Analyst monitors consumer generated content for hotels on hotel review sites, blogs, video sites and image sites and brings it all into a simple dashboard where they can track and analyze the chatter and respond where possible.

TIM: Why did you develop this application?

MW: We understand the impact that consumer generated hotel reviews and content can have on a hotel’s revenue – both negative and positive. It’s something we were actively managing for our clients and encouraging them to take notice of it and react to it. So we built an application to make it easier to manage and ultimately decided to roll out for any hotel.

TIM: Where does the ‘Analyst’ part come in?

MW: First we show an average rating of the reviews over the last 30 days to show if the reviews are trending up or down.

Second, we perform an analysis on the reviews to find recurring keywords to determine if the hotel might have some challenges or opportunities. For example, ‘service’ is the top keyword for one of the hotels we monitor. After filtering it further based on the star rating of the review, the hotel identified that service was a reoccurring theme in its negative reviews. By clicking on the keyword in the dashboard, they can see all of the reviews mentioning ‘services’ and get more details.

Third, since TripAdvisor allows management responses, we provide a guideline for how to respond and examples which sample.

TIM: What is the cost?

MW: It’s simply $99 a month per hotel with discounts for a group of 5 or more hotels.

TIM: What are your future plans for ReviewAnalyst?

MW: We will continue to refine it and the algorithms in place. And competitor tracking will be added over the next 2 weeks. Additionally, we are adding a fun feature to the application to gauge a hotel’s ‘TripAdvisor Bookability Score’. This will be based on roughly six or seven different factors to determine how likely it is that a consumer would book that hotel after seeing it TripAdvisor. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

TIM: Thanks Mike, and all the best! Hope to see in Vancouver for Canada-e-Connect.

I thought this is quite interesting - another advertising channel, and actually not as intrusive as other annoying ad tactics (i.e. pop-ups). If done well, a brand could actually now have a call to action right from the video...

This parody of the famous Dove commercial made me smile, so I thought, why not add it to the blog...

Dove Evolution Commercial

Slob Evolution Parody

In the world of mass collaboration, the best of travel and tourism related blogs will be available for print for marketers in the travel, tourism, and hotel industry...

What is the T-List? The T-List is a list of travel and tourism related blogs, which was first established by Mathieu at the Radar Blog (based in Quebec, Canada), and then I (based in Vancouver, Canada) put the T-List on Facebook. So the T-List was born and nurtured in Canda, and embraced by travel-relatede bloggers world-wide. Lots of T-List bloggers have signed up on Facebook, and the T-List has become an inofficial community. Even though there has been some controversy about the T-List as a concept, the power of sharing thoughts and connecting with fellow Travel and Tourism bloggers is undenieable. Now, we are looking to consolidate the best posts from these T-List blogs to share with the travel and tourism industry worldwide in a new book, titled "Tips from the T-List". Since the T-List was born in Canada, it is only natural that the new book "Tips from the T-List" would launch at the fist Canadian e-Tourism Strategy Conference, Canada-e-Connect. The knowledge and expertise of these bloggers is amazing and covers many different areas of focus. We hope that this new book will become a little nuggget for travel, tourism, and hospitality marketers. In the world of mass collaboration, and since the keynote speaker at the Canada's first e-Tourism Strategy Conference is Anthony Willaims, the author of the bestseller "Wikinomics", we had the idea to put his thoughts into action and lead with a good example and have all T-List bloggers collaborate to create this guide of current oneline marketing trends in travel and tourism via the various blogs.

Stephen Joyce (who had the idea of the book) as publisher, as well as Mathieu Ouellet and I as editors are spearheading the initiative to publish this book for the Canada-e-Connect Conference on November 7-9 in Vancouver. The book will be a collection of 100 (or so) of the best posts from T-List bloggers who are the actual authors of the book. The audience for the book is executives, marketers, and decision makers from the travel and tourism industry. Topics will include customer trends, emerging technologies, e-marketing tips, social media, new and ground breaking webiste reviews, etc. The book is a promotional piece and will not be sold, but attendees at the Canada-e-Conenct Conference in Vancouver will get an exclusive print copy as part of their attendance. Additional copies will be made available at the contributing T-List bloggers website as an e-book download.

This is very exciting initiative as the book will bring together the power of collective thought and collaboration, which is intensified when it is condensed into an easily accessible form. The beauty of the T-List and all it's contributors is the variety of perspectives that are revealed. I think this book is a great way to increase the credibility of the T-List blogging community and to showcase those who contribute as a valuable and deeply committed group of industry insiders. This is an opportunity for you as a blogger to get your work into a book that will be distributed at the first ever Canadian e-Tourism Strategy Conference, Canada-e-Connect.

If you are a T-List blogger (or have a travel-related blog), please make sure that you participate. As the time-line for getting contributions is very tight, we need your help to spread the word to other members of the list and to colleagues who may not be on the list yet, but would like to contribute. Here is how you can be part of the first printing of the Tips from the T-List:

Deadline for submission is September 30, 2007.
1. Complete and fax back the following consent form to +1 604 648 9651 or email it to tlist@rezgo.com.
2. Send us three of your best posts. The editors will select one of these posts to appear in the book. The posts should be your own work and should be things like tips, observations, or helpful hints. Please do not send news items or trend oriented posts because these will become outdated very quickly. Concentrate on original thoughts, tips, best practices, etc. Please limit the piece to 300-500 words max.
3. Send us a good quality headshot (if you want it included).
4. Send us a good quality screenshot of your blog or website.
5. Send us a very brief bio of yourself, and the description of your blog
6. Send us your full name, address, phone and email so we can send you a copy of the book.

Only those contributors who make it into the book will receive a copy, however, we will be making a free e-book available for download that you can distribute.

Note: The editorial team reserves the right to reject posts or blogs that are either below quality, have a commercial or self-serving connotation, or are not a fit with the overall concept of the book in delivering value for the travel and tourism industry at large.