eTravel Project

Probably yes. Look at this graph from eMarketer below.

Apps aren’t always the answer to engaging with consumers on mobile devices—especially when it comes to m-commerce. According to research from rich media company Zmags, very few Americans prefer to use mobile apps for shopping activities. Instead, consumers strongly prefer purchasing through web and mobile browsers.

For more information, please visit www.emarketer.com

Four Seasons is giving us a lesson in luxury travel and branding. It is not the time to sit and wait to see what the new trends are. If you are in the luxury field, you have to be  on top of everything. You cannot afford to be a follower anymore, you need to have the courage to take risks and be a leader and a trendsetter. Your clients expect that you exceed expectations ALWAYS and social media is not an inconvenience. If embraced, it can truly help your team and product.

Download the report below.

Everybody is talking so highly about KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and their marketing initiatives that I wanted to test them in my last flight to Europe. I was at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol very early in the morning and checked in from my Android and mentioned @KLM. Both the airport and KLM were prompt to welcome me to Holland. On my way back to New York JFK, I pretty much did the same thing when I was in Amsterdam. By the way, I forgot to mentioned that I used the awesome service of 1-hour free Wi-Fi at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol from my Android and my iPad, which kept quite some good company in my 5-hour layover.

Photo credits - KLM

The next day I checked my frequent miles on my Alitalia MilleMiglia account and the flight New York JFK – Amsterdam did not collect any mile. About 3,600 miles were missing: weird! I contacted Alitalia by phone and they gave me an email address to send my request to, no reply. I contacted Alitalia via Twitter, no reply.

I bought the ticket at www.klm.com, but the flight from New York to Amsterdam was operated by Delta. I am pretty sure that Delta messed up at the check-in. I had to tell them that the code of their Sky Team partner airline is AZ several times.

So I decided to tweet @KLM and they replied almost right away with courtesy and professionalism asking for my Flying Blue number to see if they could add my missing miles. At the end, they realized they could do little: since I am a MilleMiglia member, only Alitalia can solve this issue. At that point, I did not care much anymore. They were nice and gave me an answer almost instantaneously. In the meantime, I had also faxed Alitalia with my e-ticket and MilleMiglia  number, but still no reply from Alitalia.

Only a few days later, Alitalia calls me and asks for my boarding pass: without boarding pass, no miles. Guess what? I did not keep my boarding pass. Lesson learned: we still need to keep our boarding pass in our digital era for Alitalia , even if we can do online check-in. @KLM delivered a great customer experience though!

It is now more than ten days that I have played around Google+ – the new social networking site that Google recently launched – and I have to say that I really like it. Honestly, I have to admit that I never warmed up to Facebook. I use it, my friends are there and I share things, but I have always felt a bit uneasy to share things with my family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc. all at the same time. You might argue that I can divide people into groups. This is true, but it is easier to say than to do on Facebook. Plus, Facebook is well known for the arbitrary changes that always makes to its privacy settings. One day my sister is sharing my nephew’s photos with me, the other day they might well be public or show know what else…

Google+ circles let me organize my contacts in a flawless way and Google+ always asks who I want to share with. So, when I want to post about a travel industry topic and get an opinion from my fellow colleagues, I select my professional circles. If I have a funny photo of me while on vacation that I want to share only with friends and family, I can. I also love that I can edit my comments after they are posted. Lately, I have hit the enter button on Facebook too many times when I just wanted a break line. Read the rest of this entry »

I have not posted for a while. This is an old presentation I came across today and I think it is always valid.