eTravel Project

If you are responsible for a country or destination brand, read on.

As cheap air travel and the package tour (as well as the devaluation of the Spanish Peseta and the abolition of currency controls in the UK) helped jump start international travel in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the world was still a fairly predictable place and countries were, on the whole inhabited mainly by citizens of that country and not by the multicultural citizens living in most cities today.

Moreover, due to the social and economic structure of Western countries, consumers were only just beginning to have disposable income that allowed them to experience the concept of leisure time.

At the same time, mass media was becoming increasingly influential as consumers purchased more and more TVs and radios.

So, with more disposable income, more leisure time and the establishment of commercial television, it was now possible to reach large swathes of a population reasonably quickly and relatively inexpensively.

In this environment countries put their faith in creativity to build brands, hoping that an exotic image, tagline or promotion would resonate with prospects and increase visitor arrivals.

And generally, because of the cultural and social predictability of countries, the same message could be used to communicate with everyone.

Moreover, with few conduits to increasingly wealthy consumers who had more disposable income than ever before and with limited competition in the market place, this type of creative driven branding often raised the profile of countries enough to attract visitors.

Countries and destinations such as Spain, the UK, Kenya, Florida, Greece, The Algarve, Singapore and Italy as well as many other destinations used this approach. And in this mass market economy, mass media – TV, Print, Outdoor, with its huge reach, was the logical vehicle to enhance the impact of creative-driven branding with reach and repetition.

Read more at brandconsultantasia.com

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!

About a week ago, the Italian Secretary of State for family policy Carlo Giovanardi vehemently criticized an IKEA ad where two men are holding hands and went on stating that the ad is against the Italian constitution, which says that family is based on marriage. The ad reads “We are open to all families”.

To keep up with the controversy, Eataly – an Italian gourmet mega-market with stores in Milan, Bologna, Genoa, Asti and New York – published another ad with two women holding hands on the daily La Stampa. The ad says “We at Eataly are open to all families too”.

The travel industry did not wait to join the fray with Easyjet, which ironically asks in the ad below “We hope that Giovanardi [the Secretary] likes this family”.

In the past years, Italy has been going through strong reactionary politics and this explains the tone and attitude of the political confrontation today, but it does not justify it. Stupidity is stupidity and narrow mindedness should be called for what it is. If I were a marketer in Italy, I would not hesitate to use this theme and do also some social good. The Minister of tourism should also focus on this neglected travel segment and not only on her “Four-Leg Tourists” campaign or  the Prime Minister’s promotional videos for Italy, but this is another story.

I am at JFK Airport in New York City waiting for boarding. This is the first time I try to fully post and add an image from my Blackberry. Please, forgive me if something goes wrong and/or my spelling is not perfect.

Walking to my gate I did notice this billboard by NYC & Co. (the official tourism board for New York City) that reads “I dine after nine, therefore I am. This is New York City”. I could not help from taking a picture.

They definitely got my attention from a destination marketing point, but not sure how to feel about the message. I am confused about which target segment they are trying to reach:

1) I live in New York and assume that lots of people living in New York depart from this gate. We know you can eat in the city at any time day or night and you take it for granted.

2) This is a domestic terminal meaning that many people have already made the decision to visit New York City if they arrive here. As a marketer, how effective is it to put your marketing dollars here?

3) The fact that you can eat at a restaurant after nine is probably not the reason why the tourists “THEREFORE ARE” and – above all – why they are here now.

4) If the target segment is domestic – which I think it must be (the Spaniards eat regularly much later than that and would laugh at such an ad), the message might sound too arrogant, but very New York.

Any other thought? Given the budget at your DMO, would you spend it this way? I would not.

The speculations about the new Apple device came to an end when Steve Jobs finally showcased the iPad on January 27. Some pundits were overenthusiastic about it, others disappointed. The fact in itself that people are talking so much about something that they barely have seen and probably not yet touched is significant.

Personally I love my iPod Touch, but I use my Blackberry for email and reading RSS feeds on-the-go: I can rely on a better battery life and have not got used at typing on the iPod’s touchscreen. However, recently I finished to read Open by Andre Agassi through the Kindle application on my iPod and it was a very pleasant experience.  I also worked on a few applications to distribute travel guides on the internet (i.e. Monaco) and I would not think about doing it for a Blackberry. I believe that the iPad will consolidate the ongoing trend that tablets, netbooks and smarphones will be the favorite access points to digital content. Still not sure how much of an impact it will have on consumers and travelers in general. Troy Thomson at Travel 2.0 has an interesting take on it. I am sure that once the device is in our hands will find favorite ways to use it and developers will implement new ideas to make it more powerful than what it looks now.