eTravel Project

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.

Tourism Queensland, the people who brought you the Best Job in the World, has sent out a Million Dollar Memo inviting organizations, companies, businesses and workplaces worldwide to compete for one million dollars (AUD) worth of unique incentive travel experiences in Queensland, Australia.

Will they be so successful as for the previous campaign? More at http://www.milliondollarmemo.com/

Enac (the the Italian Civil Aviation Authority) published the data for air traffic in 2010. Italy’s airports recorded a total traffic of 138,893.023 passengers, an 7%  increase from 2009.

Passengers Traffic for the first 10 Italian airports:

Roma Fiumicino 35,956.295
Milano Malpensa 18,714.187
Milano Linate con 8,295.436
Bergamo 7.661.061
Venice 6,801.941
Catania 6,301.832
Napoli con 5,535.984
Bologna con 5,432.248
Roma Ciampino con 4,563.852
Palermo 4,341.696

I frankly do not understand the rationale behind the idea of having Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as testimonial to boost tourism for Italy.

As a destination marketing professional, this study provides me with some good insight on how to measure the impact that social media has on our marketing initiatives.

Recently DMAI came up with these findings:

• 96% of respondents have a Facebook Fan Page. Of these, 94% measure ‘likes’, 65% measure active users, and 65% measure page interactions.
• 89% are on Twitter. 95% of tweeting destinations measure followers, and 60% measure retweets.
• 3% have a presence on Myspace, an unsurprising find due to the platform’s diminishing user base.
• Of the 73% of YouTube using DMOs 86% track total views, but only 43% monitor their subscribers.
• Just over half of DMO respondents blog and noting total blog visits as the single most important metric.