Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Feb 2, 2012, 11:09 pm
Have you travelled overseas lately and been paranoid about turning on roaming data on your mobile device for fear of coming home to a ridiculous bill?  Well TripButler, a start-up out of Austria is hoping that their portable wifi devices will give technology addicted travelers a reprieve for high r...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jan 23, 2012, 3:56 pm
This is article #4 in a 5 part Start up series for tour and activity travel businesses. In working with travel start ups a consistent theme I come across is the lofty sales expectations the founders place on themselves and their start up at launch. I believe this to be a huge mistake that reduces y...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jan 12, 2012, 12:48 pm
5 Tips to starting a successful tours and activity travel business. This is Tip #3. In the first two articles I wrote about how to partner and package to help your start up get business in the early stages. This third article is about implementing a simple distribution system so at launch you have ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Dec 29, 2011, 11:36 am
5 Tips to starting a successful tours and activity travel business. This is a series of 5 articles to help tours and activity entrepreneurs start a new business. I’ll post one new article each week here at T4. Tip #2: Partner with other travel suppliers in your destination to create a unique one-...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Dec 21, 2011, 1:43 pm
This is a series of 5 articles to help tours and activity entrepreneurs start a new business. I’ll post one new article each week here at T4. Tip #1: Introduce yourself and your company’s services to the established travel business owners and tour/activity operators in the destination you plan ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Dec 16, 2011, 6:46 pm
For most small tour operators, the concept of creating a standardized set of XML messages for the distribution of tour and activity data probably sounds like gobbledegook.  For data geeks and standards enthusiasts like the team behind Rezgo, this is a huge milestone in the march towards making smal...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jul 15, 2011, 8:56 am
In October at T4, I published, “Is the new, private-sale travel site business model the real deal? an in-depth look, into the new social e-commerce start-ups, their business model and how the deals get structured. As an active online travel business consultant in the new social e-commerce travel s...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jun 13, 2011, 5:34 pm
As a tour and activity business, you are a perfect target customer for the likes of Groupon, Living Social, or any one of hundreds of other daily deal websites popping up on the Internet everyday. But be warned, the daily deals business can be a real nightmare for your company if you are not carefu...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Mar 31, 2011, 2:51 pm
Tnooz and the Open Travel Alliance are putting on THack Vegas, a gathering of developers and travel technology companies who want to collaborate and build some cool stuff to show off at the Open Travel Advisory Forum in late April. The concept behind THack is that developers will get access to some...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Mar 25, 2011, 7:14 pm
Rezgo Sponsored Industry Research Estimates Tour & Activities at $27 Billion For as long as there have been tourists there have been tours, tour guides, and destination based activities.  Unlike the more commonly known travel segments like flights, hotels, car rentals, and cruise, the in-destinati...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Dec 21, 2010, 2:07 pm
The more things change, the more they stay the same.  When I first starting commenting on the tour and activity segment almost five years ago, it didn’t take long for me to see the opportunities with small tourism businesses.  It took me a little longer to identify the challenges however.  The ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 7:35 pm
Flymuch is a browser based widget that resides on top of your travel booking experience.  It provides deals and access to loyalty programs based on the searching that you conduct.  The widget is meant to decrease the searching headaches currently experienced by travelers.  The widget aggregates d...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 6:27 pm
Afar Connect is a combination social network and group travel tool.  Members complete a profile that defines the type of traveller they are.  The system then allows the member to create trips that can be shared with others on the network.  Members share their experiences with similar travelers an...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 5:44 pm
Goby demonstrated at the last Innovation summit and presented their hyper local search engine.  This time around, they are  presenting their mobile platform which allows the traveler to find activities and local content in a mobile optimized environment.  The platform allows advertisers to target...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 5:24 pm
Small Business marketing and procurement is available in almost every industry.  The original Onerez platform allowed the auto rental franchisees to sell excess inventory through a secret shopper type model on the major OTAs.  The new version of Onerez is focused on helping small business owners t...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 5:07 pm
Silverrail claims to have invented a sophisticated middleware technology that aggregates rail inventory from multiple sources and delivering it to any partner in any currency and support real-time transactions. Rail is a $300B market.  Silverrail is focusing on Europe which saw a $500B investment ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 4:44 pm
Christ introduced his agnostic travel switch, which is a platform that provides distribution for long tail products primarily around the ski resort industry. The platform provides access to multiple components and combines a CRS for travel suppliers as well as an out of the box booking engine that i...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 4:35 pm
Movitas develops guest operating system technologies that allow hotels and resorts to communicate with guest through on property mobile. Movitas empowers the hotel to be able to maintain a connection with their guests before, during, and after their visit to the property. The core is a guest commu...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 4:25 pm
There are 79,000 corporate travel agents and $145Bworth of sales generated by travel managers. AmadeusOne is a corporate tool that brings all the ingredients of corporate travel together into one tool. Amadeus is trying to tackle the concept of the super PNR by providing access to a variety of pro...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 4:06 pm
Kyle Duffy presented Revinate, an online tool to help hotels manage their online reputation and social media. Duffy is asking the question, why don’t hotels have a good grasp on their on-line reputation? Revinate is 100% specialized for the hotel space. Duffy explained that the key to feature o...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 17, 2010, 12:39 pm
Benjamin Jost from TrustYou presented their latest innovation, the Semantic Magic Box.  The Magic Box analyzes the contents of a review and identifies the meaningful statements within the review content.  By analyzing the content, TrustYou can provide the sentiment of reviews.  Jost claims to pro...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Nov 5, 2010, 2:00 am
UpTake Networks, Inc. announced today that it has acquired RealTravel, Inc., a social hotel recommendation site. UpTake Networks, Inc. owns UpTake.com, a semantic search engine designed to help travelers research and decide where to go, where to stay and what to do. With the addition of Real Trave...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Oct 14, 2010, 9:01 am
In this month’s Travel Business Profits e-letter, I look at how the private-sale travel site business model works and why I believe it will be a powerful business model in the online travel industry. As an online travel business consultant, and an intrigued entrepreneur, I have been researching th...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Oct 1, 2010, 11:57 am
The plan you create based on the Listen, Engage, Articulate, and Demonstrate social media  strategy should be reviewed on a regular basis to make sure that the objectives for each phase are being met. I recommend you schedule the following reviews into your social media plan: Monthly review – T...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 30, 2010, 11:06 am
Your success metrics will be different for each step in your  L.E.A.D. social media strategy. To summarize, you can expect the following outcomes from each phase: Listening Where users are talking about you What users are saying about you and your brand Where users are talking about subjects th...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 29, 2010, 11:37 am
As you may be aware, I am now a big fan of Prezi, the web based zooming presentation tool.  I have started converting all of my presentations over to the Prezi platform and I may even upgrade to a pro account.  Those of you who know me, know that for me to consider paying for a service, it better ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 28, 2010, 11:34 am
Being successful with your social media strategy means having a schedule that allows you to participate and actively engage with your various channels. I recommend you break up your tasks so that the work required to listen, engage, articulate, and demonstrate are staggered throughout the week. A ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 28, 2010, 6:59 am
Well, it has been quite a year working with the gang at Tnooz.  In one year, Tnooz has rocketed in front of all the competing travel technology media sites to become the leading resource for technology news for the travel and tourism industries.  I am immensely proud to be part of this team and to...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 27, 2010, 11:04 am
Let’s face it, when it comes to getting attention, you’re better off going to one A-List party then going to 100 block parties.  You only have so much time on your hands and social media has a very real time cost associated with it.  Unless you have a team of social media people working for yo...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 26, 2010, 9:18 pm
The underlying goal of any social media strategy is to build corporate social habits for your organization. In the same way that you and your staff interact with people in the “real world” you should be interacting with them in a similar manner in the social web. The philosophies and technique...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 24, 2010, 10:12 am
There are many tools available for demonstrating your involvement in social media and your comfort with customer engagement.  Many of these tools you are probably already using without even thinking about it.  Let’s take a look at a few of the the tools/sites that you can use to demonstrate your...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 23, 2010, 11:26 am
This final phase of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy is about demonstrating your comfort and use of social media. The purpose of the demonstration phase is to direct your customers and potential customers to YOUR social media places instead of engaging with customers in THEIR social media spaces....
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 22, 2010, 10:38 am
The articulation phase of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy has a direct impact on two parts of the marketing funnel. Inspirational content will influence the user during the awareness stage and the consideration stage.  This is nothing new. Companies have been providing content in this manner fo...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 21, 2010, 11:24 am
There are a variety of tools available for you to use to execute your articulation objectives.  Most of the most popular tools are free or very low cost and can be integrated with your existing web site withe relative ease. If you are not already using a content management system that supports blo...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 20, 2010, 1:57 pm
The Articulation phase of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy is also a transition phase.  It is transitional because during this phase you will shift from being a content consumer and commenter into a content producer. The articulation phase is about generating content that fulfills the customers&...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 17, 2010, 4:20 pm
The Engagement phase is the second phase of the four step L.E.A.D. social media strategy and is the first step in connecting and conversing with your potential customers, partners, and vendors. The Engagement phase is all about joining into an existing conversation rather than starting your own con...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 16, 2010, 11:04 am
No special tools are required for the engagement phase, however, I do recommend optional profiles for the purposes of properly branding your comments: Disqus.com – Disqus is a shared commenting system used by many blogs. It allows you to post your comments to Twitter and share them on Facebook...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 15, 2010, 3:19 pm
You may already be aware of pay to play auction sites like Swoopo and Swipe Auctions, now there is a new player in town who is hoping to be the bid-to-win auction site for luxury hotels.  There is a lot of controversy around the legitimacy of these types of sites and the marketing/advertising strat...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 15, 2010, 3:16 pm
In the previous article, titled “Listening for your brand on-line“, I mentioned a few monitoring tools that you can use to listen for mentions of your brand or keywords.  I will now go into a bit more detail about each of these tools. Google Alerts If you only use one monitoring tool,...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 14, 2010, 1:21 pm
The Listening phase is the first and, I would argue, the most important step in the L.E.A.D. ™ social media strategy. Like any conversation, listening affords the listener the luxury of understanding the nature of the conversation, the individuals involved, the subject matter, and the direction o...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Sep 13, 2010, 11:30 am
If you are like most business people online, you are probably bombarded with sales pitches by SEO and social media experts all claiming that they can get you tons of traffic in no time.  But like all things that are truly worthwhile, there are no quick fixes to being successful at either search eng...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Aug 13, 2010, 6:10 pm
“Why aren’t there more photos on my mobile site? Can’t we have interactive Google Maps on my mobile site?” Your mobile site should be designed to be as usable as possible – it’s for people that are in the destination, not for people planning to visit your destination (that’s wh...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jul 13, 2010, 12:43 pm
Do you have a pricing strategy for your travel products? I believe that the pricing of your travel products is both an art and a science. This Spring, I read Smart Pricing by Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang. It is an interesting book that covers multiple pricing strategies for businesses. The book ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jun 22, 2010, 3:59 pm
I was writing a post for the The Savvy Operator recently about how to market your on-line booking website, specifically targeting in-destination tours and activities, and it occurred to me that there is of confusion about the benefits of marketing versus distribution of long tail products.  What I ...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jun 18, 2010, 12:58 pm
Prerequisites: You have a website and an online booking engine that supports the use of coupons or promotional codes and you want to drive more bookings through your on-line channel. Estimated Time for Completion: 15 min reading time (plus time to create your promotional code) Details: Coupons an...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jun 18, 2010, 11:59 am
Prerequisites: You are planning on printing marketing brochures or rack cards for distribution to various tourism outlets and DMO/CVB offices.  You also have an on-line booking engine that will allow you track referral codes or promotional coupon codes. Estimated Time for Completion: 15 min readin...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Jun 18, 2010, 11:05 am
Prerequisites: You are planning on using PPC to drive traffic to your website and you want to track both referrals as well as conversions from the campaigns. Estimated Time for Completion: 15 min reading time (plus time to set up your PPC campaign) Details: PPC or pay per click can be a very eff...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - May 30, 2010, 2:49 pm
Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Share this on LinkedIn Post on Google Buzz Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati A Destination Activity Broker creates pa...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - May 20, 2010, 2:50 am
Travel and tourism businesses have it difficult, they are often strapped for time and resources to really have effective marketing online. While there are several different factors to consider when you are marketing online (SEO, E-mail, Social media Usability etc..) this article is focusing on using...
Comment - Like

Stephen Joyce posted an article on Travel & Tourism Technology Trends - Apr 30, 2010, 5:07 pm
This guest post is written by Graham Robertson who currently works as an operations Team Leader for a global online travel company and devotes an obsessive amount of time to following current travel news and trends.  You can follow Graham at his blog, Project Wander, or via Twitter at @Grayum_Ian...
Comment - Like