July 2009 Archives

As the usually indecipherable former deputy PM says in the Guardian, Conservative leader David Cameron's Twitter/***t faux pas on Absolute radio is as ironic as they come.

Got to be careful when you tweet, haven't you Dave? It's not like reliable older mediums like, erm, live broadcasting.

I've been playing around with Google Insight this lunchtime after Travel Rants sounded off on the word 'staycation'.

Personally I defended it, but also started wondering what I could find out about who uses it.

I started in the States, and instantly struck confusion. The highest incidence of 'staycation' searches (proportionate to total regional search volume) occurs in not in trendy, buzzword-coining New York or California, but... Connecticut.

Que?

If we go by averages, Connecticut is not a state that is strapped for cash. In 2007 census figures it registered the third highest average household income in the US.

And sure, all that lovely New England scenery is a good incentive to holiday at home, but it's not the only scenic place in the US.

So what's going on? If anyone wants to turn internet detective on this, or simply sigh and point out something obvious I've missed, be my guest.

(NB: Here's a bonus screencap for the UK. A full 100% of our 'staycation' searches appear to originate in London... where the media is concentrated. Cough.)

United Airlines/Guitars hits the mainstream media. Carl Mortishead in the Times says:

No longer isolated and impotent, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells can vent his spleen not just in green ink covering both sides of the paper but via fibre-optic cables that reach every corner of the planet

This is based on singer-songwriter Dave Carroll's song song about a busted guitar going viral, and ad exec Oliver Beale's email about Virgin's food going viral.

O brave new world, etc. etc.

Forgive me, but for either of these virals to cure the average punter's 'impotence and isolation', at least one of three things has to be true:

1. We are all equally good at creating and promoting content.
2. We are all equally lucky.
3. Those two high-profile cases have inspired broader policy changes.
   

And are any of them true?

How fast are you at operating a computer? Serious question. When it comes to the basic paraphenalia around e.g. sending an email (put data in fields, use spellcheck, hit send) are you lugging your cursor from left-click to left-click, or are you combining clicks with keystrokes?

I ask for two reasons. First, because the latter makes the whole operation slightly faster. And second, because if you multiply that small time saving by the number of common tasks that require similar operations, you get a considerable efficiency boost from one small change of habit.

Sir David Attenborough can help with the first point. In this clip he uses a stone in either hand to replicate the a woodpecker's two-stroke warning sound. Why one in either hand? Because one hand holding one stone can't produce the two strokes fast enough.

Relying on the mouse is using one stone in one hand. Combine the mouse with keystrokes and shortcuts (stalwarts like Windows-D to minimise everything, CTRL-X/C/V to cut/copy/paste, TAB to toggle fields, ALT-TAB to toggle windows*) and you can overlap operations rather than doing them one by one.

The second point covers itself. Search forms. Booking flights. Online banking. Blogging and other social media, for those who do use them. They all involve inputting data...

* Or Mac equivalents. I'm not familiar with whatever trendy voodoo you people employ.

Parts of Asia enjoyed a long total eclipse last night, and readers of the travel media may remember months and months of ads pushing the event - for specialists such as Wendy Wu, which registered chinaeclipse.com as a dedicated eclipse tours website, this was a nice selling point.

So when is the next bankable total eclipse? With ocean covering 70% of the Earth's surface, landfall can be scarce, and even when it happens isn't always in an attractive destination.

Here's a quick map and list. Locations and times are for places that will see the total eclipse, and the map is a sketch - click each line for a link to precise details from NASA.

View Total eclipses 2009 - 2019 in a larger map

2010: Southern Chile and Argentina, 2-3 minutes

2012: The tips of Queensland and the Northern Territory, 2-3 minutes

2015: Faroe Islands and Svalbard archipelago, 2-3 minutes

2016: Parts of Indonesia, 2-3 minutes

2017: Central US, 2-3 minutes (the only eclipse of 2009-2019 in which the point of Greatest Eclipse is on land - it falls in the south of Kentucky)

2019: Central Argentina, 2-3 minutes

So which ones do you think have most potential for attracting travellers from the UK? Australia, Indonesia and the US?

Homepage pic: Top Photo Group / Rex Features

I've recently started following 'Grumpy Traveller' David Whitley (also on That Twitter Thing), and cannot fault this, from a post on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list:

[The travel industry behaves] as though slapping a World Heritage tag on something makes it an absolute must-see. It also gives a guise of equality - as if all World Heritage sites are equally worth seeing. They're not.

His commenters largely approve.

So I put travelweekly.co.uk to the test.

Gulp. A search for UNESCO returned 140 articles that refer to it - 13 of them from 2009.

Do we need to be a bit more sparing? Is WHS listing ever of use to travellers or travel agents?

Hoping that nobody in travel has paid too much attention to news of the report 15-year-old Matthew Robson penned for Morgan Stanley.

It's rather surprising that a major investment bank is floored by 'teens don't use Twitter,' 'teens don't like advertising' and 'teens prefer to get things for free'. They didn't know those things?

Perhaps most surprising is Morgan Stanley's readiness to treat one 15-year-old's notes as if they are a meaningful sample. The Guardian asked some other teenagers and got different answers.

Ask a third teenager and you'll get a third set of answers. Ask another 997, analyse the data, and you might have something worth reporting.

These days attractions and destinations ain't nobody if they don't have a kooky job to advertise, and the best quote of last week came from Somerset attraction Wookey Hole, currently trying to hire a witch:

Wookey Hole staff say the role is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch and do the things witches do.

Yes. Perfectly straightforward.

It may not be 100% a PR wheeze, but the coverage the witch job generated is certainly no accident. Let's hope it puts domestic tourism punters in mind of a great part of the country.

I was in another part of Somerset over the weekend, visiting Farleigh Hungerford castle at a very good value £3.60 (with free audio guide).

It's mainly ruins, and the highlight is a 15th century wall painting of St George in the chapel, below.

It was a great visit, but it got me thinking: can every attraction benefit from viral marketing and social media?

Because if there are some for which it is simply irrelevant, this is surely one - a stout, no-nonsense, leaflets-in-the-hotel-lobby, drag-the-kids-there place that would have the most inventive SM expert drying up.

Consultants/experts? Is this SM kryptonite?

Edit: I'm talking about organised SM campaigns rather than organic coverage like the above, obviously.

Yesterday I commented on an Alex Bainbridge post about a United Airlines complaint with a difference - the difference being that it's a band complaining about damage to their guitars, and doing it in song.

Alex basically asks, 'What should UA do?' and I have to admit I've found some of the comments a bit depressing.

Some default to 'make another funny video', fuelling the misconception that there is little more to social media than virals and cat humour (which I admittedly quite like, in their place).

Some recommend a whole new set of equipment for the band, which in my own words:

...is slipping into a nasty Old Media habit: high-profile columnist moans about bad service, company gives them special treatment as a result

Is that what we meant when we asked brands to engage? The odd funny video? Selective pieces of 'Brand Theatre' instead of a commitment to open, accountable treatment for every passenger?

If so, we've shown ourselves willing to take entertainment over service and will get the engagement we deserve.

Am I wrong? C'mon, cheer me up...

NB - I'm heading away for the weekend, so sorry if it takes me a while to approve comments. I'll do my darndest.

Pumpkin Tours, for this Hungarian Grand Prix deal:

Planning to leave your lady at home while you escape for a boy's weekend? Think again.

Pumpkin Tours is offering a female-friendly package to tie in with The Hungarian Grand Prix.

Every man who books a Hungarian Grand Prix package with Pumpkin Tours receives one free trip to bustling Budapest for their partner.

B1G1F! The offer runs from Monday 13 to Monday 20 July, and is limited to the first 40 customers.

Here's a flickr pic of Jenson Button celebrating first place at last year's event:

Okay, this video just shows Dutch start-up Layar using GPS data to display locally relevant results - something any standard GPS software already does (I can do similar stuff with Nokia Maps on my N95, for instance).

But it's doing it with a very appealing interface, isn't it?

It's currently available in the Netherlands for phones using the Android operating system, originally developed by Google. 

Imagine it will be more resource-hungry than alternatives that don't use the camera or have zippy visuals, so battery life may be an issue.

Wonder too how much stress testing they've been able to do - is it going to slow down when faced with the density of bars, restaurants etc in big city centres? 

Thanks to Donald Strachan (@hackneye) on Twitter for the catch - check out his piece on travel apps for the Telegraph.

Let's start the week with some pointless trivia. The flush on an airline toilet will suck in an entire roll of toilet paper...

Apparently this is from a stunt in which US comedian Mark Malkoff lived on a AirTran aircraft for 30 days.

[Spotted on Upgrade: Travel Better]

There are, I'm given to understand, shades of difference in the terminology of gadding about in an ecologically sound way.

In practice, though, sustainable, responsible, green and eco- tend to be used interchangeably, and may be accompanied by 'travel' or 'tourism'.

So I did what all journalists, advertisers, copwriters and... well, everyone, basically, does. I asked Google what keywords people like best.  

Verdict: ecotourism walks it. 'Green travel' comes second, despite being a phrase so flat and dull it sounds more like a stop on the Northern Line than a term for environmentally conscious globetrotting.

Wonder how my own coinages stack up...

A colleague has spotted a change to the Foreign Office's Greece travel advice: "Some fancy dress costumers may offend the local Greek authorities."

No prizes for guessing which incident that refers to...

Press release arrives announcing that you can swim with pigs at dizzyingly swish Bahamas resort Royal Plantation Island.

Here's the proof:

Each of the six-villas on Royal Plantation Island comes with its own motorboat, so guests can easily hop across to Pig Beach on neighbouring uninhabited island Big Major Spot. Here they can marvel at the curiously graceful water ballet of the island's rotund wild pigs, who paddle out to greet the boats

Sign me up.

Sorry about the fuzzy image - it's all that came with the release.

Update: some kind soul has sent me a better one...