via atravelerslibrary.com

Interesting writeup on a very "different" hotel in Tampa, Florida.

Travel Tuesday

On Tuesday, I borrow the phrase Travel Tuesday from Twitter, put down my books and talk about my own travels.

 

Henry B. Plant Museum

Destination: Tampa, Florida

Attraction: The Tampa Bay Hotel

I have a very bad habit of accumulating stuff.  I don’t just accumulate it–I have to have it where I can see it–preferably reach it at a moment’s notice–because if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t have it, now would I?

But I don’t  come within a mile-long, terrazzo-tiled , gilded woodwork hallway packed with furniture of those dudes in the Gilded Age.  Not only did they stuff their places with stuff, but the stuff was all curlicues and fringes, and inlays and embroidery and painted scenes, and plaques made of woven hair.

I tend to wander around establishments of that era with my mouth hanging open, wanting to ask the original owners, “What WERE you thinking?”

That was my experience at The Tampa Bay Hotel, a railroad resort that Henry Plant, the “King of Florida” built. If it weren’t for Plant, Florida might never have become the tourist magnet that it is today.   Plant made his money from the railroads and steamships, but had to create somewhere for people to GO on those trains and boats, so he built hotels. The rail line runs right by the back  door of the Tampa Bay Hotel and the steamships could pull up close by.

Outside, the hotel stretches for a city block along the water front, corners adorned with minarets and a casino* topped by a dome with the same pointy top as the minarets. The Ottoman look reflects people’s image of Florida in the late 19th century–exotic.

*Casino was a place for performances, kind of a cross between the Roman Coliseum and a theater. It was not a gambling establishment.

Incidentally, before you get any ideas, you cannot stay there any more. Part of it is restored and furnished as it was during the golden days, so that you can ooh and ahh your way through a guided tour of the Henry B. Plant Museum. The rest is used by a college. Good, practical arrangement. One suspects that Henry would approve.

Inside, the style is kind of a “you name it” basketful of French, Egyptian, Greek,  Renaissance–41 trainloads of decor, according to the brochure.  I was with a group of travel writers, and we were hustled through the rooms before we could get explanations. Yes, I can recognize a chair and a table, but the designers of the day spent their time dreaming up unique visual gems that take some explaining 100 years later.

Still, I can see myself swishing into the Writing and Reading Room in my long white gauzy cotton skirt, to sit at the tables in a room flooded with light, and writing “Wish you were here,” to all my envious friends who could not be in this exotic place.  And perhaps I would be fortunate enough to be ensconced in one of the tower rooms with cross ventilation of ocean breezes, where I could hear the clacking of the leaves of palm trees outside. I might not have been able to afford it, though. This luxury suite cost $15 a night!

You can get visitor information at the Henry Plant museum’s web site.

 

Tags: BlogSherpa, Florida, Gilded Age, Henry B. Plant, Tampa, The Tampa Bay Hotel, USA

28 January 2010 ~

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Online Video & Podcasting Secrets for Destinations

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Guest Author, Ryan Bifulco, TravelSpike.com – Destinations are always looking for ways to market and promote themselves. Every Destination offers something unique to visitors and locals alike, and a short video is one of the best ways to showcase what you have to the world. Many DMOs still seem to think that online video and podcasts are for kids, but times have changed and the stats below back that up.

According to PhoCusWright, 90% of U.S. online travelers have been influenced by fellow travelers posting blogs, online videos, travel podcasts and reviews. 80% of Baby Boomers are ONLINE and have shown a 59% increase on social networking sites year over year. Podcasts and blog followers have increased 67% among Baby Boomers; while the younger Gen Y has had no growth at all (Accenture). 24% of users over the age of 70 have watched an online video in the last week! (TNS Compete Data).

With such high statistics, social media programs need to be taken seriously and you must evaluate where your brand stands in the Travel 2.0 environment.

In this article, you’ll learn how to maximize your video and podcast efforts. Marketing in the digital age is about leveraging new technologies and social trends to increase exposure. It’s about educating the mass market and niche audiences in new ways. Video marketing is a new, emerging platform that continues to evolve every day. Video isn’t just about television anymore. It can be extended across the digital universe into many distribution formats, including syndication.

A DMO is in a great position to produce its own tourist informational videos, plus the DMO can work with its local partners to promote these videos.

Here are some tips to help any DMO catch up with the new media train:

• Shoot short 1 or 2 minute video clips that provide a nice overview of the destination.  Most users do not have time to watch a 30 minute video as they plan their trip.
• Consider shooting your top tourist attractions or sights. This is no time to feel guilty about playing favorites as your 2 minute video should be a highlight reel or sizzle reel of the best things to do in your city, state, province or country.
• Post quality videos from local restaurants, hotels, attractions and events on the official DMO or Destination YouTube Channel. Shoot a video from a local fair or festival. Interview the hottest chefs in the city.
• Cross promote your YouTube efforts in your monthly email newsletter and on your website. Also post links to your YouTube channel from Twitter, Facebook and other blogs or social networking outlets.
• While YouTube is certainly the leader with online video, there are hundreds of other video sites, directories, search engines and libraries where you need to distribute your videos. Some of the sites to look out for include: MySpace Videos, Yahoo Videos, Odeo & DailyMotion.
• Reach out to travel podcasters like Erik Hastings & journeyPod to see if they might be interested in having the DMO on their show to talk about seasonal happenings.
• Create your own video or audio podcast! Purchasing a very affordable FLIP Meno video recorder or a Sony Hi-MD audio recorder are two excellent ways to get started. Turn your event calendar and press releases into podcasts and syndicate with major podcast libraries and RSS directories like iTunes and Odeo.
• Start your own social network and invite partners and members of the DMO to join and post travel deals, events, product launches, parties and more with fellow travelers. Ning.com is a FREE social network optimizer allowing you to customize your own space and share it with the audience you choose.

Get some ideas from other Destinations:

• The Colorado Tourism Office had produced several short videos but they were only being used on their own website.  Travel Spike turned the videos into podcasts and RSS feeds to distribute to the hundreds of podcast sites, libraries, search engines and directories. Podcasts relating to skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing were promoted in the fall, while podcasts focused on biking, whitewater rafting and wildlife in Colorado were pushed early spring.  All of these efforts can help your overall digital brand and your search engine rankings.
• The St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches VCB‘s new digital strategy generated over 2 million Web 2.0 Hits using some of these techniques.
• The West Hollywood Marketing and Visitors Bureau produced seven local walking tour podcasts covering things like their famous Sunset Strip and their Red Carpet Parties during The Oscars.
• The Indianapolis CVB was one of the first to produce a video podcast that gives visitors a glimpse into the city.

As one of the most trusted resources for information about a city, a DMO has a great deal of expertise about the destination that can be maximized with today’s vast media landscape. Get on the new media train today!

Ryan Bifulco is the Founder & CEO of Travel Spike which offers DMOs and other travel companies social media marketing, digital public relations and online advertising solutions. Ryan can be reached at ryanb@travelspike.com or 770-433-2930.

Photo Credit: B_Uncie

Tags: dmo, Social Media, social networks, tourism, travel

Destinations Social Media Tips

Great tips from Ryan Bifulco on the T4 Blog on podcasting for travelers. If you bring any kind of a recording device with you on your travels, this is a great read.

The best rate Darren Popik could find on a weekend car rental at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport recently was $114. So he decided to look elsewhere.

Popik, a Los Angeles-based blogger, widened his search to other car rental locations in the Texas capital. And he found a lower price through Enterprise Rent-a-Car. “It was a much better deal,” he said.

No kidding. At $38 — just one-third the airport rate — it was a steal.

At a time when rental rates are climbing, Popik is one of many travelers who have discovered that it pays to cast a wide net when you’re looking for affordable wheels.

Why such a dramatic price difference between on-airport and off-airport locations? Local taxes and airport concession fees, according to Robert Barton, president of the American Car Rental Association. The fees cover the companies’ costs of renting airport facilities and of shuttle services to and from the terminal for customers, but the taxes can fund local projects that may or may not have anything to do with airport users.

“It’s taxation without representation,” he said.

Take Barton’s recent two-day rental at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, for which he paid $27. After a 5 percent vehicle license fee, a 10 percent concession fee, a $12 airport fee and a 77 cent-per-day “tourism” fee were extracted from the price, only about half of the rate went to his car rental company.

Neil Abrams, a car rental analyst with the Purchase, N.Y.-based Abrams Consulting Group, says that the rate difference between an airport and off-airport location has historically been “substantial.” For example, the average weekly rate on a compact car — the kind many leisure travelers prefer — was $363 at an airport, according to a survey his company recently conducted. By comparison, the same rental taken off-airport cost just $202.

“The rate difference is pretty constant,” he says. But as car rental rates rise, more travelers begin looking for other ways to get around.

The extra airport fees and taxes, he adds, put airport-based car rental franchises “at a competitive disadvantage.” That’s bad news for the car rental company, but good news for you.

Except when it isn’t.

In some cities, renting at an airport makes sense almost every time. Denver comes to mind. When Amy Pollick hired a car in the Mile-High City recently, in-town rentals were “unbelievably cheaper,” she said.

“Trouble is, my only friend in Denver wasn’t in town to meet us at the airport and take us to the office,” recalled Pollick, who works for a newspaper in Decatur, Ala. “Cab fare to and from the airport would have completely wiped out any savings we realized.”

Sometimes, it isn’t the distance to the airport so much as it is the duration of the rental that matters. Jeff Tucker, a technology consultant who lives in Hawaii, frequently rents cars in Seattle.

“You can rent cars in nearby Kent and save a bundle on taxes,” he said. “Unfortunately, they couldn’t shuttle you to and from the airport, so you had to take a cab.” For a short-term rental, it’s not worth it. “But if you’re staying for several days, that often pays off,” he added.

The other issue is convenience. Rent a car that’s miles away from the airport, and you could save a lot of money. But if your flight leaves around rush hour and you don’t give yourself enough time to return the vehicle, you might also miss your plane. That’s happened to me a time or two.

We shouldn’t have to be making these calculations, of course. We should be able to rent from the airport at a fair price when we’re flying into town. I can’t think of any other business that routinely doubles its rates between stores without breaking the law.

Any other business would be prosecuted for price gouging. There’s just one thing: Car rental companies aren’t doing this. The taxes and fees are for the most part being added by airports and municipalities, which makes these higher prices perfectly legal.

I think most travelers expect gas to cost a little more in certain neighborhoods and a little less in others. They anticipate price fluctuations on restaurant meals, groceries and other items they might buy while they’re on the road. But the exorbitant airport markup on rental cars defies reason and takes advantage of the people who are bringing tourism dollars to a destination: you.

Unfortunately, there’s little travelers can do to help narrow this unacceptable price difference. Until motorists refuse to rent their cars at the airport, which is unlikely, airports and counties will continue overtaxing their passengers, to the detriment of car rental companies, and us.

(Photo: DanieVDM/Flickr Creative Commons)

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Tagged as: AIRPORT, car rental

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Picture from my trip to Florida - entrance to Palm beach from West Palm Beach.

There are *so* many companies that are focussed on aggregating and sharing travel itineraries or assisting with trip planning (around web based itineraries). Just this week 3 sites are preparing launch plans:

• YourTour – who will be presenting at the forthcoming GetFundedShow
• Duffel – who just presented at Techcrunch 50
• SightSi – who are not much more than a blog at the moment – but look like they have plans in this direction

According to reports, Dopplr (one of the category leaders) has sold to Nokia for 15 million Euros (15 -22 million USD). No reaction from Dopplr yet to confirm these rumours.

Om Malik on his coverage stated

I’m happy for the founders and backers of Dopplr, after all it is a nice financial outcome for a service that hasn’t grown beyond a base of passionate users

Lukas Zinnagl, a Techcrunch EU editor, stated

10M$ seems adequate for a hyped product, with low traffic and very focused usage #dopplr #nokia #fail

….and…

jesus, how come people are so stoked about this? this is really not a good deal for any of the investors or stakeholders.

this is a present to nokia and some nice pr.

Interesting that an exit of this size creates such different opinions.

Thoughts
This is an interesting moment in my blogging career. Dopplr are one of the first European online travel startups that I have covered from their inception through to final sale from the founders. Whilst not many people read my blog in 2007 I did, in October, cover their FOWA presentation (1 month after Dopplr got their first round of funding).

See blog post [Good historical perspective]

Ummm – Interestingly I seem to have got one thing right – and one thing horribly wrong. At the time I thought their competition was going to be WAYN. But I don’t think WAYN are in that game still and have their own challenges in the hyper competitive online travel space. Instead the main competition is TripIt.

Still, as I wrote in 2007, I had the Dopplr strategy down as to work with the digital thought leaders (probably due to their backing from Silicon valley expert VCs). I compared that to WAYN who had travel industry backers and seemed to talk (and still do!) at many travel industry conferences.

A classic battle between web people / web VCs and travel people / travel VCs….  dukeing it out in the online travel space. Swap WAYN for TripIt in my 2007 blog post and it has pretty much gone to form.

And here we are a few years later and Dopplr, in Om Malik’s opinion, have failed to break out of their digital thought leader strategy and achieve full adoption phase.

API battles
Both TripIt and Dopplr have web APIs. TripIt is a complex API that is sooo powerful it reminds me of back end travel reservation system APIs that I often come accross. Not for the faint hearted BUT it has meant they can work with many different devices and many services have been successfully built on the TripIt platform. Solid.

Dopplr however is much more lightweight. The level of detail stored on their platform was sufficient for most social purposes but is insufficient to start getting clever with providing travel services from the data. It just isn’t detailed enough. Hence I bet that it didn’t lead to that many travel industry services that could be integrated with it (hence restricted monetisation plans). This could well be down to the Dopplr folk being highly competent web people, just not travel industry folk. A warning for other entrepreneurs entering the travel industry who propose startups without having spent a few years working for existing travel companies.

• Dopplr web API documentation
• TripIt API documentation

Dopplr have seen that they need to enhance their API but very little has happened. In early June 2009 Dopplr announced that there were plans to launch a new version of the API “soon” (during this summer). On September 18th 2009 Dopplr announced that they have had to postpone the launch of their new API. [Source]

If you look at the change log of the Dopplr API wiki you will see that in the entire of 2009 only 3 or 4 edits were made (most recent change 5 weeks ago so it is still currently maintained). This rate of change (and their announcements about the delay in the new API) are not the signs of a company that is continuing to innovate rapidly within the online travel sector, sadly.

A good sale?
Yes. Brilliant. I am very happy for Dopplr. It is fantastic to get any company to give a return back to VCs and for the founders to presumably walk away with enough to buy a house each after 2 years work.

However the Dopplr folk are heavyweight web / mobile people. This was a golden opportunity to reach further than being able to buy a house. And I bet the VCs were wishing for more too.

But that is life. I think the Dopplr folk have done well. I know how tough this game is within the current hyper competitive online travel market and the travel industry conditions.

Expectations are tough to manage – I feel bad when we have only grown to be 3 times as large this year as we were last year. Most other people would be jumping for joy!

Finally
Oh, here for a bit of fun, is a Dopplr parody (created by Mahalo in 2007)

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According to Travolution, the famous auction site eBay has reached an agreement with Octopus Travel, a hotel consolidator who works with more than 50,000 hotels. 

Back in the 2006, eBay attempted to break into the travel market by partnering with Cultuzz. There is even a website called Cultbay which aggregates about 2000 offers right now. At least this is what I discovered at Eye for Travel at that time.

For some reasons, the travel category never took off with eBay. I have never ever come across anyone who purchased travel on eBay until today. Why?

I believe eBay is famous for tangible goods. Travel is not really tangible until you get to the hotel or you take the train. And therefore I would rather use Priceline to bid on a hotel room in New York than going on eBay. But that's another debate.

But let's take a look at what eBay Travel has to offer on the hotel side today.

To promote the newly signed partnersip with the Travelport company Octopus Travel, eBay offers you the chance to bid for Presidential Suites with Intercontinental Hotels. The sales revenue made will go to charity.

For instance, bidders can get a Presidential Suite in Mauritius for more than £500 at the moment (only 2 night stay though) or the Presidential Suite at the Grand in Paris for £1,200.

 
Besides, this promotional offer with a cause to support behind it, I am still unsure about the offers posted by hotels and operators on eBay. Have a look at this hotel listing and you will see a lot of offers expire today with no bids whatsoever.

Video of turtles crawling back to the sea at sunrise from RoamingTales