Tourism Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific Region

April 26, 2008

Everybody is talking about China, India, and Vietnam…what is really going on in the fastest growing tourism destination in the world?

I have had the pleasure to sit down with Peter de Jong, CEO of PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) to learn about the challenges and opportunities facing the Asia Pacific region. In particular, Peter addressed the issue around climate change, and how the markets such as China, India, and Vietnam have to focus on infrastructure issues and sustainability in order to be able to cope with the increasing demand. These are all topics that will be addressed at the innovative “PATA CEO Challenge” around Climate Change, held in Bangkok from April 28-30, 2008. Read more

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“Social Media and Travel” at TIA TravelCom in Las Vegas

July 4, 2007

Travelcom

I was invited to participate in a panel discussion about “Social Media and Travel” at TIA TravelCom in Las Vegas last week.

I shared the panel with Jasper Malcomsen, GM of Yahoo Travel, Jim Korvarik, GM of AOL Travel, and Christine Petersen, SVP Marketing Tripavisor. Our panel was moderated by Suzanne Cook, SVP Research TIA. All the prep work was taken under by Cindy Estis Green, who has just recently published a report on Website Best Practices – and the Canadian Tourism Commission was featured in the report.

After a general overview of Social Media in Travel and Tourism by Dr. Suzanne Cook, the discussion went into questions how to deal with negative postings, and how to leverage social media for an organization’s marketing mix. In the end, everybody agreed that social media is just a shift from the traditional word-of-mouth to the web. When a guest complaints about his or her stay in a hotel, the successful front desk staff could try to leverage this opportunity to turn the negative situation into building loyalty. Very similarly to the hotel example, Christine from Tripadvisor encouraged hotels to leverage the situation and engage in a conversation with the guest. (View more pictures of the panel here.)

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