Wanderfly, I want to #travel to...

I was very impressed with Wanderfly, although it is still in beta. I think it will have a bright future ahead.

Here is why I like it:
  • You can enter your budget for traveling, when and where you are departing from.
  • You can select the mood you are interested in - outdoor adventure, beach, snow, etc.
  • It will provide for you short intro of the destination, photos, map twitter feed on the destination, weather and your friends. It will soon feature the currency data, destination review and travel tips. (I'm wondering if it will pull data from TripAdvisor)
  • If you are comfortable in allowing Wanderfly to pull data from your Facebook, most importantly is your friends data. It will provide you a quick preview on which friend do you have on that particular destination you are visiting. (I do am sure I have friends in Toronto, not sure why the data is not displaying)
  • Will also recommend flights (data pulled from Kayak) and hotels (data pulled from Expedia Affiliate Network).
  • Will also give you estimate how much money it will cost you.
  • Finally at the bottom are photo list of activities you might enjoy, organized by category. It pulls up data from multiple source such as Yelp, Foursquare, Lonely Planet, Nile Guide and others.
This tool is almost similar like Tripit, but different. Design and interface wise I Wanderfly more and simplicity to use. You can record your trips or just simply use it to plan your holiday. It really is a very handy and easy to use tool. The ideas and creativity behind it is genius, design wise hands down more interesting than other trip planners. By far I think their integration all in one place is the best I've seen.

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Google Approach Travel Industry, Reshaping the Landscape

After reading this article by Daniel A. Crane - "Let’s Calm Down On The Google-ITA Deal", I started to look again on Google move onto the travel market. Last year Google Map launched an upgrade in UK, which enables people to search hotel booking date directly on the map website, it also compares several sites at once per hotel listing. It looks like the service now have started to expand to other regions, for Bali and KL. The map results also displays the hotel reviews from multiple sites, which is useful. Although I did several search for China and it didn't show the hotel, probably due to Google still having inconsistent performance in China. I'm sure you've heard on Google's recent approach on the travel industry case such as - ITA and TripAdvisor. 

Google's mission is for sure to enable access of information to anyone publicly, whilst the travel industry is based upon a very old system - GDS which originated from airlines. But it's funny how the industry revolves, hotels and airlines rely on GDS or Online Travel Agent (OTA) such as Expedia, Orbitz, CTRIP, etc. But OTA relies on public, in order to reach the public it of course relies on buying keywords on search engines as one of their key marketing activities - namely the major search engines player such as Google, Yahoo! (although now Yahoo pulls search results from Bing), Bing (currently accused copying search results from Google) and Baidu.

Hotel of course in the recent years have tried to gain market share and tries to route booking directly, as this will lower their commission cost per booking, with Google on the verge of making a deal with ITA and enabling people to search directly from the search engines will definitely change the whole game plan. It will for sure draw or rather reduce traffic to OTAs website. Currently I haven't seen any room rate comparison coming from the hotel directly, but I see that more hotel groups will definitely race for including their hotel rates search results on Google Map. Although a lot of companies are against Google ITA buyout, but this will be a very interesting time as it will/might give the hotels a fighting chance.

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Ritz-Carlton Many Faces on Twitter

Has anyone noticed the faces of Ritz-Carltons on Twitter lately? I remember couple years ago, when Ritz launched their in 2009 Twitter accounts there were only three - their CEO, Ritz-Carlton to represent PR and CSR for their community.

Today they have many faces active on Twitter, engaging not only media, but also travelers. Check them out, also did a Klout scores:

The Klout scores are just for reference, as it takes time to cultivate a good Twitter relationships (particularly those that creates a difference). It gives a whole new meaning of putting a face to the... Twitter, after all it is "Ladies and Gentleman Tweeting for Ladies and Gentlemen".

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TripAdvisor 2011 The Best Hotels

Categories are Top 25 of the world, United States, Europe, Japan, India, China and Hong Kong/Macao/Taiwan. For category wise it is top 10 of Bargain, All-inclusive, Romance, B&B/Inns, Luxury, Relaxation/Spa, Trendiest, Best Service (categorized per area) and Europe favorite hotels.

I don't know exactly how this list is pulled, but I believe its based on readers hotel review and if the hotel maintains its positioning and hotel satisfaction/quality, they are then selected at the year end or early of the year. Thus VOILA your favorite hotel list!

I'm happy that my former hotel - Fairmont has made it to number 4 of top 25 China hotels.

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Hotel Websites Integrates TripAdvisor Reviews

Last year Accor started integrating TripAdvisor, one of the most important and probably largest hotel review social network into their website. I just noticed that more and more hotels are integrating it into their website, good or bad they are what they are.

Here are just some hotels I was able to found that integrates TripAdvisor into their website, but please share with me if you ever found other websites that integrates TripAdvisor reviews:
  • Accorhotels.com note this does not appear if you search via their individual brand website like Sofitel or Novotel. But the integration is very nice and subtle on the right hand side, just below the booking engine, it shows how many reviews the hotel has received and the overall ratings. When you click on the more reviews, it will pop-up a small window.
  • Langham Hotels did this integration fairly recently I believe, I didn't notice it at all. It is after all on the way at the bottom of the website. But if you click what it differs from Accor is their dedicated pulling content from TripAdvisor and feed it directly to Langham website, so visitors will not need to go away from their website. The feed is rather slow though and very selective, so you can see the whole content. Note that not all hotels integrates this feature
  • Pan Pacific included a logo of TripAdvisor that links to the particular hotel review on TripAdvisor directly, but not all hotels include this feature.
  • Ayana Resort in Bali creates multiple social media links at every page of their website, one of them is the TripAdvisor logo however it only invites users to vote or reviews their hotel on TripAdvisor instead of showing what other guests have to say.
  • Paradise Point integration is one of the nicest I've seen so far, the load time is fast and it also pull reviews from other OTA such as Priceline. (Engine is called Social Buzz by Revinate, credit @bilbaobab for introducing me)
  • Indy Marriort again another integration via Social Buzz by Revinate like Paradise Point, although I don't know if it is standard via all Marriott hotels. (thanks @michellewohl for introducing)
I foresee this will become a trend across all hotel websites, with over 40 million reviews TripAdvisor is the largest travel social network. On top of that TripAdvisor actually drives traffic and business for Expedia so that's quite big, which is the reason by TripAdvisor + Expedia is fighting Google.

I do think, general managers should stop fighting and being vicious about it. It is what it is, can't have absolute control on everything, but rather just try to talk and listen what people has to say. It is a human purpose era after all. I did once get a call by a hotel wanting to confirm that the TripAdvisor reviews my hotel has been receiving is fake and the reason behind is that their general manager "heard about it". In any case your hotel "conversation are taking place" whether you like it or not and unlike hotel that GM can control, conversation is not, you can only manage it.

About Social Buzz from Revinate:
Revinate's Social Buzz is a powerful system that makes it easy for you to promote your public feedback from across the Web on your own sites. Why does Social Buzz make sense for hotels? Honest recommendations from guests is now the most significant driver of booking decisions. But feedback from your guests is being posted to review and third party booking engines, so the value of the feedback is benefiting their sites, not your own. (click here for their official blog)

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Top Guest Adds Hotel Rewards

It looks like Top Guest are getting more busier, they just added several rewards available now to loyal travelers that likes to check-in not only at the Front Office, but also on their phone (here's an idea why not streamline and just do one check-in from mobile and Front Office just pull the data over, will certainly save a heck of double work). I mean checking-in via mobile for hoteliers should mean a new form of CRM.
I do think they should partner with JiePang for China market, as this is where the hospitality front will expand a lot more faster compared to the west, with more hotels on the pipeline. Working not only with the International Hotel Groups, but also local motels like Home Inn or 7 Days Inn.

Most noted are - $20 voucher benefits at select Shangri-La, Swissôtel, Mövenpick, Regent and Husa hotel properties.

It looks like more hotel groups are intrigued whether Top Guest check-in Internet model will take off.
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Check-in Gets You Travel Points

Remember Top Guest? I recently revisited their website to check how they were doing and I was quite surprised on how far they've come.

For starters they've finalized the deal with IHG and Hilton, which is two of the largest hotel groups on the world (pretty much makes sense as they will increase the chance of finding spots around the globe for people to check-in).
Furthermore when they started, they have only integrated Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite, but now they've brought in Facebook Places and Twitter as well.

I've got 50 points so far, however you do need your loyalty ID entered in the settings for it to transfer to your miles reward.
I can see that with mobile Internet growth, which it will, location base check-in will be the next big thing to promote loyalty of your customer base, I wonder how this will shape up future CRM, whether CRM would integrate more on guest's social profile. Their mobile app so far features iPhone and Android only, but it is possible to do mobile web login. 
Hopefully they'll get more hotels to sign-up like Starwood and Hyatt would be key.

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iPhone iPad Travel Apps by MUJI

MUJI, a Japanese lifestyle and travel retail brand has just stepped into the Apple App world and blast off with four well thought app.

- The calendar app shows a great integration with Google calendar and looks extremely easy to use. The app is free and you can follow this link to download it.
- The notebook app brings handwriting recognition to the next level, as well as just jotting down your thoughts or sketches. The app cost USD 3.99 and you can follow this link to learn more about it.
- Muji To GO app is a useful tool for travelers to look at local clocks, currency, weather, etc. The app is free and you can follow this link to check it out.
- The Apparel app shows their latest collection, price and launch date. The app is free and you can follow this link to download it.

Well as they say, you got to love the Japanese for their neat in arranging everything ever so... organized?

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