February 24, 2012
Solo travelers now account for over $28 billion in travel spending.
There are a lot more single Americans than you realize. It’s time travel and hospitality marketers started catering to them.
Nearly 1 in 3 Americans are single, and over 50 million Americans have never been married.
- 105 million adults in the U.S., nearly one-third of all Americans, are single.
- Almost 40% of the single population are divorced, and 60% have never been married.
- Marriage rates have declined from 72% in 1960 to just 52% in 2008.
Recently, Gary Leopold, CEO of ISM, one of the top travel and hospitality marketing firms in the U.S., explored the subject of solo travelers in a blog post for Media Post.
According to Gary, the statistics on singles travel spending are staggering.
- Singles account for $2.2 trillion in annual buying power.
- 1 in 4 Americans who travel domestically or abroad now do so alone.
- 25 million singles age 42 or older spent over $28 billion on travel in 2008.
Women are more likely than men to travel alone.
- According to Gary, women aged 42 or older are twice as likely as men to vacation alone.
- More than 80% of Match.com users listed travel as one of their interests.
A few travel and hospitality markers are taking advantage of this trend.
- Norwegian Cruise Line launched a ship, Epic, that has 128 “studio” suites and a private lounge designed for the single traveler.
- Some of the all-inclusive resorts like Breezes have packages just for singles.
- REI Adventures partners with Match.com to offer adventure travel trips to singles.
I did a Google search on the keywords “singles travel” and found dozens of singles travel specialists.
They’re focused on a wide variety of singles travel niches, including:
- Cruises
- Adventure travel
- Over 40s travelers
- Luxury travel
- Jewish Singles
- Singles Travel Clubs
It’s harder to find restaurant chains and other hospitality brands that cater to singles.
That surprises me, since the mothers of newly graduated 20 somethings and recently divorced adult children will tell you they eat out more than their married brothers and sisters.
What you can do to attract singles to your travel or hospitality brand
- You can start by developing packages and promotions just for singles.
- If you’re a travel brand, experiment with eliminating your use of single supplements.
- When marketing to singles, stop pricing on a per person/double occupancy basis.
- If you’re a restaurant, consider a singles’ menu and options for people who don’t cook at home.
What are you doing to reach the single traveler or diner?
Have you tried special packages or offers? What’s worked? What hasn’t? Tell us about it.
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Leisure Services, Research, Restaurant Marketing, Travel and Tourism, Trends | Tagged: appealing to the single traveler, CCT Advertising, hospitality marketing, leisure marketing, leisure marketing specialists, marketing to the single traveler, marketing to the solo traveler, reaching the solo traveler, single travel, single traveler, statistics on singles travel, the single traveler, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, travel packages to the single traveler | 
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Posted by 5to9branding
February 22, 2012
Several new websites and apps are helping reinvent the travel space.
If you’re a travel marketer, it’s important to understand how these sites are changing the travel game, and how you can use them to attract new guests and gather competitive intelligence.
Here are five fast-growing concepts leading travel experts say are leading us into the future.
1. HotelTonight is an iPhone and Android app that delivers day of booking hotel discounts.
The app gives consumers the ability to book a hotel the same day they need it, at a steeply discounted rate.
The site partners with hotels with too much inventory to fill open rooms with last-minute guests, and save them up to 70% off the hotel price.
Implication for travel marketers: If you’re a hotelier, consider partnering with HotelTonight to sell out your remaining day-of inventory.
2. Backbid allows travelers with a flexible hotel reservation to solicit other hoteliers for better deals.
They post their reservation on the site and wait to see if other hotels will offer them a lower rate or incentives to move a booking over to the second hotel.
Implication for travel marketers: This site gives you an opportunity to see the rates your competitors are offering in real-time, and decide if you want to beat them.
3. Room 77 is built on the philosophy that you should be able to choose a room in a hotel like a seat on an airplane.
Room 77 offers you the chance to see what rooms look like in a hotel and instructs visitors on how to book that exact room. So far, they have well over half a million room sin their database.
Implication for travel marketers: This is one more site to showcase your property and market your inventory to savvy travelers.
4. Hipmunk is a new flight metasearch site that takes travel planning to the granular level.
In their own words, the site”takes the agony out of travel planning” by giving you more information on your flight.
For instance, if you like to sleep on the airplane, you can find out which ones will be “dark flights.” It also displays in as simple a format as you can get, the flights that are cheapest, quickest, and have the shortest stopovers.
Implications for travel marketers: This is just one more example of how much detail travelers now want in their searches. Look for ways to provide more detailed searches on your site.
5. Gogobot is built on the belief that people want travel advice from people they trust.
So it offers travelers tips and advice from a member’s network of family, friends and business colleagues.
Implications for travel marketers: The Gogobot phenomenon proves that people are using social media to make more and more of their travel decisions.
Make sure you’re monitoring social sites like this and responding to both positive and negative comments.
Thanks to EyeforTravel for identifying these sites for their North American Innovation Award. By the way, HotelTonight won, and Hipmunk was the runner up!
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4 Comments | Leisure Services, Travel and Tourism Marketing, Trends | Tagged: hotel trends, how travelers shop online, latest travel innovations, new travel apps, noteworthy travel marketing trends, travel and leisure marketing, travel trends | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
January 27, 2012
Hispanics like to bring their families on business trips.
Travel Market Report recently interviewed Kelly McDonald, author of How to Market to People Not Like You on catering to the Hispanic traveler.
Although originally addressed to travel agents, Kelly’s recommendations are good advice for any travel and tourism marketer.
To understand why you should market to Hispanics, just look at the numbers
- According to the 2010 census, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the U.S.
- There are 50 million Hispanics living in the U.S. and 1 in 4 of Americans under 18 are Hispanic.
- The Hispanic population grew by 43% from 2000-2010, and accounted for 56% of the population growth in the U.S.
Here are 5 recommendations from Kelly on how travel and tourism marketers can help attract Hispanic travelers:
1. Make it operationally easy for Spanish-speaking guests to deal with your brand
- Present a Spanish-language option for your website, even if it’s just FAQs.
- Do the same for your phone answering system.
- Many Hispanics are in service industries so they work late hours. Consider extending your hours to 8 pm on weekdays and opening on weekends.
2. Speak Spanish
- This seems obvious, but what you may not know is that many English-speaking Hispanics prefer to speak in Spanish if the choice is given to them.
- Make sure you have at least one Spanish-speaking reservations or information agent on staff. It’s important, too that they have good travel expertise and service skills.
3. Develop expertise in what the Hispanic market wants and needs
- Hispanics often bring family members on business trips, so cater to spouses and kid of the Hispanic business traveler.
- Other trends in Hispanic travel include extended family and multigenerational travel and a love of shopping. Understand them and cater to them.
- You can also cater your menu and service offerings to Hispanics. The Westin Hotel in San Antonio serves Mexican cookies in its afternoon tea time because American cookies are too sweet for their Mexican guests.
4. Market through social media
- If your marketing budgets are limited, social media is an efficient way to reach Hispanics.
- Hispanics spend a larger portion of their time on social sites than other ethnic groups.
- They also trust what their friends say on social sites more than other groups.
5. Understand that Hispanics make decisions differently
- Hispanics usually want to involve the whole family in the decision-making process. So your reservations and customer service reps need to be more patient and consultative.
Thanks to Nick Verrastro and the crew at Travel Market Report for this excellent advice.
How about you? What are you doing to make your travel and tourism marketing more Hispanic-friendly?
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1 Comment | Audiences, Ethnic marketing, Travel and Tourism Marketing | Tagged: CCT Advertising, Hispanic marketing, how do I market to Hispanic travelers?, Latina marketing, Latino marketing, marketing to Hispanic travelers, marketing to Latina travelers, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, travel and tourism marketing, travel marketing to Hispanics | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
January 25, 2012
Luxury travelers have money again and are spending it.
Ancestral travel, destination weddings and booking further in advance top the list of trends industry experts see for the coming year
This year’s Luxury Travel Expo featured a panel discussion of four upscale tour companies who made the following predictions:
Swain Tours, Abercrombie & Kent, Classic Vacations, and Tauck identified these three trends:
- Watch for an uptick in destination weddings. One of the panel discussion participants noted that on a recent visit to an upscale Mexican resort there were four weddings a day.
- Savvy luxury travelers follow a crisis. After the protests in Egypt, Abercrombie & Kent lowered their prices by 50% and suddenly luxury travelers weren’t afraid to visit.
- Look for more all-inclusive pricing because luxury travelers are getting tired of having additional travel fees piled on to their bills.
The Travel Experts, a cooperative of 200 travel agencies specializing in luxury travel recently surveyed their member agencies, who identified these trends:
- First off, the luxury travel market is back. Luxury travelers have money again, and are spending it.
- There is more high-end travel being booked through agents, but less mid and low-end travel.
- Luxury travelers are once again planning their travel well in advance of their trips.
- Due in part to a decrease in discretionary spending by Gen X and Y, multi-generational travel is back with grandparents taking their kids and grandkids on trips.
- Italy is the hottest destination for luxury travelers, with the rest of Europe, South America, Alaska, Hawaii, South Africa, Australia, Cambodia and Vietnam rounding out the top destinations.
- Travel that helps benefit the conservation of wildlife and preservation of historic sites around the world.
- Traveling to one’s ancestral roots.
- Off-season travel, which allows travelers to experience a destination with fewer crowds and better deals.
- Traveling with an expert: small group travel with best-in-industry experts.
- Stanley picked these as “hot” cities for 2012: Sao Paulo, Brazil; Salta, Argentina, Beirut, Luang Prabang, Stockholm, Tallinn and Mostar.
What kinds of trends are you seeing from the luxury travel segment? Tell us about your experience.
Special thanks to Tim Scott for reporting on the Luxury Travel Expo at the Luxury Latin America website.
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6 Comments | Travel and Tourism Marketing, Trends | Tagged: ad agencies specializing in travel and leisure marketing, CCT Advertising, luxury travel trends, luxury travel trends 2012, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, travel and leisure specialists, travel marketing specialists | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
January 23, 2012
Kogi Korean BBQ proves you can reach tens of thousands on a shoestring budget.
The million dollar social media question
If you’re like most clients, you’re probably asking: “Do I have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and several staff members to make my social media program successful?
Depending on your ambitions, the answer could be yes. Or no. Consider Kogi Korean Barbecue.
Their mobile food cart travels around Los Angeles selling Korean tacos.
They were one of the first restaurant brands to build up an impressive Twitter following, first of all by offering yummy food that has a cult following among loyal patrons.
Second, by broadcasting the times and locations where their truck will be stopping that day to their almost 89,000 Twitter followers.
The Twitter feed keeps it simple: Time and place.
How did they get all those Twitter followers?
The old-fashioned way. They gave each customer their Twitter handle, and posted it on their truck, their menu and their home page.
To engage their social media audience, they also ran simple promotions and giveaways, like a contest to design a new t-shirt for the restaurant.
That’s not all. On their WordPress website, their owner writes a blog on Asian culture that is truly fascinating. On the site, they feature high quality, close up shots of their favorite dishes. And their trucks.
The website features photos of mouth-watering food.
What have we all learned here?
I don’t know about you, but I learned three things from Kogi Korean BBQ:
- Start with a great product and develop a personality people are genuinely interested in.
- Use existing customer touch points to spread the news of your social sites.
- Make your content more sharable by creating simple tools like contests to engage your audience, and to encourage them to spread the news about your brand.
What did you learn from Kogi? Share it with us.
This post was originally written for the Vitamin CCT blog. CCT is a Denver-based, digitally-enabled communications firm that specializes in 5 to 9 brands, products and services that help people get more out of their free time.
If you have a case study of a 5 to 9 brand that is using social media to innovate their marketing, share it with us. And we’ll share it with the rest of the world.
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Leave a Comment » | Blogging, Restaurant Marketing, twitter | Tagged: 5 to 9 brands, CCT Advertising, great twitter campaigns, low budget twitter campaigns, most successful twitter campaigns, restaurants using twitter, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, twitter campaigns for small businesses, twitter campaigns on a budget | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
January 13, 2012
Your Facebook fans will "like" you more if you follow a few simple guidelines.
To get more fans to engage with your travel and leisure brand’s Facebook page, answer these 5 questions.
Buddy Media recently did a study of the Facebook engagement rates of 200 of their best clients. Their findings will help you answer 5 questions most travel and leisure marketers have about this subject:
- What are the best times to post?
- How long should my posts be?
- What days should I post?
- What words will drive the most “Likes” and Comments?
- What words and phrases drive the highest engagement rates?
1. When should I post?
- 60% of posts analyzed by the study were published between 10 am and 4 pm.
- Yet brands that posted before or after business hours achieved engagement rates 20% higher than the average.
2. How long should my posts be?
- The Buddy Media report found that the shorter the post, the more fans read it.
- In fact, posts of 80 characters or less had a 27% higher engagement rate. Ironically, they only accounted for 19% of all posts.
3. What’s the best day to post?
- The Buddy Media study found that the less people want to be at work the more they are on Facebook!
- For the Travel and Hospitality industry, Buddy Media found that the highest engagement rates occur on Thursday and Friday. On average, they are 18% higher on those days.
- The lowest engagement rates occurred on weekends and Wednesdays.
4. What are the best words to use to drive “Likes” and Comments?
- The Media Buddy study found that direct requests work the best.
- To drive “Likes” or Comments, just ask directly for them to “like” your page, or comment on your post.
- The study found that “Liking” a post or page requires the least amount of effort, and if you tell them to do it they will.
- Key words that scored the best were simple action words: “Like”, “Take”, “Submit”, “Watch”, “Click”, “Post”, “Become a Fan”, “Share”, “Watch”, “Visit”.
5. What are the best words and phrases to use to drive the highest engagement rates?
- When running a contest or other promotion, soft sell keywords work better.
- Use words like “event” and “winning.” Avoid more direct words like “contest” or “promotion.”
- Ask questions. Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate.
- Questions that start with “Where” ,”When”, “Would” and “Should” have the highest engagement rates. Questions that start with “Why” have the lowest engagement rates.
You can download the complete Buddy Media report here. Then tell us what’s working to drive engagement rates of your travel and leisure brand.
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Leave a Comment » | Facebook, Leisure Services, Social Media, Travel and Tourism Marketing | Tagged: CCT Advertising, Facebook engagement rates for travel brands, Facebook page engagement rates, getting more Facebook fans to like your page, increasing your "likes", Tom Leydon, travel and leisure brands, travel and leisure marketing | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
November 28, 2011
A study of women in 22 countries identified 5 ways brands are failing women, and 5 strategies to earn back their trust.
A landmark study found that women control 73% of household spending, but feel neglected by many brands.
Authors Michael and Kate Sayre, partners at Boston Consulting Group recently published a book: Women Want More: How to capture your share of the world’s largest, fastest growing market .
The landmark study upon which the book is based traced the attitudes and purchasing habits of 12,000 women in twenty-two countries.
The study found that women control 73% of household spending, and $4.3 trillion in consumer spending in the U.S. alone.
But it found that women the world over are dissatisfied with the products and services they buy. The reason?
Many companies don’t take the time to understand the issues modern women face, and create products that fail to meet their needs.
The authors found that women are having difficulty balancing all the roles they are called to play at home and in their job. They’re time-starved and stressed out.
And they struggle to balance what the authors call “the job at the job and the job at home.”
The book reports that companies fail to meet the needs of women in five key ways:
- They are not addressing women’s need for time-saving solutions.
- They have poor product design and customization for women.
- Their sales and marketing efforts are clumsy and often insulting to women.
- They fail to align with women’s values or develop community.
- They don’t ‘give back’ to society as well or as much as they could.
The authors offer five ways that travel & leisure brands can earn the loyalty of women:
- Take the time to understand and tailor your product to their needs and values.
- Create products and services that save women time.
- Demonstrate your own values and commitment to the community.
- Empower your sales force to be more responsive.
- Offer 24/7 access to customer service, and product information that’s simple and easy to find
According to the study, women place a premium on the following values:
- Love
- Health
- Honesty
- Emotional Wellbeing.
Women want the brands they buy to understand those values, and offer them services that honor them.
According to Ms. Sayer, “Take care of those core values,and companies can really connect with women.”
How is your travel & leisure brand connecting with women? What changes have you made to reach better connect to women’s wants and needs? Talk to us.
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Leave a Comment » | Audiences, Leisure Products, My Advertising Agency, Research, Trends | Tagged: Boston Consulting Group, CCT Advertising, consumer spending, fastest growing market, household spending, Kate Sayre, leisure marketing, marketing to women, Michael Sayre, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, Women Want More: How to capture your share of the world's largest | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
November 18, 2011
If you want your travel or leisure brand to reach Millennials, study this Pew Research Center report that describes their distinguishing characteristics.
The Pew Research Center released a comprehensive study on Millennials, the roughly 50 million Americans ages 18-29 who have come of age in the new millennium.
The report explored the demographics, priorities, values and social behavior of this generation.
It uncovered these 8 important distinctions that any marketer of a travel or leisure brand should take note of:
- Millennials are more ethnically diverse than any other generation. Almost 4 in 10 Millennials classify themselves as a racial or ethnic minority, compared to less than 3 in 10 Baby Boomers.
- They are much less likely to be married or have children than previous generations were at comparable ages: Only 1 in 5 are married, compared to 2 in 5 for Baby Boomers at the same age. And 1 in 3 are parents.
- They consider their technology toys almost like a third appendage. More than 8 in 10 say they sleep with their cell phone by their bedside. Fully 2 out of 3 admit they text while driving. And 3 out of 4 have created a profile on a social networking site. By comparison, only 50% of Gen Xers and 30% of Baby Boomers have done so.
- Just 1 in 5 are married, but 1 in 3 are parents, owing to the high percentage of single moms in this age group.
- Despite coming to age during two wars, just 2% of Millennial males are military veterans, compared to 6% of Gen Xers and 13% of Bab Boomer men at a comparable age.
- Exercise is a big part of their lives, with 56% saying they had gotten vigorous exercise in the last twenty-four hours, compared to only 46% of the overall population.
- They watch less TV than other generations, with only 57% having watched more than an hour of television in the past 24 hours compared to 67% of Gen Xers and 80% of Baby Boomers.
- And most striking of all, 37% of all Millennials are unemployed
Here are a few examples of how this information can help guide your travel marketing efforts to Millennials:
- Create promotions and highlight benefits that will appeal to singles.
- Does your brand have a special appeal to physically active people? Tell them about it.
- If you must reach them in TV, advertise on shows like The Daily Show, which reaches Millennials in large numbers.
- If you’re doing mass media advertising, be sure to include a large social media component, since this is where they’re spending more and more of their time.
- A huge FYI: If you’re marketing a high-ticket item, you may want to spend less on your marketing efforts to Millennials, until the economy gets stronger.
Click here for a downloadable copy of the full report, “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next”
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Leave a Comment » | Audiences, Branding/Positioning, Leisure Products, Leisure Services, Metrics, My Advertising Agency, Production Values, Research, Social Media, Trends | Tagged: branding, CCT Advertising, leisure marketing, millenials, Pews Research Center, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure marketing, travel marketing, travel marketing to millennials | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
November 9, 2011
Americans love their leisure trips too much to give them up.
A recent study confirms that Americans are finding the money to take more leisure trips. But they are also finding new ways to save on those trips.
If your travel marketing program is targeted to the leisure traveler, we have good news.
According to the Ypartnership’s latest Portrait of American Travelers study, the U.S. leisure travel market is showing signs of stabilizing.
- The average American leisure traveler took four overnight trips during the past year, and spent an average of $3,500 on travel services.
- A net increase of 2% of leisure travelers expect to take more overnight trips in the coming year.
- 11% more affluent households (HH income of $125K+) say they plan to increase their leisure trips this year.
Value will continue to be a popular travel trend.
- 1 in 3 leisure travelers are waiting for items to go on sale before buying.
- 1 in 3 are buying fewer “exclusive brands.”
- Baby boomers, facing the double whammy of kids in college and elderly parents who need care, are cutting back more than other generations.
Leisure travelers are practicing a new resourcefulness.
- Coupon use, buying generic brands and adjusting the time and location of one’s shopping to get lower prices continue to trend upward.
- 8 in 10 leisure travelers rank the ability to check for the lowest fares and the lowest price guarantee as the two most important attributes of a travel services website.
Many leisure travelers are making more impulse travel buys, based on seeing a good deal.
- 1 in 7 have purchased a travel service after receiving an unsolicited e-mail.
- 4 in 10 who have responded to these e-mails have booked an entire vacation.
- 3 in 10 leisure travelers have booked a last-minute vacation.
If you’re the marketer of a travel or attraction brand, you can take advantage of the changing habits of the leisure traveler by:
- Offering more last minute deals.
- Packaging those deals in e-mail offers.
- Offering special coupons for shopping and attractions with your last-minute deals.
That’s what we’ve learned. Tell us how your travel or tourism brand is adjusting to the new realities of the post-recession traveler.
You can order the full Ypartnership report here.
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1 Comment | Travel and Tourism, Trends | Tagged: 2010 Portrait of American Travelers, CCT Advertising, leisure marketing, leisure travel, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure branding, travel and leisure marketing, travel and tourism marketing, travel marketing, Ypartnership | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
November 2, 2011
When I moved to Denver 18 years ago, it seemed like a long way off from the work-obsessed, almost cult-like ad community I left behind in Minneapolis.
Then I started meeting a few of the natives. And saw what they were doing with their free time.
Up and down my street, and in office after office at work, I met people who worked hard. And played even harder.
I met people who plotted and planned out every minute of their evenings, weekends and vacations like it just might be their last.
They mountain biked, kayaked, fly fished and tent camped in the summer.
They skied, went snowboarding, ice climbed and went snowshoeing in the winter.
Somewhere in there, they found time to take vacations to exotic resorts, desolate beaches and undiscovered four and five-star hotels in Asian and Eastern European cities I had never heard of.
In between trips and treks, they talked my ear off about their passions, and the latest travel and outdoor recreational brands that helped keep their adrenaline pumping.
And I began to understand the difference between a customer and a follower.
That brings us to your brand.
Have you created the kind of product or place that people can’t stop talking about? Is your brand worthy of someone’s full and undivided passion?
Do the people who follow your brand feel like you get them? Do you participate in their conversations enough to know what they love? And hate?
Do you wrap your brand in the same love that intoxicates your followers?
If so, I know 3 million people here in Colorado who can’t wait to meet and talk to you.
If you don’t, I know another 300 million Americans who can’t wait to ignore you.
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Leave a Comment » | Leisure Products, Leisure Services, Marketing Leadership | Tagged: brand enthusiasts, brand loyalty, building loyal customers, CCT Advertising, experts at travel and leisure brands, leisure marketing, passion brands, Tom Leydon, travel and leisure advertising, travel and leisure marketing | Permalink
Posted by 5to9branding
