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What if blind sampling of hotels were possible, with brand names hidden? What if we could dis-associate brand expectations from actual experience…and reassess accordingly? Back-to-back stays at two very upscale hotels in the Miami / Ft Lauderdale area provided the perfect opportunity for this type of strenuous, high wire evaluation gymnastics. So, working without a [...]
The experience is still too fresh to totally grasp the long-term implications, but I believe I’ve glimpsed the future of cruising…at least the future of Big Ship cruising. My week on the Norwegian Epic was an eye opener to say the least. Some of NCLs innovations are new and original. Others – like a completely [...]
It is a fact: Well written biographies and personal stories resonate with consumers. And those of us in the travel trade have a special advantage. We get to travel a lot. The more we travel, the better our stories. Does your About Us page reflect that? After all, this is where you get to tell [...]
My fellow TAs, this is a cry for help. My 30-year-long love affair with cruises is in jeopardy. ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ as BB King says. The change has been so gradual as to be almost un-detected, previously misdiagnosed as Creeping Laziness. I recently sat down for some remedial therapy with my Grief Counselor*, digging [...]
The buzz is building. The Great American Steamboat Company is now open for business – as of September 30 – with cruises beginning in April, 2012. Jeff Krida and company are bringing back the great sternwheeler, the American Queen. Jeff is former CEO and President of Cruise West and Delta Queen Steamboat Company. Corporate offices [...]
My fellow TA’s – allow me to speak to you in confidence – as a representative of my generation. We Boomers have some unique, even eccentric needs. By going the extra mile to address those needs you can win our undying loyalty. In the US there are 77 million of us who were born between 1946 [...]
The travel industry was stunned this week when – for the first time in ten years – 48 hours passed without the launch of a single new online travel application. Critics, travel writers and technology reviewers alike scanned the media in a panic, checking their iPhones, Androids and Blackberries, glancing nervously at their news feeds [...]
Once upon a time being indispensible to clients was a no brainer, back before critical information became available to the public. In those bygone days, all one needed to do was subscribe to a GDS, join a relatively closed society of information gatekeepers and you were in business. With the advent of the Internet and [...]
We’ve known for some time now that too much information makes for poor decisions. The new news is that the definition of ‘too much’ has been adjusted downward. It turns out that the bar is much lower than was thought. Researchers are now saying it only takes a small step over that tenuous threshold to [...]
It is not a stretch to call me a true denizen of the digital age, after all, I know my way around Photoshop, know how to code a webpage with Dreamweaver and understand that CSS in not another spinoff of Law & Order. I even communicate regularly with my teenager via IM – often the [...]
