International Tourism, Online Travel Sites, Worst Passwords

Uncertainty looms for international tourism in 2016

International tourismDespite strong grown for the past six years, 2016 may mark a downturn in international tourism. In a recent report the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) predicts that international tourism may only grow at a rate of 4% this year – down nearly half a percent from the 4.4% rate seen in 2015. If that report proves accurate that will mark the slowest growth rate since 2009.

UNWTO does identify some reasons for the lower rate prediction, noting that safety and security are among the biggest concerns for travelers.

2015 saw 1.18 billion people travel internationally, up from 256 million during the height of the global recession in 2009.

Study: online travel sites aren’t just about prices

There’s more to what consumers want on travel websites than just the best price. According to a survey by reservation and ecommerce system supplier Atcore, it’s a combination of factors that most consumers look at when deciding who they’ll go through to book travel.

Those factors come down to price, selection, ability to specify details, easy of use and booking several parts of a trip in one spot. The survey found that most sites are lagging on what they promise – according to survey participants.

47% of those surveyed listed booking multiple parts of a trip, advanced search options and filtering to be “must haves” for them while recommendations and trip suggestions were ranked important by only 7%.

Worst Passwords

Worst PasswordsPassword management company, SplashData, has revealed its worst passwords of 2015. We know this is necessarily news, but it is always fun to read. This data is based on more than two million passwords that were leaked last year. There’s some good news and bad news: we’re getting a bit better about making our passwords longer – but not necessarily better. Here are the top ten worst passwords of 2015 and their ranking compared to 2014:

  1. 123456 (Unchanged)
  2. password (Unchanged)
  3. 12345678 (Up 1)
  4. qwerty (Up 1)
  5. 12345 (Down 2)
  6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
  7. football (Up 3)
  8. 1234 (Down 1)
  9. 1234567 (Up 2)
  10. baseball (Down 2)

It’s worth noting that some very topical passwords rounded out the top 25, including starwars and solo. SplashData notes that, for now, the best defense against hackers or thieves is to create a long and random password that is hard to guess.

Custom Newsfeeds, TripAdvisor Bookings, Airfordable

Facebook adding custom newsfeeds?

Facebook Custom NewsfeedsWe’ve reported quite a bit on the ways Twitter is copying Facebook, but now it looks like Facebook may be taking a page from Twitter’s playbook. Category-specific newsfeeds similar to Twitter’s lists have been experimented with since October, according to some reports, but now appear to be rolling out a bit more widely.

In an example tweeted out by Laundry Services’ CEO there appeared to be 13 categories including style, travel and headlines. These feeds seem to include updates and posts from friends and pages being followed – as well as pages that aren’t being followed by someone, but the feeds do appear to offer some customization.

One big point worth noting is that, in the example tweeted out, no ads appeared – but some analysts expect that to change if this new newsfeed option rolls out to the wider Facebook audience.

TripAdvisor offers instant bookings in most popular locations

As TripAdvisor has increased its ability to allow for instant bookings instead of sending visitors to third-party sites so too has its ability to cover the most popular destinations in the world.

A December study by financial firm PiperJaffray found that TripAdvisor’s Instant Bookings covered a whopping 92% of the most popular hotels in the most popular markets in the world. That number is up from only 76% in September and is thinks to the Booking.com partnership TripAdvisor forged in November. The study involved the top 500 hotels in the top 100 markets.

Airfordable wants to make it…well, affordable, to fly

AirfordableDepending on where you want to go flying isn’t exactly what many would consider “cheap”. However, new startup Airfordable wants to change that and get more people to fly by paying for their tickets in installments.

Airfordable has a $2,000 maximum on tickets it allows right now and does not charge interest like a credit card would – but it does charge a flat 20% service fee it spreads out across all payments. Travelers must pay for one third of the ticket’s cost up front and select if they want to pay off the ticket in biweekly or monthly installments. The founder says she wanted to make traveling easier for those without credit cards or who can’t normally afford to fly. Airfordable says many of its users are people who have used it to plan trips for major life milestones, like honeymoons or anniversaries.

Facebook vs Yelp, Best Travel Apps & Syrian Vacations?

Facebook vs. Yelp?

Facebook Professional ServicesIf recent news is any indication, Facebook may be looking to take on Yelp. The social network has reportedly developed a tool to help users find top-rated businesses within an area.

Tentatively called “Facebook Professional Services,” this feature would live within and be a part of Facebook and is currently desktop-only. This is likely to change as the company appears to still be designing the new tool and has not even officially announced it at this time.

Visitors to Professional Services are greeted with a search engine-type page with a box to select the area for which they are browsing. There are already more than 85 business types available for search, with results taking the Facebook five star rating system into account. The results that come up present the business name, contact information, hours of operation and snippets of some reviews.

As mentioned, Facebook has not officially announced the new tool, but did say it was still in early stages of development.

Vacation in Syria?

One of the last places most of us think to visit on vacation these days is war-torn Syria – but that’s exactly what one Russian travel firm is trying to set up. Starting next year, the Assad Tours (named after embattled President Assad) feature a four-to-five day trip to the Syrian front line. The president of the firm says he knows the trip won’t appeal to most people, but there is a niche audience for people “curious to see history made.”

Bizarre PR stunt or not, the head of the Russian Federal Tourism Agency says he has not heard about any such trip at this time and that sending tourists to conflict zones runs against Russian law.

Best iPhone Travel Apps

Let’s face it; apps make life easier – especially if you’re traveling and have no idea where to go, what to do or where to eat. Mashable compiled a list of the best travel apps available for the iPhone (most also appear on the Android store) and came up with the top six apps for travelers. Check them out if you haven’t and go exploring!

  1. Google Maps
  2. Uber
  3. Waze
  4. Yelp
  5. Foursquare
  6. CityMapper

Video Tourism, Easier Custom Audiences, Most Instagrammed Places

Video’s Impact on Tourism


Video and TravelAttractive and compelling visual elements are easy ways to hook peoples’ imaginations and desires when it comes to travel and tourism. We see something amazing and we want to go. Over the past few years, the rise of video as a medium on mobile devices has grown significantly – and that remains true for tourism as well.

New information from Google UK sheds some light on why people engage with video when researching and looking up information for travel.

  • Nearly 50% of travelers watched video online before deciding where to go on a trip.
  • 65% use video when thinking about taking a trip.
  • 67% are using video when choosing their destination and which activities to enjoy.
  • 63% use video when deciding on accommodations.

While this data is focused on the UK, it provides a good sample example of how important the use of compelling and informational video can be when selecting and planning a trip.

Custom Audiences Made Easier

One of the great tools from Facebook is the ability to create a custom audiences from pixels and email addresses for advertising retargeting. It allows advertisers to reach a specific audience they want to engage with. Fortunately, Facebook is making it even easier to create such groups.
Announced this week, multiple data types with real-time matching will be added to the custom audiences tool. Previously, advertisers were limited to only one type at a time.

This means that the following data types will be used to help match people on Facebook and create a custom audience:

  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Mobile advertiser ID
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • City
  • State
  • ZIP code
  • Country

This change means that by uploading a customer list to the custom audience tool the tool will use more points of data at once to create a list while improving accuracy.

The World’s Most Instagrammed Places

It’s no secret people enjoy posting pictures of their travels and vacations on Instagram. That’s probably why there are more than 353 million pieces of travel-related content on the social platform. However, which places around the world are getting the most attention?
Most Instagrammed Places

According to Skift, these are the top five most geotagged locations on Instagram this year:

  1. Disney Properties
  2. Universal Studios Properties
  3. Times Square, New York City
  4. Central Park
  5. Eiffel Tower

Worth noting is that Disney held the top spot last year as well! For the rest of the top 10 most Instagrammed locations in the world, click here.

 

Facebook Notify and Facial Recognition

Facebook wishes to Notify you of important news

Facebook NotifyThe latest in Facebook‘s play for eyes has a name: Notify. The new app launched this week is the company’s newest attempt at being your source for breaking news and information. Notify works by allowing you to select a number of more than 70 publishers to customize alerts and push notifications regarding news on companies, teams, events and more.

The app is available on iOS in the U.S., but does not allow for real-time discussion between users like Twitter does. This isn’t Facebook’s first attempt at something like this (remember Paper, Slingshot or Home?), but with the inclusion of real-time push notifications Notify may finally break Facebook’s less-than-stellar streak with apps involving news and information.

Facebook Experimenting with Facial Recognition Technology on your Phone

A new feature in Facebook’s Messenger app is either really cool – or really creepy, depending on how you look at it. The company is trying out something called “Photo Magic” which uses facial recognition to search for friends of yours on Facebook in pictures immediately after the picture is taken. You’ll then receive a push notification suggesting you send the picture to your friends in the photo.

The feature is being tested out in Australia and requires users to opt-in for the function, which may come as a relief for some. That won’t stop your friends from receiving the suggestion for you if you’re in a picture they’ve taken with you in it. Fortunately, you may opt-out of the facial recognition within the main Facebook app.

 

Pinterest Opens Shop, Twitter Kills Favorites

Pinterest Opens Shop

Pinterest ShopWhen Pinterest announced users would finally be able to buy some of the items they see and pin onto their boards many thought it was a great and exciting concept! However, the reality was a bit less exciting as it quickly became clear that finding pins with the little blue icon on them indicating they were able to be purchased was quite rare. Now, however, Pinterest is hoping to make buying items much easier for its 100 million users.

Available now, the Pinterest Shop allows you to find “trend collections” or buyable pins curated by the social network. For a company valued at $11 billion the move makes perfect sense. While the obvious application for retail is clear, it remains to be seen how other industries might be able to get in on the action. After all, how many travel/tourism-related pins do you see on a daily basis?

Twitter Kills Favorites, Replaces with Likes

For some time now Twitter and Facebook have borrowed ideas from one another (cover photos for Twitter, hashtags for Facebook), but the latest tweak on Twitter’s part seems to show how similar that social network is to becoming Facebook. Twitter has replaced its use of Favorites with Likes. You should notice this now when logging in that the star icon under tweets in your feed has been replaced with a heart.

The reasoning for this from Twitter’s product manager was a bizarre response: “”You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.” Oh okay…

Facebook Boosts Search, Instagram Launches Boomerang

Facebook, social network and…search giant?

Facebook search

Credit: Facebook

Facebook sees 1.5 billion searches each day and has indexed more than 2 trillion posts so, needless to say, there’s an opportunity that the social network is looking to explore there. This week the company announced some new steps being taken to help users find content related to searches. Some of the new features include:

Better search suggestions to bring up more relevant content when you begin typing your search (similar to Google).

Posts from your friends will show up if a search is performed with a topic they posted about. Example: Derek Adams post about being at game 5 of the 2015 Stanley Cup Finals if a search about Stanley Cup Finals is performed.

Public posts relating to a topic being searched will come up to allow users to dive in and engage in discussion with others.

These new changes should be made available to you soon if they are not already.

Instagram throws a Boomerang out there

A new standalone app from Instagram, called Boomerang, want to let you experiment and use one second video loops – similar to a GIF. This app (available now), lets you shoot either one second of video or allows you to loop five photos together into a video that plays and then reverses in a loop over and over again.

The interesting thing is that Boomerang doesn’t even require an Instagram account to start going out there and creating your own GIFs now! See how Boomerang can be used below! Boomerang

Facebook Dislike Button, Instagram Engagement & Annoying Hotel Guests

Facebook Dislike Button debuts…sort of

After years of requests from users Facebook finally unveiled the Dislike Button they had recently mentioned they were working on. The only thing is that the button they talked about turned out to be an emoji-like face to allow users to express an emotion they feel.

Called “Reactions”, they are a series of emoji alongside the good ol’ Like button to give users the ability to express the emotions seen in the image below.Facebook Reactions

Reactions are being tested out in Ireland and Spain with no word on if they will become available for worldwide use.

Instagram Organic Engagement is dropping

Social analytics company, Locowise, deduced that Instagram organic engagement is dropping after conducting a study of more than 2,500 brand profiles. The findings suggest the social network is moving closer to a pay-to-play model similar to Facebook (which owns Instagram). Interestingly enough, Instagram ads are beginning to become more widely available to pages…

Don’t be an annoying guest

Annoying Hotel GuestsExpedia has a list of the most annoying hotel guests. After conducting a hotel etiquette study and asking more than one thousand people which traits and behaviors they found most annoying of fellow guest the list is interesting:

  1. Inattentive parents who let their kids run wild
  2. People who are exceptionally loud in the hotel hallway for all to hear
  3. Guests who berate hotel staff

Check out the full list here and stay polite, friends!

 

Facebook Experimenting with Carousel Page Posts

Not just for ads anymore?

Carousel-type post from TwoSix Digital client, Hamilton County Tourism

Carousel-type post from TwoSix Digital client, Hamilton County Tourism

A new posting option on Facebook seems to mimic the carousel ad format it rolled out last year for non-advertised posts. When posting a link to Facebook you may soon see the option to include multiple images from the landing page (or uploaded by the channel manager) in a carousel format – with each image allowing for customized text.

When posting the link, the carousel format auto-generates and a blue box with text pops up reading:

“Choose images from this website to include in your post, or upload your own. Each image will link to the website”.

Carousel-type post

Credit: Social Times

This option seems like a great feature for channel managers to showcase multiple aspects of a blog post or page (see the example above), or to use multiple images to draw eyes to a story (see the example right), but it should be noted that images in this type of format cannot be clicked on to enlarge – so if you experiment, make sure the images are clear!

At this time, Facebook has not commented or released information regarding these types of posts, so there is no confirmation that this is here to stay or just another new feature the social network is trying out.

What kinds of stories can YOU tell with the carousel?

 

Twitter Polls, State Tourism Spending and Tourism’s Future

Twitter Polls, State Tourism Spending and Tourism’s Future

Twitter PollTwitter Experimenting with Polls

Twitter is starting to allow some users to use polls in their tweets. It’s only on the mobile apps and website right now and still in the experimentation stage, though it could be a great way to get quick feedback (roughly 24 hours per poll allowed) from followers on a number of topics, from issues and news stories to preferred locations of travel at a destination.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has experimented with something like polls. Companies used to be able to poll followers through custom cards.

States with Increasing Tourism Budgets

With the recession becoming more and more of a memory, more states are increasing their tourism budgets – to a record average of $18.1 million this year with an overall 4.9% increase in budgets year-over-year. So, who’s who in the big state tourism spend increase?

Florida has the largest monetary increase of $15 million at a 22% increase, giving it the largest tourism budget in the country at $84.5 million, ahead of Hawaii’s same $82 million it spent in 2014. In terms of percentage increase Missouri and Nebraska take the cake with a 46% increases.

Tourism of the Future

What will the tourism of the future look like? A survey by Marriott Credit Cards asked more than one thousand people what the near future of travel could be and received some interesting theories of what would be possible by 2030:

  1. 61% felt 24 hour virtual concierge service would be able to accommodate travelers any time
  2. 58% believe digital passports and facial recognition would be available
  3. 58% thought that digital payments via phones and watches would take over
  4. 51% said that extreme hotels, like zip-lining over your treehouse or an over-the-ocean hut/hotel would be common
  5. 47% think that personalized mobile travel guides could pave the way for unique experiences