Tag Archive for: Cuba

Olympics Social Video Views, Cuban Commercial Flights

Olympics Draw Massive Views

Rio OlympicsThe 2016 Rio Olympics games drew serious video views but, unfortunately for NBC, those views were on Facebook. While NBC cited millennials as a reason for the 15% dip in ratings from the London 2012 games, 59% of the 285 million unique video viewers on Facebook came from people under the age of 35.

Social Times reports 139 million views also came from Facebook Live – giving credence to the accusation that NBC – and not millennials was to blame for a dip in network ratings. Many have noted that NBC made it exceptionally difficult to watch the games due to a poor streaming experience.

Indeed, more than 277 million people had more than 1.5 billion interactions with Olympic content on Facebook during the games. Snapchat also reported 50 million Olympic video views while Twitter indicated it saw more than 187 million Olympic-focused tweets.

Commercial Flights to Cuba Coming Soon?

Cuba announced this week it would be ready to begin receiving U.S. commercial flights as early as next week.

JetBlue will perform the inaugural flight August 31 after a more than half century of commercial flight cessation. This is the latest in a tourism boom for Cuba since a 2014 announcement that the U.S. and its Cold War enemy would normalize diplomatic ties. The first U.S. cruise ship to visit the island nation arrived earlier this year.

Yahoo Chat, Cuba’s Study and Cali a Summer Favorite

Yahoo Chat, Cuba’s Survey and Cali a Summer Favorite

Yahoo launches silent video chat

Yahoo’s new messaging app, Livetext, is rolling out globally. Before now, the silent video app was mainly available to those in select countries.

Livetext works by delivering video of yourself to a friend while simultaneously allowing your message text to show up on screen in a somewhat Periscope-like fashion (but for one-on-one conversations). The short video embedded below should give a good idea of what to expect.

Whether Livetext turns out to be a hit, like Facebook Messenger, or a flop, like Facebook’s Slingshot, remains to be seen.

Cuban study targets American travelers

Cuba is looking to take some business away from its Caribbean cousins. The island nation is analyzing American perceptions and ideas of Cuban beaches and cities. The goal is to see how the Cuban perception matches up to other Caribbean destinations.

An analytics company out of Spain is performing the work, looking at Cuba-related keywords in more than seven million Twitter and Instagram comments each month. The main destinations being compared to are in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

Despite the current ban on travel for American travel to Cuba, the Cuban government isn’t waiting for the U.S. Congress to lift that ban to start preparing for American tourists.

California named top summer location by Priceline

There’s no denying that Americans love California. Priceline announced the Golden State is the most-booked state in the U.S. by Americans for travelers in 26 states. The second most-booked state was Florida.

The travel booking site looked at tens of thousands of bookings made in April and May of this year to determine where people were visiting.

Some interesting information to note: most of the people heading to Cali are from Mid West and Western states while East Coast states travel to Florida more.

If you’re wondering where Californians tended to travel to the most, the answer may surprise you: Europe.

Cuba and Airline Fuel Prices

Cuba, Cuba and more Cuba

In case you haven’t noticed, Cuba has been in the news a lot lately thank to the beginning of normalization of relations between the island nation and the United States. This has led to an increase in interest in travel to Cuba. Because of this renewed intrigue, Airbnb recently announced more than one thousand homes would be part of its rental program. Airbnb says the average nightly rental rate will run you about $42. While most of the rooms available are in and around Havana, some others are also available.

However, some analysts note that the 1950’s “stuck in time” appeal many people associate with Cuba could be lost with the normalization of ties and commercialization with the U.S. While it appears that the change is inevitable, the window of opportunity to explore Cuba as it has (largely) been for several decades is open right now, especially because several real estate agents and cruise lines have already been scoping out the island looking for opportunity.

Cheaper travel thanks to fuel prices?

For the past several years, airlines have cited higher fuel prices for higher airfares. However, things may be changing thanks to cheaper oil. Delta Airlines President Ed Bastian says the relaxed prices his airline and a number of other are beginning to enjoy will inevitably trickle down to consumers.

However, Bastian notes that before prices start to fall in step with oil those $50-$60 per barrel oil prices would need to be the norm for some time.