Comments on: Day 2 Highlights – 2010 Association of Travel Marketing Executives Conference

By: RobertKCole

RobertKCole — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:21:34 +0000

I completely agree Phil.

Too early can be called wrong if the expense exposure is significant and the activity never grows in popularity. However, responsibly testing new technologies, marketing channels or processes may provide valuable learning and result in an early mover advantage.

The key is to have a strategy, set goals, measure results, and analyze future opportunities based on the results.

Priceline successfully differentiates itself with it reverse-auction model and strong price focus, but I believe they could use social media very effectively to increase user trust and preference so that the traveler is predisposed to book through Priceline when there is rate parity with the supplier and OTA sites.

By: Phil Caines

Phil Caines — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:06:56 +0000

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the great account of the second day, wish I could have been there.

Although controversial, I tend to agree with Brett Keller when he said “Being too early can also be called being wrong”

In my opinion, being on the bleeding edge ahead of where the consumer spend is will burn up a lot of $, and not deliver in the end. While I believe that there is true value in social media marketing, it may be some time before it can be formulated to entice a direct ROI.

With that being said, Priceline could follow some introductory examples of using twitter to push out hot deals, look at @travelzoo for example, they have 55k followers of their deal stream, and there are plenty of others. With 1 @priceline tweet from Jan 2008, surely they could do better

Phil

By: Priceline excited about price, not social media |

Priceline excited about price, not social media | — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:27:25 +0000

[...] Brett Keller created some serious controversy with comments that seemed to smack of the old-school. From social media to price vs. value, nothing was safe. I puposley waited a few days before writing this post, I felt it would give a bit more objectivity before I jumped in with my two cents. For a really good breakdown from someone who was there, click here to read this post from Robert Cole. [...]

By: connectme360

connectme360 — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:07:37 +0000

Thanks for an incredibly useful followup to the Day 1 post.

If you look at two social media darlings – Best Buy (Twelpforce) and New York City (NYC Big Apps) – the thing both have in common is a CEO that earlier on, made a commitment to using data. Best Buy took a lot of grief when they said they were going to “fire their worst customers” using data to identify who was naughty and who was nice. New York City made city information available via a 311 hotline and learned to connect the dots between making data available and productivity.

It may take some time, but once the C-suite makes the commitment to data, it turns subsequent data-driven initiatives from “truckloads of tinsel” into “vehicles of value”.