Far Far Away

Photograph by Ande Truman

Everything is possible, but where do possibilities begin...with a slumbering white lion and a train, of course. After all, the journey of a lifetime has to start with a BIG dream ~ Dream of Africa.

While you're at it, why not start with its furthest edge. On the southernmost end of the African continent. Here mountain ranges mark the last stronghold, before this rugged land gives way to the sea. Cliffs rise like fortress walls, while enormous boulders stand sentry guarding the shoreline, unwavering against the thieving sea. Not one, but two oceans battle for more ground here. This vibrant land, South Africa,  rises spectacularly, as if it were the last vestige of land at the edge of the world.

South Africa: a land far, far away...

It should be said, while a visit to South Africa will be incredibly memorable for its beauty, this is a land deeply scarred. It is a country still trying to resolve its rocky past; a country riddled with controversy and upheaval, but through it all settlers and travelers continue to come for its spectacular beauty. The wounds of the past are glaringly evident in Cape Town, where we begin this journey. Here a huge percentage of South Africans still live in poverty. The road is long both behind, and ahead of this country, but the possibilities are great. I keep a favorite quote by Maya Angelou on the home page of this blog. It is perhaps no more suitable than here. It reads, "Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."* South Africa will hopefully become a place where all its citizens are treated and cared for equally well. Awareness is key.

Arriving in Cape Town ~

Groot Constantia Estate

As you can imagine, at this point, after the long flight, anticipation for the spectacular train trip ahead will be almost unbearable. You'll eagerly await the call, "All aboard," like mice waiting for the Pavlov's bell to ring. However, before you hop the train, give yourself a day or two to rest and explore this bustling, colorful city; a day or two to get acquainted with this country and its people. After all, this is your once-in-a-lifetime journey, so, arrive early. Why not? It is your big dream.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden

There are vineyards here and beautiful botanical gardens…museums, mountain ranges and oceans…penguins and, yes, even white lions. Bordered to the North by Table Bay, to the West by Signal Hill and the Atlantic, and to the South by Table Mountain National Park, it's not a place that is, "just as good as any," to start the trip of a lifetime, it is an extraordinary place to start.

The Old Biscuit Mill Market

Cape Heritage Hotel built in 1771 or the Vineyard Hotel, are both lovely places to choose as a base. South Africa's unique flavors can be found at any number of restaurants, but to truly experience an abundance of South African flavors and goods visit the markets: Greenmarket Square for traditional African arts and crafts, V&A Market on the Wharf known for fresh, organic or homemade, or at Saturday's ritual the Old Biscuit Mill. If flora is your thing don't miss Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden which boasts over 22,000 indigenous plant species, and was the first botanical garden to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's a one of a kind "steampunk" coffee shop called Truth and more than one world class winery.
Cape Town is said to be one of the most photogenic cities in the world, so of course exploring it should be included in a trip of a lifetime to Africa.

Truth Coffee Shop

Cape Heritage Hotel

*Tourism does help support South Africans, but it's not enough. While visiting this amazing part of the world consider finding other ways to help South African's in need.

Labor of Love

Remember what it felt like when you started the project? When you purchased the space? When you first had the idea? How it filled you with joy, wonder and ideas.

With the economy the way it is today it's difficult to remember those days.

• Perhaps you're struggling to keep things going. 
• Perhaps you're feeling the effects of your regulars being less regular and more frugal. 
• Perhaps you're having to cut corners or staff. 

Now is the time to turn it around; to break the hold the economy has over you; to tap into that feeling you had when it was a labor of love. To find it within yourself.

Like swinging on musical swings, it's time to feel giddy again.
The following is inspirational. A true labor of love. Listening may just allow you to find your joy again.

Created by Daily Tous Les Jours

Musical Light Swings
on the Streets of Montreal

Recommendations - Snake Oil or Gold

I recently read a comment by Valorie Maltoni suggesting, "We are witnessing the dissolution of the traditional sales role, as recommendation commerce store fronts become wherever you happen to be, doing whatever you happen to be doing...the Storeless store and the Saleless sale." While I don't think it's entirely true or affecting every industry yet I do think the online recommendations are wildly popular, especially in the hospitality industry. The obvious reasons are convenience, instant availability, and perceived reliability. The problem is cheaters- businesses that misrepresent themselves with false information then regurgitate the information through recommendation commerce. They get away with it over and over again until it becomes a perceived truth. Most cheaters eventually get exposed, but the damage is already done to consumer and the industry making recommendations seem suspect. In order for recommendation commerce to thrive there will have to be a semi-altruistic intent of reliability within the industry. In other words it's ok to be cool, make money, and achieve notoriety; trustworthiness and reliability will need to rule. Online businesses that make recommendations must mind the store, deal with problems swiftly, and make sure snake oil sales are squashed. Even if you didn't make the recommendation, misrepresenting a product or service is unacceptable. Simply allowing it to be posted on your website is sanctioning it. Sorting it all out is a bit of a conundrum though. To insure that it does not become as severe a problem as the old acceptable margin of false advertising, recommendation commerce must police itself. It isn't possible to catch everyone cheating. Giving consumers reporting options is a good start. Its like having a neighborhood watch (at the very least a good deterrent), because it is never okay to perpetuate a falsehood when consumers have put their faith in your recommendation.

As more useful applications and social media inroads develop online recommendations will become the most powerful form of marketing hotels, restaurants, and attractions... viral word of mouth. Recommendation commerce is a great marketing tool as long as it is reliable.

More Ways to Build Your Brand

So, what is Pinterest? Or more to the point, How do we use it for marketing?
According to Pinterest it is: a virtual Pinboard that let's you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the Internet. Its intent seems to be a virtual, shareable, Internet scrapbook without all the glue tape and cutting.
I know what you're thinking, Not interested! Give me a minute to explain. As often happens on the Internet, Pinterest has evolved into much more. Nothing malleable gets past the Interenet grape vine and Pinterest has set off some serious gossip. For those of us who constantly search for new and better ways to further promote businesses it screamed, Opportunity. And yes, there's still discussion as to where it will go and how long it will last. Who cares! While "they" are still figuring out it's a true value, I say, we go with it. Sometimes a thing is just a thing, but even a temporary thing can provide upward momentum.

Right now Pinterest can help you get noticed and build your brand.

Here's how it works –
You pin pictures of anything of interests to you on Pinboards (groupings) you create. Others can like or repine your pins and follow your boards. Your pins, their repins and your repines get repined again by others and so on. But here's the most important part: your pins can have a link which can lead them straight back to you - your website or blog. It's very simple and it can be fun. Don't pin junk. It will sit there on your boards collecting dust like pins of you oldest great uncle fishing, unless of course, your uncle is fishing at some fabulous destination.
Pin things about your business. Once you get started you'll find plenty to pin – interesting things to do nearby, your beautiful hotel pool or garden, your rooms, the food you serve, your chef at the local farmers market, etc. – just be creative and enjoy.

Overhauling Travel Marketing - Part 1

Time to get real about YOUR marketing!
Let's face it I've been blogging for a while now. Blogs are available on almost every subject and if one doesn't hold your interest you simply move on to the next. I'm one of a multitude of travel related bloggers out there and if you combined all our efforts we've worked extensively on the subject of travel. Blogs are immensely popular, yet even if we've specifically mentioned your hotel, restaurant or attraction you've probably only benefited minimally from our efforts no matter how massive the amount of information we've put out. That being said getting mentioned in a blog post is still important, but we need to address the whole travel marketing picture. If anything, most blogs serve the user (guest) and really great destinations don't get equal billing nearly enough. I'm here to change that to mutually benefit both you and potential guests.

To avoid being overly wordy we're putting hotels/lodging, restaurants and attractions (theme parks, museums, etc.) together under one term-destinations. After all, you are a destination and from a marketing perspective if you're not thinking of your place as such you should be!


Beginning at the beginning -

There are three basic challenges inherent in any destination marketing campaign:

1. They (potential guests) have to find you

2. You have to convince them to try you

3. You have to convince them to come back

The easiest marketing campaign challenge to address is #3. To get guests to come back you must provide them with an acceptable value for their money and their time; you must perform to a reasonable expectation. Do that and they will return. Don't do it and they won't. Perform above expectations and they'll SHARE. Perform below or mislead them and they will likely SHARE negatively, sometimes very negatively. Misleading guest is a huge mistake! Surprisingly this practice is still fairly common and it hurts everyone in the travel industry. Consequently there is now a website that exposes places that mislead guests. 

Performing above and beyond guests expectations, fulfilling their desires can get you a viral response and that's pure GOLD! Let's face it, positive word of mouth from your guests is the absolute best marketing and you can't buy it you have to earn it. If you are already doing this, that's fantastic! You are the destination guests are searching for. The good news is you don't have to be outrageously expensive or exotic to be that destination. Yesterday I happily tweeted, and it wasn't the first time, about an attraction just outside of Yosemite we visited a few years ago because it's such a great memory! I haven't been back to that area (six hour plane trip) but I happily tell others about Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad - GREAT family fun! So if you didn't know about it already or stumble upon it by chance on the internet, like here, how likely are you to find them? How do potential guests find you? For this, #1on the marketing campaign list, there is help. 

Of course, traditional methods of marketing (television, radio, print and direct mail) are still available but, only minimally effective. I could spend considerable time on this subject, but for now let me just say this, These methods are akin to playing roulette; plunking your money down, picking a slot then spinning a wheel and rolling a ball hoping luck lands it in your slot. They're too unpredictable at too high a cost. Ask yourself this, When you do get lucky and get your ad in front of your potential guest  are they really paying attention? 

Fast forward to the Internet - the worldwide web. Your potential guests are using it. They are out there. Great! Right? Considering how vast the Internet is we might as well be saying, aliens do exist - they are out there - somewhere. What you want to know is, How do I communicate with them?  How do our potential guests find us? The internet is suddenly your best friend and your worst enemy. I've heard it all - lack of time, fear, frustration. It's frankly overwhelming! Help is here and I'll take you through the steps over the course of this series of posts.

So here's the first thing you should do, not the number one thing just the first thing we're going to tackle, possibly the easiest thing. Create a Twitter account and begin tweeting. It amazes me how many of my favorite places don't have twitter accounts when you can literally do this in 15 minutes! Do it! Then tweet daily for 15 minutes and you WILL increase your visibility guaranteed! Don't tell me you don't have 15 minutes, find it! If you do this I will follow you. Just copy the following in a tweet:
Hey @travelvisions I'm on #twitter now-follow me.
If you're already tweeting - awesome! Send me the same tweet from above and I'll follow you if I'm not already doing so. If you are ahead of the curve and already tweeting please don't think this series of posts isn't for you. I promise you we will improve your marketing methods in the coming weeks if you stick with me. Coming up next post I'll delve further into the simple social marketing things you MUST do! Until then, I look forward to your tweet!

Overhauling Travel Marketing - Introduction

Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building. Carol M. Highsmith, 2007

My daughter Googled herself the other day and, shockingly, there she was in a photo taken by a reporter in front of The Library of Congress. That day welcoming visitors to “the world’s greatest storehouse of knowledge,” the Librarian of Congress said, “This is all here for you.” On the historic occasion of its grand re-openning and launch of the Library of Congress Experience he explained that the Library, the largest in the world, and its collections are now available “to everyone in the world,” who from their computers are able to “turn pages” of the Gutenberg Bible or examine Ben Franklin’s edits of the Declaration of Independence by way of a new Web presentation portal.

As amazing as the portal launch was nothing is quite like walking through doors of this historic treasure - seeing Thomas Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence with notations by Ben Franklin and having the rare privilege of walking around the Main Reading Room (seldom open to the public). This place is not just a building housing accounts of history in books, its architecture envelops you and its artifacts speak to you. It was the best part of our trip but it was not at all planned. Lucky us!
We stayed at a great boutique hotel, the Palomar, got a private tour of the US Capitol Building, toured the Smithsonian Museums, found a tavern with the largest selection of beer in the world, Bier Baron Tavern - fka Brickskeller, and discovered a terrific Mexican cocina called Oyamel. There they serve the freshest homemade guacamole and an amazing margarita topped with a salt froth. All told it was a fantastic Washington D.C. experience and easily fell into the perfect trip category.
Reminiscing prompted me to now say what I've long thought, Why is it necessary to have such a category? Why shouldn't every trip be this rewarding? Why is it so hard for people to travel like this all the time? After all this is the age of information. Why is it that with all our technology we're still not getting the right information in front of the right people? We can find just about anything on the internet, can't we?
The problem is we're on information overload and the speed and ease of the internet comes with a price. Even with specificity most of our searches yield way more information than we could possibly sort through. Mountains of it! And these places - hotels, restaurants and attractions, are lost in the mountainous pile like a needle in a haystack; an internet size haystack. These places, destinations, want us to know, "This is all here for you," if you can find them. Unfortunately, it is most often left to us, travelers, to do just that. Lucky us?

It's time for a change. Instead of information overload we need information overhaul so that everyone gets to go on the perfect trip nearly every time. TravelVision is doing just that. We're building a website that makes it easier, way easier, to discover and explore the places of interest to you. We're starting a revolution in travel marketing!
Travelvision.com launched in BETA December 2011. Take the Tour and whether you're a user or a destination we'd love for you to join us now. For users it will be a tremendous search, explore and plan tool and for destinations we promise it will be the best marketing experience you will ever have - a destination showcase. Join us over the coming weeks as we evolve and grow adding more and more exciting destinations and features.
Travelvision.com - Know Before You Go