Baby boomer travel
Reindeer in Finnish Lapland. Photo from Visit Finland.
In my last post, I analyzed the six U.S. tourism websites that the travel site skift.com considers to be among the 20 best-designed such websites in the world.
I was particularly impressed with the Oregon and Los Angeles visitor websites. For me, great website design encompasses not just spectacular visuals and clean typography but easy navigability leading to compelling, well-organized content. The other sites (Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Tennessee [Fall season]; and Florida, while all well designed, also contained some flaws.
If potential visitors — the baby boomer travelers that I focus on, in particular — get frustrated by not being able to find something they’re looking for right away, they may go elsewhere to find it rather than spending the crucial extra minutes on the site that might convince them to visit the destination. Tennessee, for example, has beautiful new sites for… Continue reading
Santa Monica Beach, an iconic site to visit in Los Angeles. Photo from Discover Los Angeles.
I read recently that there are something like 850 million websites in the world, and who knows how many are travel-related, but it must be at least in six figures.
So a new list by skift.com (itself one of the best travel websites) of “The 20 Best Designed Tourism Websites in the World” limits itself to official tourism sites of either countries, states, cities or regions — known as destination marketing organizations, or DMOs. That certainly makes it more manageable.
Even though I always take lists like this with a large shaker of salt, I agree with the sentiment expressed in the accompanying piece by Samantha Shankman: “Websites created by destination marketing organizations are some of the most underused resources in travel today.”
Skift’s analysis of the 50 most visited U.S. tourism websites,… Continue reading
Baby boomers take a break while cycling the Dalmatian coast. Photo from Adventure Media News.
I’ve long wanted to bicycle through Europe, but a few things have held me back:
Do I really want to carry all my gear on a bike?
Is it too complicated to make all arrangements for accommodations along the way, especially if I’ve planned too ambitiously and wear myself out?
What if my bike breaks down and I can’t fix it?
If I go with a bike tour (which will essentially solve the first three problems), can I afford the expense?
And what if, in the end, I just can’t tackle the terrain if there are too many hills?
So I end up taking the train or driving — not that I don’t love European trains or roadways, but I still don’t get to experience Europe with the same intimacy as on a bike.
This… Continue reading
A treehouse hotel in Hocking Hills. Photo from ExploreHockingHills.com
When it comes to my own bucket list of destinations, Ohio has never been high on my list.
Having grown up in the Midwest, I’ve driven through the Buckeye state many times, mainly to get to other places. I spent a weekend in Cincinnati once, found a great breakfast spot near Toledo, and know that Cleveland has a great clinic and improving baseball team, but most of my impressions of Ohio are of flat views from Interstate 80.
So when I learned that a spot in Ohio had made Buzzfeed.com’s list of “22 Stunning Under-the-Radar Destinations to Add to Your Bucket List in 2014” — the only place in the U.S. to make the list — I took notice.
Along with other global under-the-radar destinations like Jericoacoara, Brazil; Ladakh, India; Ipiales, Colombia; Kampong Thom, Cambodia; and the Lofoten Islands, Norway, comes… Continue reading
This 5-ounce container holds a full-sized beach towel, from Lightload. Photo by Clark Norton
The Blackout Pocket from Scottevest is, appropriately, black, and protects your digital data. Photo by Clark Norton
With just a week to go before Christmas, it seems like a good time to mention some gadgets and smallish travel items that are easy to carry but can come in useful on a trip — and which make great stocking-stuffers for the baby boomer traveler on your list.
These items all have a few things in common: they’re compact in size, they meet travel needs and wants, and they’re all nicely designed and packaged. In short, besides being useful, practical or in one case just enjoyable, they’re well-marketed.
If you have a hiker or camper or other kind of outdoorsy person in mind, this full-size beach towel from Lightload comes in a small 5-ounce waterproof container (pictured)… Continue reading
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson”s home, is just outside Charlottesville and one of its prime attractions. Photo by Clark Norton
Having recently spent a week in Charlottesville, Virginia, home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the Jefferson-designed University of Virginia among other terrific places for baby boomer travelers to visit, I was intrigued to learn that the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau (CACVB) has been garnering all kinds of awards for its marketing efforts on social media.
Just a few days ago, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) announced that the CACVB’s social media campaign had won a prestigious Adrian Gold Award, which honors outstanding achievements in advertising, public relations and digital marketing in the travel industry.
The CACVB has also taken home awards this year for “Best Public Relations Initiative” and “Best Online Marketing Campaign” from the Virginia Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, as well as a… Continue reading
The 2014 Berlitz Cruising and Cruise Ships guidebook is Douglas Ward’s 29th edition. Photo by Clark Norton
Each fall when the Berlitz Cruising and Cruise Ships guidebook is published, cruise line marketing departments hold their collective breaths until they see how many stars and points their ships have received from author Douglas Ward, dubbed “The World’s Foremost Authority on Cruising” and whose 2014 edition is the 29th in the series.
An extra star from Ward, or deletion of a star from a ship’s ratings, can have something of the effect of a top chef gaining or losing a Michelin star. Ward, who takes 15-20 cruises a year and spends much of the rest of the time checking out ships in port and making shipyard visits, is known for his objectivity, attention to detail, and no-nonsense writing style.
You won’t find fluff, puff or snark in these 752 pages… Continue reading
Viking River Cruise boats glide through Europe. Photo from Viking.
The travel site Skift.com has just named its top 50 global travel marketers for 2013, including the senior vice president for marketing of Viking River Cruises, Rich Marnell.
Little wonder — Marnell was hired in 2007 as Viking’s director of marketing for North America, and since that time Viking’s share of the burgeoning European river cruise market has risen from 20 percent to fifty percent, remarkable considering that competition is getting increasingly fierce.
I’ve written previously about Viking River Cruises’ approach to marketing: a laser-like focus on their target customer — the classic baby boomer.
“What we’ve done is tailored the product experience for the 55+ culturally curious in mind,” Marnell told Skift. “We don’t try to be everything to everyone. For us, we see that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.”
At a press conference last spring … Continue reading
The Little Havana Food Tour in Miami is one experience you can book at Peek.com. Photo from Miami Culinary Tours.
Let’s say you’re on your way to San Francisco and you’re looking to do things beyond the standard trip to Fisherman’s Wharf, a stroll through Golden Gate Park, or a cable car ride.
Maybe you’d like a sailing tour of San Francisco Bay, a walking tour through North Beach, an electric bike tour of San Francisco, or a food and farm tour of Marin County.
Or maybe you didn’t even know these latter possibilities existed.
This is where a relatively new website called Peek.com comes in. You can go to the site, click on San Francisco (there’s a colorful box with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the home page), and an array of possible activities will come up, organized by categories: Food and Drink, Romantic, Under $50,… Continue reading
Spaceport America — will it revive the fortunes of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico? Photo from Spaceport America.
Baby boomers of a certain age may vaguely recall when a small town in southern New Mexico, then called Hot Springs due to the natural hot springs in the area, agreed to change its name in 1950 to Truth or Consequences.
Ralph Edwards, the host of a popular radio and soon-to-be TV quiz show (called, of course, Truth or Consequences) offered to broadcast the show from any town that would change its name to, you guessed it, Truth or Consequences, in honor of the show’s tenth anniversary. Edwards returned every year for decades on the anniversary, and Truth or Consequences turned the occasion into a celebration called the T or C Fiesta. (The town is now usually referred to simply as T or C by the locals).
T or C gained… Continue reading
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