Cities
Dubai’s Burj Al Arab — Often Voted the “World’s Most Luxurious Hotel”
When baby boomers travel, surveys show, they aren’t generally looking for familiar amenities – they’re looking for exotic (or at least different) foods, people and experiences that they can’t find at home.
In other words, the old “ugly American” stereotype of folks who will only eat hamburgers in France or who stare goggle-eyed at someone dressed a bit differently cannot be applied to most boomers. (Thank goodness.)
Furthermore, many baby boomers are sophisticated travelers who have journeyed abroad multiple times in their lives, both on vacation and on business. They long ago developed a taste for Thai food (very possibly in Thailand), have long since done the Eiffel Tower, Tower of London and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and can speak authoritatively on the relative merits of the Spanish Costa Brava and the French Riviera.
I don’t like… Continue reading
Cape Town offers spectacular coastal scenery. Photo from Cape Town Travel
Teaming with the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Cape Town Tourism invited Facebook users to send their virtual profiles on a “holiday” to Cape Town.
Based on users’ answers to various questions, their Facebook profiles could then experience customized itineraries in the South African city, with the players receiving regular illustrated updates on how their profiles were spending their virtual time seeing the sights and perhaps relaxing at the beach.
Those enrolled in the game — more than 8,000 players in all, who hailed from South Africa, the UK, the U.S., Canada, India, Germany and elsewhere —… Continue reading
White-cheeked Gibbons in the Bronx Zoo — photo from Bronx Zoo
In a previous post on Re-Branding the Bronx, I talked about the challenges of finding ways to combat the “bad first impression,” as one image consultant put it, that many people have had about the Bronx in the past. When tourists decide where to spend their time in New York City, how many of them are scared off by lingering Bronx images of crime, abandoned burned cars, and Bonfire-of-the-Vanities-meets-Fort Apache-style scary neighborhoods?
Well, it’s a new day in the northernmost borough of the city, so let me reiterate some of the reasons to love the Bronx:
The Bronx Zoo — one of the world’s finest.
The Botanical Gardens — flowers and plants galore near the zoo, a great place to wander.
Wave Hill — overlooking the Hudson, this estate may be be the most peaceful spot in all of… Continue reading
Hanging out at the Bronx Zoo. Photo from Bronxzoo.com
As a former resident of the Bronx — albeit on idyllic City Island, which is more like a New England fishing village than a big-city neighborhood — I recommend this piece in today’s New York Times about the challenges of “fighting the image of the ‘burning’ borough,” as the Times headline puts it.
Not surprisingly, considering its history, the Bronx has a branding problem when it comes to attracting visitors and their cash. Those of us of baby boomer age most likely have three key associations if we hear the words “the Bronx”: “the Bronx Bombers” (the Yankees and Yankee Stadium); the Bronx Zoo; and “Fort Apache, The Bronx” — the 1970s film depicting a scary, crime-and-grime-ridden borough that probably scared off more tourists than King Kong.
And yet, the Bronx does have its share of attractions, something that I wrote… Continue reading
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