baby boomer marketing strategies
Riverwalk is at its most colorful at night. Photo from Visit San Antonio.
A short while ago a website called SpareFoot — which helps users find good self-storage units but features a very interesting blog filled with de-cluttering tips and other useful info — compiled a list of what they called “America’s 15 Baby Boomer Boom Towns.”
I guess baby boomers are among the biggest users of self-storage units — to which I myself plead guilty over the years, having archived dozens of boxes representing a massive paper trail of my career (I’m currently in rehab on this addiction). But in any event, SpareFoot put some work into this project and identified 15 of the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S. that were attracting new boomer residents and some of the reasons why (the title should really read “boom cities,” but we’ll stick with “boom towns” as the… Continue reading
Victoria Falls at dawn — an unforgettable image. Photo by D.E. Cox, two-time Society of American Travel Writers photographer of the year.
In my travel writing for magazines, I confess I’ve sometimes felt like my words were there more to frame the pictures than to tell the story.
National Geographic Magazine, I’m told, always starts with a portfolio of superb photographs on a topic, and then builds a story around them, rather than have story ideas drive the decisions.
As I noted in a recent post, words — or content as they are now known on the Web — are crucial for conveying information and are the ultimate reason why most people go to a travel website.
But it’s the visual images — if done well — that become seared in our brains and very possibly lead us to choose one destination over another, even if only subconsciously.… Continue reading
Travel websites should seek to flow like this Maine Windjammer in Penobscot Bay, seamlessly and effortlessly. Photo by Clark Norton
I recently read a statistic that unless a website loads within six seconds, the majority of users will give up and go elsewhere. Whether completely true or not, it speaks of our collective impatience when we can’t have our way instantaneously on the Internet.
My frustrations with websites — and travel websites, in particular, since I spend so much time on them — come when I can’t find what I’m looking for after not just six seconds, but sometimes minutes and what seems like hours. Or I never find what I’m looking for at all after exhausting every possible avenue I can think of.
How tough can it be to make it easy for your potential visitors or customers (depending upon whether or not you’re marketing a destination or travel-related… Continue reading
A photo from the Visit Finland website, one of the world’s best designed travel sites.
A few weeks ago I analyzed some of the top travel websites in the U.S. and around the world, focusing primarily on design.
Design is crucial, but there are other key elements to creating great travel websites as well — whether the site is focused on a destination, a tour company, a travel agency, a resort, a hotel, a restaurant, cruise line, or other travel purveyor.
Today I’m going to talk about content, and in days to come I’ll focus on various other elements.
Content: Everything hinges on it. Travelers — and potential travelers — want information first and foremost. It should be clear, accurate and up-to-date. That means professionally written, thoroughly researched, and current.
Professionally written: When you read a sentence — any sentence — its meaning should be clear. It should… Continue reading
Omaha! at night. Is it on your vacation list? Photo courtesy of Visit Omaha.
When we last checked in on the serendipitous relationship between the city of Omaha, Nebraska, and Denver Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning’s signal calling during the NFL playoffs — often consisting of shouting “Omaha! Omaha!” to indicate when to hike the football or change a play — Omaha’s tourism officials were overjoyed at all the free publicity that Manning had generated. According to those who actually counted, Manning yelled “Omaha” more than 40 times during the game against the San Diego Chargers, searing it into the nation’s consciousness.
In response, @Visit Omaha, the Twitter handle of Omaha’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, tweeted that “We certainly appreciate all the love from #PeytonManning,” which garnered some 4,000 retweets and increased Visit Omaha’s Twitter following by at least 400.
But that was just a start.
Hotels.com,… Continue reading
Scranton, Pennsylvania, is one of those cities baby boomers just don’t want to leave. Photo from Wikipedia.
An interesting piece on The Huffington Post this week listed the number one town or city in each U.S. state that baby boomers just don’t seem to want to leave as they get older and/or retire.
The author, Moira McGarvey, runs a website called GangsAway.com that provides helpful info to people planning their retirements — including places to retire. Using U.S. Census and other data that the Gangs Away! gang has dug up, she came up with what she determined are the “stickiest” hometowns across the country — those most likely to find boomers age 55 and up who own their houses free and clear and are staying where they are rather than moving, say, to warmer climes, nearer to their children, or for some other factor.
McGarvey wasn’t able to come up… Continue reading
New Mexico’s Spaceport America, where Virgin Galactic hopes to launch the first commercial space flights. Photo from Virgin Galactic.
Fortune has come out with an interesting follow-up story to our previous post about Sir Richard Branson’s out-of-this-world venture Virgin Galactic, which aims to bring space tourism to America.
Some 600 affluent travelers — including plenty of intrepid baby boomers — have plunked down up to $250,000 each to be among the first passengers on a commercial flight into space, which could happen as early as 2014, though previous target dates have come and gone. With six passengers scheduled for each flight, that would already amount to 100 sold-out flights.
According to Fortune, one travel agency — Virtuoso — has landed exclusive rights to book passengers throughout the Americas onto the flights.
Virtuoso — which bills itself as “the travel industry’s leading luxury network” — includes more than 330 agencies… Continue reading
Omaha’s downtown skyline along the riverfront, looking good. Photo from VisitOmaha.com.
Viewers watching the recent NFL playoff game between the Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers could hardly have missed Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning shouting “Omaha, Omaha!” repeatedly while calling signals. Someone counted up all the “Omahas” and came up with a total of 44 out of 70 snaps.
According to ESPN analysts, calling “Omaha” as a signal — either to alert teammates to an impending hike or changed play or possibly to draw the defense offsides, as Manning did twice — actually started years ago with quarterback Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. But with Manning wired up by CBS during the Broncos’ telecast, “Omaha!” has now become a minor football phenomenon. #OmahaOmaha even trended on twitter during the game, and @VisitOmaha, the twitter handle of the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau (OCVB), tweeted: “We certainly appreciate all… Continue reading
Miley Cyrus putting “twerking” into the news.
The answer to the above heading is “probably not.”
But it may have caught your attention. And that’s the point.
Celebrities — celebrity news, celebrity endorsements, celebrity appearances — can help drive traffic to businesses, including travel businesses.
And while Miley Cyrus and her “twerking” routine — which Yahoo reported was one of the top-searched items of 2013 — may not be a baby boomer obsession, other, shall we say more mature, celebrities can be very helpful indeed.
In the theme cruise column I write for Porthole Cruise Magazine, some of the most successful cruises I’ve featured use appearances by old-time baseball stars, soap opera stars, Broadway music stars — even political pundits who often show up on TV — to attract passengers. The passengers get to mix and mingle with the celebrities, the cruise lines get to fill cabins, and… Continue reading
Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood beckons tourists from around the world. Photo by J Fusco for Visit Philadelphia.
What do you do if you’re in charge of marketing a city destination and you lose most of your state funding?
If you’re Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia — the official destination marketing organization for the city and five regional counties — you get creative.
Levitz, who has headed up Visit Philadelphia (known as the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation until November 2013) since the mid-1990s, told the travel site Skift.com that her biggest challenge was funding, with Pennsylvania state cutbacks resulting in a one-third cutback in her budgets for the past three years. State funding for Visit Philadelphia has dropped from $4 or $5 million a year to zero, though this year they’re getting a special $850,000 grant from the state to promote countryside towns in the area.… Continue reading
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