In luxury goods, price matters, but trust and service retain

Premium and high-end brands shouldn't be tempted to undersell themselves by overusing voucher codes and heavy discounting. Consumers are willing to commit to higher prices as long as the shopping experience and customer service is as premium as their purchase.

A tough economy notwithstanding, 61% of UK consumers who buy premium products and services online will not reduce their online spending in 2012, according to a new study. But, they expect superior service for premium prices, and luxury goods and services providers need to prioritize customer service during the online shopping experience.

Price certainly counts, even among luxury brands: 39% of respondents say that lower prices encourage them to shop with a premium brand, but 21% of consumers cite quality of product and great service as enough of a pull to encourage a luxury spend.

Premium brands need to know their customers inside out and consider every angle of the shopping experience from the perspective of the consumer; this should be a core aspect of retail marketing strategy for high end brands. Premium retailers need to make the whole consumer journey easy, from start to finish, not overlooking the importance of offline interactions such as delivery options and of course post-purchase customer care.

Get the full story at MarketingVox

When research analysts at Facebook studied the Facebook posts of 200 large-brand clients, certain patterns and trends emerged. The results show simple strategy tactics that brands can try to increase fan engagement with posts.

Among the findings:

- Posts containing 80 or fewer characters had 27 percent higher engagement rates than posts longer than 80 characters.

- Yet, only 19 percent of all posts analyzed were this short in length.

- Brands that posted (or scheduled posts) outside of business hours showed engagement rates 20 percent higher than those that posted only during business hours.

- Yet, about 60 percent of posts went live between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET.

- In general, across all industries, engagement rates were 18 percent higher on Thursdays and Fridays compared with other days of the week.

- in general, engagement rates fell 3.5 percent below average for posts Monday through Wednesday and 18 percent below average on Saturdays.

- Fans are more likely to engage with “events” and “winning” than with “contests” and “promotions.”

- Posts that end with a question result in a 15 percent higher engagement rate than posts that do not end in a question.

- Avoid the question why and instead go with where, when, and would and should, which were shown to result in higher engagement.

Get the full story at AllFacebook 

International Tourism Off to a Strong Start in 2012
ENCOURAGING RESULTS ACROSS THE WORLD


In the first months of 2012, growth was positive in all regions, with the exception of the Middle East (-1 percent), where there were nonetheless encouraging signs of recovery, such as in Egypt (+32 percent in the first quarter). Southeast Asia and South Asia (both at +10 percent) led growth by sub-region.

Africa was the fastest-growing region with an increase of over 7 percent in international tourist arrivals thanks to continued growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (+7 percent) and a clear rebound in North Africa (+8 percent), as Tunisia (+53 percent in the first quarter) started to recover. Asia and the Pacific saw a 7 percent increase in tourist arrivals, led by South Asia and Southeast Asia (both +10 percent). Northeast Asia (+6 percent) recorded higher growth as well, with arrivals to Japan up by almost 10 percent in the first quarter. The Americas also reported significant growth (+6 percent), driven by the sustained strong demand in South America (+8 percent) and Central America (+7 percent).

Worldwide, international tourist arrivals surpassed 131 million in the first two months of 2012, up from 124 million in the same period of 2011.

According to the forecast prepared by UNWTO at the beginning of the year, international tourist arrivals are projected to increase by some 3 percent to 4 percent in 2012. For the year as a whole, the number of international tourist arrivals is expected to reach one billion for the first time.

MEDIA CONTACT: Principal Media Officer, Marcelo Risi, Tel: (+34) 91 567 81 60, Email: mrisi@UNWTO.org , Web: www.UNWTO.org ; UNWTO Communications Program, Tel: +34 91-567-8100, Fax: +34 91-567-8218, Email: comm@UNWTO.org

Source: UNWTO via ForImmediateRelease.net

Hey, How Did You Find That Place?
By Jennifer Conlin

EVERY March my most organized friends start reserving waterfront rooms, urban oases or country cabins for their perfect summer getaway, while I procrastinate, overwhelmed by the options. Recently, I logged onto VRBO.com (Vacation Rental by Owner), only to find my head spinning at the length of its roster — 180,000 properties worldwide. Scrolling through Hotels.com (145,000 hotels in more than 60 countries) and Airbnb.com (over 100,000 short-term rental places in 192 countries), I almost gave up.

Then I stumbled upon DesignTripper.com, a site that features 200 or so beautifully photographed small hotels, inns and houses — a slim roster of properties, which appeared to be so breathtakingly designed that the destination seemed secondary.

DesignTripper is one of several curated Web sites that have recently sprung up, offering an alternative to those endless lists on mainstream sites.

“On the big booking Web sites you find all the corporate hotels, but if you want to find the cabin, cottage, B&B or family-owned hotel, it is really hard,” said Meghan McEwen, the founder of Designtripper.com.

“Not everyone enjoys the big hunt for that little gem,” said Krista Garcia, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who notes that people are starting to prefer sites “where the experts are trusted tastemakers who save the consumer time.” (How true is this!)

Source: NYTimes. Continue reading the complete article "Hey, How Did You Find That Place?" on the NYT website 

The rise in private property of Chinese people along with the appreciation of Yuan has induced this growing demand of luxury travel. There are millions of millionaires in China with personal wealth of RMB 10 or more, and they are 15 years younger on average compared to the travellers in Europe and America.

China is one of the biggest countries of self made millionaires and billionaires and it has managed a strong position on financial map of the world. The number of millionaire and billionaire has increased considerably and that has a positive impact on the luxury travel industry of China. Many of the rich people are taking trips around the world with better facilities. The demand for business class travel and costly destination with shopping opportunities has increased among the affluent class and at the same time they are demanding to stay in well known hotels with all sorts of modern facilities no matter what they cost.

A survey was conducted by the Harun Rich List Authority to understand the travel habits and decision making of the affluent class of China in 2011 between April and November. Here 401 millionaires and billionaires were interviews on one to one basis on their travel habits. Among these 401 people 45 had an asset of more than RMB 100 million. Apart from these people 62 more millionaires were interviewed between April and May.

Get the full story at Tourism-Review.com

By Courtney Boyd Myers  

Travel is a multi-trillion dollar industry, so naturally companies as small as Trippy to as giant as Google all want a piece of the pie. In recent years, travel companies have tried to harness the power of data aggregation along with the social graph to produce powerful travel planning tools. For many, sites like TripAdvisor were the first stop in the travel process, but they’ve just been bumped from first class by Gogobot.

Gogobot is a San Francisco based startup founded by MySpace’s former International GM Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Search BOSS. The startup opened up its public beta in early December 2010 and its growth has been astonishing, with a new member joining the site every 15 seconds, on average. After just 18 months since launch, Gogobot is today announcing its 1 millionth registered user along with some pretty competitive stats.

Since launch, more than 5 million places have been shared on the service, with Gogobot’s mobile app and a partnership with Foursquare cited as a major driver of this growth. Since launching the iPhone app in October, the number of reviews submitted by users has doubled each day, the number of trip plans created has doubled each day and the number of photos uploaded by users each day has increased by a magnitude of 5x.

To sign up for Gogobot, use your Facebook, Twitter or email and then start searching for travel recommendations from your friends and browse the top recommendations (e.g. London restaurants) from the entire Gogobot community. You can also post questions within the Gogobot community and out to friends on your social networks like “Where should I go in Thailand?”.

Katz had the idea for Gogobot while he was living in London and taking frequent weekend trips around Europe with his wife. “We’d say, ‘Let’s go someplace we’ve never been before,’ and we’d look on the map at the South of France and spend all day researching. And every single time we’d find ourselves 8 hours later with no idea of where we were going,” says Katz. “I realized that something is badly broken if it’s impossible to plan travel on the Internet.” After a 3 month hiatus in Hawaii, Katz quit MySpace and moved back to Silicon Valley to get started building a solution to his troubles. The company’s headquarters remain there today with an office in London.

Unlike TripAdvisor (which has come under fire recently for its fraudulent reviews), Gogobot was born in the post-Facebook era and baked social in right from the start. It’s part of an entirely new generation of social companies — like Zygna, Spotify and Highlight — that’s been able to beat out the dinosaurs by leveraging the social graph.

Early on, Gogobot scored major partnerships with the top travel booking sites including Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, Priceline and Hotels.com positioning Gogobot to be the number one social platform for travel and wanderlust exploration. According to the Katz, in addition to driving 30 times more traffic than all of its rivals (likeWanderfly, Trippy and Gtrot) put together, Gogobot has secured 4 times more funding over the last 18 months — $19M — than all of its rivals combined.

“The million registered user milestone makes us the first site in the social travel space to get to critical mass, which is really important for a social product. Lots of people launch social companies but unless they have a massive user base, it will never be social enough. You need to have people posting, responding, commenting and caring. And we were the first company to get to there in our space,” says Katz.

With a clean design, intuitive user experience and $19 million in funding from Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Innovation Endeavors, Gogobot’s 1 million strong traveller community is worth perusing before you plan your next vacation.
Courtney Boyd Myers is the Features Editor of The Next Web, based in New York City and London. 

Pinterest spreading to the travel world
By Susan Farlow, Special to the Los Angeles Times

(- to be honest, this is a world I am yet to discover, but am reading about it with interest!)

The travel industry, as well as individual travellers, are starting to use this visual social platform with interesting results. The photos make it easy for a traveller to quickly scan a destination's food, architecture or historic sites.

As a travel writer, I'm always looking for new tools I can use to help plan my trips. Lately, there's been lots of talk about a social media site called Pinterest, a free online photo bulletin board that's popular with designers, foodies and crafts people.

But could you use it to plan trips? Well, yes. It turns out that the travel industries, as well as individual travellers, are starting to use this visual social platform with interesting results.

The photos make it easy for a traveller to quickly scan a destination's food, architecture or historic sites. If you're intrigued by a picture, a click on it will take you to more content.
More uses

Arranging a family trip? Make a Pinterest page with boards such as "Eateries to Try," "Museum Must-Sees" or "Hotels to Consider." Invite family members to add their two cents by "pinning" their photos and comments to the boards. Then, devise an itinerary on which everyone can agree.

Let's say you're looking for great sunglasses, flip-flops or an offbeat backpack. Plug in the keyword and you're presented with a picture gallery of your travel must-haves. Compare offerings and find faves; you can often click to buy.

Keep in mind that Pinterest pages vary in their helpfulness in travel planning. It's a new platform, and the travel industry is still figuring out how best to use it. Even Pinterest itself is trying to figure things out, especially concerning copyrights. Check its terms of service for more information.


Get the full story at the Los Angeles Times

New Study Reveals Best Social Media for Search Ranking
By Courtney Rubin

There are entire businesses—and literally hundreds of thousands of web pages—devoted to improving your Google search ranking. Optimize keywords! Get some backlinks! Hit up social media!

But which social media outlets are most effective? Search engine optimization (SEO) company TastyPlacement put the networks to a not-totally-scientific but still revealing test, pitting Google+, Facebook and Twitter against each other.

The Austin-based company created six websites based in six similarly-sized U.S. cities and let them sit for 10 months. Then the researchers spent a month promoting five of the websites in one of five ways: Twitter followers, tweets and retweets, Facebook shares and likes, followers to the site's Google+ business page and Google+1 votes to the homepage. The sixth site received no promotion to act as a control.

At the end of the month, the company measured how each site's search engine ranking changed for a set of keywords. The changes over the month ranged from dropping 1.22 results to a rise of 14.63 rank positions—suggesting that social media does have an influence on search results.

The Winners

Perhaps not surprisingly, Google+ had the greatest effect. The website linked to a Google+ business page with 100 followers, yielding a 14.63 rise in search position. The website that had 300 Google+ votes rose 9.44.

Observed TastyPlacement: "It's probably not surprising that Google's plan to cut out the crowdsourcing middleman by enticing users to directly vote on a site's relevancy would positively affect rankings."

Facebook promotion had a small but demonstrable effect on the rankings. After 70 Facebook shares plus 50 "likes," the test site here rose 6.9 in the rankings.

A Tweet Defeat

Twitter made a poor showing, at least in this study. After 50 tweets (and some retweets)—some original and some from the company—the linked site rose just 2.88 in the rankings. The truly bad news for fans of Twitter promotion is that the Twitter-promoted site actually did worse than the site with no promotion at all, falling 1.22 in the rankings, versus the no-promotion site dropping only 0.11.

Source: Open forum. Continue reading the complete article "New Study Reveals Best Social Media for Search Ranking".