She Wears a Special Tracksuit Each Time She Flies
I checked the weather, first outside on the thermometer here at Cindy’s house in Holyoke. Just barely 20 degrees…then I saw that in Tehran it’s a balmy 63. So I guess there’s no need to bring that silk long underwear that helped out so well during our trip to Northern […]
The Islamic Republic of Iran Welcomes Me
I’ve got a whopping 18 hours of so before I get back into an aluminum tube for an extended stay in the air tomorrow night. I never sleep well onboard, despite the piles of gadgets I get sent to try out. One blow up tubular pillow extends up the shoulder, […]
AOL Travel Brands the Hell Out of Their Party
My final morning in Hollywood found me out on the terrace, yakking into my cellphone about business and the opportunities which presented themselves out here at this remarkable show. Last night I attended the final party of the show, AOL’s Moonlight Bash, where a swish nightclub was transformed into a […]
Sitting by the Pool, She Told Me About Iran
We had lunch in the brilliant blinding Hollywood sunshine, on the roof next to an empty glistening pool. I sat next to a couple who worked for Phocuswright, and the conversation got around to my trip on Saturday to Iran. She said that in 1978 she was an exchange student, […]
Pamela Knows How to Throw a Good Party
What is a conference without a few high-class parties? True to Phocuswright form, last night I made my way up to the 20th floor to a party thrown by Pamela Johnston, who runs PJ Public relations in New York City. The job of an effective PR company, of course, is […]
Snackable Video Clips Make Trip Television Cool
Trip Television is one of the brightest stars of the Travel Innovator’s summit, since I truly believe that the next big step in travel content has to be video. I think that once people have seen video they will no longer be content to simply read words or view photos. […]
Twitter Has Eclipsed the Blog as the Hot Thing Here
Twitter is definitely replacing the blog as the key application that people are interested in at the PhoCusWright show. During our session, the big screen showed a live feed of all of the twitter comments made during that session and during other sessions. It was real time feedback, comments made […]
Phones Are the Future of the Web
WCities is a perfect travel website to adopt a mobile platform, as they focus on detailed destination guides to major US cities. Now I am listening to Fraser Campbell talk about how he provides content to many sites like Yahoo, AOL and others. We do the same thing at GoNOMAD […]
A Blogger’s Summit: Is There Money In This?
I’m sitting in a room at the Renaissance hotel in Hollywood, it’s a session on blogging, led by a woman from Singapore named Siew Hoon Yeoh who writes a blog there and who told us about the Burmese blogger who went to jail and other horror stories. There is a […]
Taking the Subway to Get a Visa
The first three rows of the vast convention center stage is devoted to bloggers and media. They sit with their laptops pecking out messages on Twitter, commenting on the innovators who one after another got their ten minutes to pitch the crowd on the worthiness of their travel website. I […]
Innovators Gather and Wow the Crowd in Hollywood
The opening speaker this morning, Philip C. Wolf, put our industry in perspective with this daunting statistic: Eight percent of the entire world’s workforce has something to do with travel and tourism. Wow! With this heady stat about our relevance, we launched into this morning’s parade of innovators, a group […]
At the Magic Castle, These Little Touches Add Up
Isn’t it the little things that often make the difference? For me it’s been a combination of goodness since I checked in last night to the Magic Castle hotel here in Hollywood. First the honest-to-goodnessly friendly guy at the counter upgraded me to a suite for my $155 a night […]
A Chance to Hobnob With Travel’s Biggest Players
This afternoon I fly to Hollywood California, and at about 7:30 tonight I should be checking in to the Magic Castle Hotel, a block away from the event venue the Renaissance convention center. I’m going to attend my second PhoCusWright travel conference, where the leaders of today’s biggest on-line travel […]
What Does It Take To Be Great?
Malcolm Gladwell looks like somebody wearing a big funny wig, with hair that shoots up all around and the serious demeanor of a scholar. The New Yorker writer is out with a new book that if anything like the first two, (The Tipping Point and Blink) should sell well and […]
Meeting New Friends on Barstools in ‘Hamp
Last night I sat at a bar and learned quite a bit from a new friend. I had arranged to meet my usual Friday night cohorts at the Brewery, in Noho’s bustling downtown. Shoul and Joe were there and Kevin Downey, the cave photographer. Then we were joined by Jim […]
The Vernacular of a Dismal Economy
I’m becoming all too familiar with the vernacular of today’s amazingly dire economic realities, as written in the pages of the WSJ. Many businesses seem to be ‘stung’ by the tough retail climate, and ‘struggling to cope’ or deciding to ‘unwind or unravel’ the deals they made in the ‘good […]
Voters Demand Better High Speed Rail and Subways
I sat this morning in my kitchen while we waited for the men to arrive to work on the new bathroom. I had a chance to see a positive story in the WSJ, about how voters said yes across the US to Mass Transit projects of all stripes. That’s good […]
Caribbean Beaches Shrink as Thieves Steal Sand
Caribbean round grains, favored in creating smooth surfaces for plastering and finishing, are being hauled away by the truckload late at night. On some islands, towns and ecologically sensitive areas get exposed to tidal surges and rough seas.Among the hardest hit is Grenada, where officials are building a $1.2 million […]