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I’m sitting in the Orlando Airport Southwest terminal and thinking about Randy Miller. Randy passed away in June, and the last thing on this trip I had to do was to join his family and some of his friends at the lovely Veteran’s Memorial near the bridge over the Intercoastal […]
We met this Osprey as we kayaked today on the Indian River. My guide was Kristen Beck, an expert paddler and naturalist who told me about the 400 species of birds that live here and that this is one of the world’s most diverse estuaries. Paddling was refreshing, there were […]
I met a man I wish I looked like. A silver haired, well-toned, tall, hotelier and restaurateur named Tom Collins owns a sprawling hospitality empire in Sebastian Florida, about eight miles up Rte 1. It’s called Captain Hiram’s and it’s right on the river, with a marina, hotel, sand bar, […]
I had an excellent night’s sleep in the comfy big bed here at the Caribbean court. Overhead a fan gently revolved, and an HDTV provided striking images as I fell asleep. Lori Burns, the Tourism board director, took me to a landmark restaurant known by everyone in Vero, the Ocean […]
Boris Gonzalez was born in Cuba, raised in Spain, schooled in New England and now runs a hotel and many other businesses in Vero Beach Florida. He’s the son of winemakers in Spain, but after younger days of partying, eighteen years ago he gave up the drink, and now rents […]
Yesterday I stuffed my notebook full of interesting jottings from speakers on the center stage. With gigantic screens and state of the art audio, we heard from the heads of travel companies who talked about their brands and how they helped create them. Jack Williams, the CEO of Eos Airlines, […]
It’s another exciting day surrounded by more than 1100 of the world’s travel business leaders. Tim Armstrong, Google’s head of advertising joked that if something disastrous happened in this room, “it would take out 10 percent of the world’s economy.” It’s true–I am gathered here with the leaders of the […]
The best parts of a conference, inevitably, are the times when you gather by the pool for the cocktails. Then you loosen up, laugh a bit, and get the nerve up to corner that guy you saw earlier and noticed his badge, and wondered what his funny sounding company did. […]
I am in a huge pavilion, a sort of giant tent, and a man up in front of us is speaking about his company called Hitwise. His company provides intelligence to on-line travel agencies about their competitors, they can tell you, for instance, where web surfers went after they left […]
I’m in a room full of bloggers. They all have their laptops open and we are constantly popping over to search engines and sites, sharing opinions and information about the world of travel blogs. It’s a heady time, it’s so much fun to be an established blogger who has a […]
Part of the fun of this conference is the chance to have short meetings with new companies who are entering the on-line travel sphere. I sat with two young guys who have started a new company called TV Trip. It’s a cool concept–they provide a video look at thousands of […]
On the bus over to the Omni, I eavesdropped on a man who spoke enthusiastically about blogs, search engine marketing and the work he does creating blog content. His name was Marty, and he wore Ray Bans over his shaved head. He said as he was leaving the bus that […]