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Travel Trends – Mobile Travel Stats, Flipboard

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We review the latest State of the American Traveler report and what it says about mobile travel planning, plus take a look at everyone’s favorite new app…Flipboard.

Mobile Travel Stats - Our friends at Destination Analysts sent the new State of the American Traveler Report (for July) our way with a note to review the recent stats on travel planning and mobile.  The full report is linked below, but we wanted to pull out some highlights:

Technologies Used to Plan Leisure Travel

  • Listened to Friends, Family - 39.9%
  • DMO Website - 31.2%
  • Used a Mobile Device - 28.0%

One, we are always surprised that the DMO website ranks so highly.  Not because of a lack of content or quality, rather due to the perception that many of us in the DMO space have about our own site.

According to the report, using a mobile device to plan travel is now more common than UGC, email, TV, magazines, direct mail, etc, etc.

When did you use your mobile device for travel information?

  • During a trip (or trips) - 85.3%
  • Before leaving home for a trip(s) - 58.6%

Which of the following did you specifically do using your mobile device?

  • Find restaurant info - 62.1%
  • Check weather - 55.8%
  • Look at maps - 49.1%
  • GPS-app for directions - 48.1%
  • Find hotel info - 46.0%
  • Find shopping info - 36.1%

Great report, thanks to the team at Destination Analysts for sharing.

http://www.destinationanalysts.com/ (.PDF)

Flipboard! - Well, the official hype of the week was declared early Wednesday morning.  Behold, the Flipboard!  Truthfully, we like the idea and the execution.  As much as we talk about the death of the printed piece, the functionality of newspapers and magazines is hardwired into our information consumption process.  And the Flipboard takes that format, pulls in the shortened URLs and status updates, and presents a usable and lovely interface for the user.

How this will impact the travel industry...that is to be determined.  Along with the long-term success of the application.  However, the Flipboard is, like Facebook and Twitter, user-centric, so don't expect a new direct marketing channel to your social audience...unless they want you to be in their Flipboard.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o]

http://www.tnooz.com/

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Troy Thompson

Troy Thompson is a respected consultant, speaker and thought-leader in the tourism industry. Principal at the Travel 2.0 Consulting Group and Founder of mark, Troy provides destinations, DMOs and CVBs with answers to difficult digital marketing questions.

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  • http://www.connectme360.com Brian Hayashi

    Flipboard is the latest version of apps that repurpose RSS feeds from social media. RSS feeds come from everywhere, from blogs, Twitter, Foursquare check-ins, and even your ongoing Google searches. Facebook saw this happening early on and removed the ability to consume personal Facebook stream data as RSS.

    Other examples include Feedly and paper.li. If you don't have an iPad handy, the paper.li product gives you a good sense of what Flipboard does, minus the swipes:

    http://paper.li/foodwineclassic/media

  • http://scurvypirates.com Captain Ahab

    Troy, we discussed Flipboard today on #mrktchat, a recurring Thursday afternoon resort marketing group (maybe you should guest host it sometime, hint, hint). Trying to decide if all the hype around Flipboard is because of the product, or because of their high-profile funding. Anxious to use it with FB and Twitter connectivity, alas me scurvy mates, it seems they are over capacity.

  • Troy Thompson

    Brian, great comment, thanks for the links to paper.li and Feedly.

    Personally, it is interesting to see how our counterparts, at least in the tech space, become so excited about a product based on such simple and old (by the internet watch) tech like RSS.

    Love the paper.il idea, easy to start too...just created our paper for Travel 2.0: http://paper.li/travel2dot0

    Cap, thanks for the reminder about #mrktchat. Honestly, I have missed the last month or so, but really need to get back involved. Already tweeted @milenaregos about moderating next week.

    - Troy

  • http://marcoliver.tumblr.com/ Marc-Oliver

    Well, the question is not where does it go – the question is: How to design the future of mobile marketing. A couple of thoughts and a lovely solution you might find here:

    http://blog.flip-digital.com/...he-future-of-travelling/

    and

    http://marcoliver.tumblr.com/...e-global-queuing-network

    Regards,
    Marc-Oliver . Experience Designer

  • Troy Thompson

    Hi Marc-Oliver,

    Thanks for the comments and the links.

    Appreciate the insight...love the iQueue idea, we saw that update on Tnooz as well.

    Please stop back by and provide more insight in the future.

    - Troy

  • http://outandaboutmarketing.com Milena Regos

    Troy,
    great job moderating #mrktchat. Thank you so much! Looking forward to your involvement even more with this group.
    Best regards,
    MIlena

Strategic Tourism Consulting


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