MSC Takes Digital Leadership Position

MSC Takes Digital Leadership Position

Three years of research has led to the digital experience of the future aboard the MSC Meraviglia and Seaside, powered by the company’s MSC for Me app.

“The expectations of our guests were changing. The idea was to place them at the centre of the ecosystem and the centre of the stage,” said Luca Pronzati, chief business innovation officer. “We wanted to give them the possibility to get in touch with the ship for any need, at any place and anytime during their vacation.

“What you see today on the Seaside is from a three-year program involving 100 people and a major investment.”

The app, available on Apple and Android platforms, is based off a human-centred design approach, Pronzati said, that will get rid of paper, long lines and other friction points.

Perhaps more impressive is the technology powering the app, which worked seamlessly across the Seaside, and will be introduced to more ships in the near future.

Daniele Buonaiuto, the company’s CIO, said it was nothing short of a major project putting in the infrastructure to keep guests connected, which included 665 access points and some 3,275 wireless beacons across the ship.

“We can’t lose connections, so we needed a highly reliable network,” he said. “There are 900 people in the theatre getting connected at the same time, it’s a complex scenario.”

“It is one of the most advanced networks (at sea),” Buonaiuto noted.

MSC’s app can pinpoint a passenger’s location within centimetres. “Exploring a city through GPS has become a given,” he continued.

That experience is much different at sea, with a huge metal superstructure killing signals.

“For that reason we have recreated a GPS system using beacons, installed everywhere.”

The app can direct passengers, turn-by-turn, to venues, elevators, restrooms and their cabins.

Next, Pronzati said the company was looking into the robotic experience aboard.    

“There has been a huge commitment from Mr Vago (Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman) and top management to further invest beyond what we’ve already achieved,” he added.

Smartphone booking values up 198% year on year, finds study

By Travolution

The average value of bookings on smartphones has grown significantly, up 198% year on year, while tablet booking values have risen by just 17%.

In its latest mobile browsing and booking trends report, brand consultancy Nucleus also found that mobile had rised to 43% of all website traffic in June 2014.

Apple remains the dominant operating system, with 77.9% share and 87.8% of bookings, while Android accounts for just 19.6% of the market.

Brands that have invested in responsive design or smartphone-friendly websites are naturally seeing better mobile results, with luxury sites reportedly leading the way.

However, despite evidence that users are increasingly shifting to mobile, and Google's warnings about penalising mobile-unfriendly sites, the travel sector was found to be lagging when it comes to implementing responsive web design.

Founder and chief executive of Nucleus, Peter Matthews, said: “We are in our fourth year of studying the growth in mobile web browsing and are seeing further significant shifts in user behaviour with affluent smartphone users, in particular, now completing high value bookings on their phones.

“Wider availability of 4G and the launch in September of the larger screen iPhone 6 are likely to accelerate this trend.

“It’s surprising in this context that there are still so many travel brands without either a mobile-friendly website or app and fewer still taking advantage of the flexibility and efficiencies of responsive design. This prolonged inactivity is beginning to look like a death wish.”

Social media strategies: Show, don't tell

By Margie Jordan

A picture has traditionally been worth a thousand words. Today, the right picture could be worth a thousand likes.

Social media has gone visual in a very big way, offering travel professionals unprecedented opportunities to promote their products and brands. Photo-based social media sites such as Instagram and Pinterest, in particular, have ushered in a visual revolution, taking the old adage "don't tell when you can show" to new heights.

Unlike words, photos can preserve visual memories when ours fade or fail to recount a great vacation from beginning to end. No one takes a vacation without taking photos, right?

But beyond sheer memories, a really great photo can influence a purchase decision.

Of course, bad photos can have the opposite effect: They can drive away potential customers, who won't bother to look at the details of an offer if the photo is boring, of low quality or off message.

Among other things, the image revolution creates an opportunity for travel professionals to become visual influencers. Knowing what's new, what's changed and how to leverage those changes is essential.

Remember Polaroid cameras? By the standards of the day, it was "instant." Within seconds, it spit out a photo. Of course, you couldn't touch it for several minutes until it was completely developed, but at the time it was pretty serious technology.

Today most people have a camera in their pocket. Smartphone cameras are getting better with each generation. In an instant, you can snap a picture and upload it to any social media website, sharing the moment with friends or clients in real time. It is this pocket-camera technology that has sparked the growth of social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest.

Becoming a visual influencer with social media begins with great photos.

Choose images that stand on their own and tell a great story even without words. The best are photos that invoke an "I want or need to go" response. Conversely, boring photos are off limits.
Sourcing great images is not as hard as you might think. Check with preferred suppliers, cruise lines and tourism boards for photos you can use. But, be sure to ask how and where they can be used and whether you'll need to credit the source.

While you might find amazing images with a Google image search, remember that every photo on the Internet is someone's intellectual property. If you don't have written permission to use it, don't.

Flickr.com is a good resource for free images. By doing an advanced search for photos with Creative Commons licenses, you can find images available for free use. But again, be sure you understand the terms of use before you post a Flickr Creative Commons photo.

If you don't find exactly what you're looking for, another source for story-telling images is stock photography websites. iStock.com, Bigstock.com and many others sell royalty-free photos at very reasonable prices.

Instagram

Pinterest and Instagram were built solely for the purpose of sharing great photos. Instagram, which was purchased by Facebook in 2012, is a smartphone app that turns ordinary photos into masterpieces. It takes full advantage of the camera in your pocket and enables users to share their lives or businesses in real time. On an average day, more than 40 million photos are uploaded to Instagram.
Instagram is very user-friendly. Select a photo from your phone or take a new one. Then get creative. Let your inner Michelangelo flow by enhancing your photo with Instagram's built-in filters and effects. It's nearly impossible to create a bad photo. Photos created in Instagram can be shared on Facebook and Twitter right from the app. Like Twitter, Instagram uses hashtags, which are simply keyword phrases or topics with the hashtag symbol (#) in front of them.

Create a hashtag for your business and build your Instagram community by inviting clients to follow you. It's best to use your business name or brand as the hashtag (#travelagency), then share your hashtag with clients and ask them to use it in their own photo description when posting vacation photos. The hashtag will become a clickable link that takes Instagram users right to your profile. Promote a monthly gift card giveaway for the best client travel photo. The photo with the most likes wins a $25 gift card each month. It will encourage clients to share photos and get their friends involved by liking the photo. It's a very effective way to get clients to share your brand, showcasing what you do best: create amazing vacations.

Don't be afraid to imprint the personality of your business by sharing a behind-the-scenes look at your office, staff and events. Fam trips are also great moments to share on Instagram. Tours of hotels, cruise ships, beaches, pools, spas, sunsets, sunrises, dining experiences and cocktails all make great Instagram posts.

Pinterest

According to a study by Shareaholic, which develops interfaces for content sharing and discovery, Pinterest, a pin-board style, photo-sharing website, drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. It was the fastest-growing social media site in 2012. Women are the biggest users of Pinterest, where users create boards of their favorite things, everything from shoe fetishes and recipes to dream weddings and travel bucket lists.

The biggest benefit of using Pinterest is its ability to send traffic back to your website in two ways. The first is to pin photos directly from your website with the Pin It button (http://about.pinterest.com/goodies). The Pin It button installs in your Web browser, where it is displayed in the toolbar. When you want to share images from a Web page, click the Pin It button. A dialog box will open to select the image you want to pin. After you've selected the image, decide which Pinterest board to display it on or create a new one. Add a description for your photo, and you're done. Pinterest automatically links the photo to its original location -- in this case, your website.

The second way to send traffic to your website from Pinterest is to upload an image along with your website link, or URL, manually. To upload an image, hover over your name on your Pinterest page in the top right-hand corner. Click Add a Pin. Browse for the image on your computer and add a description. Select the board it should appear on or create a new one.
Once the photo is uploaded, go back to it on your Pinterest page. Hover over the image and click Edit. Add your website link. Each time the image is re-pinned or shared, your Web address is attached. Thus, when the image is clicked, it sends traffic to your website no matter who repins it.

As a rule of thumb, taller (vertical) pins/photos are better than wider (horizontal) ones. The maximum width for an image is 554 pixels. You can make them as tall as you like. Tall images take up more space on a board and get more attention.

About 80% of photos on Pinterest are repins. It's a wide-open opportunity to become a content creator by adding new photos people want to share.

Creativity is king when it comes to Pinterest boards. Here are a few board ideas:

• Summer Vacation: Pin photos of the best summer getaways;
• Beach Vacations: Pin photos of the best beaches around the world;
• Client Testimonials: Ask clients to take a photo while on vacation and share it with you along with a testimonial of their experience. Upload the photo to your client testimonials board and place their testimonial in the description. Link the photo to your website;
• Caribbean Destination Wedding Hot Spots.
• Travel Deals: Pin destination photos and include a price by typing it into the description. Be sure to link the photo to a page on your website offering more information about the deal. Budget Travel does a great job of this.
• Travel Videos: Pin videos from your YouTube channel, and they will play directly in Pinterest.

As you create boards, consider adding to each a cover photo, i.e., an image that you specify as the first image a Pinterest user sees. You can title it by adding text to the images. A cover image for each board goes a long way in building your brand and keeping your page organized.

Beyond the basic travel photos, add a call to action to some photos, such as "Click here for details," which points to product details on your website. You can also add a price by simply typing the price in the description. Pinterest will automatically add a price banner at the top of the image.

Set up your Pinterest account as a business page and not a personal one. If you currently have a personal page, you can convert it to a business page by visiting http://business.pinterest.com. In the setup process, be sure to verify your website. If you aren't comfortable with HTML code, call your webmaster for assistance. Verify your website by visiting your Settings page and clicking on the Verify Website button. Once verified, your entire website URL, rather than just the website icon, will be displayed on your Pinterest page.

Facebook

A recent study by the Harvard Business School revealed that about 70% of all Facebook activity centers on uploading, liking, sharing or commenting on photos. Facebook is playing a major role in the visual revolution with its billion-dollar purchase of Instagram and last month's introduction of a redesigned news feed.

Prior to the redesigned news feed, Facebook jumped headfirst into the visual revolution with the introduction of Timeline for profiles and pages. The idea behind Timeline was to tell your story through photos, friendships and milestones. It was a radical shift from Facebook's small profile photos and thumbnails.
Building your brand visually with Facebook starts with a strong cover image, the large photo that sits behind the smaller profile image on your business page.

As of March, this image can now include text. The only rule is that text cannot be more than 20% of the image. Think outside the box on this one. A cover image could be promotional with calls to action that instruct fans to like your page or visit your website. The size of a cover image is 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. The cover image is the face of your brand, so image quality is crucial.

Highlight images in your status updates. A highlighted photo displays across both columns of the business page wall rather than just across one. Highlight a photo by hovering over the top right-hand corner of the post itself and clicking the star. Be sure your image is large enough (843 pixels wide by 403 pixels tall) to cover both columns.

Facebook's redesigned news feed brings one distinctive feature: larger photos. The feed itself is becoming visual with the introduction of a number of new feeds that give the Facebook user different ways to view content. Viewing one of those feeds, Photos, lets a user see only photos; there are no text updates. If 70% of the activity on Facebook happens with a photo, my guess is this will be one of the most used Timeline feeds.

With each photo you post on Facebook, add a location. Facebook's new Graph Search is rolling out, giving users the ability to search Facebook solely for photos of destinations and places. Photos with a location have the potential to show up in the search results, offering more exposure and business potential.

As the world makes the shift to sharing visually, join this revolution. Travel is an emotional purchase sparked by the photos we see. Images of dreamy sunsets, turquoise Caribbean waters or white-sand beaches all convey blissful vacation moments that clients often wait all year to experience.

Become a visual influencer by sharing story-telling images. Capitalize on the idea of showing instead of telling. Use sharp, bright images with vibrant colors. Watermark your images with your website and/or logo, using free tools like PicMonkey.com and Photoshop.com so no matter where they are shared, you're connected.

As you build your community on each social media site, share it with your clients via your email newsletter. It's also perfectly fine to let your Facebook fans know that you are actively using Pinterest and Instagram.

The further you can spread your message on social media, the more exposure you gain to new travelers. Now go forth and tell your story. Visually.

Margie Jordan is the CEO of Jordan Executive Travel Service and a self-professed social media geek. She is also a speaker and trainer and has led sessions on social media at Travel Weekly's conferences.

A brief history of social media

1991  

• Tim Berners-Lee's work at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) leads to the development of the World Wide Web.

1993  

• The Mosaic browser gives birth to the website. 

1994  

• The first personal blog is started.

1995  

• Classmates.com becomes the first social networking service.

1996  

• Travelocity and Expedia launch, becoming the first online travel agencies.

1997  

• AOL Instant Messenger enables users to chat in real time.
• Six Degrees launches the first site that enables users to create profiles and become friends with other users.

2002  

• Friendster launches.

2003  

• The business-focused LinkedIn launches.
• MySpace launches and enables users to customize their profiles and embed music and video.

2004  

• Facebook launches and soon spreads from Harvard to other schools.

2005  

• YouTube becomes the first video-sharing site.

2006  

• Facebook opens its network to everyone.
• Twitter is founded.

2008  

• Facebook becomes the largest social networking site.

2010  

• Instagram and Pinterest launch as photo-sharing social networks.

2012  

• Facebook purchases Instagram for $1 billion.

Host agencies help retailers forge ahead with mobile technology

By Kate Rice

When it comes to profitably exploiting the business potential of mobile technologies, many agencies and agents have been well ahead of the curve.

And frequently, these have been home-based travel retailers taking advantage of solutions provided by forward-thinking hosts.

Jeff Anderson, vice president of marketing for Avoya Travel/American Express, whose affiliated agents have full access to Avoya’s technology platform on their handhelds and tablets, said the host agency opted early on to build a browser-based technology platform. That immediately put Avoya on the path to mobile.

“We were using mobile significantly eight years ago,” Anderson said. Avoya was first able to do mobile bookings in 2006 with the Palm Treo 700, and since then its platform has offered everything agents need to do business, from customer relationship management to booking engines.

“All the functionality they have on their desktop is 100% available to them on their iPhone, iPad and Android platforms,” Anderson said.

Avoya has tweaked its technology, making sure its platforms are “thumb-friendly.” Its server recognizes what kind of device is accessing it so it can adjust the browser’s text size and screen resolution accordingly.

Avoya’s LiveLeads program, which drives leads to agents, is also built for mobile; if agents are not at their desks, leads are pushed to their handhelds via text.

Cruise Planners’ ERez mobile enables its home-based agents to run their businesses from the palm of their hand, said Vicky Garcia, the host’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.

Michael Consoli, a Cruise Planners franchisee, said that ERez mobile enables him to make a booking from anywhere in the world using an iPad or iPhone. He can send a customized quote from any device that automatically updates. That means if the price changes between the time he sends it and the moment his client opens the quote, it will update automatically.

Consoli, who said he had booked a Royal Caribbean cruise using his iPad minutes before he was interviewed for this report, does a lot of group business, and he said he can work on a group on his handheld.

This kind of easy and instant access is one reason Consoli was named Royal Caribbean’s Southeast Partner of the Year and was Viking River Cruises’ Top Travel Advisor for 2012.

Besides B2B tools, Cruise Planners has a B2C white-label app for its agents, which enables their customers to find vacations and book them from within the app. It lets them access travel reservations and see the destination they’ll be visiting, check out the weather and get directions.

The app has social functions that enable clients to share that trip with friends and family. The agent’s business name and contact information are embedded in the app.

Virtuoso is revamping its technology platform for its agents to make it mobile-friendly, according to David Kolner, senior vice president of consumer acquisition for Virtuoso. It began the redesign about a year ago, and a key goal was to make it tablet- and handheld-friendly.Some agents are testing the new site now, Kolner said. They can access the more than 1,000 hotels in Virtuoso’s hotel program, refine the search to see the ones that will fit the client and access the Little Black Book that includes contact information for each property, commissions and other information.

“How many people work while sitting on a couch with a tablet while watching ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ and thinking about what property is right for a client or what cruise looks good to them for a client?” he said.

Virtuoso, which is also revamping its consumer website, is following principles of consumer website design for its agent site, rather than travel industry conventions. That’s being done to accommodate new entrants who might go into shock when presented with the legacy green screen of a GDS, Kolner said.

Virtuoso has also given the mobile-friendly treatment to Composer Reports, a management reporting tool that synchronizes with members’ back-office systems and CRMs. Members can check their total sales, their performance with preferred suppliers, client activity, individual agent activity and other data while on the go.

“It’s not like people are sitting at a desk all day long,” Kolner said. “They are in Bora Bora, on a cruise ship, on a river cruise, in Antarctica.”

Virtuoso also has a B2C mobile tool called Travel Folio, which agents can use to quickly send up to three options for a client. It is a social tool, which means they can extend it to friends and family members who can vote for or comment on the choices.

Travel Leaders Franchise Group, which has several mobile apps for corporate travel managers, this spring introduced a leisure travel app for agents to provide to clients for use on their vacations: a mobile version of Travel Leaders’ “Personalized Travel Planner” that provides destination content.

It uses augmented reality technology, which means users can point a device at a landmark or attraction to learn about it, as well as get information such as business hours and admission fees.“The entire reason why we’re investing in mobile app technology, both on the business and leisure sides, is to further enhance the level of service our Travel Leaders agents are able to provide their clients,” said Roger Block, president of the Travel Leaders Franchise Group. “Instead of providing apps to enable consumers to book directly, each app underscores the continued need for a trusted travel adviser’s counsel and help throughout the booking process.”

Vacation.com announced a post-purchase mobile app last summer called GoSiteSee. Once the client buys a trip, the agent can input the traveler’s itinerary: flights, hotels and recommended points of interest.

Other highlights include pictures, reviews, maps, and navigation. The application also enables trip sharing; clients can write a trip journal and post pictures and postcards online and via email.

Vacation.com’s AirPro and CruisePro are Web-based and mobile friendly; agents can make bookings on them using handhelds and tablets.

CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. will be launching mobile-friendly websites in Q2, according to a company spokesperson. The goal is to make it easier for customers to shop from their phones, search for their local agent, sign up for the email newsletter and find cruise itineraries.

Liberty Travel is developing its mobile technologies; consultants at its Madison Avenue flagship store in New York have access to Liberty’s full suite of booking tools on their iPads.

Even GDSs are going mobile. Travelport, which last October introduced a mobile app, in November significantly upgraded the product, bringing complete green-screen functionality to Apple and Android devices. 
The host agency Oasis said its online booking tool, Freedom, scheduled to be launched in the first quarter, will be tablet friendly.

Some suppliers provide agents with mobile enabled websites. Royal Caribbean’s CruisingPower is one. Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ two agent websites, StarwoodPro.com and StarwoodMeetings.com, are both smartphone- and tablet-friendly.

And, of course, agents can also use their handhelds to access supplier websites even if the site is not mobile-enabled.

One agent sees suppliers as lagging when it comes to providing mobile tools for agents.

“None of my preferred suppliers have travel agent apps that I can use to book clients,” said Jason Coleman, president of Jason Coleman Inc. “Suppliers are behind the curve on this one. Thankfully, most of their travel agent websites work on my iPad, fewer on my iPhone, so I can still book clients that way, but it’s a challenge.”