Social Media

April 12, 2018

Do you know how to speak Instagram?

Blog, Blogging, Social Media

By Otto De Vries, CEO ASATA Did you know that the determining factor for millennials when picking a holiday destination is how ‘instagrammable’ the location is? Four ... Read more

February 8, 2019February 8, 2019

Facebook messaging integration: is dark social going to get brighter?

Social Media

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are a shady place. Lots of stuff gets shared around in these private places. That’s kind of annoying if ... Read more

January 28, 2019

Blippar stops trading: the long wait for AR and VR to become a reality

Social Media

ANOTHER new year, another debate on whether virtual and augmented reality will become, well, a reality. Not delivering on what’s been promised, gimmicky ideas, a focus on ... Read more

January 10, 2019

What’s hot in travel for 2019, according to everybody

Social Media

As a travel writer, I can tell the time of year just by looking at my email inbox. At Easter, the subject lines are usually filled with ... Read more

December 20, 2018

The retro resurgence in travel and tourism

Social Media

When travelling around America in the 1980s, helpful signs directed you to park the car and photograph a view. With a camera back then, not a smartphone. ... Read more

December 14, 2018December 14, 2018

Is YouTube’s hugely disliked Rewind 2018 round-up the most expensive tourism ad ever?

Social Media

In six days, a video has raced up YouTube’s trending charts thanks to, at the time of writing, some 113 million views. It is not the latest ... Read more

November 30, 2018November 30, 2018

Draining the swamp of fake influencers: can it be done?

Social Media

The analysis of an influencer’s worth is deepening daily, as brands turn away and genuine influencers turn on their wannabe colleagues. Two influencers in the past week ... Read more

November 21, 2018

Instagram finally cracks down on fake followers

Social Media, Trends

Are you an influencer or a microinfluencer (or even a nanoinfluencer)? After this week, more may be in the latter category. Instagram has finally announced that it ... Read more

November 5, 2018November 5, 2018

#WTMLDN Day 1 – The Highlights!

Blog, Blogging, Social Media, Technology

At 10am today WTM London 2018 got underway. Travel professionals from around the world filled the halls of ExCel London, all here to find #NewIdeas, #NewBusiness and ... Read more

November 4, 2018

Social Media at WTM London 2018

Social Media

WE are delighted to be back at World Travel Market to deliver seven world-class seminars on the best use of social media in today’s travel and tourism ... Read more

October 19, 2018

Why travel needs to get into long-form video

Social Media

We have talked for a long time now about how video is the future in the world of social media. That was underlined again last week when ... Read more

October 4, 2018

Cornwall benefits from social media tourists – but inland UK misses out

Social Media

England had its hottest summer ever this year, while the UK as a whole equalled previous highs set since records began in 1910. The heatwave lasted 46 ... Read more

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018

TripAdvisor reinvents itself

Social Media

If I talked about a social network with hundreds of millions of users based around a feed of content curated from the best of what your friends, ... Read more

September 7, 2018

The buying (and selling) of travel photos and video gets easier

Social Media

There were two developments this week that will help social media organisers and brands improve their output in visuals. One concerns images, the other video. And both ... Read more

August 31, 2018August 31, 2018

How can travel brands work with content creators?

Blog, Blogging, Social Media

Annabelle Arch from World Travel Market London spent the day at the Greenwich Peninsula with travel content creator Neel Wanders, known for his Flunking Monkey blog to ... Read more

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

What Facebook is going to do next in travel…possibly

Social Media

Very large, successful multinational companies, whether they drill for oil, make cool technology products or are huge e-commerce platforms, tend to have one thing in common these ... Read more

August 15, 2018August 15, 2018

Neglect your blog and social and suffer the consequences

Social Media

For the life of me, I fail to understand why a travel and tourism site starts a blog or a social media channel if it can’t maintain ... Read more

July 30, 2018August 10, 2018

How to lose $100 billion in a day

Social Media

What a difference a day makes. On Wednesday 25 July, Facebook’s share price reached $218.62, its highest ever, valuing the company at a whopping $615 billion, around ... Read more

July 12, 2018

Instagram: becoming the TV of mobile?

Social Media

I read an interesting line the other day: the regular Instagram feed is getting boring as everybody is playing with video on the platform. The observation is ... Read more

June 29, 2018July 11, 2018

Are we getting tired of social media?

Social Media

The scandal around the use of data harvested on Facebook has caused many people to reassess their use of the social networking site and saw the rise ... Read more

June 18, 2018June 19, 2018

Why travel brands need authentic content

Blogging, Social Media

Long gone are the days of the 70s/80s/90s when you’d book a holiday after seeing a TV advert, reading a brochure and visiting the travel agent. The ... Read more

June 14, 2018August 3, 2018

My best travel friend is Google

Social Media, Trends

I grew to accept that Google owned travel several years ago. Already seduced by Gmail and hangouts (remember them?), it had me at Google Maps. So when ... Read more

June 6, 2018

What the millions of people using Pinterest for travel inspo are looking for

Blogging, Social Media

Finding travel inspo has been a huge success story for Pinterest. Of the 100 billion or so ‘pins’ – the visual bookmarks that are at the heart ... Read more

May 9, 2018May 14, 2018

How $5.4 billion in profits lets you go launch crazy: the latest from Facebook

Social Media, Technology

You might have noticed that Facebook has been a lot in the news recently what with those pesky privacy issues that have been brought to light by ... Read more

March 22, 2018March 23, 2018

Facebook faces its biggest crisis…

Social Media

TWO friends left Facebook this week after revelations that the data of 50m people had been mined and sold without the knowledge and permission of the user. ... Read more

March 13, 2018

Social media – back in the day…

Blog, Social Media

By Kathi Everden A golf challenge on the opening day, VIP evening preview, lunch time closures and public days … it was all very different when Arabian Travel ... Read more

March 8, 2018March 7, 2018

Is this the most expensive tourism ad ever?

Social Media

If you were in the US and tuned into Super Bowl 50, you would have seen what purported to be a trailer for a reboot of a ... Read more

March 1, 2018

Social media mayhem, why bloggers need to control their creative content

Blogging, Social Media

One of the most common questions you’ll get at many blogging and influencer conferences these days from new content creators is “what advice would you give someone ... Read more

February 8, 2018February 20, 2018

Facebook in 2018: how travel companies can beat the news feed apocalypse

Social Media

The end of January is always an interesting time in social media. It is at this point of the year when we hear just how much more ... Read more

December 22, 2017

Storify is dead: long live any decent alternative

Social Media

Back in July, on these pages, I wrote about the long and slow decline of Storify, a platform which allowed users to aggregate links, photos and social ... Read more

December 14, 2017May 10, 2018

We’re all digital content creators now

Blogging, Social Media, Technology

There’s been a huge shift in the democratisation of technology, placing increasingly powerful tools in the hands of the masses. The advancements in gadgets like smartphones, 360 ... Read more

December 7, 2017

Watch this space: will travel embrace Facebook’s new video platform?

Social Media

The launch of a new watch by one of the tech giants is a bit of a yawn these days but back in August, social media behemoth ... Read more

November 30, 2017

The best social media projects of 2017

Social Media

This year, the Faroe Islands won. Their victory highlighted, yet again, the importance of setting out on a project with a clear strategy. Because there are many ... Read more

November 2, 2017

Should Instagrammers be banned?

Social Media

There are more than 1,000 places on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and it should probably come as no surprise that there is a strong correlation between this ... Read more

September 27, 2017October 4, 2017

Instagram – a travel marketer’s best friend

Social Media

It’s no secret that people are increasingly basing their travel decisions around Instagram. As the Facebook-owned app connects the world, we are increasingly exposed to exotic destinations ... Read more

September 7, 2017October 4, 2017

The rise of influencer marketing and why bloggers need to rebrand

Blog, Social Media

Brands are increasingly looking to use influencers, such as Instagram stars and bloggers, in their marketing but the chasm between what brands and their PR companies expect ... Read more

August 30, 2017October 10, 2017

Using social media to do more than sell holidays

Overtourism, Responsible Tourism Blog, Social Media

Among this summer’s slew of stories about overtourism, one took a slightly different angle. In an article titled 10 tourist destinations ruined by Instagram, the Independent reported ... Read more

August 25, 2017October 4, 2017

Instagram Stories on the rise as Instagram engagement drop-off still causes anger

Blog, Social Media

It started in the summer of 2016, a conscious algorithm move by Instagram to get shot of bots and introduce an avalanche of features that are still ... Read more

August 4, 2017October 4, 2017

Why travel influencers are living in The Matrix

Blog, Social Media

“What is real? How do you define real?” So says Morpheus to Neo in the classic sci-fi movie, The Matrix. His quote took on more significance this ... Read more

July 28, 2017October 4, 2017

Bye-bye Storify, you’ve been Scooped.

Blog, Social Media, Technology

I was a big fan of Storify… as were a lot of journalists and news organisations, who regularly used the site between for the four years after ... Read more

July 6, 2017October 4, 2017

How social media has helped make music tourism explode

Blog, Social Media, Video

Tourism associated with gigs and music festivals like Glastonbury is now big business.  UK Music’s Wish You Were Here study in 2016, revealed that music tourism generated ... Read more

June 29, 2017June 30, 2017

Chatbots, will they take over the tourism industry?

Social Media

JAPAN has done a tremendous amount of work in the past decade to help foreign travellers by installing English language signs at transport hubs and dual language ... Read more

June 14, 2017October 4, 2017

Forget social media – why quality blog content is the most valuable

Blogging, Social Media

It’s easy as a blogger to find yourself chasing your own tail scrambling to keep up with the latest social media platform and focusing on your follower ... Read more

June 6, 2017September 18, 2017

Pandora’s Paradox: social media, tourism and FOMO

Carbon & Water, Responsible Tourism Blog, RT Marketing, Social Media

Last week, a village in Switzerland got loads of press coverage for banning tourists from taking photos of its scenery and sharing them on social media. According ... Read more

June 1, 2017June 1, 2017

How two DMOs are using content to sell and why this hybrid model is the future

Social Media

Two destinations have announced two very different but both very eye-catching approaches to marketing themselves in the past week. But at the heart of both Visit Sweden’s ... Read more

May 26, 2017May 26, 2017

DMO bosses reveal their social media tactics in attracting visitors

Social Media

With the summer season approaching, this should be a cracking year for British holidays. Forecasts say the weakened pound and fragile economic confidence is likely to see ... Read more

May 4, 2017May 4, 2017

Are augmented and virtual reality the future for travel inspiration?

Social Media, Video

Will 2017 be the year for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)? Some would argue that 2016 was the year. Pokémon Go became the most downloaded ... Read more

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017

Facebook & Instagram make up the rules as they go, but not everyone likes it

Social Media

This week, I wanted to create an Instagram account for a tourism destination on my iPhone 5 but I wasn’t allowed. I’d taken a few steps – ... Read more

April 6, 2017April 26, 2017

Who’s winning the social media arms race?

Social Media, Video

It’s been a busy month for the major social networks, with a flurry of new features announced. But who is making the best new features? Facebook effects, ... Read more

March 24, 2017March 24, 2017

Social followers: a numbers game

Blogging, Social Media

Social followers: a numbers game  When it comes to working with digital Influencers over social media, top line numbers are still the first thing that many brands, ... Read more

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017

How important is social media in attracting visitors to Britain?

Social Media

A lot, according to Visit Britain – and it’s going a long way to disrupting traditional research methods. Will talking to friends, family and colleagues replace other ... Read more

March 2, 2017March 3, 2017

Google Maps’ gets smarter with new social and real-time features

Blog, Social Media

When you are a travel writer, there is a question you get asked more than any other: what are the best places you have visited? It is ... Read more

February 20, 2017February 21, 2017

How mocking Trump is benefitting destinations

Blog, Social Media, Video

It has become the latest trend by countries around the world – trolling Donald Trump. In his first speech, President Trump made it clear that he was ... Read more

February 17, 2017February 21, 2017

Spotlight on: virtual reality, drones and wearable technology

Blog, Social Media, Video

One is interesting, two is a co-incidence and three is a feature. Or, in this case, a blog post. The 1-2-3 motto is a benchmark which journalists ... Read more

December 12, 2016January 26, 2017

Instagram: the winner in the 2016 social media channel wars

Social Media

Instagram is looking forward to 2017 by adding a host of bells and whistles to its increasingly strong dominance of social media channels. While Twitter’s social stock ... Read more

November 2, 2016January 23, 2017

Vine is dead. Long live social video

Social Media

So farewell then Vine, your life has been almost as short as the clips you host. The platform, which enabled users to create short, looped videos of ... Read more

October 7, 2016January 23, 2017

The wifi revolution is set to accelerate real-time conversations with visitors to your city

Social Media

Real-time travel information for tourists is the widely acknowledged ambition of any destination. That is, being able to stay in touch with your visitors throughout their stay, ... Read more

October 6, 2016January 23, 2017

How destinations are using Snapchat geofilters

Social Media

If you are looking for the next big thing for destination marketing, you need look no further than Snapchat’s geofilters. A growing number of DMOs are investing ... Read more

September 9, 2016January 23, 2017

Is the Government finally getting serious about how social and digital media can boost British tourism?

Blog, Social Media

Summer has been normally the quiet time of year, when everyone in the travel industry is on holiday with the rest of the country. But there’s been ... Read more

August 26, 2016January 23, 2017

Why do people use social media? The answer is revealed

Social Media

FIVE years ago, Travel Perspective was asked by an online travel agent to help re-write all of its destination content following a big algorithm change by Google. ... Read more

August 5, 2016January 23, 2017

Is your social media strategy ready for The Olympics?

Social Media

How is your gold plated social media strategy shaping up ahead of tonight’s launch of The Olympic Games? Just putting the finishing touches to your schedule of ... Read more

July 25, 2016January 23, 2017

How England’s Newest Tourist Attraction is using Social and Digital

Social Media

One of Britain’s newest tourism attractions has opened in County Durham this summer and its organisers are hoping to match some of the success of Puy du ... Read more

June 27, 2016January 23, 2017

How Social Media Is Being Deployed At Euro 2016

Social Media

Social media has been a key part of this year’s Euro 2016 football championships. Twitter added new features just for the championship, including auto-generated emojis when you ... Read more

June 3, 2016January 23, 2017

Chat Apps: Real-Time Travel Information on the Move

Social Media

If visiting Istanbul, you may well buy a tourist pass giving discounts to museums, bus tours and other attractions. Many cities have them. But not all offer ... Read more

May 31, 2016February 17, 2017

ATM 2016 in Review – Social Media and Blogging Trends

Blog, Blogging, Social Media

I have been attending Arabian Travel Market in Dubai for years – either as an exhibitor, a visitor, or media and always thoroughly enjoyed it. This year ... Read more

April 1, 2016January 23, 2017

The only way is video

Social Media

I think this is a UK first: there is a drone film festival in London in May. It is essentially a drinks event with awards attached: 10 ... Read more

March 21, 2016January 23, 2017

Is the tourist board irrelevant in the digital world?

Social Media

I often wonder whether we are seeing the end-game for the traditional tourist board or destination marketing organisation (DMO). Tourism boards and destination marketing organisations have been ... Read more

March 4, 2016January 23, 2017

Social media analytics: be careful what you choose

Social Media

A COUPLE of years ago, I started playing with an analytics tool called Sumall. It’s essentially a site that pulls together social media statistics from all platforms, ... Read more

February 22, 2016January 23, 2017

Five ways to save time on social media

Social Media

One of the most annoying quirks of Instagram is finally being addressed, bringing an end to a nightmare suffered by social media managers who have to look ... Read more

February 8, 2016January 23, 2017

Find a friend in Iceland through social media

Social Media

One of the many, many benefits of this technological age is that it has allowed destinations to put themselves on the map in a way that they ... Read more

December 9, 2015January 23, 2017

Jump into the stream: Facebook trials live video

Social Media

I can’t emphasise this enough – if you are not using video yet, you had better start soon. Video’s rise has been stratospheric this year. In its ... Read more

December 1, 2015January 23, 2017

Would you buy a present without reading the reviews?

Social Media

With Christmas shopping yet to reach its peak, time spent researching product reviews will be hugely on the increase. Online reviews now form a vital part of ... Read more

October 7, 2015January 23, 2017

Social media helps business to bloom in British tourism

Social Media

A COUPLE of years ago, my wife and I made the big move out of London to Dorset to set up a cut flower business. The business ... Read more

September 25, 2015January 23, 2017

What’s not to dislike about Facebook’s new plan?

Social Media

This week there has been a lot of talk about Facebook introducing a dislike button. Even James Corden on the Late Late Show has an opinion on ... Read more

September 4, 2015January 23, 2017

Square, us? Instagram makes its photo size rule obsolete

Social Media

You can’t keep Instagram out of the news. Already the brightest star in the social media firmament, IG is generating ever more heat this summer. I wrote ... Read more

August 28, 2015January 23, 2017

Google: rich social search and the anticipation game

Social Media

Google’s first results page has come a long way since the company launched 17 years ago. When we first started using that rather clever search engine, the ... Read more

July 10, 2015January 23, 2017

Making money out of Instagram

Social Media

Instagram remains the current darling of social media, its star rising as brands clamour for attention in the best photogenic social platform on the market. The ability ... Read more

June 22, 2015January 23, 2017

Are you on top of the newest Twitter features?

Social Media

Destinations, attractions and other tourism businesses will soon be able to promote themselves even better on Twitter thanks to a new feature being tested by the microblogging ... Read more

June 11, 2015January 23, 2017

Instagram redesign: revolution or evolution?

Social Media

Instagram’s website has been redesigned. On the face of it, that’s very nice but there’s not a lot to shout about. It does look better, certainly. Only ... Read more

May 22, 2015January 23, 2017

Facebook’s Instant Articles: threat and opportunity for travel?

Social Media

How often have you clicked on a link to an article on your Facebook feed only to sit for what seems like an eternity before something shows ... Read more

May 5, 2015January 23, 2017

Tourism Attractions Should Embrace Social Media

Social Media

There was a distinct moment when David Coulthard realized he had ‘cracked’ the challenge of encouraging his staff to adopt social media. The marketing manager of Salisbury ... Read more

April 20, 2015January 23, 2017

Is it time to flip the funnel?

Blog, Social Media

In one of the many presentations made at our inaugural Social Travel Britain conference in Salisbury over the past few days, Dr Philip Alford of Bournemouth University ... Read more

April 2, 2015January 23, 2017

Self, Self, Self. In Some Places

Social Media

It’s getting to the point where you need to check whether its acceptable to brandish a selfie stick. Last month, several museums banned the ubiquitous poles. Music ... Read more

March 23, 2015January 23, 2017

Does #OreoEclipse mean we are hashtagged out?

Social Media

They were first spotted in 2007. They were given the official thumbs-up in 2009. Now they are everywhere. You cannot escape. By they, I mean hashtags. I ... Read more

February 4, 2015January 23, 2017

Facebook adds travel tips to Newsfeed

Social Media

In the past week, Facebook has made it’s latest attempt to grab a bigger share of the geolocation market with the launch of Place Tips. These nuggets ... Read more

December 17, 2014January 23, 2017

Social Media: bye bye fictitious figures

Social Media

Over the past five years, bloggers and brands have built fictitious number of real followers. They have bought followers, blindly followed everybody that follows them (without regard) ... Read more

December 3, 2014January 23, 2017

Get earned or get burned: the Oreo vlogger ruling

Social Media

A ruling by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority last week threatens to remove a key plank from the content marketing strategies of travel companies. The ruling rapped Mondelez, the ... Read more

October 27, 2014January 24, 2017

How delegates can engage with the WTM Social Media Team

Social Media

I came across a great article by Mashable entitled, ‘5 Tips for Using Social Media During Conferences’describing how best to interact when attending conferences using social media. ... Read more

October 22, 2014January 24, 2017

Will Storify enter the Room 101 of digital travel?

Social Media, Technology

I don’t know how I feel about Storify. I mean, we’ve been together for two years now and I’ve never been let down. Yes, I’ve dumped others. ... Read more

October 9, 2014January 24, 2017

Have we reached peak InstaMeet? Queensland breaks the record

Social Media, Technology

We spoke in our last blog post about why Instagram was the star social performer for 2014. Just this week, we have heard how the Australian state ... Read more

September 24, 2014January 24, 2017

Instagram: the star social performer of 2014

Social Media

Let’s put video to one side for a moment. But if you accept that images are very important to your social media strategy, then Instagram has to ... Read more

September 10, 2014January 24, 2017

Valuable thoughts and takeaways from key sessions at TBU Nantes

Blogging, Social Media

TBU Nantes, our sixth (!) blogging and social media conference ended last week after three days of networking, learning and discovery. I was particularly proud of the ... Read more

September 9, 2014January 24, 2017

From Ice Buckets to Bucket Lists: social goes commercial

Social Media

You cannot fail to have noticed the Ice Bucket Challenge videos that have been filling our Facebook news feeds over the summer. According to Facebook, between 1 ... Read more

August 29, 2014January 24, 2017

Facebook cracks down on the click-baiters

Social Media

It’s called click-baiting, whereby fantastically humorous quizzes await those who link through and then (usually) share the results with friends on Facebook. In this case, ‘Canvey Island ... Read more

August 22, 2014January 24, 2017

Reputation is Everything

Social Media, Technology

Image: Dilbert Some news in the last few days has reminded me of one of the subjects I was addressing at my World Travel Market seminar back ... Read more

August 13, 2014January 24, 2017

What is the ROI of social media?

Social Media

This post’s title is a much repeated question and one that is often answered by digital agencies with “What is the ROI of a chair or a ... Read more

July 31, 2014January 24, 2017

The splintered picture in travel and social media

Aviation, Social Media

I work with social media in travel every day. Nose down to the grindstone, I don’t sniff the air often enough to always gauge what others are ... Read more

July 17, 2014January 24, 2017

Using Twitter for Twitter stats

Social Media

In preparing monthly reports for travel clients on how well their social media is faring, I’m a fan of Twitonomy in gathering data on Twitter. It gives ... Read more

June 18, 2014February 13, 2015

Newsjacking the #worldcup

Social Media

If you are on Twitter, you won’t need any introduction to the concept of newsjacking. It is the, some say shameless, practice of jumping on board something ... Read more

May 22, 2014January 24, 2017

The social media expert is dead. Discuss

Social Media

There have been a few more blog posts doing the rounds recently announcing the death of the social media consultant. The broad argument goes that, as companies ... Read more