Travel agents compete for dream trips with OfferMeATrip

Consumers who are tired of planning, negotiating and comparing costs for trips can turn the duties over to OfferMeATrip, a London-based start-up that combines travel-agency-type service and expertise with the convenience of the Web.

Free to use, it invites would-be travelers to outline their ideal trip (destination, length of stay, budget, activities). Then, OfferMeaTrip's network of certified agents put together personalized proposals for users to browse and choose from online. Once the bidding war is complete, users are connected with the winning agent for booking confirmation and payment details.

The site allows busy consumers to customize and compare dream vacation options by crowdsourcing a host of certified experts, saving them time and energy.

Syfy Travel Series Explores the Unexplained

One of the hottest travel shows is a Syfy Channel series, Destination Truth. The series is hosted by world renowned adventurer, Josh Gates, and takes viewers across the globe as Josh investigates the unexplained. The show dives into local cultures and searches for clues to the existence of strange creatures and paranormal phenomena.

Josh and his team lead unprecidented investigations including the world’s first overnight exploration of King Tut’s cursed tomb and a pitch-black dive in ancient Caribbean caves. Destination Truth is also broadcast online and has a strong following with 1.6M unique viewers, according to Nielson.

Crowne Plaza Hotels “Switch Off”

Geared toward business travelers who have a hard time shifting into rest mode, select Crowne Plaza hotels will be adding a new feature called “Switch Off” to their existing SleepAdvantage program. The SleepAdvantage program includes features such as comfortable new beds, guaranteed wake-up calls, quiet-zone floors and sleep amenities such as eye masks, window drape clips, earplugs and lavender spray.

With “Switch Off,” Crowne Plaza will now also offer polite phone calls at 7pm reminding guests it's time to retire their technology (based on research that revealed a great number of business travelers take their gadgets to bed, check email at night and don’t get enough rest). "Switch Off" will launch at 92 Crowne Plaza locations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa by the end of 2010.

Green Greeting Cards

Regreet cards is an eco-friendly greeting card company that cuts down on waste by allowing cards to be re-sent from friend to friend. The first sender sticks a label on the back of the card to track its journey. Recipients use the enclosed sticker to cover the original text, write their own message and mail it on with a “Hop-Along” kit that keeps the journey.

The process not only allows cards to be re-used, rather than contributing to environmental waste, but it also gives users the ability to follow the travels of the card and its recipients.

Merry-go-round cards utilizes a similar concept offering cards that have slits that hold separate slips of paper for recipients to replace as it’s passed along.

Millennials Will Pay If Content Meets Their Expectations

They grew up with YouTube and Hulu.com, but Millennials aren’t just a bunch of freeloaders. A recent Advertising Age white paper about “The On-Demand Generation” revealed that this group spends 7 hours and 38 minutes a day with media—up by more than an hour from 2004, and the first time in a decade that time spent with media increased. While much of that content is free, they’re willing to pay for content they want, like music and movies from iTunes. Some findings from the report include the fact that Millennials want instant gratification. Free is their preference but they are willing to pay small fees or even watch advertising (“but it better be good advertising, and it better not take more than a nanosecond to load”), and they will not compromise on anything but the best quality.

Summer Travel Plans

The recent American Express Spending & Saving Tracker indicates that 51% of Americans are planning a vacation this summer. Those surveyed expect to spend on average $1,000 per person on summer travel, a figure that increases to $4,800 among young professionals and $6,400 among affluents. Additionally, 58% of parents plan to spend an average of $600 per child on summer activities at home. Family trips are the most popular (52%) but other types of vacations include couple trips (26%), a staycation (11%) trips with friends (10%), experiential or adventure vacations such as a culinary retreat or hiking trip (7%) and educational vacations (4%).

Most people planning a vacation will stay in the U.S. (89%). However, affluents (19%) and young professionals (29%) are more likely to travel outside the U.S. Of the 49% of people who do not plan on taking a summer vacation, the main reason cited is that they have not saved for a vacation (44%).

Expedia Opens Gay Travel Store

Travelers booking hotels through Expedia.com are now able to search “LGBT-welcoming” hotels or visit Expedia’s new LGBT store as part of a partnership with the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association. Ten gay-friendly cities are featured on the store page along with guides to gay events and hot spots in the area. Expedia plans to add more cities to this feature in the future.

Apple Apps Become Even More User-Friendly

Apple has recently made their applications for the iPhone and iPod touch even more useful to consumers. Users can now gift any one of the apps directly to a friend instead of just relying on a gift card. The Give a Gift feature allows givers to send redeemable app presents over e-mail with a 500-word personalized message or on paper with everything necessary printed out directly from iTunes. The giving screen even allows people to give the same app to multiple recipients.

Apple apps are also now available through an official App Store Facebook page. “With more than 170,000 apps available in the App Store and with more than 3 billion downloads, bringing the incredibly popular App Store to Facebook was a perfect fit,” states a post on the Virtue Blog, the company responsible for running the site. “Both the App Store and Facebook are currently two of the hottest application development platforms today, so bringing the two together is a match made in heaven.”

The new page contains Facebook fan-page standards like comment threads and a wall, but it also encourages users to recommend apps to their friends and search for new apps via updated lists and spotlights.

Loyalty Programs in the Travel Industry

Americans hold a total of 1.8 million loyalty club memberships and average 14 rewards programs per household, but when it comes to travel, consumers are seeking new routes to rewards. Restrictions and requirements (blocked dates, fees, expiration dates, etc.) leave them frustrated. They want flexibility, convenience and relevance — they want rewards that promise choice, practicality and personalization. According to a study by Hotels.com, 93% of consumers feel that improvements need to be made to their loyalty program memberships.

Third-party websites are helping consumers better leverage these rewards. Best Western’s Status Match, No Catch deal lets any elite rewards members enjoy the perks. Sites like Points.com and LoyaltyMatch.com let people trade frequent-flier miles from one airline to another, or for hotel rewards points, merchandise or cash. Placely.com is a one-stop social networking site where travelers can input, store and manage all their frequent-flier information, and AwardWallet.com keeps tabs on the best rewards programs on the market.

Airlines are also revamping their traditional programs, with an emphasis on accessibility. United, American, and Delta now allow for one-way rewards usage; members can redeem points for one-way flights (or half the number of miles required). United’s Miles and Money and Delta’s Pay with Miles both let members combine cash with miles to book their trips. At Delta’s SkyMiles Marketplace, members can redeem their miles, or a combination of miles and cash, for more than 6,000 items, including hotel rooms, car rentals, consumer electronics, clothing
and jewelry.