matt tillotson dot com

How can you be bored when you travel? Your fellow travelers and the absurdity of the rituals we must go through to get from point A to point B provide a continuous stream of high comedy.

Recently, I settled in for a Delta flight as the usual safety video came on. The video-taped pilot came on said thanks for flying with us, etc., as many of us have seen a hundred times. As he spoke, the woman next to me said to her husband, "Look! The same pilot from our last flight is flying this plane, too!"

Endless comedy. You just have to pay attention to the skits going on around you.

Loading mentions Retweet

Mark Cuban reflects on increased ratings for baseball and the NBA, giving much of the credit to social media:

The internet has trained us.

It has trained us to assign two distinct values to content that is available to us, regardless of media.    The 1st variable is participation value. The 2nd variable is shelf life.  The two variables go hand in hand.

Every type of content has some quotient of participation value. At the bottom of the spectrum are games/shows/movies/events that you watch or attend by yourself, and you have no interest in telling anyone about.  Those shows have zero participation value.  They could be Perry Mason reruns (happened to catch one while I was working out on the road) or shows you watch when you have nothing better to do.

At the top of the scale are games/shows/movies/events that potential viewers have predicted to have high participation value.  These are events that we look forward to not only watching or attending, but that we plan in advance how we are going to extend our participation.  We may plan on tweeting about it or posting a facebook update because we know our friends are there and we are bragging to each other, while at the same time showing off to friends who cant be there. Think going to the opening of Cowboys stadium, or going to a concert or opening night of a movie, or watching the big game.

The mixed results by network vs. last year seems to support Cuban's theory that "event TV" -- sports, major news events, American Idol, etc. -- that allow for an immediate and shared experience can do well on TV. Other programming, like dramas and comedies, don't share that sense of shared participation and thus viewers are more likely to watch at their leisure, via DVR, iTunes, Hulu or other sources.

Loading mentions Retweet

Interesting article at newgeography.com showing a continued outflow of highly valuable residents (families and educated workers) from higher-tax large cities to smaller and mostly sunbelt-based locations.

Between 2006 and 2008, the metropolitan areas that enjoyed the fastest percentage shift toward educated and professional workers and industries included nominally "unhip" places like Indianapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.

I am a fan of Richard Florida's work, but these numbers don't support his premise of a "new urbanism," where educated workers mass in supercities where education and creativity have traditionally been cultivated. Instead, maybe we are seeing that the Internet reduces the barriers to economic opportunity that traditionally have required living in expensive urban areas. Increasingly, people may have access to good, white collar jobs without needing to live in the same town as corporate headquarters. People are voting with their wallets as they look for tax relief -- and a little more sun never hurt, either. 

Loading mentions Retweet

From the Infrastructurist:

The airport-in-the-ocean idea is not a new one. Among other places, Hong Kong did it recently–filling in 4 square miles of the South China Sea with rocks and dirt to build an artificial island. By all accounts the resulting facility is lovely. But the Pacific off San Diego is too deep to lend itself to that sort of scheme. So Englund has proposed a solution that’s both more dramatic and elegant: Build a giant oil rig-style floating platform permanently moored 10 or so miles off the coast of San Diego. It would be three square miles and afford plenty of room for two long and very safe runways.

Passengers could potentially connect to the airport via ferries along the SoCal coast or underwater tram in a "floating tunnel." Cost: $20 billion. Cool idea? Yes. Practical? Maybe not so much.

Loading mentions Retweet

Congrats Southwest on the great new interface for ticket booking. Orbitz et al take note!

Loading mentions Retweet

Powerful quote from Mathew Honan in this presentation from Morgan Stanley on the mobile Web:

Location changes everything. It certainly does. We’re already seeing the impact:

• It’s easier than ever to connect with others who may be visiting same place as you.
• Smart businesses are wooing walk-up customers by making sure they are listed on Google Maps to show up in mobile map searches.
• Google is betting big on Android (CEO comments) to gain access to mobile advertising, and it looks like location-based ads are the Next Big Thing. As you step off the jetway after a long flight – say a redeye – wouldn’t Starbucks want to hit you with a Latte ad on your smartphone? That's relevancy. It can also seem invasive, so marketers will have to balance the opportunity against violated consumer trust. I'm sure, ahem, that we'll do a great job.

We are still at the beginning of the "location-aware" phase of technology and marketing. Tons of implications for both travel marketers and travelers trying to find just what they need – and who they want to see – lie ahead.

Loading mentions Retweet

Airport Maps sits in first class at the front of the iPhone App Store's travel section -- and with good reason. The app offers a simple interface to find restaurants, stores, trams, smoking areas and wifi hotspots at airports around the country. (Oddly, it doesn’t show restroom locations. Is anything more important after a TPA-SFO jaunt?)

The app covers 53 North American airports. Click your airport, click your terminal on the map and it populates with gate numbers and graphics for the amenities.Click on a graphic and short descriptor pops up. But are the maps accurate and up to date? I emailed the app creator, Michael Wolff, who responded quickly with this on accuracy and updates:

Shops and restaurants do change from time to time and the airports' websites frequently do not keep 100% up-to-date with the changes.  I plan to fully reassess every airport every 2 months for any changes.  I do also get an occasional email from a customer about an inaccuracy, which I correct and add to the next update.

The app allows you to turn items on and off to customize it to your tastes. Don't want to see restaurants? Turn them off. Hate coffee? Wipe it off your map.

Conversely, you can click the services button and get a list rundown of what's available.

The app is handy but feels light on features, especially at $2.99. What might make it a home run?

• GPS to show you exactly where you are in a terminal. That would likely require expensive integration with Google Maps. But we're thinking out loud here.
• Virtual reality, like the Yelp Monocle, so amenity names could simply overlay the camera display and show you what's ahead
• Links to reviews
• Free beer. That makes everything better.

Ultimately, is it worth $2.99 for a handheld concourse map? Seems steep relative to the feature set. But it depends somewhat on where you travel. You might not need it in Louisville, where you can get a lay of the land pretty quickly. But in Atlanta, where there seems to be some sort of city ordinance permitting only one concourse map for every 437 gates, it could be helpful to get moving quickly. In the end, it works as advertised and has a solid base on which to layer on more compelling features.

Loading mentions Retweet

Christopher Elliott says that 2010 will be another great year for travel bargains. Which means another lousy year for travel service providers -- at least most of them.

How is a company to react – in travel or any other industry – when the industry growth curve keeps pointing flat-to-south? Too many of us have to ask that now. And with the economic picture foggy at best for the next few years, it’s a question we’ll ask ourselves over and over again.

What’s the next step? Better customer service? More competitive prices? Those are requirements for survival, not growth. Anyone who’s disappointed with service or price today has several other eager providers anxiously waiting for an at-bat. How about radical differentiation? Some in the travel business are shaking things up, in smart ways. Virgin Galactic will fly you to space, and is happy to reserve your spot today for just $20,000. The Parking Spot creates differentiation in satellite parking with leopard-spotted buses to pick you up and a bottle of water on your way out.

Loading mentions Retweet

I think Southwest's current campaign -- "Grab Your Bag. It's On," is great. The line captures the spirit of business travelers getting after it in a recession, and more importantly, sets Southwest apart as the airline that doesn't nickel and dime you to death.

Except the airline is starting to nickel and dime you to death.

Southwest recently introduced a new service called "EarlyBird Check-In," which allows fliers to pay $10 for priority boarding, right behind the Business Select crowd.

Couple the EarlyBird fees with Southwest's move in 2007 to its new, more complicated seating procedures, and it looks like Southwest is, well, starting to look like everyone else. Why grab for a few extra bucks at the expense of the brand experience?

Starbucks seems struck with a similar affliction. In a contest to support VIA, Starbucks' new instant coffee, the company's web site says that "...it tastes just as bold and flavorful as any cup we brew fresh." Is that a good thing? Isn't the Starbucks core brand built all around the grand experience of ordering that steaming cup of coffee, just how you like it, and enjoying it in their stores? If VIA really is as good as as fresh-brewed, then why bother with anything but the instant? Again, it seems like another grab at extra revenue at the expense of the company's core value.

Innovation to create new, blue-ocean markets is great. Short-term cash grabs that fly in the face of the brand promise are not. The iPhone and Wii created competitive space for their companies while holding to the core positioning that made them unique: simple, friendly and inexpensive flying. Pay one low price, no food, no first class, no attitude, no hassles. It's a unique, blue-ocean position Southwest created long ago. Now it seems the company is slowly wandering off-course.

Loading mentions Retweet

Use of social media sites is still exploding:

Time spent on social network and blogging sites accounted for 17% of all the time Americans spent online in August 2009, nearly triple the percentage of time (6%) spent on the sector in August 2008, according to recently released data from Nielsen.

"This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used," said Jon Gibs, vice-president of media and agency insights for Nielsen's online division. "While video and text content remain central to the Web experience, the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate, and share is increasingly driving the medium's growth."

Advertisers are spending more to follow the trend, doubling their investment. But the real story is how we can better interact with people inside of social media platforms, right?

Loading mentions Retweet