McColl Communications: PR & Marketing for the Travel Industry

Thanks to Trump's Muslim ban (and the related rise in hate speech, hate crimes etc.), inbound tourism to the USA is dropping fast. With that drop, the US economy falls too. And many US jobs are lost. #trumpslump #thanksTrump http://www.frommers.com//the-travel-press-is-reporting-the

iSeeiTravel.org's mission is "empowering the conscious consumer." Cool! Here's a short interview I did with them, on the founding of EthicalTraveler.org . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m73uB_KHpyE

The 'holy grail' of advertising is ads that your target market genuinely *wants* to look at. Sometimes they don't feel like ads at all, but they create purchase intent all the same. This video is probably sponsored by someone involved. So at some level, it is advertising. But it is also great storytelling, and great cinematography. It's the best piece of travel video I've seen in 2016: "Salkantay Inca Trail: The Ultimate Trek to Machu Picchu : www.glpfilms.com/salkantaywin...ner2016 Awesome work, Rob Holmes and team!

Honored to have been part of this great New York Travel Festival (NY Trav Fest) 2016 panel, moderated by Nancy Trejos from USA Today's travel section. Included Roads and Kingdoms' Mitch Moxley , U.S. Department of State's @Daisy Cardiel, and GeoSure Global's @Michael Becker . So many great audience questions on travel safety and ethics/sustainability in travel. Thanks all!

"And the winners are...." Announcing the winners of the 2016 Ethical Destinations Awards. http://ethicaltraveler.org//2016-ethical-destinations-awa/ ... As you plan your travels for the coming year, please consider spending your travel budget in places that take good care of their people and their natural environment.

Intuitively obvious, perhaps. But now backed by data!

Hotels are rightly worried about losing their direct sales to the online travel agencies. Small UK hotel chain Shire solved the problem brilliantly. If you want more direct bookings on your hotel's website, spend a few minutes reading this, then copy the idea ASAP: http://www.eyefortravel.com//hooray-small-nimble-uk-chain-

According to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourism is set to hit a new record by the end of 2014 with over 1.1 billion international t...ourists travelling the world in one single year. During the first ten months of 2014, the number of international tourists grew by 5%, rising above expectations. By region, the strongest growth was registered in the Americas (+8%), followed by Asia and the Pacific (+5%) and Europe (+4%). Read more: http://ow.ly/G7sTF Photo: Palenque, Mexico

Advertisers often say "I know half of my ad budget is wasted, I just don't know which half." Well, I think we can all agree that 100% of this ad spend was wasted. How can we tell? 1) North Korea currently has a travel ban in place that would prevent tourists from entering the country. (In October, authorities reportedly told tour companies they were barring international tourists from entry because of Ebola fears.)... 2) As South Korea's Yonhap News reported, the aim of the site is to "attract foreign tourists," but since the page is exclusively in Korean, it's unclear who exactly the target audience is. http://www.huffingtonpost.com//north-korea-tourism_n_62573

By now, we all know that travel websites need to be mobile-ready (AKA "responsive"), right? Once the overall site is mobile friendly, it is time to focus on making your site mobile-ecommerce ready. Mobile is expected to account for ** a quarter ** of US online travel sales by 2015 nearing $40 billion in revenue.... Hotel Tonight's app lets you book a hotel room in 8 seconds. That's the gold standard. For most tour operators, a responsive WordPress site with WooCommerce might be the easiest way to prepare for the mobile-first future. Let us know if we can help. http://www.phocuswright.com//mobile-to-represent-over-one-

Is your tourism business concerned with keeping your 5-star scores high on review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor? Good! Are you considering fining your patrons for leaving negative reviews? Bad. Really, impressively, cluelessly bad. ... Union Street Guest House , in the Hudson River Valley of Upstate New York: welcome to the Travel Marketing Wall of Shame! It's brand new, inspired by YOU, and accessible via the NOTES link above, just below the cover photo and our logo. http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/04/no-just-no/?ncid=tcdaily

Note the key finding at the end of the piece: quality content from recognized authors is still fine by Google. Guest posting is not dead. Garbage posting, yep, that's dead.