Traveling the World with Sam Walton and Davy Crockett

July 15, 2014 Steve Wellmeier

Sam's Club Travel, an online information and booking site for members only, was recently introduced by the company. Photoshop by Mark Babushkin Photography.

Several travel-related news items flashed on my laptop screen late last month, reminding me of the power of well-known brands, cross-selling, proprietary customer databases, media clout and destination content.

Sam’s Club, a sister company of Wal-Mart and the eighth-largest retailer in the US, announced on June 24 the creation of Sam’s Club Travel, a new online travel service and collaboration with Tourico Holidays.

A few days earlier, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL), the second-largest cruise company in the world with a 23% market share, had confirmed that it was developing a new land tour operation to be called TourTrek.

These announcements followed several others that caught my eye earlier this year. In March, The New York Times launched an expanded tour operation as part of its Times Journeys travel subsidiary.

And, finally, Adventures by Disney, a division of the Walt Disney Company that started in 2005 with tours only to Hawaii and Wyoming but is now offering nearly 40 escorted programs worldwide, said in May that it was unveiling a variety of new adventures, some close to home but others further afield.

For the purposes of this blog post, cross-selling is the common denominator linking these four brands and their new ventures. And while there is inevitably some overlap in the market segments they are targeting, there are clear differences, too. Some of these companies are clearly making a move toward “experiential travel,” what a recent report by Peak DMC and Skift calls “more immersive, local, authentic, adventurous and/or active travel.”

Let’s look at these developments a little closer...

Are U.S. Travel Marketers Ready for Canada's New Anti-Spam Law?

June 11, 2014 Steve Wellmeier

A fine of $10 million tends to make you sit up and pay attention.

That’s the maximum penalty for non-compliance with new regulations that will take effect July 1, 2014—less than a month away—impacting all commercial electronic messages (CEM) sent to Canadian businesses and individuals.

The new regulations are outlined in Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL), which was originally legislated back in 2010. I’ve been following this story closely for the past month and tweeting about it to my followers. Frankly, I am surprised there haven’t been more articles about it in the U.S. travel trade press, considering the fact that cruise lines, tour operators and travel agents rely so heavily on electronic databases of customers and prospects to market their programs.

U.S. and other non-Canada-based companies aren’t exempt from the new law, and if their databases look anything like the ones I’ve helped build at travel companies over the past several decades, there are plenty of Canadian addresses in those customer and prospect files.

The Rising Power of O in Travel Marketing

March 5, 2014 Steve Wellmeier

Magazine image courtesy of Webomator, with title help from Mark Babushkin

Where does your tour or small ship cruise product fit in on the O Continuum?

No, this isn’t something out of pulp science fiction. I learned about it recently in the January–February issue of the Harvard Business Review: “What Marketers Misunderstand About Online Reviews,” by Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen.

If you’re a marketer like me, you’ll likely apply the principles to your own product or service as you peruse the article. In my case, that’s the marketing of specialty cruises and tours. It’s a quick read and I recommend it. But I’ll summarize some of the major points and add a few of my own in this blog post.