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Berlin vg deck and exercise
This document summarizes a presentation about trends in travel, technology, and content. The presentation discusses how technology is changing the travel industry and consumer expectations. It identifies eight key insights, including how technology is enabling interactivity and multimedia, lowering barriers for people to become travel writers, and how trust and online connections are shifting how people plan travel. The presentation suggests travel companies provide expert communities and blogs, renew their promises to readers, and leverage celebrity influencers to stay relevant in a changing industry.
Berlin vg deck and exercise
- 1. Presentation and workshop: Trendsin travel, technology and content
- 2. Presentation and workshop: Trendsin travel, technology and content Tom Hall Editorial director, Lonely Planet, and contributor to The Guardian, BBC, CNN, and others
- 3. What’s this sessionfor? • What’s happening? • What does it mean for VG? • What do we all do about it?
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- 9. Everyone can bea travel writer
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- 14. What does allthis mean for VG? • The opportunity for well-established brands in the travel content space is simple: a chance to commit to excellence and high standards, demonstrated on a daily basis with a tailored content strategy that is not just better than known competitors but shines, multi-platform and internationally. • The challenge is two-fold: to understand how readers needs have evolved and continued to evolve, and to have an ongoing conversation rather than a one-way relationship. • In addition to this, travel experts have a responsibility beyond simply helping recommend the next holiday. They can and must help the reader make sense of emerging trends and destinations.
- 15. Tom’s suggestions • DoesVG seek to offer a community of experts in social spaces, some of whom work for VG, others who are passionate experts? • Shorter, blog-style pieces for online and mobile consumption, where the importance of the headline and first line is bigger than ever? • Is there a need for a renewed promise to readers, making old assumptions about free travel, PR involvement clearer? • A regular slot devoted to the future of travel, but instead of an interview with an expert a journalist and a traveller go and do share their experience. • Consider one-off or ongoing celebrity contributions based on their social footprint. Get them to make a video, too.
- 16. What do wedo about it? • Feedback and questions • Project Berlin • The rest is up to you!
Editor's Notes
- #7 Technology, connectivity and social media are revolutionising the role travel/holidays plays in our lives. Travel media is increasingly connected to the rest of our lives. Travel cycle. Dreaming – planning – booking – travelling – (sharing) – basking - dreamingTablet consumption and traffic. Social sharing deciding what’s popular. How does your audiences needs differ depending on how they’re engaging with you? ALSO complexity of social landscape – Pinterest, Instagram, Storify, G+…The question I would ask is this: do you think when you publish a story the various routes that an audience will find it from?
- #8 A writer’s exulted position, broadcasting from a piece of paper to an uninvolved audience is gone. Forever. Comments cut indulgent writers down to size and hold the correspondent to an entirely different set of standards. Lonely Planet had over 1,000 responses to a single article, selecting Uganda as our best country to visit in 2012.
- #9 Words and images must be accompanied by audio and video. This brings the importance of the theme as much as destination into focus.The New York Times weekly travel section has evolved to become a platform for a range of media on a single theme. Example is last month’s London feature: an essay by noted writer AA Gill, a photo gallery, a one-minute (just one minute) video.The BBC run a course on using the iPhone as a newsgathering tool.Question: do your contributors have the skills to do this?
- #10 Publishing is democratic and free: anyone can go on holiday and write about it. Not all do this well, of course, but many of those who do are far better than mainstream media at exploiting the possibilities for distribution offered by social sharing. And when free and ok is more popular than excellent and paid-for then old-world media have a problem.Everbrite is a contributor to Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree bulletin boards – she posts only about Russia and the former Soviet states, and has made 30,000 posts. She maintains wiki-style FAQ pages on these countries and is an acknowledged expert on the countries she covers. She’s not an author, but what is she?Are you tapping into this informal yet growing network of experts, who will in many cases be able to tell you what’s new faster than anyone else?
- #11 The above also asks serious questions of where travel media stands on ethical questions. The reader asks: can I trust this? And the answer is more important than you may think. The bloggers that I meet are, in many cases, in the business for free trips rather than a desire to bring the world to their audience. And they’re not bothered with such details as transparency and editorial integrity. I find this troubling.
- #12 We are in the middle of the third wave of the internet (1. commerce online 2. connecting with others 3. making offline experiences through online connections) . More than simple consumption of content, for many using social networks is a gateway to real-life experiences.It’s not just writers who grapple with this change. Airbnb and other social accommodation providers threaten to not just challenge the status quo but rip up the rulebook and start again. Will everyone avoid crummy budget hotels or some respond to the competition? What happens when city councils and governments wake up to the lost tax revenue?Question: why, if all your friends are telling you what’s great and where you should go travelling, and what deals there are, and sharing photos and video via Facebook would someone buy your newspaper or read your website?
- #13 Celebrity culture is king. A piece is more likely to get pickup online if it’s written by a big name. Daily Mail travel section. Question: could the answer to a lot of the questions above be to get big names writing travel pieces?
- #14 Destinations and holidays continue to evolve. Lonely Planet’s fastest-selling book this year, so far is Myanmar (Burma). LP sells more copies of Vietnam than Thailand. What’s the next Turkey? Algeria (clipping)? Or is the only future for the organised holiday cruising? Key themes in travel to watch out for: nostalgia, social sharing, learning holidaysQuestion:
- #17 Project BerlinEither individually or in groups, take Berlin as your example. Consider how you would approach this city as a destination based on what we’ve discussed here. There aren’t any limits, and I’d like you to think without the usual constraints of budget, timing and format.Take as long as you like (20 mins?) and then we’ll have 5 mins to present back.A few things to consider:What is it?Why does it work?What formats does it use?Does it work across platforms?How do you promote it?What would you like the reader to do once they’ve got to the end of it?