Guest Blog - the ISM team describes their approach (and subsequent jubilation!) to introducing Emirates Airlines to the San Francisco market…

They stopped. They looked. They smiled. They discussed.
To paraphrase Sally Field, “They liked it. They really liked it.”

But let’s back up 36 hours or so, to when we first started unpacking box after box of artificial palm fronds (1,280 fronds to be exact). The plan was to make a typical station domination anything but typical. For those who don’t know, a “station domination” is when a single advertiser buys every available unit in a particular station. In this case, the advertiser was our client Emirates, the world’s fastest growing airline. The site? San Francisco’s Montgomery Station. And the crew? Five installers, two ISMers, one Emirates client…and a partridge in a palm tree. Even before we had hung the first frond, onlookers began to take notice. In the middle of their commute, they’d take time to come over and ask what was going on. Some had heard of Emirates. Most hadn’t. (One even thought that Emirates was a cookie. And another was more interested in what kind of video camera we were using, but I digress.) Everyone agreed, this was gonna be a hit. And oh was it ever.

In addition to the 32 “Palm Trees”, we created wallscapes, floorscapes, dioramas, transit posters and banners. 215 different pieces in all. Let’s just say that Janice, our production manager, has earned herself a much needed vacation. (And don’t even get her started on the taxi wraps, news racks, billboards and monitors that we worked on for the rest of the city.)

But let’s get back to those palm trees. After weeks of searching for the “perfect frond” and experimenting with the proper rigging, we were finally ready to roll. Of course, it wasn’t until we saw the enormity of the task at hand that we realized, well, the enormity of the task at hand. (Who knew that there was a proper way to fold a frond?) Even our client had to get his hands dirty and help out. And at one point, when the installers were ready to call it a day, we actually had to bribe them with a Quizno’s run and sandwiches for everyone.

When all was said and done, the installation was a huge success. (And our hands and forearms were killing us from all that frond folding.) It was quite nice to see people walking into the station with no idea who Emirates was and walking out booking reservations on their iPhones. (Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.) But at the end of the day, we felt like we really left our mark on the city.

Sort of like our own little San Francisco treat.

-Ana Gonzalez

Watch the video here: http://ismboston.blogspot.com/2008/12/domination-jubilation.html

Founded in 1984, ISM has grown into one of the world’s leading firms specializing in marketing and advertising for the travel, hospitality and lifestyle industries. Premier brands from around the world seek out the company for its expertise, strategic abilities and creativity. Current clients include Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Emirates, American Express, Barbados, Best Western and others. The firm is comprised of a unique mix of talent that hails from both the travel industry and leading marketing communications agencies.

Tags: advertising, Airlines, emirates, hospitality, hotels, ism, lifestyle, Marketing, pr, san-francisco, Tourism, Travel

With Dubai the wonders never cease! The scope, pace and nature of the developments and projects in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in general is mind-boggling. The hotel industry is also abuzz with new properties - the city of Dubai is currently host of about 40,000 rooms in various categories and this number is set to grow to almost 94,000 by 2016! The biggest project, Bawadi, itself will account for 29,000 hotel rooms, with the biggest hotel in the world, Asia-Asia (6,500 rooms). This article gives a short brief of the hotel industry and a list of the top 20 hotels in Dubai by popularity (Read it here)

Tags: dubai, hospitality, hotels, middle-east, motels, resorts, Tourism, Travel, uae, united-arab-emirates

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has just launched a new website www.starwoodpro.com to cater exclusively to the information and booking needs of a wide and important travel professional base. The official blurb:

Why we’re here: To make matching specific client requirements with the perfect hotel effortless. How we’ve done it: By putting you first. Created by professionals, for professionals, StarwoodPro puts the information and tools you rely on most – the ability to research locations, dynamic search that helps pinpoint the right properties, and a booking shortcut tool – all in easy reach. We’ve also included textural information – such as vivid descriptions of each of our brands and local area information so that you can unite clients with hotels that will not just meet, but exceed expectations.

Visit www.starwoodpro.com for more

The site also lists what’s expected in the future: “On the Horizon”

Working to help you open more hotel doors to your clients, StarwoodPro is looking to do more – provide more tools, more information about our properties, and finding more ways to help you help your clients. Some of the things we’ll be adding in the future:

Enhanced Travel Professional Education – We’re focused on helping you find more ways to use Starwood’s brands to build your business. We also want to get to know you, as well as help you get to know us and each of our brands.

Travel Professional Rates – Stay with us! We’re working on enhancing our current discounted rates for Travel Professionals to give you more opportunities to stay at our hotels and resorts worldwide at preferred rates.

Rewards Program – We’ve got something cooking that may just motivate you to book any one of our 825 + hotels and resorts.

Special Events – Celebrations and business go hand in hand, and we will have a lot to celebrate as we launch new brands and open new hotels.

Tags: book, bookings, ecommerce, hospitality, hotel-bookings, hotels, information, internet, Online, professionals, resorts, starwood, tour-operators, Tourism, Travel, travel-agents, website

Some pretty good photos of Dubai City in the UAE, taken fresh from the air, showing the development of major projects, hotels, resorts, etc. The photos give a good picture of the overall scope of Dubai city though mostly restricted to the town centre areas of Jumeirah and Bur Dubai.

Tags: aerial, bur-dubai, burj-dubai, city, development, dubai, helicopter, hotels, jebel-ali, jumeirah, photography, photos, real-estate, resorts, tour, uae

Emirates Business 24/7 reported - The UAE has come out on top of an international index ranking the world’s best destinations for resorts and hotels. The Emirates beat such luxury locales as the Maldives, Australia, Tahiti, and Bermuda in the 2007 Country Brand Index issued by New York-based Future Brands. The study found the UAE ranked as the best for resort and lodging facilities because it boasts a wide-variety of hotel accommodation – from family-friendly beach resorts to the world’s only seven-star hotel, Burj Al Arab, in addition to the largest number of new properties under construction.

In Dubai, developments in the pipeline stretch out to 2020 and are in line to deliver 80,000 extra hotel rooms by 2010, with 100,000 people employed in the sector. The UAE’s investment in the tourism industry stands at more than Dh878 billion, with Dubai leading the field with Dh454bn in projects followed by Abu Dhabi with Dh305bn, according to a recent report. The UAE was also awarded third place among the most popular emerging destinations under the category ‘Rising Star’ after Croatia and China, who came in first and second respectively. For fine dining, the country came in seventh, topped by destinations like France, Italy, Singapore, Japan, the US and UK. The Emirates was also in the top 10 for best business destinations.

In other news:

The number of visitors to Abu Dhabi grew by 16 per cent in 2007 – one of the highest growth rates for the sector in the world. However, the head of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) said the emirate does not have enough hotel rooms to accommodate the increase.

A strategic study on Abu Dhabi’s tourism sector conducted by ADTA for 2015 said about 1.37 million tourists visited the capital in 2007, compared to 1.18m in 2006. And the study predicted the sector will host 1.58 million visitors in 2008.

The study said the emirate is likely to see 12 per cent annual growth in the coming years, with three million tourists planning trips to Abu Dhabi by 2015.

Tags: abu-dhabi, best, development, dubai, emirates, future-brands, growth, hospitality, hotels, new-york, resorts, survey, Tourism, tourists, uae, visitors

Kenya has always been considered a safe haven in East Africa and is a great tourist spot for beach holidays and African safaris. However the recent post-election clashes and continuing violence in the country has torn apart the economy - tourism and the Kenyan hotel industry has been hit hard. News reports indicate a high number of hotel closures and lay-offs with declining visits. At the Coast of Kenya, which accounts for about 2/3rds of the hotel industry, 20 hotels have been shut down (of 150 hotels with 32,000 beds in the region) and others are recording a dismal 10 - 20% occupancy. It is clear that the situation is headed towards a spiral if nothing is done to bring warring parties to an agreement - the hotel industry, which took some time to recover from the blasts half a decade ago, is right back where it started at that point, much to the dismay of hotel operators and tourists.

About Kenya: The Republic of Kenya is a country in Eastern Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border.

Tags: closures, economy, hotel-industry, hotels, kenya, kenya-hotels, kenyan, kenyan-hotel-industry, Tourism, Travel, turmoil, violence

Kango.com has introduced a new travel blog search widget which hopes to alleviate the trouble most of us go through searching for (and through) good travel blogs / posts. The widget employs custom Google search and scours the contents of selected travel blogs which have made it on the list. A great promotion tool, no doubt, for Kango itself, but also a good value addition to most travel blogs to help their readers search for more travel content out there…

What is Kango?

The official site blurb:
Kango is a travel information search engine - your first step to deciding where to go, where to stay or what to do. We’re here to help you make informed decisions about what best fits your travel preferences. We have scoured the web to collect 400,000 places to go, things to do and places to stay. Then we have analyzed and organized millions of travelers’ opinions to enable you to search based on your exact travel requirements and preferences.

Tags: hospitality, hotels, kango, search-widget, Tourism, Travel, travel-blogs, travel-search

The two week holiday is dying out, according to a new survey revealed today by Holiday Inn. Families across Britain are struggling to find the time or money to go away with their loved ones, and a whopping 52 per cent of families definitely WON’T be going on a two week summer holiday this year, citing cost as the main problem. But shorter breaks of three or four days are becoming more popular for couples who juggle work and family life.

The average family now takes approximately four short breaks a year - feeling that a long weekend every three months stops them from getting too stressed with everyday life. And with the average spend being just £349.11 for a weekend away, that’s only £1,396.44 to keep the whole family entertained for a year.
The poll of 5,000 people was conducted by Holiday Inn - it revealed that 24 per cent can’t go away during school breaks as holidays are more expensive than any other time of the year.

Another 24 per cent simply can’t afford to pay for holidays which last longer than a few days, whatever the date.

One in five people can’t get enough time off work for a holiday - whilst one in 10 couples can’t take time off work on the same dates.

A staggering 72 per cent of folk now believe that shorter breaks are a more affordable way of treating the family.

And four in 10 people say taking time out with the family on a regular basis helps them feel less guilty about spending so much time away from the children at work.

The children also benefit from trips around the UK - 70 per cent of parents say their children get really excited about having quality time with their family.

Chris Hale, spokesman for Holiday Inn, said: “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a huge surge in the number of people booking into Holiday Inns for short breaks. Gone are the bad old days when people would save all year for their annual two week summer holiday at the busiest and most expensive period - we’re much too savvy nowadays”.

“Now everyone is grabbing a few days here and there to get out and about and discover this fabulous country of ours - without all the stress and cost of just one long holiday.”

In fact, folk are quick to criticise long holidays. A quarter polled said they hated spending their hard earned cash on just one break.

Fifteen per cent can’t stand flying to faraway destinations and one in 10 people hate long journeys on the ferry, train or in the car.

Nineteen per cent of folk hate the extensive packing and unpacking required for a long trip, whilst one in 10 get fed up with the laundry on their return.

Six per cent worry about the work they will need to catch up on, and five per cent simply miss their home comforts.

Chris Hale, spokesman for Holiday Inn, said: “Why spend your hard earned cash on one big holiday when three or four breaks a year is less stress, less money and a lot more fun?”

Tags: britain, family-travel, holiday-inn, hotels, intercontinental, research, resorts, survey, Tourism, Travel, trends, united-kingdom, vacations

Guest Blog - the ISM team describes their approach (and subsequent jubilation!) to introducing Emirates Airlines to the San Francisco market…

They stopped. They looked. They smiled. They discussed.
To paraphrase Sally Field, “They liked it. They really liked it.”

But let’s back up 36 hours or so, to when we first started unpacking box after box of artificial palm fronds (1,280 fronds to be exact). The plan was to make a typical station domination anything but typical. For those who don’t know, a “station domination” is when a single advertiser buys every available unit in a particular station. In this case, the advertiser was our client Emirates, the world’s fastest growing airline. The site? San Francisco’s Montgomery Station. And the crew? Five installers, two ISMers, one Emirates client…and a partridge in a palm tree. Even before we had hung the first frond, onlookers began to take notice. In the middle of their commute, they’d take time to come over and ask what was going on. Some had heard of Emirates. Most hadn’t. (One even thought that Emirates was a cookie. And another was more interested in what kind of video camera we were using, but I digress.) Everyone agreed, this was gonna be a hit. And oh was it ever.

In addition to the 32 “Palm Trees”, we created wallscapes, floorscapes, dioramas, transit posters and banners. 215 different pieces in all. Let’s just say that Janice, our production manager, has earned herself a much needed vacation. (And don’t even get her started on the taxi wraps, news racks, billboards and monitors that we worked on for the rest of the city.)

But let’s get back to those palm trees. After weeks of searching for the “perfect frond” and experimenting with the proper rigging, we were finally ready to roll. Of course, it wasn’t until we saw the enormity of the task at hand that we realized, well, the enormity of the task at hand. (Who knew that there was a proper way to fold a frond?) Even our client had to get his hands dirty and help out. And at one point, when the installers were ready to call it a day, we actually had to bribe them with a Quizno’s run and sandwiches for everyone.

When all was said and done, the installation was a huge success. (And our hands and forearms were killing us from all that frond folding.) It was quite nice to see people walking into the station with no idea who Emirates was and walking out booking reservations on their iPhones. (Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.) But at the end of the day, we felt like we really left our mark on the city.

Sort of like our own little San Francisco treat.

-Ana Gonzalez

Watch the video here: http://ismboston.blogspot.com/2008/12/domination-jubilation.html

Founded in 1984, ISM has grown into one of the world’s leading firms specializing in marketing and advertising for the travel, hospitality and lifestyle industries. Premier brands from around the world seek out the company for its expertise, strategic abilities and creativity. Current clients include Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Emirates, American Express, Barbados, Best Western and others. The firm is comprised of a unique mix of talent that hails from both the travel industry and leading marketing communications agencies.

Contributed by Kevin Nicholas

Tags: advertising, Airlines, emirates, hospitality, hotels, ism, lifestyle, Marketing, pr, san-francisco, Tourism, Travel