News and Events

bgb UK Market Insight Report

During World Travel Market we launched our annual UK Market Insight Report. This is intended to be a useful and concise snapshot for issues facing travel marketeers in the year ahead and full copies are available - simply email my colleague Robin Mack on rmack@bgb.co.uk. Here are a few extracts we hope may be useful.

Online content - what's new?

I took part in an interesting Travelmole debate about online content tonight. Fellow panellist Giles Longhurst explained how Frommer's Unlimited creates relevant bespoke and syndicated content for different company websites - content not just to drive high traffic levels, but traffic with a low bounce rate to engage and deliver results.

Social media quote of the month

I attended the Travelzoo fifth birthday party last night. An amazing success story - 1.8 million UK subscribers, 4 million across Europe in just five years. It's a company that doesn't sell anything but obsessively checks the accuracy of the information it publishes and gets the trust of that level of subscribers as a result. Hugely impressive growth.

5 Inspirational links

A client recently asked me to give them some ideas about what's happening online. Here's five things I picked.

The view from Pow Wow

The mood was optimistic at the 43rd Pow Wow held in Orlando this week. Roger Dow, the CEO and president of the US Travel Association talked of an "industry recovery underway."New York for example, posted an 11% increase in total visitors in the first quarter of this year (although no stats were given for UK arrivals).

2010 Marketing? Think Differently

It's World Travel Market 2009 and this is a speech given at a Caribbean Tourism Organisation Event during the show

A cloudy forecast from The Travel Convention

My favourite quotes from this year's travel convention were Peter Long of TUI UK who said: "my crystal ball is as cloudy as everyone else's" and Micky Arison of Carnival who rather modestly deflected requests for predictions by saying "I'm not an economist I sell cruises."

TUI UK & Ireland Trends Report

We launched the TUI UK and Ireland annual trends report today. I've been involved in projects for TUI for more than a decade and this organisation never ceases to surprise me. Working for them once a year is a bit like being a maiden aunt who is guaranteed to irritate her small nieces and nephews by proclaiming how much they've grown, or changed. Well TUI UK and Ireland has grown and changed and the company I saw this year has been transformed from the business it was just a year ago.

Luxury trends

Luxury has always been an incredibly important part of our business at bgb. We have worked with Raymond Blanc for many years and are delighted to be celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Our clients also number brands such as the International Luxury Travel Market and One & Only, through to individual properties such as Le Mas Candille, or uber luxury skiing lodges.

Travel companies can make a difference

If you're running a travel business, scarce water resources or declining fish stocks are something other people should be tackling, right? Well actually no; it's not that simple, and you can make a difference. I spent Monday this week at the Travel Foundation's AGM. Last year the subject at this charity's AGM was water shortages and I turned up thinking it would all be theoretical and too abstract to provide useful advice for clients. But I was wrong. It proved to be a powerful session on how travel organisations have a real role to play. thetravelfoundation.org