GUEST POST (sort of) – David McGuinness, founder and director of off-the-beaten-track tour specialists, Travel The Unknown, spent 25 days in Iran in October 2012, and has been reflecting publicly on the state of tourism to Iran in the light of the recent election – I’m re-producing it here…

Change is coming to Iran. At this stage it is difficult to say to what extent the election of Hassan Rouhani with the backing of Iran’s reformists will affect Iran’s relations with the West, or living conditions for Iran’s 75 million citizens, but there is a now a momentum to the sense of change I felt in the air last October when I travelled there with my girlfriend to set up our Iran tours.

Lonely Planet’s newest Iran guidebook had only come out in August 2012, but within only two months it described an old Iran, one that had since changed dramatically. The book explained that in Iran, and particularly since the failed Green Revolution in 2009, people were reluctant to talk politics, to the extent that they would remove the battery from their already switched off mobile phones before broaching the subject. Such was the apparent fear of being caught out. So it came as a surprise when a student, only a couple of days into our trip, approached us and immediately started talking about the Iranian government and political system in a very open and less than complimentary manner. And he was the first of many. People didn’t seem worried, or afraid, and the feeling that the regime is in its final throes was commonly expressed.

The protests in Tehran’s bazaars, amongst the people normally most supportive of the government, certainly shook the foundations of the Islamic Republic. The number of protesters alone threatened to tilt the balance of power against the regime and it seemed this fact wasn’t lost on the street. Previous economic issues have caused the government to back down, for example, in previous attempts to increase the price of petrol which is very heavily subsidised. Clearly the regime, though perhaps not removable at the ballot box, are still susceptible to public feeling and need to keep up some appearance of legitimacy to be seen to represent the people. The dramatic fall of the currency, which lost a quarter of its value in a single week while we were there, exposed the present instability of the economy, suffering under both Western sanctions and government mismanagement. The upcoming election I felt would be an opportunity for the Ayatollah to gently switch track without being seen to do anything of the sort. A rapprochement with the West, including hopefully a softer line on the nuclear issue, and some easing of sanctions as a result, would of course be just the natural result of a change in the democratically elected leader of the country. Evidence of a functioning democracy. Or so the narrative could be spun.

Yet Lonely Planet wasn’t wrong to prioritise “meeting the people” as the number one item on their highlights list. The warmth of the welcome, the helpfulness and the hospitality of Iranians, were quite remarkable. If they didn’t speak English they called their friend who did. If they didn’t know where something was they found someone who could help. Going the extra mile was the norm, and it was always done with a smile. The wonderful Iranian people, whether religious or secular, liberal or conservative, young or old, were kind, genuine, and an absolute pleasure to deal with. Even the taxi drivers were honest! This is not the picture that most people have when they think of Iranians, but the truth is the Iranian people are a real credit to themselves.

One of the local operators we work with in Iran is Cyrus. He is 73 of age and climbed Mount Damavand (5,610m in altitude) last year, and most years previous to this. I struggled to follow a man almost 40 years my senior as we navigated the busy streets of Tehran; he is a force of nature with a smiley, bubbly personality to match. His company handled about 300 travellers per day under the golden era of tourism under Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, the reformist, Mohammed Khatami. Today they handle about 300 in a year. Not that Cyrus is the type to complain.

Another memorable encounter on our trip was with Mortesa, our driver for the day’s journey between Shiraz and Yazd. Mortesa was a real character who had spent time in the United Arab Emirates and Sweden after the 1979 revolution. He was continually chatting, telling us jokes and anecdotes, and asking about our lives in London and our home countries. He told a fantastic story about the time Iran’s morality police caught him in a vehicle with a younger woman he was not related to. She was only a friend whom he was driving to visit her mother, but the morality police are not known for being the understanding type. Since she was sleeping Mortesa told them she was his niece. But they asked him to wake her and took her outside for questioning, just within view. He saw her say he was her husband so when the man returned he asked him, ‘Have you finished questioning my wife?’ Confused, the man said that Mortesa had previously claimed she was his niece. “Not at all, you must be tired”, he retorted. The man went back and asked something else to his “wife”, and then returned. “What TV do you have at home?”, he asked. Mortesa replied “Samsung”. “Thank you, you may go sir”. I can see Mortesa driving away with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

I am hopeful that Cyrus, Mortesa and the tens of thousands of others who work in tourism in Iran will have a second golden era of tourism to look forward to.

It’s all too easy for travel media, travel PRs and the travel & tourism industry to think in the ‘here & now’, and forget there’s a step-change almost upon us, with the arrival of a new generation of travellers – Generation Z.

Forget Generation Y (aka “The Millennials”, born between 1980-2000). They are already here. Generation Z are the first generation born (1995 – 2010) into a world dominated by the Internet, Social Media, and Mobile. Generation Z may be smaller than their predessesors in numbers, but what they lack in quantity they will make up for in influence, driven by their incessant and determined connection to the world around them. For them, that world without the Internet is just a history book concept. Social media took off as they started school and began to build their first relationships outside the family, mobile computing took off as they became independent teenagers, and they are now about to arrive in the travel marketplace.

I should know. I have one of the first ones. Born December 1995, he is taking driving lessons and next month will be going abroad for the first time with his mates and not his parents. Gulp!

What does this mean for travel media?

Subjectively, not a lot. We write for the generation we are. So Gen-Z is not an audience we have to reach, but it is a generation we will have to compete with. If anyone thinks the travel blogosphere and social media networks are already too busy with Gen-X & Y bloggers, influencers & content creators, they’d better brace themselves because Gen-Z are going to be all over the online travel space like a swarm of bees.

This is the generation who aren’t just in constant communication with their friends. They are in constant communication simultaneously on multiple platforms! (I see it every evening. My son sits on the sofa with his iPhone and laptop, talking to overlapping groups of people on Skype, on his phone and via the Xbox/TV that he is playing FIFA 13 matches on, with his team mates… while at the same time messaging & posting on Facebook.)

Gen-Y, and some X, writers may have been the first to occupy the online travel space, but over the next decade our presence there is going to be competitively diluted. Fortunately our voices will still be heard (thank goodness for search and the ‘long tail’!) but in a few years our resources will begin to diminish as the travel & tourism industry turns its attention to the new and growing customer base.

What does this mean for the travel industry?

A new concentration on seamless online technology says Grail Research, who last year produced an excellent summary of who Generation Z are, and their defining characteristics. They say, companies wanting to target Gen-Z will need to…

• Adopt technology-based marketing and sales channels such as text messages (SMS), mobile Internet, social networking portals, etc.
• Aim to ‘catch them young’ (especially relevant for technology companies)
• Enhance their virtual world presence with online product information and purchase facility
• Develop high value-for-money products that are multifunctional with simple and interactive designs
• Provide ‘green’ products and services or take a proactive stance toward the environment

That last one is an interesting and encouraging trend. Grail point out that access to a large online information pool has made Gen-Z acutely aware of modern day challenges such as terrorism, climate change, etc. Globally, 74% of teenagers consider climate change and global warming to be a greater threat than drugs, violence or war. Although more recently, social researcher Emily Anatole, writing in Forbes magazine, suggested that school violence/shootings will have the biggest impact on American Zs.

Emily says that an early loss of innocence has made them resilient and pragmatic.

“Zs will be wary with their money. After seeing their parents lose jobs and their older siblings move back home, this generation will avoid debt. They’ll be diligent researchers, always considering what’s a good investment, and less likely to make impulse purchases. In our study, 57% of Zs said they would rather save money than spend it immediately. Like Ys, they’ll strongly consider whether college is worth the cost. They’ll find the best deals and will expect to test out products physically or virtually before they buy.”

Last autumn, Jon Keefe, CEO at KMP Digitata told delegates at the Travolution Summit that it’s the Gen-Z girls who will have the most impact on the travel industry:

“We’ve been researching these girls, known as “Disruptive Divas*” and they are incredible. They are constantly connected across multiple channels both in groups and privately. They spend on average 2-9 hours a week video chatting and they send between 500 and 3,000 messages a week via platforms like BBM (Blackberry messaging) and Facebook.

“What is particularly interesting is the group behaviour – group chat and group video chat. Multi-conversational across multiple devices.These girls will start a conversation in real life with friends at school. They’ll continue using BBM on the way home on the bus, and they’ll pick it up again on group Skype or Google Hangouts later on in the evening. They embrace the idea of shared experience and in three years time these girls are going to become your customers, bringing their ingrained digital behaviour to your front doors.”

KMP Digitata’s interest in Gen-Z girls is in the development of their concept travel platform, Factor 15, which will enable group collaboration and purchasing, by creating a ‘trip board’ which will gather and curate the group’s conversations from multiple networks (Twitter, Facebook, BBM, G+ Hangouts), and insert product suggestions, content (video, photos, reviews) and prices.

Very different to today’s travel websites, although Expedia have been making advances in collaborative purchasing through Facebook.

Gen-Z are not patient browsers or searchers, said Jon Keefe, they want ideas fed to them organically as the site ‘listens in’ to their conversation. Nor is privacy an issue. They want stuff brought to them, now, and they’ll hand over their personal details to get it, with no worries.

“Privacy is for old farts – generation X people, like us!”

The Factor 15 site will also enable the divas to get live feedback on their ideas. Jon described a scenario where the girls get a live video review in a ‘hangout’ from another Gen-Z who is actually on holiday in the destination they are interested in, and for a 15% discount off his holiday, has agreed to make himself available for reviews on demand.

Now there’s an opportunity for travel writers/bloggers to exploit – ‘live’ reviews on demand… and that spawns a whole new subject area that I’ll be writing about shortly.

* “Disruptive Divas” was a name coined in the Mobile Youth Report 2012 – Generation Optimizers by mobileYouth.

Photo: CC Flickr/Steve Crane

Airbus seems to have got its creative mojo running at top speed at the moment, with a bunch of disruptive aviation concepts, and new products such as the A350 and a smart suitcase, being highlighted just in time for next week’s Paris Airshow.

Planes powered by body heat, luggage floating on a bed of air and even aircraft running more efficiently on cow power (methane gas)… are some of the revolutionary ideas, developed by students from universities across the world with encouragement from Airbus, that could one day feature on the aircraft of the future.

The innovative ideas come from Fly Your Ideas, a global competition run by Airbus – and supported by UNESCO – designed to inspire new talent and ensure a sustainable future for the industry. The global aircraft manufacturer challenged students to develop radical eco-efficient ideas for aviation with five finalist teams selected by Airbus from a global pool of creative, engineering and design talent.

The five teams are now heading for the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse to compete for the €30,000 prize and present their ideas to a panel of judges. The winning team will be announced at an award ceremony at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Friday (14 June).

Their shortlisted concepts are:

Luggage floating on air – submitted by Team Levar from Brazil
Using the principles of air hockey, the cargo hold is retro-fitted with super-light sliding sections to enable workers to quickly, easily and safely load and unload luggage. Passengers could get their bags 30% faster and can start their holidays sooner.

Shape shifting materials that help reduce noise – submitted by Team AVAS from India
A simple engine modification made from special shape-shifting materials can change airflow through the engine and reduce noise pollution.

Planes powered by cow power – submitted by Team CLiMA from Australia
A sustainable fuel solution puts liquefied methane to use in specially-created supercooled pods that sit next to the engines. The solution could reduce CO2 emissions by a remarkable 97%!

Battery-powered hybrid engines – submitted by Team Flybrid from Italy
Specially-shaped rechargeable batteries drop into the cargo hold, helping to power efficient hybrid engines – only the required number of batteries are loaded dependent on mileage, optimizing the plane’s weight. In a short-haul flight, this solution could save up to 60% of fuel, which reduces up to 40% of CO2 emissions

Human body heat powering cabins – submitted by Team Embarker from Malaysia
Even a resting human body can be efficient – heat energy from specially-embedded heat-sensitive material in cabin seats captures energy from passengers. This energy could be used for onboard electronics, reducing the energy requirements for the flight.

For Airbus ‘blue-sky’ concepts like these do not only enable them to pioneer new technology and products, there’s a more practical, down-to-earth benefit – meeting the skills shortage. According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, high tech companies face a shortfall of 40 million skilled workers who will be needed by 2020 and beyond, with aerospace likely to suffer, along with motor and the medical equipment sectors.

Dr Lidia Brito, Director of the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building at UNESCO, says: “If we can’t find ways to inspire a generation of engineers with varied skills, this is going to be a principle obstacle for growth in our slowly recovering global economy. Although the general number of engineering students is increasing worldwide, the proportion who enroll in engineering, as compared to other disciplines, is concernedly dropping. We need hands-on challenges like Fly Your Ideas to motivate young innovators about the potential of engineering in helping to find practical solutions to issues the world may face in the near future.”

And there’s more…

A smart suitcase that talks to your phone

Airbus is not just thinking about new ideas for their aeroplanes. In a surprise departure from their normal activities they’ve just announced another potential new product.

In collaboration with German luggage manufacturer Rimowa and mobile phone operator T-Mobile they have created a prototype smart suitcase called Bag2Go, which can weight itself and comes with an iPhone app to keep track of its location.

The suitcase has an RFID chip which registers with local baggage handling systems at airports and stations, and a GPS locator. A quick check on your phone can tell you where it as at any point. It also has a digital scale. When you lift the suitcase by its handle, it will give you a weight reading. And it’ll alert you via the app when it is being opened or tampered with.

Airbus Chief Innovation Officer Yann Barbaux told Australian Business Traveller that if and when it goes on sale, he expects the smart bag would cost around 20% more than comparative ‘dumb’ bags, and it is likely they would also be available to rent from airlines on a per-trip basis.

Fresh on the heels of its successful Blogsposure travel blogger campaign collaboration with Navigate Media in February, Visit Finland are now asking bloggers to apply for a chance to join a new blog trip entitled Bloghome by the Baltic Sea.

The campaign includes two “bloghomes”, a Helsinki loft apartment and a summer cottage in the archipelago. The blogger trips are divided into five periods between July 22nd and August 18th, each featuring a blogger visiting one of the destinations. All five periods have a theme

The Helsinki themes are:

• Design and Architecture
• Music
• Food and Culture
• Summer in Finland
• Lifestyle

Bloggers in the archipelago will be concentrating on:

• Culture and History
• Outdoor Activities
• Food or Slow Life

Visit Finland is not looking for travel bloggers exclusively. Bloggers will need to have writing experience and a steady readership, plus an ability to present a comprehensive and personal view of Finland. Each blogger is allowed to bring along a blogging partner.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is an application form on the Visit Finland website. The application deadline is June 25th and chosen bloggers will be announced on July 2nd.

The campaign will also be running on Visit Finland’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest pages.

There’s a rather noticeable trend at the top of this year’s Top 100 Social Brands report from social media agency, Headstream.

The Social Brands 100 survey measures the social media activity & engagement of over 700, mostly UK-centric, brands on Twitter, Facebook & Youtube and then ranks the Top 100.

What’s striking – and rather pleasing – is that of the top five brands, four are in the travel sector.

The top brand leading the way in social is a game: Battlefield.

The next four are: American Airlines, Lufthansa, Thomson Holidays and Thomas Cook UK.

Overall, travel brands accounted for 15 of the top 100 and 10 of them were in the top 50: the four above, plus Canadian budget airline, WestJet (18), EasyJet (29), First Choice Holidays (30), Virgin Trains (39), London Midland (42) and Princess Cruises (50).

What does an airline company need to do to be top dog – well, deputy top dog – in social media?

American Airlines’ Director of Social Communications Jonathan Pierce says they only began to focus on social media two and a half years ago, when he was appointed and built a team covering both customer service and customer engagement.

“From our business perspective, having the reservations people, who tend to deal with pre-travel issues, in the same space as the public relations people, who often handle post-travel issues, can speed up response.”

The team monitors all the platforms together, so if a customer posts on multiple social networks, conversations can be joined up and commented on quickly. Pierce thinks the key is getting people in customer service positions to look at interactions as part of a relationship, not solely transactional.

“Social is not just the role of a team of people in communications. It’s changing the way decisions have to be made and changing the way we act on customer feedback.”

Interestingly, although 100% of Travel brands surveyed are present on Facebook and Twitter, only 89% have a YouTube channel, which sounds high but the total for all brands surveyed is 94%, and no Travel brands appear in the YouTube top 20, despite airlines generally scoring above the industry average on Youtube.

So, more work needed, especially on video, if travel brands are to stay ahead of the game.

Image: cc Flickr/Frostwire

The hours of darkness are being transformed by the largest light, music and ideas festival in the Southern Hemisphere.

The 5th annual Vivid Sydney festival (24 May – 10 June) is now well underway featuring lighting installations around the Sydney harbour foreshore, live music performances, and over 120 creative industry events.

It opened on Friday with Sydney’s iconic Opera House illuminated in a stunning 3D-mapped visual feast of colour & movement, and is expected to attract over 550,000 people in 2013.

In a world first, Sydney’s famous Harbour Bridge is being brought alive with an interactive lighting installation on the Bridge’s western face, controlled by the public from an interactive touch screen, and Darling Harbour is hosting spectacular water fountains, water screen projection performances and dazzling light and water shows.

Click here to view the embedded video.

DMOs should note that Vivid Sydney is an initiative managed by Destination NSW as part of the NSW Government’s new tourism and events strategy.

Image: PRNewsFoto/Destination NSW

The tourism office for the (extremely) remote island of St Helena has launched a blog.

The St Helena Wirebird blog hopes to inspire travellers and showcase the diversity of this little-known island’s landscapes and experiences through amazing photography, top tips and rich content. It will also give readers a chance to engage with the blog and gain a deeper insight into what life is like on the island.

Cathy Alberts, Director of Tourism says: “We are thrilled to be launching our first blog. The blog gives St Helena a ‘global’ voice and expands on our current digital offering helping us put the destination firmly on the intrepid travellers map. It will also act as a great resource for travellers looking to come and experience St Helena for themselves.”

The blog, which is named after the island’s endemic bird, will be updated weekly. Its first post showcases some fantastic aerial shots of the island taken by photographer Marc Lavaud. It was published, appropriately, on St Helena Day – a national day, celebrating the discovery of the island over 500 years ago.

St Helena is an island of 47 square miles (122 sq.km) situated 1,200 miles off the west coast of Africa. It is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom, with its own legislature and a high degree of internal self-government. Currently the only access to the Island is by sea, via the ship RMS St Helena, plus a number of cruise ships and yachts. However in Nov 2011 the UK government gave the go ahead for the construction of a new airport, scheduled to be completed and operational by early 2016.

St Helena Tourism is anticipating a significant growth in visitor numbers and plans to roll out additional social media channels including Google + and Flickr at a later date to complement the blog and an already successful Facebook page.

The Rotterdam Maritime Museum is not huge, but it does have some amazing stuff in there. For a start there’s a section on cartography, highlighting among other precious exhibits, the work of a local boy who ‘done well’(sic), Gerardus Mercator. In 1569 he worked out how to display a map of the 3-dimensional world on 2-dimensional paper so that sailors could use it to plot a true course.

The museum actually owns one of the original three world maps he made.

There’s also a chronological display of maps from Claudius Ptolemaeus’ world map in 1486, demonstrating the growth of knowledge as explorers discovered new lands and cartographers refined existing data.

There’s a good moment in 1606 when Australia is discovered. By 1660 the southwest corner of Australia around Perth is partially drawn on Pieter van Alphen’s world map.

It’s amazing to look at the detailed 16th & 17th charts and coastal drawings in this section and realise their significance. These were top secret documents of national and global importance. The Dutch became a huge maritime trading nation through the expansion of the Dutch East India Company and other Flemish traders, based on these maps and pilot books.

In another part of the museum dedicated to marine art, you can see the kind of colossal commercial enterprise these pioneering explorers and cartographers initiated. In 1612 The Northern Company was set up to harvest even arctic waters! In 1670 Abraham Storck painted the Dutch whaling fleet at work off Spitzbergen, plundering whales, seals, polar bears… pretty much anything they could lay their clubs on! Their most productive season was in 1697 when 129 ships caught 1,255 whales.

By the way, if you have ever wondered “how did artists paint maritime scenes that were always in motion?” a clue comes in the museum’s model ship section where there is a model of a Scheveningen fishing boat…. used by the painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915) in his studio as a reference.

The museum has a small selection of models on display but most visitors walk straight past the most significant one. The ‘Mataró model’ from the 15th century is the oldest known model ship in Western Europe.

As a centre of maritime commerce, it’s not surprising that Rotterdam’s Maritime Museum should currently have an exhibition on piracy. It neatly balances the popular myth of pirates with the modern day reality (I quite like the way they use Lego pirate characters in and around the displays to lighten the approach). Visitors make their way through the exhibition through ‘yes’ and ‘no’ doors answering questions like: “Were pirates always keen to fight?”. Behind the ‘no’ door you learn that Dutch pirate, Claus Compaen’s strategy was to lure the captain & officers of ships onto his ship for a slap-up dinner… and then explain the cost of their liberty would be their ship!

The photos and video footage of modern day pirate activities highlight the disruption it can bring to shipping routes and the importance of maritime trade to every nation including the Dutch. Rotterdam’s role in that is demonstrated on the mezzanine floor in the museum where the walls are decorated with examples of the goods that pass through MainPort – from grain to metre-long aluminium ingots – and a dynamic representation of MainPort’s shipping activities in real time with a ‘live’ video link to the Port Authority Control room.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nobody these days is exempt from European austerity. Sadly, as the museum’s Shaula Nuuts explained, one of their primary exhibits has had to be closed due to budget cuts.

The Buffel, built in Glasgow for the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1868, was, can you believe it, an ironclad ram ship! I thought ramming went out with the Greeks & Romans!

Anyway, until recently, museum visitors were able to go onboard and explore the officers’ quarters, the galley, engine room, and ship’s prison. That pleasure is denied visitors for the time being, but the museum is well worth a visit nevertheless.

I’m not sure how the numbers compare but there are probably just as many, if not more, ‘commercial’ fam trips as ‘media’ ones.

As if to make the point, Brand USA, the new tourism marketing entity responsible for promoting the United States to world visitors, is running its first-ever, multi-itinerary familiarisation trip for nearly 100 influential international travel agents, May 9-16.

The fam trip has seven simultaneous itineraries covering: the western wilds of Utah and Colorado; the urban playgrounds of the East Coast; the rich culture of Texas; the laidback lifestyle of California; the creole flavors of the Deep South; the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest; and the Great Lakes region. The MegaFam culminates in Miami, Florida for the grand finale where each of the participating agents will join together to celebrate and share their experiences with each other.

MegaFam participants from the UK & Ireland were selected from travel agents who booked trips to the USA from January 1 – April 5, 2013 via Brand USA’s partner airlines, British Airways and American Airlines, and ground transportation partner, Avis.

All participants have a passion for the USA and, just like bloggers, will be sharing their experiences and stories via social media throughout their journeys, on: www.twitter.com/USATravelTrade #usamegafam and www.facebook.com/DiscoverAmericaUKtrade and the new Brand USA blog at http://brandusa.tumblr.com.

Back around 2008-2010 when the sub-prime mortgage crisis was hitting Americans in a bad way, I noticed a new term cropping up in several U.S. travel publications (mostly the travel/lifestyle pages in local newspapers): the Tankaway.

Like Staycation (the word most travel writers & editors love to hate), Tankaway describes a type of holiday or short break.

A Tankaway is a destination that can be reached on a single tank of fuel – remember, most Americans take their holidays by road in the USA.

So, when everyone was budgeting carefully and ‘gas’ was nowhere near as cheap as it is now, travel editors were writing up destination suggestions for Tankaways.

I was reminded of it today when the Daily Telegraph wrote up a piece of holiday research that Post Office Travel Money has commissioned into the – heavy – costs of fuel in Europe and how they might affect British families motoring abroad this summer.

If Wallace & Grommit are being wheeled out in this time of austerity to encourage us all to… muhahaha… staycate (!), perhaps UK bloggers, travel editors and the marketing folk at Visit England, should be coming up with suggestions for Tankaways.

What do you think?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images:
Flickr/NCReedPlayer (Top)
Flickr/RambergMediaImages