"Bath Butlers" in luxury hotels? To what end? 

All we could come up with, when this amazing revelation appeared in the New York Times  earlier this year, was the comment by Greg Furman, CEO of the Luxury Marketing Council, that …"it gives people something to talk about."

Well, giving people "something to talk about" is the very  foundation of the Mega/Mega dollar power of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing. you can almost hear the deafening roar of WOM about WOM.  
Last month alone:

• The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) sponsored a top drawer WOM  panel where Brad Fay, coo of Keller Fay Group, said that word of mouth was the best measure of consumer engagement   

• Harvard Business Review  October 2007 asked, How Valuable is Word of Mouth? And suggested that customer referral value might indeed be more valuable than lifetime value

• Question for Luxurytravel360 readers: how does all that WOM apply to luxury travel? Are rich folks getting their ideas and direction from their peers? Are they getting it online? Offline? A combination thereof?

Click Here for Part One of a three-part look at Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM) as it applies to luxury travel.  Parts Two and Three  in succeeding issues take a closer look at:

• Who’s Doing What to Put the Wham! In WOM
• How You Win Worldwide at WOM

Part 1: The Big Picture on WOM in Luxury Travel Marketing

How the Experts See It

• "Travel is all about WOM," says Andy Sernovitz, president of WOMMA. He adds, “You don’t go to a place because you saw an ad on TV. You go because you know somebody who had a good time. The more high end it gets – the more it’s about knowing if it will be a great experience.”

• Rich Folks Love WOM: Among the rich, says Larry Pimentel, CEO of Sea Dream Yachts, which floats small luxury cruise vessels; “WOM was always hot; now it’s just hotter

• Travel, according to Jon Berry, of WOM experts Keller and Fay, is the subject of an average of six conversations a week, with mentions of seven brands – often related to location. “Travel gets particular lift with the affluent, “according to Berry, “with nine conversations a week compared with seven for the public as a whole – and that includes ten brand mentions as opposed to seven."

• Sernovitz sees WOM conversations as “dipping in and out of online and offline. When you take a vacation,” he explains, “you might tell five friends, then post a review online. Then someone reads that review and tells their friends – so the conversation moves in and out.”

• Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research, one of the most quoted people in the Internet travel space, says, “People at the highest end have very high expectations. And they are the most technologically engaged – with the ability to take and post pictures online, send them from their cell phones, etc.

Part 2—Putting the Wham in Wom –will be published in the newsletter November 19th