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
-by Harvey Chipkin, Editor at Large
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
We began our recent report on ‘Family Travel Rising’ with the following:
“All the evidence -- whether you are looking at the Amex-Harrison Group study we reviewed in our last issue, or the Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluence Report completed in September, -- shows Family First when it comes to disposable dollars.
We believe family focus is going to be front of mind for a long time to come, long after the punishing economic climate has subsided. Provider brands will be hard pressed to provide much more than kiddie or junior, or young adult activities. Smart travel agents will have to rise to higher levels of creativity and performance on the family front to sustain customer loyalty and earn the benefits of word of mouth in the neighborhood.”
And last week we caught our favorite global traveler-editor-writer-commentator during a quiet moment at home in England, the home of The Gostelow Report. She shared these thoughts:
• The hotel industry has been very slow to realize that this big expansion in family travel was going to happen. We’ve had “connecting rooms and you can put the kids next door”. They moved on to two swimming pools rather than one. One was kid friendly and one was not. But we really haven’t had anything more than that.
• We are seeing more and more bigger family groups. Operators are having a real challenge coping with such groups because it’s not a group per se, but they form their own groups. They want to be private. They want their own thing. .They tend to do their own excursions. They suddenly want a bus to take them all out. So it’s a real, real challenge. And so far the hotel industry has not realized this is happening. Now, it’s not only families. We’re also seeing more and more groups of friends traveling. And the hotel industry is not incentivizing enough – say a pair of DINKs come- Double-Income-No-Kids. There’s no incentive to them at the moment to bring along two other friends or even four other friends. And there’s big potential on the marketing side there.
Everybody knows her, but her bio is worth repeating.
Mary Gostelow, president of Gostelow Travel: Hottest Hospitality News Worldwide, is an inveterate traveler on the road more than 300 days a year. She owns and publishes the definitive Gostelow Reports, monthly market intelligence briefings to the top levels of the hospitality industry. She is the editor of KIWI's online Wow! Magazine, and also sends out a monthly update to top travel professionals worldwide.
At the same time, she is contributing editor to such publications as Elite Traveler, enRoute, Hotels and Le Magazine.
Nat Ives, in Ad Age Online Sept 6, cites new data from Ipsos MMR which assures that well-off readers read print publications just as much now as they did 5 years ago.
Also, survey respondents making more than $100,000 annually said their average hours online had grown to 22.1 each week from 10.7, while the time they said they spent watching TV sunk to 18.6 hours from 23.7 in the 2003 survey. Read the full Ives story at http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130685. Lux 360 attended the client briefing this week and will provide additional perspective in our Sept. 30 issue, interviewing Ipsos MMR President Bob Shullman.
Imagination Marketing 
