Company Blog

A New Journey

tmadmin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:27:07 GMT

Today, I’m announcing my departure from TravelMuse. Russ Lemelin is assuming the CEO post but I will remain actively involved as a member of the board of directors. Companies go through different stages from concept to scale. I’m proud to have led TravelMuse from its founding on PowerPoint in April 2007 to segment leader with millions of visits a year.

Russ has the skills to help the company advance to its next stage -- focused on growth and profitability. Prior to joining TravelMuse in 2008 as CFO, Russ was interim-CEO and CFO at Sidestep, which was acquired by Kayak in December 2007. (Russ can be reached at russ(at)travelmuse(dot)com)

The last 2 ½ years have been a great ride for me as CEO and co-founder of TravelMuse. The experience of building a company, a team, and a solution from scratch and seeing that solution so warmly received by the market has been extraordinarily gratifying. The opportunity to collaborate with consumers, partners, suppliers, analysts, and investors has been extraordinary. TravelMuse has helped shape the future of online travel, and I’d like to think, set the bar for travel inspiration and planning.

As a founder and entrepreneur it’s impossible to sit back and say ‘we’re done’. But TravelMuse has come a long way, and the road ahead for the company and the industry is bright. This just in: TravelMuse was named the Executive Editor’s Pick for travel advice in this month’s Travel & Leisure!

Wishing you all a great journey in work and life!

Kind regards,

Kevin

If you wish to contact me, my email address is: kevin(dot)fliess(at)gmail(dot)com

Twitter Adoption from New Travel Insights 100 Panel

tmadmin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:10:02 GMT

With TravelMuse approaching 3,000 followers on Twitter (@TravelMuse) I was interested to read the results of a new survey “Travel Insights 100 Survey Reveals How Twitter is Being Used by the Travel Industry” published by UpTake and conducted by Travel Insights 100, a newly launched travel industry panel led by Uptake, Tips from the T-List and BootsnAll.

After surveying online travel industry experts and bloggers they conclude:

•   52 percent just started using Twitter in the past twelve months.
•   31 percent claim to be Twitter addicts (where they use Twitter ten or more times a day).
•   The top three subjects to tweet about are blog posts (93 percent), travel industry news (70 percent) and travel information (82 percent).
•   Consumers could use Twitter to help plan a trip by looking for insider tips and recommendations (75 percent), connecting with local Twitterati (69 percent), and finding a deal (63 percent).

See full survey results.

Elliott Ng, co-founder, UpTake said “…we are still very much in the experimental phase of how these social media tools can be best used.” I agree and as I discussed with a research analyst yesterday, I think sharing best practice is one of the most valuable ways to learn how we can leverage these new tools. The Travel Insights 100 panel seems positioned to do that, and I look forward to reading more in the future.

Although Twitter may face a rocky road ahead as it figures out the challenges of monetization, spam, relevancy etc., I also agree that micro-blogging is here to stay, especially as we see greater adoption of the mobile Web. While penetration of smartphone users is still fairly low (17 percent in Q2, 2009, source Nielsen), it shows significant growth potential and offers a platform particularly suited to micro-blogging.

I would like to ask this panel some other questions such as:
• Do you measure the ROI on Twitter, what metrics do you regularly track?
• How much time do you actually spend on Twitter everyday? I find myself distracted some days managing multiple social media sites while trying to get other work done. It brings a new meaning to multi-tasking!

New Multi-Destination Support for the TravelMuse Planner

tmadmin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:41:13 GMT

Now you can plan a trip with multiple destinations in one travel plan on TravelMuse. This has been the most requested enhancement and we’re delighted to show it to you.

How to Plan a Multi-Destination Trip:
1. From the TravelMuse homepage simply click the Start here>> link next to Multiple destinations.

2. Fill in your primary destination and click on Add destination to add other places you plan to visit on your trip.

3. Once you’re inside your Trip plan, use the handy sidebar on the left to switch destinations. As you do, you’ll be able to find hotels, restaurants, and attractions.and save the ones that interest you to trip.

For more information on Multi-Destination trip planning visit the help section.

Also In This Release – Updated Homepage Features Top Trips
We’ll be featuring some of our favorite trips -- created by users and our staff -- on the homepage each month. This month, the TravelMuse homepage highlights these great getaways:

•    An Insider’s guide to San Francisco
•    Experience the Aloha Spirit in Maui
•    Windy City Getaway to Chicago
•    A 3-day Parisian Escapade

Did you know that there are now more than 12,000 public trips on TravelMuse? Each of these trips can be copied and personalized. To copy and personalize a trip, just click the "Copy This Trip" button and then customize the itinerary to your liking by adding and removing items.

Let us know how you like these new capabilities on TravelMuse and as always we welcome your feedback so we can continue to improve TravelMuse.

Thanks and happy travels,

Kevin and the TravelMuse Team

The Best TravelMuse Yet

tmadmin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:40:35 GMT

Today, I am delighted to announce the latest release of the TravelMuse Planner. (From the TravelMuse homepage, just type in where you want to go to try it out.) This is the most advanced yet intuitive trip planning solution on the Web and we’re really excited to share it with you! Our goals for this release were to:

1. Make the overall process of trip planning on TravelMuse even easier and more fun.
2. Make it simpler for you to find and save relevant content—both on TravelMuse and from anywhere on the Web.
3. Create a forum for TravelMuse users to share information about the Web site and the trip planning process.

Here’s a quick rundown on the key features:

A Tripfolio That Follows You Everywhere

The Tripfolio is your virtual manila folder—a central storage container for all your travel research. It’s the place where you save anything that interests you while planning your trip. You’ll notice that the Tripfolio is now bound to the right side of the site and is present when you are using the TravelMuse Planner.

Above: When you begin a trip, your Tripfolio is empty. As you save research, it appears in your Tripfolio.

Above: Tripfolio with saved research items.

New! Embedded Web Search

It’s no longer acceptable for travel Web sites to exist as walled gardens. Consumers naturally visit multiple Web sites when planning a trip, but struggle to organize all that information.

Now, with embedded Web search, users can explore the Web and save any interesting Web pages directly to their trip plan without leaving TravelMuse—no more managing multiple windows or endless bookmarking, and no more e-mailing links back and forth to your friends while planning a vacation.

It doesn’t matter what kind of page it is: A hotel review, an article, a blog post—all of them can be saved and stored centrally. Now, co-travelers can save all of their favorite research in the same place.

TravelMuse is the first travel Web site to harness the power of the Web in this way.

The screenshot below illustrates how TravelMuse has integrated embedded Web search into the trip planning experience. Note that there are two tabs at the top of the page; one tab provides access to TravelMuse’s own great content. The second tab lets you explore the Web using embedded Web search. The power of this integrated experience is that you can save both TravelMuse content with Web content to a single place—the Tripfolio.

New! Community Forums

Have a question about TravelMuse or a great idea for a new feature? On the new community forum you can connect with other TravelMuse users and communicate with the TravelMuse product team. It’s your go-to location for product help and idea exchange.
We hope you like this new release as much as we do. As always, please send us your ideas and feedback so that we can continue to improve the TravelMuse experience.

One last thing: With this release, we are also refocusing our content development around the planning process. What this means is that you’ll see fewer general articles and more bite-sized pearls of wisdom specifically designed to make your trip planning experience better. Leading our content development efforts is Jill K. Robinson, who assumes the role of Managing Editor. Over the coming months, you’ll see new content emerge on the site such as destination ratings, recommended trips and thousands of activity descriptions in hundreds of destinations.

Happy travels!
Kevin and the TravelMuse Team

User Feedback From Natasha, TravelMuse’s “Plan a Trip” Winner

tmadmin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:11:12 GMT

We were excited to receive thousands of entries for our recent “Plan a Trip, Win a Getaway” contest sponsored by Kimpton Hotels. We’ve now secured all of the prizewinners and would like to extend our congratulations to you all and thank Kimpton Hotels, Eye-Fi and Peter Greenberg for providing prizes!

When I reached out to our grand prize winner, Natasha F. from Vienna, PA, she was very excited to have won a two-night stay with Kimpton Hotels and $500 spending money. She went on to tell me about the trip she had planned on TravelMuse, which I wanted to share:

“Also, wanted to add that the TravelMuse Web site is one of my favorites. It was a great resource in planning our New England Road trip. I printed out the customized travel brochure and put into a binder. It contained all our notes and reservations for our trip (which was crucial since we drove over 1500 miles and needed to be very organized for the multiple stops). TravelMuse was great in finding places I would not have known to go to without being able to search. Two destinations I completely attribute to TravelMuse are Waterfire in Providence, RI and Purgatory Chasm in MA. Additionally, having everything in one place online made it accessible to me at work and at home.

I plan on using TravelMuse for all my trips, especially road trips.”

I don’t think we could have picked a better winner if we’d tried, as Natasha fully mastered the planning tools on TravelMuse. She gladly agreed to talk to me by phone last Friday to provide more feedback on her experience.

Natasha explained that her primary motivation for taking her trip was that her husband wanted to eat lobster, and she wanted to go white-water rafting and visit Cape Cod. Apart from that, everything else was fair game.

What she liked about TravelMuse
Natasha had a lot of good things to share about planning a trip on TravelMuse:

•    Destination guide-style intros gave her some background on places.
•    Top bookmarked activities by other TravelMuse members provided helpful suggestions.
•    Articles about activities and events influenced a change in her itinerary to take in the first bonfire of the season at Waterfire.
•    TravelMuse Bookmarker made it easy to add any Web page to her trip.
•    Ability to edit and add scheduled details (e.g., bed and breakfast confirmations) kept everything in one place, making it easy to find.
•    The free custom pdf guide with all her trip information, maps and notes became her bible for her road trip.

What she thought we could improve on TravelMuse
Natasha didn’t have too many problems with TravelMuse:

• Scheduling items became more difficult with a full Tripfolio and a packed schedule for a 10–day itinerary, as it was hard to drag and drop items far down the page. [This is a great piece of feedback and we are looking at how we can make this easier to use.]
• A couple of great suggestions… [Sorry, I’m not going to post these gems. You’ll just have to watch this space!]

Natasha plans to use her “Plan a Trip, Win a Getaway” prize to plan a California wine country road trip.

Thanks Natasha for being a very well-deserved winner and for sharing some great user feedback with the TravelMuse team!

ATME Conference Highlights

tmadmin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:16:25 GMT

I returned last week from the annual Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) conference in blisteringly hot Las Vegas, Nevada. Here are my top 10 takeaways from a great event.

10. Imagini demonstrated some cool and useful technology that wowed everyone. The special sauce is something called “visual DNA” that profiles consumers based on their reaction to photos. Hotels.com in the United Kingdom has integrated it into its booking path—it’s called the Hotel Visualiser—and it’s driven a real uptick in conversions.

9. With great challenge comes great opportunity. Some of the most successful brands were born during the Great Depression. Today, in the midst of a “Great Recession,” new and interesting companies are hatching to define the next generation of online travel. Trazzler, for example, thrilled the audience with its deft integration of social media platforms—Twitter and Facebook.

8. It’s the economy, stupid. Every segment has felt the pinch from destination marketing organizations (DMOs), to online travel agencies (OTAs), to airlines and hotels. Henry Harteveldt of Forrester used the term “neo-frugal chic” to describe the new reality. We’ve seen the end of excess—flash is out, value is in. Absolutely.

7. Social media is inextricably linked to daily business. Case in point: Dan Comenduley, manager of communications marketing at United Airlines, says the airline has created a dedicated Web site for its top 500 travelers (Global Services customers, perhaps?), whereas JetBlue ... has leveraged the “twittersphere” to connect with cost-conscious fliers. These two varied approaches work because they enhance the respective business model of each company.

6. ROE (return on engagement) is the new ROI (return on investment) is a hot topic. Jeff DeKorte of Travel Ad Network described the current online booking and shopping experience to be as interesting as withdrawing $20 from an ATM. I heard one person grumble, “If we (the travel industry) were marketing sushi, we’d call it ‘cold, dead fish.’” Ouch. Several emerging companies—Imagini, Nileguide and TravelMuse—shared novel approaches for inspiring, engaging and building trust with users through compelling design.

5. Shorter trips are the norm. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) is seeing “consumers more willing to take a break than a vacation.” Why? People are afraid to go away for more than a long weekend for fear of being laid off.

4. Despite the economic challenges of today, successful companies are building strategic plans for the future. The Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau, for example, is planning conventions out to 2030. How does one even begin to imagine what life will look like 20+ years from now? This video helped get people thinking outside the box.

3. The great American road trip is alive and well. The industry is seeing much greater strength in road travel than in air travel as gas prices are down by 50 percent versus July 2008; airfare is down a more moderate 4.1 percent thru March 2009.

2. The number of people unsure of where to go has doubled in the last 12 months from 11 percent of the traveling public to 20 percent. The need for travel inspiration has never been greater.

1. Twitter has exploded. It was astonishing to see, since last year most attendees had no idea what Twitter was. This year, dozens of attendees tweeted away (read the stream here: #atmeconf) and lots of press, bloggers and industry insiders followed the posts remotely. Questions poured in from around the Web, making the Q&A sessions livelier. Wall Street 24x7 recently posted a story on 10 ways Twitter will permanently change American business.

Here’s an 11th: Meetings and events will never be the same again.

Let the Good Times Roll at the NATJA Annual Conference

tmadmin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:34:41 GMT

The North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) will hold its annual conference in Cleveland, Ohio, next week—June 2 to 5, 2009. As well as a great list of speakers, the conference features an evening at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Featured speakers include:

• Keith Bellows, editor in chief, National Geographic Traveler

• Joe David, author of Gourmet Getaways

• Christopher Elliott, travel blogger and National Geographic Traveler’s reader advocate

• Kevin Fliess, CEO and co-founder, TravelMuse

• Fran Golden, travel editor, Gatehouse Media

• Jeffrey Lehmann, host of Emmy-winning PBS series Weekend Explorer

The schedule includes sessions on: getting your foot in the door with an editor, surviving new media, tips on workflow for editorial photography and how to grow your business. There is also the opportunity to tour the city and attend a destination shoot and critique.

NATJA is a professional association of writers, photographers, editors and tourism professionals dedicated to redefining professional development for the travel industry. Members can register for the conference for a special rate of $475.

Be sure to say hello to Kevin!

TravelMuse at ATME 2009 Travel Marketing Conference, Las Vegas

tmadmin — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:38:39 GMT

What’s next on the calendar? Now that it’s May, we’re gearing up for the Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) conference in Las Vegas! It runs May 27 to 28, 2009, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort.

Henry Harteveldt (vice president and principal analyst, Forrester Research) will kick things off with a keynote speech addressing comsumers’ thoughts on the economy, travel and marketing in general. Over the two days of the conference, there are a number of informative sessions planned.

My top five session picks include:

1. What Is the Role of Advertising in a Recession?

How to plan out the rest of 2009 and what to think about 2010, moderated by Rob Torres of Google.

2. Taking Social Computing From the Edge to the Center

Susan Black (managing partner, Susan Black Associates) will moderate a panel with Tim Simmonds (vice president, United Airlines) and Adam Rugel (president, Trazzler.com). Unsurpisingly, Twitter seems to be a hot agenda topic!

3. Improving the Online Selling Process

Kevin Fliess (CEO, TravelMuse) will join Josh Steinitz (CEO, Nile Guide) and Alex Wilcock (CEO, Imagini) in a session moderated by Jeff DeKorte (vice president, Travel Ad Network) in rethinking the way travel firms engage customers and address selling shortfalls.

4. Improving Your Advertising and Promtion ROI

I’m always on the lookout for new tools. This session peaked my curiosity and includes former Yahoo general manager Brad King, now managing director, BlueKai Channels, who intend to build the world's largest database of intentions.

5. Profiting From Design

Optimize your Web site from a design and usability standpoint with Dean Kakridas of Frog Design.

There are various registration packages, but ATME members can register at the special rate of $495 (which ends May 15, 2009). Find out more here.

And keep an eye out for Kevin in Las Vegas. Be sure to steer him away from the tables and slot machines—that’s not the way to improve our ROI!

TravelMuse Wins CODiE Award

tmadmin — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:40:10 GMT

Last night, TravelMuse won Best Online Consumer Information Service at the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 24th Annual CODiE Awards! The CODiEs are the only peer-reviewed awards within the software and content industries, so we’re thrilled to have been selected!

More than 850 nominations were shortlisted to 345 finalists, by a panel of expert judges, from which more than 70 CODiE winners were chosen for 2009.

TravelMuse is excited to have been selected over some great sites, including nationalgeographic.com, which was also selected as a CODiE Finalist.

“Now in its 24th year, the CODiE Awards continue to recognize those companies providing the best new technology products and services across a broad array of industries,” noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. “In addition, its winners are a prolific testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to businesses and consumers. SIIA warmly congratulates all of the winners and nominees of the CODiE Awards, whose innovation is essential for continuing America’s leadership in the global knowledge economy.”

A complete list of winners is available at http://siia.net/codies/2009/winners.asp.

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. For further information, visit www.siia.net.

TravelMuse Takes Flight!

tmadmin — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:32:15 GMT

Blog post written by Marissa Klein

TravelMuse has had much to celebrate in the past month: the two-year anniversary of the company’s founding, the re-design of the TravelMuse Planner and the launch of the Yaycations Calculator. To celebrate our accomplishments and all of the team’s hard work, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary: indoor skydiving.

Last Thursday afternoon (Apr. 30), we cleared out the office and headed to iFly in Union City, Calif., for indoor skydiving in its vertical wind tunnel. First, we watched a video and learned the hand signals: legs bent, legs straight, chin up and, of course, “relax!” Next came the suiting up: full nylon flight suits, kneepads, goggles and helmets for all. Finally, we took turns flying with an instructor’s guidance for a minute or two at a time.

So what does indoor skydiving feel like? It’s hard to say, since it’s difficult to equate it to anything other than what it is: hovering on your stomach above a wire grate that is not unlike a giant hairdryer-like turbine. We’d all joked before the trip that this would be the closest any of us would get to real skydiving, but I think after the indoor version went so well, there may even be a few among us who are ready to try the real thing!

Although Kurtis thought a fear of heights would compel him to stay on the ground, once he saw how safe and controlled it would be to fly in the tunnel, he was persuaded to give it a try, and had a great time. Kids as young as 3 can try iFly, and after seeing how much Russ’ daughter loved flying during our trip, Kevin and Dana plan to return with their own kids.

Our iFly outing was great, and we would definitely recommend it for group and corporate events—we can even relive it with the DVDs we got to take home with us! We wrapped up our celebration with beers and hot wings at Jack’s Brewing Company in Fremont before heading home to work the tangles out of our hair and call it an early night. Spending three minutes in a wind tunnel really takes a lot out of you!

Here’s to two amazing years, and on for many more!

Editorial Internship Opening

tmadmin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:40:57 GMT

TravelMuse has an immediate opening for an Editorial Intern looking for online publishing experience. If you have a passion for travel, a nose for news reporting and trends, and a desire to work in a fast-paced start-up environment, then this could be the ideal opportunity for you!

Responsibilities:

• Copyedit and fact check travel articles and blog posts

• Write two posts per week for the TravelMusings blog

• Report and write two travel trend or round-up articles per month for the online magazine

• Write article heds, deks, descriptions and SEO (search engine optimized) fields

• Research and write destination descriptions

• Learn our CMS and enter articles and links into the database

• Assist with social media outreach

• Assist with industry research; some tracking and analysis of site usage for editorial projects

• Participate in weekly editorial meetings

Requirements:

• Strong proofreading, editing and writing skills

• Experience writing for an online publication (beyond personal sites or blogs), preferably for a newspaper or magazine

• A journalism, communications or English degree (or current study toward such a degree) is desired but not required, provided candidate has related internship or work experience

• Excellent organization skills, and be quick to pick up on editorial styles as well as software systems

• Be able to work independently and meet deadlines

• Knowledge and use of social media sites

• Knowledge of AP style is a plus

• Experience writing for SEO is a plus

• Must be available to work 20 hours per week on site in our Los Altos office

The position reports to the editorial director, works closely with the senior editor and pays $500 per month. The term is open.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, résumé and three published clips to editor@travelmuse.com with Editorial Intern in the subject line.

Applications must be received by Friday, May 1, 2009.

The TravelMuse Planner 2.0—Better, Faster, Easier

tmadmin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:05:46 GMT

After several months of end-user testing, countless design cycles and many, many cases of Diet Mountain Dew and Red Bull, we are excited to bring you the totally redesigned, simpler yet more powerful, TravelMuse Planner.

The Planner still lets you organize all of your travel research into one central location, create an itinerary and involve your co-travelers in the planning process. But with this release, you also get new robust Mapping and Search Tools that enable you to quickly find and save the information you are looking for—be it articles on a given destination or specific places to sleep, eat and see. You can also now use proximity search to find nearby restaurants, hotels and attractions that are closest to a given location—and view search results plotted out on a map.

In addition, we’ve incorporate more than 2 million user ratings and reviews for hotels, restaurants and attractions from TravelMuse and other Web sites, including Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Travel and more.

Finally, we’ve introduced Customized Travel Guides. You can now create a personalized travel guide—on the fly—that is 100 percent personalized and contains all your important saved research, with maps, your schedule and a detailed city guide. You can build, share and print tailor-made travel guides to take on vacation at no charge.

This is our proudest day at TravelMuse yet. We’ve listened to our users, engaged them in the design process and released something that we think is market leading. We hope you agree.

Kevin & Eric

The Yaycation Calculator Widget—Discover the Travel Budget You Never Knew You Had

tmadmin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:45:28 GMT

In February, as the market was tanking, there was a lot of talk about 2009 being the year of the “Naycation”—aka the Lost Year, The Travel Nuclear Winter, etc.

Should this come to pass, it would be even worse than 2008, which was deemed the year of the “Staycation” by many, e.g., when people chose places close to home to visit for a day or a single over-night stay instead of really getting out on the road exploring.

We conducted a travel survey because we wanted to test this Pollyannaish theory. Turns out that the Naycation is just that—a theory. The majority of respondents to our survey were willing to make big sacrifices in other parts of their lives in order to KEEP traveling. People remain adamant about maintain their right to travel—so much so that many are willing to forego or cut back on other “luxuries,” like new clothes, fancy dinners or spa treatments.

This travel-fighting spirit and resilience needed a name; hence, the term “Yaycation” was born.

Armed with this simple understanding, we decided to empower people with a tool to help them identify ways to trim their spending in order to save some real dough for traveling—the Yaycations Calculator. It helps individuals see how much they’re spending on lattes, lunches and more, and identify where they can cut back.

They can then parlay that “found money” into trips to amazing destinations. Check it out, and let us know what you think. Where do you want to go today?

Kevin & Eric

Gearing Up for TravelCom ‘09: Vote for TravelMuse

tmadmin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:29:48 GMT

At the end of this month, key players from within the travel industry will gather in Atlanta to participate in the U.S. Travel Association’s Travelcom’09.

The conference will celebrate Southwest Airlines’ founder and chairman emeritus, Herb Kelleher, who will receive the Steve Fossett Innovation Award.

Noted industry analyst Henry Harteveldt will give a keynote speech on “The State of the Industry 360—There Is No Room for Maybe in These Uncertain Times” where he will focus on the latest 2009 Technographics data from Forrester Research.

The industry’s two newly appointed leaders, Barney Harford (president and CEO, Orbitz Worldwide) and Hugh Jones (president and CEO, Travelocity Global), will discuss challenges for the industry from an executive viewpoint.

Kevin Fliess, TravelMuse CEO, will particpate in a panel alongside Sam Shank (CEO, Dealbase.com), Gregg Brockway (CEO,TripIt) and Yen Lee (president, UpTake). They will be discussing “The New Digital Opportunities That Make Sense in a Challenging Business Environment” moderated by Vela McClam Mitchell (president and CEO, Market Designs, LLC).

It looks set to be an extremely informative conference amoung the industry’s leaders. There is still time to register for the conference, and you may even want to take advantage of the multi-staff discount, where you can buy three registrations for the price of two!

In the meantime, TravelMuse has been nominated for the TravelCom Innovator of the Year Award, sponsored by Kayak, which will be awarded at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta. We’d love your vote—simply click here and vote for TravelMuse before March 23!

You Can Say YAY to Vacations in 2009!

tmadmin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:50:29 GMT

With the Dow at its lowest yesterday in 11 years, the economic prognosis in the United States may not look bright. What does this mean for travel? We know the industry is hurting and taking a huge hit on revenue, however, what we found in a survey (2009 Travel Trends) we conducted last month here at TravelMuse.com, was that the majority of travelers are actually still saying yay, not nay, to vacations in 2009.

Travelers Still Assert Their Right to Travel

A full 62.2 percent plan on taking the same number or more leisure trips in 2009 as they did in 2008, with 22 percent saying they will take more trips!

People Prefer to Cut Spending Rather Than Sacrifice Leisure Travel

Consumers will be more value-conscious than ever—but will still assert their right to travel: 77 percent of respondents said they were willing to cut spending in other areas to avoid having to cut back on travel. Travelers are making their own lunches and espresso; canceling the daily paper and cleaning services; driving less to save money for their vacations; forgoing tickets to events; and planning camping trips instead of staying in hotels or staying abroad fewer days to save money while they continue to travel.

One TravelMuse user said “I just gave myself a travel/expense test—and I have 1) curtailed going out to dinner (a lot) and 2) stopped shopping for clothes for a few months now, 3) but there is NO WAY that I would give up travel—even in a recession. It is tooooooooo important. I booked a trip to Chile for my family in August and to Maine/Boston in July … plus will book Mexico soon!”

Travel is Important, Especially in Tough Times

Nearly 65 percent of respondents said that vacations are very important. The benefits to health, wellness and state of mind can be greatly improved by taking a break, even if it’s a mini vacation, as highlighted by the U.S. Travel Association in its Benefits to Travel survey (2008)

Where are People Traveling in 2009?

There is still a healthy desire for travelers to travel: 68 percent of respondents said they planned to vacation in other U.S. states, with a staggering 52 percent still planning to travel internationally on a leisure/personal trip. So people are not just staying at home, or staying in their own state, for that matter.

Other Industry Research and Comments in Support of YAY to Travel in 2009

TravelMuse certainly is not alone in its belief that travelers will keep asserting their right to travel.

The U.S. Travel Association* showed that for 2009, consumers are pursuing “good values” in the trips they plan —76 percent of respondents expected to book a packaged vacation to save money, while 67 percent planned to stay fewer nights and/or spend less on food and entertainment when traveling.

Forrester vice president and principal analyst, airline and travel research, Henry Harteveldt, agrees that people would rather “trim around the edges,” and as a result, travel sellers need to “help travelers find ways to stick to their budgets.”

Peter Greenberg**, travel guru and New York Times bestselling author told us, “No matter what the economic conditions, there is something that transcends the current financial malaise—and that’s travel itself,” … “It’s part of our cultural DNA. We really can’t help ourselves. We will find a way to travel, no matter what. We may deny ourselves an expensive dinner or a new fashion purchase, but we will not deny ourselves the opportunities to travel. And where there’s a will—especially with travel—there are many ways.”

Say YAY to Vacations in 2009

Our CEO, Kevin Fliess said “There is strong data to support the notion that people are continuing to travel despite the challenging economic times,” ... “While people are more focused on value, travel continues to play a vital role in our lives. Travel is rejuvenating—and people cherish this experience even more during tough times.”

Don’t deny yourself the right to travel, take a break and say YAY to vacations in 2009!

Tell is what you think? Yay or Nay to vacations in 2009? Are you cutting back on anything so you can take your vacation this year?

The full press release is available and for more information, including full survey results, email us at marketing@travelmuse.com.

*Ypartnership travelhorizons™ survey (October 2008)

**Peter Greenberg’s latest book, Tough Times, Great Travels: The Travel Detective’s Guide to Hidden Deals, Unadvertised Bargains, and Great Experiences, released today (March 3), features tips for today’s traveler, such as the best day to buy airline tickets, trips you can take on just one tank of gas and destinations where the dollar is still king.