Travel. It's personal.®

You Can't Get There From Here

A few years ago my husband and I pulled off the road just outside of Pittsburgh, PA to ask directions from a gas station attendant. After we told him where we wanted to go, he pressed his lips and rubbed his chin and then pronounced: “Youens can’t get there from here.”

More often than not I've found that searching and shopping for leisure travel experiences on the Internet feels like a "you can't get there from here" experience.    

To the casual observer,  the “on-line” travel business is booming. Since 2006 more than half of all travel sales transactions take place on-line.   

But within the revenue growth statistics are a few trends worth noting: In the past year according to both Forrester Research and PhoCusWright, the percentage of internet users booking travel on-line has dropped between 6-9%. This is during the same period when other e-commerce markets were growing customers. Another study shows potential travelers returning to travel agents to help them with travel plans.

The good news and the bad news: The Internet has put too much of the world at our fingertips. For both consumers and sellers of travel there is a void that new technology has yet to fill. Advertisers can’t find their ideal customer and consumers can’t find the match that fits their preferences.

There is no easy way to filter and personalize search and information. An Internet travel shopping experience has become a virtual “paper chase” through a maze of websites. The result for the traveler looking for personalized travel solutions is frustration and more often than not compromise and disappointment. The result for sellers large and small is that they can’t reach their ideal customer or fully grab the long-tail.

Now add the promise of mobile technology into the tour and travel experience.

Mobile technology would seem to be a natural fit for tour and travel. After all, the very act of traveling away from home implies “mobility”. What better way to connect to the world around you than through your personal mobile device?

We believe that the convergence of internet and mobile technologies with new media holds the key to opening up new worlds of discovery and adventure for travelers. With the growing use of G3 mobile devices, the technology exists to be able to transform the travel experience. But the mobile ecosystem as it exists today creates sizeable barriers.

Now all we need to do is figure out a way to get there from here.

 

 

 

Prisoner of the Web

I remember the good old days. It was back in 1999. We had a dial-up modem and a Dell desk top that had the screaming speed of 356 MHz, and we felt like the world was at our fingertips. Maybe it was the flush of first love, but every now and then I think back wistfully on the simplicity of that first bloom of searching and planning our travel adventures using the “world wide web”.

That was the year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. To make it extra special, we rented a villa just outside of Siena, Italy and invited some friends and relatives to celebrate with us. We found the villa the old fashioned way in a full-color catalog, but many of the other components of the trip, we searched, shopped for and bought online.

It was a liberating experience! Using a meta search engine we located information about the villages of the Chianti region and the Tuscan countryside.  For an extension down to Rome and the Amalfi Coast I found websites that were full of information that helped us plan and make reservations for our stay. These were simple websites managed by inn keepers and local travel entrepreneurs.  Ah, those were the good old days, when you could type in the key words that took you to the information you were looking for rather than online travel agencies or even internet auction sites.   

Now the proliferation of information has brought more of the world to our fingertips, but the frustration with this is that now we need information filtered for our personal preferences and interests. And for me, I usually don’t start my travel shopping search with flights and hotels so most of the travel selling sites out there right now don’t work that well for me.  And while reviews on sites like Trip Advisor and Igougo are helpful, they too are becoming cluttered and hard to manage.

My once felt liberation in searching for travel options on the internet now more often than not feels more like imprisonment on the world wide web.

What's the Point?

Years ago, it was not uncommon to work hard all of your life and then reward yourself at retirement with the “trip of a lifetime”. In those days, visiting the destination was the point, and the travel industry created escorted tours to fulfill those dreams. Travel was a privilege. Travel was its own reward

 We don’t approach our leisure travel experiences that way anymore. We expect to take many memorable trips during our life. We take multiple trips every year.  We travel with family, friends, and on our own. We are traveling to new and exotic places. We believe travel is our right. Rewards are found in meaningful travel experiences.

 In a recent Travel Weekly, Arnie Wiessmann wrote that leisure travel magazine editors instruct their writers to use an “angle” or “contrivance” to “package destinations”. It’s “the point” within the context of the destination that entertains and creates meaning for travel magazine readers.

Mr. Weissmann then made a comparison:

“…the travel industry, too, packages travel experiences... But interestingly, for the most part, the final product doesn't seem to have a point…it seldom promises to follow a specific story line.” (“Inauthentic Authenticity”, Arnie Weissmann, Travel Weekly, March 31, 2008),

 In Marie’s post of March 19 she is asking the travel industry to recognize that “the point” (the “Why” and “What”) of her travel is the most important thing for her. The commodities of the travel equation – getting there, staying there, getting around there – will fall into place when “the point” is taken care of first.

 It’s “the point” that immerses us in our travels and creates a lifetime of experiences that connect us to the world.  “The point” makes travel personal. 

 Mr. Weissmann makes the conclusion in his March 31st editorial that in general the travel industry seems content to sell “generic and clichéd” experiences even as trends say we want authenticity and immersion in our travel. 

 We believe there is a better way. This is what motivates us to explore new ways to approach the travel equation.

 

 

Travelers in Traveland

Flights, Hotels, and Prices... Oh My! Travel brokers always start by trying to get you the best price for getting to your destination and hotel. I want to start with “Why” I am going, and ‘What” is there for me when I get there. It’s as though the “Why” and the “What” have no value in the travel equation, and your destination only adds up if the commodity provider can make his/her commission.

As the name of our blog Travel. It’s personal. implies, I am on a quest to find personalized travel that fits the “Why” I am going, and “What” is there for me. I want the commodity brokers to know it’s the first time my family is going to Europe and that first impression is important to me. The cultures, the customs, the food, the people are the “Why and “What,” about which we want our big adventure to be. How does a flight to Paris, 3 nights in the 7th ward, a train to Florence, 4 nights there, picking up a car and driving to Rome with 5 nights in that city and returning to the States on the 6th day,  answer my “why and what?” These parts of travel are just parts. They do make a difference, but the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. I guess it would be easier if we took one of the hundreds of different prepackaged tours. Should I choose this alternative, I would be  sharing my personal family time for two weeks with fifty newly acquainted mates traveling on the coach with us.

I would know what I want if I knew what was out there, but I don’t have the time to dedicate four hours a night for six weeks on the internet to make a personalized and detailed itinerary. It's the time between the commodities that counts. It’s the “Why” we are going, and “What” is there that make the destination. Is any one out in Travel-land listening to the travelers?

What's In Our Name?

So what do we mean by: “Travel. It’s personal.”? 

We are passionate about travel and finding ways for all of us to create travel adventures that are experiential, immersive, special and unique.  Clearly, what is personal for you may not be personal for us.   To us when we say “personal” and “personalize”, it means “made especially for you” and “tailored to fit you”.  It is the opposite of “cookie cutter” and “one size fits all”. 

Marie enjoys travel adventures that blend historical drama and fantasy with real world locations.  Margaret loves to explore and appreciate the cultural connections of the people and the food of the places she visits.  In both examples a lot of time is spent on research and planning to find the stories that create these immersive experiences. 

For us making our travel experiences personal is an inclusive exercise.  At times we may indulge our own personal preferences to the exclusion of others, but more frequently making travel “personal” includes considering the personal preferences of our family and friends both directly (when we travel together) and indirectly when we ask for advice and input or by sharing our respective adventures, discoveries and fun times. This is what inspires our imagination in our quest to make travel personal.

We look forward to your comments and finding out what you think and what makes travel personal for you. 

All The World Is A Stage...

    Our career backgrounds and our love for travel became the catalyst that led us to formulate ideas for creating travel adventures through a "mashup" of entertainment and travel.  We knew we had something and we wanted to share it.  It's what set us in motion to start this blog and to create Travelore™, which literally means travel stories.  We use stories to set the stage for discovering the world.

    We believe that great stories create great travel adventures. When we hear the stories (the lore) of a place we visit, it comes to life.  Stories reveal the history, myths and folklore and connect us to the drama and the romance behind the traditions that influence each culture and define its people and its social structures – its economy, its government, its religions, its style, its art and architecture, its music, its food, its drink and its celebrations.   

    At the moment we are creating our first Travelore™ stories. Eventually we will produce these stories to be downloadable for playback on mobile media devices.  In the meantime we have decided to share the alpha (printable) version with you.

    Location-based storytelling that transports you through place and time...

    Look for our first Travelore™ stories in the coming weeks and months.

Who We Are & Why Travel

Marie Miller
Concept & Art Director/Environmental Designer

    Working for many years in entertainment, designing theme parks, museums, etc. allowed me to travel.  I always look for the back story to the places I visited.  I love to discover environments around the world.  Each location has its themes, stories and unique beauty.  The people, the culture, the architecture, and the history, the lore of how it became the place it is today, are the elements of travel that  make my experiences unforgettable.

Margaret Zola
Tour Director/Leisure Travel Product Manager

    As a tour director and product manager, I have been able to share my love for places and cultures with others.  Over the years I came to realized that flights, hotels, tour buses and rental cars don't usually make very exciting entries in our travel memory books.  What we treasure are our experiences with family and friends and the discoveries we make about ourselves and the places we visit.

Travel Threads...
    We got acquainted through Marie's sister, Cheri.  Coming from different worlds of employment, we found we share a common thread or as the German's say: "a red thread" that ran through our collective life's stories -- we love great travel adventures.