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			    <title>Tourism Marketing | JLC Travel &amp; Tourism News Source</title> 
				<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/tourism-marketing</link> 
				<description></description><item>
			<title>Shop and dine Las Vegas launches at International Pow Wow</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/shop-and-dine-las-vegas-launches-at-international-pow-wow</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Anderson Retail Tourism Marketing, recently announced the upcoming launch of Shop and dine Las Vegas, a cooperative tourism program and innovative commissionable package. Research continues to show...

http://www.travelandtourworld.com
            
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			<pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 00:50:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Coke Puts Consumers’ Names on Pack</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/coke-puts-consumers’-names-on-pack</link>
			<description><![CDATA[
Coca-Cola is launching its “biggest ever” summer campaign, replacing its branding with 150 of the UK’s most popular names across 100 million packs, as it looks to reverse a period of slow sales growth and drive positive uplift in to brand perception.
The personalised packs – which appear on individual 375ml and 500ml PET bottles of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero – were distributed to stores from last week with little media support as the brand looked to drive intrigue around the campaign. The on-pack creative also features the hashtag #ShareACoke, encouraging people to tell their friends about their discovery online.
Those who are unable to find their names on pack can visit the dedicated Share A Coke UK website or the the Share A Coke Facebook app to create virtual cans with their names on.
The bottle roll-out will be supported with a fully integrated marketing campaign from May, which includes a TV ad that will feature young people telling stories about people they admire and are inspired by. The campaign, which was created by Leo Burnett, is its biggest ever in terms of media spend for the four month summer period – even larger than the burst around last summer’s Olympic Games.
Jon Woods, managing director of Coca-Cola Great Britain and Ireland, told Marketing Week the campaign replicates similar activity that took place in Australia and New Zealand last summer and helped boost engagement with the brand and grow volume in the regions.
He added: “Last year was the most fabulous year to be involved with Coke but our sales were not as strong as we would have liked. We have got off to a good start this year and we think this campaign will build momentum on the first quarter. We are still cycling some of the crummy weather from last summer but this is going to be a really strong campaign for the brand – it’s quite unusual and arresting to see your name replace a brand as iconic as Coke.”
In 2012 sales of Coca-Cola variants in the grocery, convenience and impulse market increased just 0.8 per cent to £1.15bn and volume sales fell 3.3 per cent, according to the Britvic Soft Drinks Report. Sales of Pepsi variants grew 7.4 per cent to £352.2m, while volume increased 10 per cent.
Woods said: “I think the measure of success for us with this summer’s campaign is how we excite our core consumer, create interest in the brand and drive value and volume.”
He adds the role its diet brands play in the campaign is also significant, following on from its recent Diet Coke hunk ads, the “Be OK” anti-obesity spot and Coke Zero cinema campaign.
Diet variants now make up 45 per cent of its business in the UK and 80 per cent of all Diet Coke and Coke Zero packs will contain consumers’ names on bottles as part of this campaign. The other 20 per cent of all bottles will carry a “Share Coke With…” either “friends”, “family” or “everyone” message.
In 2011 Heinz launched a “Get Well Soup” campaign, which allowed its Facebook fans to replace its branding on tins with a personalised message to be delivered straight to an unwell friend or family member.
Woods said while the Heinz idea is “interesting” – and the virtual cans will also allow people to write their own messages – the scale of Coca-Cola’s campaign is what will ultimately make it successful.
He added: “If you walk into a store to pick something up at lunchtime and there’s your name on a bottle, it’s special because it’s there at that moment you buy.”
Source: www.marketingweek.co.uk
Julia




		
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]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>The Benchmark of Lundberg Family Farms</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/the-benchmark-of-lundberg-family-farms</link>
			<description><![CDATA[
Lundberg represents a growing sector of family farmers adapting to the demands of a specialty (higher quality) marketplace. The globalization of the food market allows for customers in foreign, as well as domestic markets, to custom grow rice with Lundberg that suits the tastes of the market.
If you sent all the rice grown in California for one year to Japan and replaced their existing supply, an annual California crop would be consumed in about 12 short weeks. Why then does Japan look to specialty rice farms, like Lundberg Family Farms, to supply them with organic rice? While the answer isn’t obvious at first, after spending a day in their rice fields, it became apparent.
On a beautiful, sunny day in Richvale, California (about 20 miles south of Chico) I accompanied Bryce Lundberg, a family farmer of the renown Lundberg family, on a tour of their 10,000 acre farm. I say this, because no day would be too beautiful if it was steaming hot, as it is often apt to be in the 100 degree plus days that are characteristic of this agricultural region. The weather’s been cooler than expected this summer, delaying the harvest season by about two weeks. I fully expected to see the wild rice harvest in progress, along with the long grain, medium grain, short grain, aromatic grain, and their colorful exotic grains. Unfortunately, I arrived just a couple of weeks before the harvest was to begin.
“The cool temperatures this summer pushed the harvest off for, oh, about a couple of weeks,” explained Bryce. He added, “We’re ready to go, the minute it’s ready to harvest.”
PURITY OF SEED LINES
Lundberg Family Farm grows about 13 different varieties of rice. Many varieties will remain whole grain brown rice while others are milled down to white rice. While all Lundberg Family Farms rice is grown using sustainable farming methods, each variety is also grown organically as well. New varieties are always under development in their nursery and in experimental plots. They develop, breed and harvest their own seed and varieties not only to ensure varietal survival (and supply) for generations to come, but also in order to ensure the purity of the varieties.
Bryce continued, “Many of the varieties we grow are not grown anymore by the California rice industry so we keep the varieties growing ourselves. We propagate our own seed. The varieties I’m showing you are currently in the seed development program at our farm. We sow large seed paddies and we develop the seed that we use for planting.”
As we drove by seed plots of Wehani, Arborio, California Basmati, California Jasmine, Black Japonica and many others, we came across a variety I had never heard of before. “What is Hong Kong Black?” I asked.
Bryce stopped the truck so we could get out to take a look. Hong Kong Black, I found, is another variety currently under experimentation on the Lundberg Farm. “This variety originates from Asia,” he explained. “We do a lot of crossing. We take a variety that is in our nursery and clip the seeds, collect the pollen, and do a manual cross. Then we take the pollen, swap the seeds, and grow them to see what kind of cross we get to accommodate for the climatic differences that otherwise would make growing the original variety unfeasible.”
The desire to create outstanding varieties of rice is an art form treasured by the Lundberg family. Only natural methods involving cross-pollination are used. “Here is a new variety of sweet rice,” Bryce indicated as he pointed to a small sized patch to our left. “It’s not new, it’s from Japan, but it’s a variety that our customer from Japan wants, so we are doing some experiments to see if it can grow here. This goes to a seed field next year, and it will be ready to be planted for crop the year after that. After this year, we will have a pretty good idea if it will come to fruition or not.”
Purity is the focus here, and purity is always the goal. Unless we produce a pure strain of seeds in advance, we’d end up with rice that may have desirable characteristics, but wouldn’t be pure. Seed operations often strive for purity, but what is truly unusual at Lundberg’s is that a crop-producing farm would set aside acreage to grow their own seed. “It’s because we produce so many varieties that are not grown commercially in California or anywhere, that we need to maintain these varieties for the future. Our small plots maintain our purity.”
WEED CONTROL STRATEGY FOR ORGANIC RICE
Organic farming represents about 60% of the acreage at Lundberg Family Farms. “While we do eradicate the weeds by flooding the paddy during the first phase, it does stress the rice. In our second phase we dry up the fields so that the remaining water hardy weeds are destroyed and hope the remaining rice is strong enough to thrive,” Bryce comments.
Weed control strategy is a buzz term on this farm. Organic farming results from a love for the environment and a desire to always use natural methods to maintain the delicate balance of nature. But with it comes an extra commitment to observation. The Lundberg’s keep a keen lookout to assure their current strategy maintains effectiveness. Weeds are capable of adapting to extreme environmental variances, so even though a natural weed control method works now, there are no guarantees as to the duration of time a particular method will remain effective ,so the Lundberg’s are always working on an innovative natural solution to replace those that aren’t doing the job. One method of stressing the weeds through flooding then subsequently drying up is quite effective. The word of their success practicing this method spread, and other organic farms are trying their hand at this technique as well. It’s challenging most of the time.
CROP CYCLE OF ORGANIC RICE
Early in the growing season, Lundberg Farms uses deep water to drown the grasses. Weed control is the number one challenge in growing organic rice. For every rice seed planted, there, are potentially 50 weed plants that could grow around it, choking it off. If you have a seedling at the beginning of the year and you put water over the top of the soil, grass and weeds start to grow at the same time. But weeds need to get through the water and get a leaf on top in about 20 days. Rice has a window of about 48 hours longer to get its leaf up. If it doesn’t, then the rice will drown as well. Different varieties have a tougher time surviving. Akitokamachi, for example is really challenging. Over time, total weed control is not possible. “We could anticipate over time, that the weeds will become more adaptive to whatever technique we are using, so we will devise another natural control method,” explained Bryce.
During the second phase, the fields are drained of all water for sedge control. This dry-up phase is another form of weed control to eradicate the weeds and the weaker rice. Water management is always a key issue involved in farming organic rice. During the third phase, water is let back into the fields, so the crop can reach final maturation.
Lundberg Family Farms base acreage is roughly 3,500 acres, and they manage another 7,500 acres through their loyal family of growers. As we drove through the farm, I commented often on the natural ruggedness and beauty of the terrain. On all the farmable land, they utilize crop rotation as part of their strategy to build and maintain healthy soil. Also, all acreage is routinely fallowed, that is, given a periodic rests from planting to restore soil to its optimum condition.
THE WILD RICE CROP
Nothing surpasses the beauty of a wild rice crop. If you’re inclined to marvel at nature’s creations, then you must include a stop to a wild rice field next August, just before the harvest begins. Standing over 12 feet high, the beautiful stalks of lavender, tan and golden plumes sway in the breeze to create a rippling effect with nature’s colors. As we got out of the truck to get a closer look, I chose to stay on terra firma, rather than schlock through the muck, because Bryce had the only hip-high wading boots necessary to walk through the fields. So dense was the field, the ground was not even visible. Bryce inspected the stalks of the rice to see if they were ready to harvest. The unexpected cool weather had slowed the maturation process down so harvest was going to be delayed.
AKITAKOMACHI
As we drove by the Akitakomachi, a Japanese variety, I was amazed to notice it sported an almost auburn hue. This paddy had just come out of the dry up cycle and the crop had not finished greening up. Akitakomachi is treasured for its beautiful round, pearl-like grain and delicate flavor. Typically milled to a white rice, Akitakomachi is favored for used in Pacific Rim dishes, sushi in particular. The Lundberg’s successfully grow and experiment with several varieties of rice originating from Asian countries, making them the primary choice for Pacific Riclients desiring their crops to be grown in California.
RICE CAKES
The popularity of Lundberg’s delicious rice cakes in Europe began with an American who relocated to Holland. After several months of buying and importing his personal supply of Lundberg rice cakes, this enterprising fellow became a European Lundberg broker. He assumed if Europeans loved Lundberg’s rice cakes as much as he did, a great market potential could be realized. As a result of this vision, Lundberg Family Farms is enjoying an eager and growing market throughout Europe.
Lundberg rice cakes are different than typical European rice cakes. Now that the European markets tasted the thicker, crunchier, denser, tastier cake, they really like them! Repeat business is steadily increasing. “In the U.S. markets, most of the rice cakes are about the same size, but ours have twice as much rice in each cake,” VP sales and marketing Tim O’Donnell explains. While it hard to note the difference between Lundberg rice cakes and conventional rice cakes while they are in the package, Lundberg’s are “deliciously dense”. In the Euro market, traditional rice cakes are even smaller, thinner, and even less crunchy. Basically there is nothing like our rice cake in any other country. “
The Lundberg rice cake package weighs about twice as much per package as other American brands, with an even bigger difference in the European brands. Repeat business stems from a crunchier, tastier, more nutritious rice cake. Lundberg rice cakes can even be very lightly toasted, an advantage that they maintain over all available other brands. “The ability to toast the cake is clearly an advantage,” O Donnell explains with a smile. ” The fragrance is similar to baking bread.”
The Lundberg rice cake recipe is proprietary, of course. In the rice cake popping facility, located at farm headquarters, they have custom-designed and continuously improved their innovative system of popping delicious rice cakes, and they add a delightfully diverse range of all natural toppings and flavors to their 18 different flavors. Representing a large percentage of the Lundberg’s business, rice cakes have been a favorite with their loyal American consumers for many, many years.
“Customers want to know that they are eating a pure and healthy product. If you start out with a great grain, you are going to end up with a great rice cake. We will continue to support this product into the European markets.”
Source: http://fbworld.com
Alexey




		
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]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>New ad alert: Google Ad Extensions</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/new-ad-alert-google-ad-extensions</link>
			<description><![CDATA[In the endless battle for advertising dollars in search, Google has been rolling out new products that encourage more engagement with paid links over organic results.
The most recent is Google Ad Extensions. The new functionality allows advertisers to attached additional information beyond text to ads: a map of a business location, for example.

Destinations, tours, hotel properties and OTAs could also very well take advantage of this new ad unit to visually showcase the promoted experience with the Image Extension:

The increase in real estate to the top listing – which is the only paid link that benefits from Image Ad Extensions – means that brands will be competing even more for prime real estate than they already are. PPC rates will likely climb as businesses battle for the winning bid that places their linked images in the top spot.
However, the ad unit will get more clicks with the engaging visuals, and likely convert better if the images are more targeted to the specific search.
So the increase in CTR, which increases the price of the ad unit, will actually increase prices across the board. Even those not participating in a bidding war for the top slot may see rising prices across the board.
Organic placements will also suffer, as they are pushed down the page with more real estate devoted to the top spot. With the majority of clicks already going to paid placements, organic SEO is taking another hit. The march towards pay-as-the-only-way-to-play continues.
The Ad Extensions are part of a new interface that aims to surface relevant travel/destination content within search results by adding a visual element to the browsing experience. This is quite an evolution, as the product is a clear departure from the relative simplicity of the classic Google interface.

Google explains the latest iteration of the AdWords product with the tagline “making a good thing even better.”

NB: Thanks to Tnooz reader Philipp Kloeckner for the tip.

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			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 10:30:05 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Interflora adwords case ruling could help travel firms</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/interflora-adwords-case-ruling-could-help-travel-firms</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Industry law firm Travlaw says a trademark infringement case covering Google adwords advertising could help travel companies.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 07:30:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Week in Review – May 24, 2013</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/week-in-review-may-24-2013</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Top Supplier Sales Reps, digital marketing tips and an update to the temporary closure of the Beaches Turks &amp; Caicos Resort Villages and Spa topped this week in travel news.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 06:30:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>&#039;Ghetto&#039; tours of Bronx ended</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/ghetto-tours-of-bronx-ended</link>
			<description><![CDATA[A New York company offering tours of Bronx neighborhoods has shut down after officials objected to its advertising that claimed to give visitors &quot;a ride through a real New York City &#039;ghetto&#039;,&quot; according to a statement from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.
    
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			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 06:20:01 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Collateral damage: Google cannibalizing their own PPC revenues?</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/collateral-damage-google-cannibalizing-their-own-ppc-revenues</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Google has been rattling the cages of travel for years now, constantly threatening as a perceived enemy with product releases like Hotel Finder and Flight Search. The entrenched interests push back against the intrusions into their sacred territory – especially given that Google is the beneficiary of billions of dollars of ad spend each year.
For the first time, there’s ample empirical evidence that Google may actually be cannibalizing their PPC revenues in the travel vertical.
The analysis comes from AdGooroo, who did an in-depth look into the 2013 trends of AdWords spending in travel. Overall ad spending on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) in 1Q 2013 dropped 19% from the same period in 2012 – a drop of $57 million.

The longer-term trend since 2010 points drastically downward, with a $75 million reduction compared with the same period in 2010.
Two potential explanations are that travel advertisers have pulled back from search (which is not supported by the data – there are more travel advertisers this quarter than last, 228 now vs 217 a year ago), or that travel websites are more well-designed and thus more sticky. With an improved user experience, users are more likely to be loyal and simply directly enter the preferred website into a browser.
Another, more intriguing, explanation is that Google’s entry into the travel space has decreased the amount of available PPC traffic by encouraging organic clicks to their own products, which they’ve prioritized in search results.
Google HotelFinder and FlightSearch were launched in August and September 2011, respectively, and provide a direct search experience for users seeking to book flights and hotels.

Of course, Google now offers advertising products within each of these services, which don’t appear as a keyword targeted ad buy (for example, paid placement of hotel bookings into HotelFinder results).
Regardless, the organic placement of an interactive tool for hotels and flights within the search experience is clearly having an impact on user click behavior.
The drop in paid clicks in favor of organic clicks may or may not be of concern to Google – notoriously tight lipped on the travel front – although there is plenty to be said about the shifting landscape. From the import of Priceline-Kayak to the changing SEO realities of Google’s travel plays to the newly minted Instant Buy feature, Google is at the center of an industry tempest.
The research continues to the most popular keywords, as represented by this word cloud of both generic and navigational searches.

While Google enthusiastically discourages bidding on navigational searches, or searches aimed at navigating to a specific brand, the bidding is fierce on the generic travel keywords like “cheap flights” and “hotels.”
Of these keywords, Adgooroo highlights the most popular 25 travel keywords by clicks during the first 3 months of 2013:

Perhaps a factor of the Star Trek film, or perhaps due to the difficulty to spell correctly, “enterprise” enjoyed the number 1 spot on travel keyword clickthroughs. Research showed that the “enterprise” keyword had a 12.1% CTR, while the category leader was Expedia, which 1 out of every 4 users presented with a paid ad clicked on said ad (25.9% CTR).
Beyond the click-through rates of ads, the Adgooroo team also gleaned some perspective from the Top 100 most clicked terms:

• The growing popularity of the keyword “vrbo” (vacation rental by owner), which rose to position 51 in 2013 from 78 in 2012, may indicate a new trend in consumer travel habits and a threat to the hotel business
• Average clickthrough rate was 8.1%, with navigational terms posting much higher rates and generic terms yielding much lower clickthroughs (“flight” was lowest at 1.4%)
• Queries on “Airlines” yielded the most paid ads: 10.6 per SERP, while searches on “Greyhound” yielded less than 1, on average
• “Hyatt” got the highest ad coverage (appearing 95.2% of the time) while “United Airlines” got the lowest (37.7%)
• “Vacation packages” was the term with the most bidders, with 259 advertisers gaining first SERP impressions during the first quarter of the year. “Greyhound” had the fewest bidders (4).

Of the top spenders in the travel category on AdWords, Priceline and Kayak dominate – pointing out perhaps one of the most compelling reasons for the linkup: the ability to act as a counterweight to Google’s movements into travel, given that they both rely on Google for so much of their paid traffic.

1. kayak.com – 883 million impressions
2. priceline.com – 699 million impressions
3. orbitz.com – 670 million impressions
4. tripadvisor.com – 663 million impressions
5. cheapoair.com – 629 million impressions
6. expedia.com – 595 million impressions
7. booking.com – 538 million impressions
8. travelzoo.com – 469 million impressions
9. bookingbuddy.com – 353 million impressions
10. hotels.com – 349 million impressions

Google has most certainly done a cost/benefit analysis, given that the value of capturing more travel queries for their owned and operated products – and then selling access to that targeted traffic most likely at a higher rate – is much more compelling than losing PPC revenues.
In addition, as can be seen with other products like Google Product Listing Ads, Google seems to believe that the PPC ad model is not one of the future – but contextual ads within user-facing interfaces are.
Google declined to comment on this story.

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			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 04:00:02 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Shop &amp; Dine Las Vegas Package Launches at International Pow Wow  - Anderson Retail Tourism Marketing</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/shop-dine-las-vegas-package-launches-at-international-pow-wow-anderson-retail-tourism-marketing</link>
			<description><![CDATA[One Package for Two Travelers. Hundreds of Shopping and Dining Offers. Thousands of Dollars in Savings.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 02:10:01 PDT</pubDate>
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			<title>New tourism campaign promotes – ‘Where great begins’</title>
			<link>http://www.jlctraveltourism.com/rss/news/new-tourism-campaign-promotes-‘where-great-begins’</link>
			<description><![CDATA[A new marketing initiative promoting the beauty and accessibility of the Southern Great Barrier Reef will roll out this month to entice more south east Queenslanders to the region.   Minister...

http://www.travelandtourworld.com
            
]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 23:10:02 PDT</pubDate>
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