David Whitaker was hired in May of this year as chief marketing officer for Brand USA, which was set up in 2010 to market the U.S. to the world. He served as head of Tourism Toronto from 2007 until taking the Brand USA job. Prior to his Toronto job the Georgia native spent 17 years with the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. I sat down with him this week in Orlando at IPW, the massive, annual U.S. tourism session that attracts thousands of travel, trade and media types to talk business and book U.S. travel. Whitaker was in constant Read more
U.S.A.
I got news of a remarkable study the other day from Resonance Consultancy, which did a report on 121 U.S. cities and ranked them according to their “experiential quality.” It strikes me as a bit of an inexact science, but the idea behind the study is a very good one that involved analyzing consumer comments on various websites to determine not just actual numbers of who goes where but the level of engagement and happiness people feel when they go to a destination. In a press release they sent, Resonance officials said industry folks know about visitor county,, spending and Read more
With the stroke of a pen, or, rather, with the stroke of a bunch of ballot votes in favour of legalizing gay marriage, Ireland has suddenly jumped into the thick of the worldwide travel conversation. Not only does the country look good by most of the world’s standards in terms of embracing different cultures, it stands to benefit greatly from a tourism standpoint. I don’t know how large the LGBT tourism business is worldwide, but if guesstimates are right that 10 per cent of the world counts itself as gay or transgendered or what have you, then it’s big. Very Read more
Hotel Wi-Fi is one of those touchstone issues travellers love to talk about. Who’s got the best? And who’s got it for free? There’s a new study out from Hotel WiFi Test that ranks hotels around the world, which is a great idea. The bad news for Canadians is there’s no Canada table. But there is date for Europe and the U.S. and Asia, so it’s still pretty useful. And a bit surprising. Despite continuing criticism, there are far too many hotels in the U.S. that charge for Wi-Fi, which I’ve argued is like charging for water in the shower Read more
We all want to save a buck. Or three. With that in mind, the folks at gobankingrates.com have put together lists of the 10 cheapest and 10 most expensive cities to visit in the U.S. I’m quite familiar with many of them and have some thoughts of my own, so I’m offering three free things to do in some of the most expensive cities. And, just for fun, free things to do in the cheapest cities so you can REALLY save. We’ll start with the most expensive on the list. In order, from most expensive on down, were New York Read more
