Cultural, Heritage and Shopping Tourism – One Travel Conference

Just back from ONE Travel Conference in Orlando, which was geared to cultural, heritage and shopping tourism. Kudos to conference producers, Rosemary McCormick and Sheila Armstrong, for a fun, well run and informative conference.  We tweeted some intelligence, interesting facts and figures, and social media tips, but in case you missed it, here’s a roundup:

• Original idea on funding for cultural advertising: Sarasota CVB asked arts patrons to contribute to an ad section on culture in US Airways’ Pace magazine. They ended up contributing half of the cost. Then the local paper repackaged the section and overprinted it, enabling distribution to local realtors. Congrats to the Sarasota CVB and our colleague Gary Leopold’s ISM agency.

• Watch for ProjectAudience.org, a new aggregator of cultural event information for the US. The pilot project is in southern California and will last for one year

• Tourism Australia has the largest number of Facebook fans – 2 million+ at last count

• American Express reported that fast casual restaurants have been thriving in this economy and the biggest winner in the dining category – bars, with a revenue increase of 40% (our takeaway: if you don’t have a bar menu, do so post haste!)

• Also from Amex, sweet spots in sales this past year: Baby boomers are over cutting back. Male boomers, especially interested in premium jewelry, GenX and GenYers. And after Canada and Mexico, top growth areas in luxury purchases are Asia-Pacific, with Australia, South Korea and Japan leading the way in that order. Then comes Europe (Turkey is up there in growth) and fourth place, the Middle East.

• Shoppers live longer. So wrote UK’s The Week, reporting on a survey of 1850 Taiwanese. Those who shop more than once a week are living longer.

• Speaking of Rosemary Rice McCormick, President of Shop America Alliance and Co-Founder of US Cultural and Heritage Tourism Marketing Council, she just published a book on Marketing Cultural and Heritage Tourism, a valuable resource.

• A case study of a cruise line’s Facebook loyalty point program spearheaded by Travelmole was said to generate $20,000 in sales on Facebook daily! Well worth checking out or contact Kieron.Keady@TravelMole.com (by the way, he looks like Bill Clinton).

• And finally, social media guru Susan Sweeney detailed a list of website short cuts – everything from free conference calls and outsourcing web design, to ebrochure templates, website graders, and sites that will do a job for you for $5 – $25.

And a photo from the conference – a bespoke, seriously bling Chanel tablet case.