For a fun update on the week’s news in travel, you might enjoy the “This Week in Travel” podcast.
I was on this past week as a guest for Episode #73 The Travel Blog Game, and hosts Chris Christensen, Gary Arndt and Jen Leo plus my fellow guest Jessica Spiegel were all a rollicking good group. We covered a lot of territory in our news discussions.
Toward the end of the podcast recording we talked about Tourism Currents and which destinations, hotels or organizations do a particularly good job with marketing using social media.
Here was our quick list off the top of our heads:
** Gary — Spain, especially Valencia
** Jessica — Portland, Oregon (she mentioned their Twisitor Center for Twitter updates and news about the city)
** Jen — Downtown Los Angeles on Facebook (nice business district initiative) and the MGM Grand Twitter account for Las Vegas special deals
** Chris — Chicago and Maui (we also discussed the Visit Lanai New Media Artist in Residence program, which Gary will be doing later this month.)
** Me — Well….I got a bit carried away past one or two….so I mentioned Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Oregon’s Coos Bay, @SeattleMaven on Twitter and my “usual suspects” in Texas of Austin, San Antonio, Beaumont and Abilene.
Chris mentioned doing some social media CVB training when he was in Maui, and that local hotels, restaurants and resorts all sent representatives to learn. Smart.
We all gave a shout-out as well to Hawaii-based PR pro Nathan Kam, who does a bunch of tourism work on Oahu. He’s professional but also very personable and fun, and he reaches out to people online in a very un-market-y way.
Of course we left out plenty of other great examples, but still, that’s a pretty good list if you want to check them out.
I’m happy to hear about your favorite social media stars down in the comments, and have a listen to the podcast when you have a chance!
Update: Gary sent me the code to embed the podcast right here….
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