One rather extreme example was discussed on Campbell Live.  This complaint involves someone who simply wanted to change the passenger name (not even cancel) with Emirates – because she had the foresight to get an early bird booking for a cheaper price she was faced with considerable fees to make the change. See the story video here.

How do you treat travellers who need to change or cancel their booking?  I’d suggest that in such a competitive environment where travellers have a choice and can complain online about unreasonable fees you should think twice about how strict your policies are.

For airlines I think that differentiating fares based on cancellation policies is a rather unfair approach – the passengers still all get the same service if sitting in the same class of travel, so shouldn’t price be differentiated based on service differentiation, lead time of booking, supply and demand, and value added components rather than something that leaves your customers vulnerable to the situation described in the Campbell Live story?

Yes you should be compensated for last minute cancellations where you can’t replace the booking but any situation where you won’t necessarily face revenue loss a more lenient approach should be taken.

Whatever decision you make can have a long term impact on your business reputation and repeat business which has the potential to cost you a lot more than the impact of a booking change.  What do you think?

Developing the right viral campaign is a bit of an art because you have to be careful not to make it too manufactured, it needs to be genuinely funny and the brand or message involved has to be visible but not dominating – potentially the more outrageous and cheeky it is the more success you will have.  People will either love it or hate it – but that’s OK, so long as it gets exposure.

How can tourism use it? Very creatively hopefully!   This is a superb way to create interest in a destination or particular tourism product in a different and memorable way.  A couple of current examples of viral marketing campaigns for New Zealand tourism organisations are:

Air New Zealand – Who Would You Spoon?

A funny video featuring comedian Di Henwood with the campaign centred on the Air New Zeland Facebook page.  They have even produced a Facebook application for the spooning campaign so fans can select some of their friends to spoon and enter a competition to win a weekend away…the marketing message for this campaign?  It’s all about their new Economy Skycouch which allows passengers to lie down during flight to sleep, and presumably spoon if travelling with a close friend…

Destination Northland – Northland For Dummies Aussies

A clever couple of videos have been produced and placed on YouTube with the star of the show being the likeable Bazza from Oz.  Targeted at Australians to visit Northland, these 2 videos (A language Guide and an Outdoor Guide) are being spread virally through You Tube, Facebook and Twitter.  Bazza has his own Facebook page and Twitter account so you can follow his travels through Northland.

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