Earlier this week I wrote an article for Mashable entitled “5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success.” The article tells five tales of businesses that capitalized on industry trends and cultural memes.
Yesterday, on day four of my Toronto social media road show, I spoke with the Canadian online travel agency, itravel2000, who actually had to fight back against the traditional news reports that were actually hurting their business.
In February, the general news media was reporting on the drug and gang wars going on in Mexico. To the casual observer, the problems seemed systemic across the entire country, and as a result people stopped booking travel to Mexico. It got so bad that itravel2000′s Mexico travel which usually accounts for 40% of their business dropped to 14%, said Brad Miron, VP Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, for itravel2000.
In reality, said Miron, the violence was happening alongside the U.S./Mexico border, about 3600 km from any of itravel2000′s vacation destinations. So to combat the negative mainstream press about Mexico, itravel2000 sent camera crews to Mexico to report on what was really going on in the vacation destinations, and they posted 90 videos on a custom blog entitled, “What is really happening in Mexico.com.”
In just two weeks, 50,000 people visited the blog, and their Mexico travel bookings returned to 40% of overall bookings.
Once again, itravel2000 is facing another Mexico news story that’s impacting their business – swine flu. Since they were so successful with their last blog, they’ll be launching another custom blog, It’s time to go to Mexico.com (will be live July 29th) where video crews will follow a handful of families going to Mexico.
For more, watch my interview with Brad Miron of itravel2000.
ITravel2000, Steller Customer Service and Ethics….NAAAAATTT!
I’ll try to make it as short as possible:
1. Booked and had a problem with disclosure (even though I was entitled to the PDP refund of $150.00) Not about the money, it’s about the principal and I felt deceived. I didn’t want to deal with them.
2. Didn’t get my invoice with terms and conditions until a month later after many email requests.
3. Tried to cancel. Request to cancel was denied by the company via phone and email.
4. Finally accepted the terms and conditions of the company because I had no choice.
5. Both myself and Itravel2000 agreed I would keep my reservations with I travel2000 on October 25th.
6. Sent email to CEO,Itravel2000,Travelzest, staff and posted on their Facebook page that they should provide more disclosure October 25th. I was forced to stay in the contract or lose my money but they did not BUY my opinion of how they operated.
7. October 26th a supervisor called and said they were transferring me to a third party(without my permission or prior notice).
8. I asked them to put this transfer in writing. They refused. I said I would not continue the conversation and hung up.
9. They sent me a notice that they cancelled my reservation one and half months before departure after I told them the sole reason I was staying with them is because my husband and I had already booked our vacation time off.
10. I gave them until 11am October 27th before rebooking with another company. Itravel2000 did refund my money of the trip purchase.
11. I will not get the $150.00 PDP that I was entitled to/qualified for because I did not agree to the supervisor transferring me to a third party provider without written documentation.
12. I will not be in the Let It Snow Contest(in case it snows more than 5inches at Toronto on Jan 1st) because they cancelled my reservation.
I know TICO is as what another victims of Itravel2000 described as, “a rattlesnake with no teeth”.
Consequences for the company: Let see what our justice system and governing bodies can really do, watch those tax dollars work!……I am not hopeful.
Me: A couple dollars lost, inconvenience, annoyance, in addition to my incremental loss of faith that humans can further themselves in an ethical manner that is conducive to those around them.