Daniella Nabuco - Online Marketing Specialist » Travel

Have a Berry Good Time at The Girls U-Pick Strawberry Farm

dnabuco — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:43:40 +0000

A few weeks ago during the harvest season, I took the trip up to a South Florida strawberry farm; The Girls U-Pick Strawberry Farm in Delray Beach, FL. At first glance, you wouldn’t expect the Girls U-Pick to have the location that it does. Nestled into a typical strip mall, once inside, one is pleasantly surprised. The farm contains hundreds of rows of strawberry plants for picking. Done in an innovative hydroponic method of planting, there is no need to bend down in the dirt to pick your organic delicacies. Spin the plant around to find more strawberries for a one-of-a-kind picking experience.

Strawberries are not the only thing The Girls has to offer. There are animals dispersed across the grounds as well. From talking birds, to two donkeys named Romeo and Juliet, swans, tortoises, and more. There are also pineapple trees for purchase ($10), as well as other blooming trees and vegetables. The farm is the perfect size as to not be overwhelmed when picking and walking through the grounds. Unfortunately, when I visited the strawberries were not in season, but I will definitely be back to pick some when they are. The strawberry season starts at the end of November, and usually runs until April.

They also have a country store with a wide assortment of homemade jams and jellies, ice cream, fresh squeezed orange juice, sweets, and much more. Even an Amish brand of soaps and body lotions made from goat milk called Edna Lucille.

Down the street is The Boy’s farmers market, where you can get fresh home grown products for a great price.They also sell some of The Girls products as well. Both The Girls U-Pick and The Boys Farmers Market are owned by the Palermo’s, a family that has been in the produce and market business their entire lives.

I purchased a tasty zucchini bread, fresh avocado, and freshly cut pineapple. There is a wide assortment of coffee beans, teas, fish, and even a take-home section of already prepared hot food to enjoy at home. Not to mention some massive pumpkins!

The Boys and The Girls are both fun, great places to visit. I will be reporting back with part II once strawberries are in season!

Located at:

1446 S. Military Trail, Suite 3

Delray Beach, FL 33484

Hours: 9:30 to 5:00 PM. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday during off-season.

For more information, visit www.thegirlsstrawberryupick.com

To find other strawberry picking farms in South Florida or near you, visit PickYourOwn.org.

Check out pictures of my visit to The Girls and The Boys below

The Girls U-Pick Strawberry Farm

JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass

dnabuco — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:40:41 +0000

Have some free time and $599 floating around?

Jet Blue has launched an All-You-Can-Jet-Pass where purchasers can enjoy unlimited travel from September 8th to October 8th to any city that Jet Blue flies to. Jet Blue flies to 57 cities and has over 600 daily flights – including some tropical destinations like Puerto Rico, Cancun, Aruba, Jamaica and the Bahamas!

It will be interesting to see who buys the pass and where they use it to travel to.

The offer ends on August 21st, so hurry if you want to get one!

UPDATE: As of August 20, 2009, the pass has SOLD OUT.

2010 Update: The pass was brought back for 2010 travel from September 7 to October 6. As of August 19, 2010, both the $699 and $499 (restricting Friday and Saturday travel) passes have SOLD OUT.

United Airlines Breaks Guitars?? Learn from Other’s PR Mistakes

dnabuco — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:42:16 +0000

Dave Carroll was traveling on a United Airlines flight when he noticed bag handlers in Chicago throwing his Taylor guitar. Upon retrieving his luggage, he noticed the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. After months of arguments and playing the blame game, Carroll told United Air since they would not compensate him, he would retaliate and make a music video about the experience and post it on YouTube. United Airlines reponse: Go Ahead.

Result: The video has been viewed several million times and has been featured in the mainstream press worldwide. Social Media has become the online “suggestion box” for companies. A customer service mishap these days can now turn into a global sensation with social networking sites.

United finally agreed to make a donation of $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for music education for kids to make up for their mistakes.

Lesson: Respect your customers. United Airlines should have understood how important a guitar is to a musician.

Check out the hilarious video below:

Free things to do in Paris

dnabuco — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:20:00 +0000

Paris: the city of light, and also the city of an empty pocketbook. This world class city in western Europe is full of things to do, but many times at a high expense. In my junior year of college, I studied abroad in Paris. Being a student, I quickly learned how to get by on little cash and still have a lot of fun. Here are Travel Marketer’s personal favorite FREE things to do in Paris, France:

The Eiffel Tower (Tour Eiffel).

This is one of the most recognized structures in the entire world and a must when visiting Paris, however, if you want to get all the way to the top, it will cost you about 13 euros. Instead, grab a bottle of wine (you can get great wine in France for as cheap as 1 euro!), a loaf of bread, and a couple of friends and enjoy a picnic at the foot of the tower. There is often free entertainment and performances to enjoy! As an added bonus, on the hour, the tower displays a spectacular 10 minute light show.Take a look at a live shot of the Eiffel Tour at Webcams.travel.

Notre Dame:

One of the world’s most stunning pieces of architecture and the inspiration for a classic novel, this cathedral is a free treasure for tourists.

Take a walking tour. Paris has so much to see and I would spend many days walking around and discovering this very accessible city. Some of my favorite spots included: the Seine River, which slices a path through the heart of the city, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Palais Royal. On the way to and from class, I would walk through the gorgeous Luxembourg Gardens, central Paris’s largest park in the heart of the Left Bank which also houses the Luxembourg Palace.

Museums. No one can visit Paris without visiting the famous Louvre. Admission is free for all visitors on the first Sunday of each month and on July 14 (Bastille Day). My favorite museum in Paris is the Musee Rodin which features the famous statues of The Thinker and The Kiss, is also free of charge each first Sunday of the month.

Window Shop on Avenue Montaigne and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, one of the city’s priciest streets. Galeries Lafayette, one of Paris’s largest department stories, offers free weekly fashion shows on Fridays at 3 p.m. on the seventh floor. For even more window shopping, take a stroll down the Champs Elysees or Saint German.

Pay Your Respects: Pére-Lachaise Cemetery has served as the final resting place for a “who’s who” of cultural icons since 1804. Chopin, Colette, Molière, Modigliani all lay beneath 118 acres of rolling terrain. So do Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, Georges Seurat, Sarah Bernhardt, Gertrude Stein, and Jim Morrison.

With all of the free and exciting things to do in Paris, there is no reason not to visit. Visit Future Vacation s to book your trip today! -Travel Marketer

The Top Social Media Trends for Travel and Tourism: PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin

dnabuco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Last week, I attended the PhoCusWright Blogger’s Summit Workshop held at the ITB conference in Berlin, Germany.

The workshop was entitled “The Top Social Media Trends for Travel & Tourism” and featured a panel of 5 major bloggers. Each member of the panel was asked to provide his 3-5 top Social Media Trends for 2009:

Darren Cronian

Mobile
Twitter: companies are going to have to become more social and interact with the consumer
Travel companies will start using more social media

Klaus Hidebrandt

Social Media 2.0 is all about communication with the consumer. Companies need to know, understand, and execute social media at a top level.
Get your CEO or top executive involved. Employees love it. Customers love it. There is no more powerful way to humanize your brand.
The future lies in companies that adopt EVERYTHING: one brand and one media is best.

Kevin May

Twitter: 974% of traffic in UK in 2008
PR: people are thinking more cleverly in terms of PR. They are using different forms of media both online and offline for campaigns.
Crowd-sourcing: making sure you know what is happening in a network digitally.
Hyperlocal: creating niche services for a localized community

Martin Schobert

Feedback 2.0: a lot of comments, learning how to communicate with a social internet
Maps will be the new interface.
More CONTEXT: the right content offered to the right person at the right time
Do your homework. Define goals clearly with social web and have B2B conversations

Vasco Sommer-Nunes

Volume of mentions will become part of a greater measurement metrix, such as “share of voice”, to determine success in social media.
Personal publishing on the web will continue to increase, thereby increasing the share of user generated content.
Companies will react and hire a social media guy to listen, help and educate users
Cross publishing will become stronger, i.e. publishing into several communities from one web site or mobile phone.
The travel industry will embrace social media even more than other industries, because people love to talk about their vacation and show others where they´ve been!

After the panelists presented their trends, the audience was asked to interactively text in their picks to have a final list of 3. Although the majority of the panel’s trends focused on social media sites, especially Twitter, the audience’s choices end up being strategies.

Audiences Choices of Top 3 Social Media Trends with the greatest impact in the next year:

Change in Philosophy
PR using more channels
hiring a Social Media guy to increase ROI

Using Twitter to Market Your Travel Business

dnabuco — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:13:00 +0000

Twitter, the social networking and micro-blogging service, seems to be sweeping the nation. Twitter allows users to send and view others updates (called tweets) which are 140 characters in length. Like Facebook, Twitter originally started for others to be updated on the happenings of their friend’s daily lives. The main difference between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter encourages a dialogue, allowing opportunities to be built with people which would not have otherwise occurred. It has quickly shifted directions as now many celebrities have adopted Twitter, as well as businesses. Twitter is quickly becoming a communication medium of choice between companies in a variety of industries and their customers.

Twitter allows people to connect with your business on an up-to-date basis. The social media site can be used to increase your brand visibility and converse with your customers as up to the minute deals and information is posted. You can even make online Twitter coupons at twtqpon.

JetBlue, Crystal Cruises, Carnival, British Airways, and Virgin America are great examples of businesses that are using Twitter to keep customers in the know. Their Twitter posts feature sales and deals, travel tips, and current flight delays and cancellations, although Virgin America seems to be setting the bar in the Travel industry sector.

Want more travel industry Twitters? Click here for “50 great travel tweeters.” (telegraph.co.uk)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Can’t Make it to Mardi Gras? Use the Internet to take you there!

dnabuco — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Happy Fat Tuesday! This past weekend I visited one of my favorite U.S. cities, New Orleans, for the start of the Mardi Gras celebrations. If you want to celebrate and are unable to make the trip to the Big Easy, the internet has some great ways to make it feel like you are there.

Throw on some party beads and watch the parades!
Click here for a live webcam of various shots of New Orleans, as well as the parades broadcasted live. There is also a live blog that will update you on the happenings of the day.

Bon Apetite! Mardi Gras is not complete without the delicious cuisine that New Orleans has to offer. My top favorites:

Café Du Monde’s café Au Lait and beignets.

You can buy beignet mix and a can of coffee on their website.

Central Grocery muffaletta.

A typical muffuletta consists of one muffuletta loaf, split horizontally. The loaf is then covered with a marinated olive salad, then layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, emmentaler, and provolone. Click here for a fellow bloggers recipe.

Tropical Isle Hand Grenades. Known as “New Orleans’ Most Powerful Drink,” the cocktail has a sweet melon taste, is colored light-green, and comes in a plastic half-yard glass shaped like a hand grenade at the bottom, with small plastic grenades inside the container. The home mix can be purchased from their website.

And of course, no Mardi Gras is complete without king cake. A Lousiana-style king cake is a cinnamon-roll like cake inside with sugary icing with traditional Mardi Gras colored (green, yellow, purple) sprinkles on the outside. The cakes have a small plastic baby trinket inside, and the person who gets the piece of cake with it is King or Queen for the day. The top 15 places to order king cakes can be found here, although Party Palace is my personal favorite.

For more information on visiting New Orleans, visit www.NewOrleans.travel

Airline Marketing in a Recession

dnabuco — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:46:00 +0000

In the current economic downturn, the travel industry has taken a hard hit. The challenge of getting people to spend their hard-earned money on leisure travel is rising by the day. Convincing people to travel has now come down the strategic marketing plans set forth by industry leaders. To me, airline marketing has always been interesting to observe. Each company takes their own individual approach to grab the consumer and convince them that they need to fly a specific airline. Two airlines have launched marketing campaigns geared toward the recession.

JetBlue has recently launched a program that refunds plane tickets to those who are laid off from their jobs before the flight. “JetBlue launched the program not because customers were asking for refunds, but because the airline has noticed that passengers are waiting to the last minute to buy tickets, a sign of nervousness about their finances.” (Wall Street Journal)

Under its new Promise Program, customers who book flights between Feb. 1 and June 1, 2009, and lose their job on or after Feb. 17 may be eligible for the refund. JetBlue’s fares are usually nonrefundable, but with the Promise Program the traveler listed on the itinerary can request a refund for up to nine customers traveling on one reservation.

“JetBlue is committed to helping customer’s book stress-free travel plans, and based on their feedback we made adjustments to our refund policy to allow them to book with confidence,” Robin Hayes, executive vice president and chief commercial officer for JetBlue said in a statement. “This price promise allows them to book early and take advantage of our low fares without worrying they will lose their money if they need to cancel their trip due to job loss.”

JetBlue’s latest marketing effort is also a great idea for businesses that are cutting back on business travel. With the Promise Program, customers will be able to feel comfortable about making travel arrangements even with rumors flying around the office about layoffs.

On the other hand, Allegiant Air is taking an opposite tactic from JetBlue by expanding their service and targeting a niche market of smaller cities throughout the country. The airline was the most profitable domestic carrier in 2008, and wants to continue to grow. Allegiant believes that small-town Americans will continue to buy getaways to escape from the daily grind.

So in the end, which marketing plan will win? The one that promises financial security or the one that offers a chance to leave all worries behind for a few days? Only time will tell.

An Introduction

dnabuco — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:40:00 +0000

As way of an introduction, I will tell you a little bit about the purpose of this blog and the origins of it. Starting at a young age, I was exposed to different cultures and creative outlets. My father is from Brazil, my mother American, and I spent my first few years of my life living in South America before moving back to the states.

I have always loved traveling and exploring the world and experiencing new places. I always knew I would someday need to be in a career which allowed me to think outside the box and continue my passion for traveling. I received my BA with a double major in Psychology and International Marketing, and a minor in Sociology. While in college I studied abroad in Paris, France, which was a great and unforgettable experience. Now, I am working in Marketing for a Travel and Internet company and plan to blog about tips and tricks to Internet marketing, specifically, but not limited to, the travel industry. I will focus on topics such as digital marketing, media solutions, and SEO. Please check back soon and feel free to leave comments and feedback!