When I was traveling into Vietnam’s most out-of-the-way pockets in 2005, reporting for National Geographic’s first travel book on Vietnam, I would ask my guides about sightings of the region’s most charismatic animals. Outside Kontum, gazing at the distant peak of Chu Mom Ray, my guide Nguyen Do Huynh, told me that 5-6 tigers were...
As if any of us needed further proof that China was the verge of reorienting the East-West axis, check out this first line from a recent Travel + Leisure feature: “China is in the midst of what may be the biggest building boom in human history, surpassing the creation of the Pyramids and the Great...
During the second semester of my senior year in college, I sold a story about a postman who delivered mail by boat all over the lake I lived on in Belgrade, Maine – Great Pond. This man, Dave Webster, was a classic Maine Yankee and was the inspiration for the mailboat man in the Henry...
Nothing, right? Cause you’ve hired them. You pay them money. They work for you. It’s their job to generate media whilst you go about your business. Right? Actually, nothing could be further from the heart of a healthy relationship between an agency and a client. Unless there’s regular contact between key decision-makers who are vested...
We all want our press releases to go viral. For the wire services to pick them up. For Yahoo to run the news on their home page. For Google to elevate our news prominently on their News homepage. But this rarely happens. What does happen? Well, according to one recent study by RealWire, four media...
In the New York Times today, there’s this about hoteliers and TripAdvisor Reviews. The gist of the article is this: That some hoteliers are mad to the point of boiling mad, lawsuit mad, about hotel reviews that are so negative and so uniformed they border on libel. The temptation to go overboard on the negativity is always...
In the Atlantic this month, there’s an insightful article about a realm of tourism with a weird name — thanatourism. The thana part comes from the Ancient Greek, thanatos, which means ‘personification of death.’ This word isn’t in the dictionary yet, but Wikipedia’s got it. The Atlantic article explored Cambodia’s embrace of thanatourism, from Tuol...
For ten years, I worked as an editor in the medical equipment industry. The big service providers often talked about what it was that distinguished them from other providers. What was this, pray tell? Service. They provided more meaningful service. That was humbug. More than humbug, it was lazy. There was a failure of imagination...
The Travel Mole reported the results of a PR survey today that shed meaningful illumination on the needs of travel writers. The survey, conducted by an Australian media consultant, debunks many of the standard operating procedures in the hospitality industry. To wit: Just 8% of travel writers “want” press packs or press kits on paper. And with...
Last week, Conde Nast Traveler magazine revealed the results of its Reader’s Choice Awards for 2010. We at Balcony Media were thrilled — three of our clients in Vietnam made the list — but not all that surprised. I lived in Southeast Asia for three years. Vietnam for two. During that time, a smattering of friends and...
