holidays

Guest Post by: Jo Stratmann

Hotels, tour operators and travel providers looking to cash in on winter sun and summer breaks for 2012 would do well to pay attention to the effectiveness of their social media strategy and how social media is having an impact on how their customers choose holidays.

Well, another year has all but come and gone and, sadly, so have many dreams of selling stuff at full price. So it's a good time to reprise a holiday favorite here at The Bulb, with apologies to the anonymous authors who penned it in the mid-19th century (and invented the modern idea of Santa Claus in doing so).

Also, you can listen to this post as a podcast:

Like many people I will be travelling later today. Taking one of the last trains on Christmas Eve from London to the north of England. And like many people I have spent the last few days checking the weather and the news, hoping that my train will run and I will make it on time.

The guys at Vox Pops have issued a free video showing interviews with people talking about their spending intentions this Xmas. I hope the companyt doesn’t mind but I have added it to YouTube because I thought it contained some interesting messages.

It's ten days to Christmas and we're already two days into Hanukkah, so I'm ready to call the season's retail sales:

• The worst performing stores and brands will often evidence the "best" advertising, only the results won't be their fault.
• The best sales results will come from businesses that offered low prices, and they won't get credit for any marketing success.