Category Archives: travel

Extraterrestrial Tourism and the Alien Abduction Roller Coaster

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Extraterrestrial Tourism really is considered a niche market, but it’s not really named properly as that would involve visits to other worlds. Roswell New Mexico is the best example of ET Tourism. For decades the city of Roswell has based much of its tourism economy on the mysterious crash back in 1947 that some claim was an alien spacecraft with aliens aboard. Most Roswell conspiracy theorists also hold that the US Government covered up the evidence of the Alien landing.

Now Roswell is stepping up to the Extraterrestrial Tourism plate with a new amusement park that will feature an Alien Abduction Roller Coaster ride as well as other Alien themed rides and attractions.

I just hope they give free parking for all the UFOs that are sure to land there regularly to ride the ET coaster.

Local Voices Needed – Apply Here… or There….

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Got a blog? Want to start blogging?

Locals know the best things to do, places to eat, and more about their regions. We’re looking for a few … hundred thousand … who want to tell the world about their own town in their own way.

Yes, we want you!

Click here to sign up

Hey, what kind of nut would write a pitch like THAT?  Oh, it’s me.
I’m still not sure if Facebook is the best platform for the local blogger project I’ll soon start in earnest but it seems like a good place to start the search for other local voices.

One great aspect of blogs and the internet is the ability to connect locals to visitors before, during, and after a travel experience.   I’m big on blogging and travel and would love to join with others who share that interest in an effort to eventually “cover the globe” with local voices from every region.

I think the key to success will actually be the *lack* of formal structure for the project, though obviously it’ll be helpful to have a site that will allow easy navigation to the various blogs and will mashup travel information about the regions along these lines.

P.S.  If you are interested in this and don’t want to join facebook or don’t have a blog yet that’s fine – send me an email: jhunkins@gmail.com   I think we can find a good way for  everybody who is interested to participate in the project.

Blog Travel and why YOU should be blogging!

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One thing I *really* like about blogs is keeping up with your friends in some detail about their life and experiences, especially when they are doing really interesting stuff like traveling to cool places.   Sure, using legacy snail mail and picture media you might get a postcard or a few emails or a christmas card, but you can’t beat blogs for really tuning in – for bringing some depth to heretofore superficial social experiences.

Anne and Keith are in Italy teaching at Sienna and Keith’s started blogging their adventures in earnest at his site WonderfulItaly.com.  The main downside of him blogging is simply getting envious about not roaming around the Tuscan countryside.

Jeremy’s over in Hangzhou China talking Yahoo and internet stuff and has posted some neat pix at Flickr as well as comments about China at his blog.

People often ask me “why should I start a blog” and I think one of the best reasons is that through blogging you can keep up with your friends and other interesting folks  on their terms AND on your own – ie they post what and when they like and you can read what and when you like.    When you are with them in person it’ll be easier to cut to the most important stuff, and blogging brings a kind of depth to the life experience for both reader and writer that is not accessible using the normal small talk and christmas card method.

So why blog?   For friends, family, and for YOU!

Lancaster, PA

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Wow, what’s going on with Lancaster Pennsylvania? It seems like there is a major piece of bad news coming out of there every few months or so. The horrible murders of the Amish children, then the Floyd Landis Tour de France doping scandal, and now the brutal murder of a family in their home.

We are having our big family reunion this year just down the road from Lancaster, which in my prior visits has always felt like a fine rural area with gently rolling green hills, rich farmland, and nice people.

I think it’s a news fluke that Lancaster has been in the news for bad stuff so often over the past few years and I’m going to keep looking forward to the trip.   In fact I’d encourage you to visit this wonderful place – a delightful blend of the very old and the very new.   Lancaster Visitor Center.

Black Holes = Worm Holes = Dimensional portals to new universe? Maybe….

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You’ve got to love it when highly respectable, real science collides with science fiction as in this recent study suggesting that black holes may actually be worm holes that connect our universe to others.

This appears to be consistent with the provocative ideas in string cosmology that suggest the possibility of many parallel universes existing together without much interaction between them. Some string theorists think that gravity – a very weak force in terms of the universe – may represent a force that exists simultaneously in several universes and thus could possibly be used to communicate between them.

It’s very hard to wrap your head around ideas relating to dimensions in space that are not what we commonly experience as the three physical dimensions plus time, but these extra dimensions are becoming a key part of the way physicists describe the underpinnings of the universe. Perhams more importantly, they are … fun and educational!

Web 2.0 adapter for Grandparents is needed.

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Don has a very insightful look at trends in Web 2.0 based on a couple of recent conference experiences.  What I found particularly interesting was the graph which correctly noted the large missing link in Web 2.0, which is a simple (ideally I’d say a seamless, one-click) way to integrate the tons of independent content “silos” out there with the collectivce online body of work that falls under the Web 2.0 categories.

For example wouldn’t it be interesting if you could unleash a program that would scour your computer for pictures and writings, then ask you “do you want to send this out to the world?”, then shoot stuff off to the legions of online content repositories that might have an interest in that topic?      Despite the growth of online photo sites like Flickr, I bet they contain less than 1 in 1000 of all existing digital pictures.

Some tech people will say “hey, I already make sure the stuff I want online makes it online”, but tech people often forget how averse a lot of regular folks are to the interactive part of the internet, let alone to figuring out how to place their own stuff online.    This aversion won’t change anytime soon, and ironically it’s often the people with the stuff of the least interest who are mose likely to post it online.  For example gossipy myspacy party pix are plentiful where an old-timers thoughtful travel recollections often are relegated to Christmas letters and photo albums only found in a dusty old file cabinet.  Unleashing this treasure trove of experience and wisdom would be neat.

Governor’s Tourism Conference

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Oregon’s premier travel event is the Governor’s Tourism Conference. This year it was held in Sunriver, Oregon (about 15 miles south of Bend, Oregon) where the resort did a simply super job with food, accommodations, and hospitality.

My first Oregon Tourism conference was at Sunriver ten years ago and I think I’ve only missed one since then. It was great to catch up with folks I don’t see much since I stopped my internet marketing work with for the Southern Oregon Visitors Association a few years ago.

Although it’s been ten years since the internet became a key travel marketing tool, it’s still remarkable how print advertising remains the key marketing vehicle despite ROI measures that would make any truthful marketeer blush. Print enthusiasts, and even some silly “online marketing experts” have kept alive the myth that print ads lead to more than a trivial amount of web activity. I now attribute this to the fact people simply do not understand how cheap Pay Per Click advertising is as a destination marketing tool. It’s not uncommon for places to spend *several dollars* for a single print ad lead where a similar lead could be obtained online for as little as a nickel. I’d assumed years ago this gap would push people to PPC but as with most human behavior there is a huge level of psychological momentum that prevents them from changing behaviors. This is even true for huge companies like Ford that is *finally* moving to a much bigger online spend after a study showed how cost effective the online advertising has been for Ford.

One of the best presentations was from Golf Digest where even their head of research misconstrued results from a study of print vs online activity in planning golf related travel. He noted comparable numbers for the categories of “used print info” and “used online info” and suggested this meant that print advertising was therefore comparable to online in terms of effectiveness. This is technically true but it seems to me *extremely* misleading in terms of return on investment for advertising which won’t be comparable at all (they did not study this). Online you can target an ad and get *global reach*, all for pennies per click. With magazines you’d have to spend tens of millions *per ad* to get comparable reach on your message. Thus, as a marketer if you are deciding whether to run an ad in Golf Digest or run a comparably prices online campaign it is very likely that in almost all cases the PPC campaign will outperform the print one.

Walk of Fame, Hollywood Boulevard

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Walk of Fame, Hollywood Boulevard

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
This was Sunday, Monday was Disneyland, and today we spent the morning over at a BIG sound stage built for the film “Semi Pro”. Mostly just sitting around while the director reviewed and set up scenes, but luckily we got placed right behind the basket for some shooting so we might actually be in the picture cheering on “our” team (out in 2008). I’m sworn to secrecy about the score and the shot with 17 seconds left in the game. We had to say we’d not talk about the scenes or take any pictures.

Graumann’s is big and impressive – the hand and foot prints in front
are neat. There’s a tour of Grauman’s Chinese Theater aka Mann Theatres but we did not do that or the Kodak Theatre tour which seemed too expensive at about $15 for a half hour.

As we arrived in Hollywood on Sunday, “Meet The Robinsons” was premiering across the street at the El Capitan but we couldn’t make out any stars as they walked down a red carpet past some media.

It was cool today though to be “close” to Will and Woody as they
filmed for Semi Pro.

Overall I get the idea LA is NOT really very glamorous unless you go eat at the fancy restaurants. Hollywood and Vine is much improved with Kodak Theater and a big shopping mall structure, but Hollywood
Boulevard is still pretty dumpy with Tattoo places and such. Funny
how the big rich stars and the grimy mean streets along Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards seem to coexist so comfortably here in the smoggy sun of Southern California.