For decades, airlines have watched their fares sell at commodity prices as consumers increasingly enjoy the expanse of online options. Settled into a routine of paying commissions to sell their own inventory to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), airlines were generally happy to pay up as there had never been such an accessible way of reaching …
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In the 1989 sports-movie classic “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner builds a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield and magically meets the “Shoeless Joe” Jackson and the rest of the 1919 Chicago White Sox – better known as the Black Sox for fixing the World Series. The scandal symbolized the loss of innocence in sports …
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Even though technology continues to revolutionize every aspect of our personal and commercial lives, some things are still unavoidable: death, taxes and crappy air travel. Airline disruption? That’s unavoidable, too. Earlier this year, United Airlines faced a public relations disaster after airport police, at the carrier’s request, violently removed a passenger from an overbooked flight. The …
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The rise of Donald Trump and the troubling dynamics of our rapidly changing political environment have added several new phrases to the national discourse: “Fake news” is one of them, “alternative facts” another. The latest unfortunate addition to the repertoire (this one coined by alt-right media activist Jack Posobiec) is “reality journalism”… which of course …
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In our ‘Internet of Things’ era, consumers and online businesses engage in a continuous, invisible exchange of data every day. As any privacy-minded Internet user understands, however, the complexities of that exchange are nearly impossible to navigate – even on a one-to-one basis, with a trusted brand – since companies’ data collection and usage policies …
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If you still think there’s no such thing as bad publicity (ask our president), a quick review of Silicon Valley’s “woman problem” should set you straight. For as long as I can remember, the Bay Area has been ground zero for a wealth of systemic issues related to women’s experiences in the technology sector. The …
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Since Airbnb’s debut in 2008, the home-sharing startup has gone from nuisance to nemesis for the hotel industry. For nearly a decade, hospitality executives largely dismissed the impact Airbnb would – or rather, could – have on their businesses. As recently as 2014, two industry leaders played down the threat (or perceived lack thereof) posed …
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Over the past few years, we have seen a steady growth of mobile payments across all industries. In a study last November, 93% of consumers surveyed by Deloitte reported using their smartphones for “shopping.” By that measure, shopping is the number two activity (second only to work) for which consumers use their mobile devices. Today, …
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Advertising Age recently published an opinion piece positing that empathy is “picking up steam” and likely to become an official marketing buzzword for 2017. Like many themes I’m seeing this year, empathy (in the context of advertising and marketing) is both a visceral reaction to our collective political anxieties and a fallback for brands when …
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There is a number – 72 – that I can’t get out of my mind. It’s the percent of airline loyalty programs ‑ 72% – that claim to have been victims of fraud. I’ve used this number before, most recently in an article in which I shared a few thoughts about loyalty program fraud. The …
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Most progressives will agree that we’ve been treated to a cornucopia of PR gaffes on an almost weekly basis during the last 18 months. It could be longer -‑ I’ve become immune to “that” noise, so it was with somewhat sick delight that I started following United Airlines’ recent PR cluster when a gate agent …
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The monetary value of loyalty programs continues its global ascent. In the U.S. alone, the current stored value of loyalty currency stands at approximately $50 billion, by some estimates. That’s an impressive number. Here’s another: Nearly three-fourths (72%) of all airline loyalty programs have been hacked or defrauded in some way, according to a survey …
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