Physical & Web mix

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Taken by Chen in Beijing

1. Supermarket On the Wall

I took this picture when I was in Beijing last year, and I remembered that it was on the wall of a subway station. Customers could shop online by scanning those two-dimension codes of productions by their mobile phones, and then the stuff would be sent to their house directly. The target market was that kind of people who didn’t have spare time to shop. Therefore, this supermarket was allowed them quickly shop when they were waiting for subways. This was so surprised me when I found it  accidentally because I could image how convenient it would be for people’s lives.   And it might be a great signal to show that the era of “Internet of things” has very closed to us.

Taken by Chen

2. A Lovely name card

In front of this name card includes several kinds of social media logos, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube, of this company. In back of this name card has its two-dimension code, so people who are interested in the card’s owner will able to find more information by scanning the code. I think the advantage of this card is enlarging the amount of information in a limited space by combining physical with the Internet.

Taken by Chen

3. Getting feedback from Facebook

I noticed that some companies pay more attention to their social media marketing tool. Their packages usually contain their social media contact information to encourage customer give them feedback or follow them on this platform. Therefore, customers have more accesses to contact these companies directly; At the same time, social media has also become a great platform for companies to collect feedback from customers directly.

Secrets about buying cheap flight tickets

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from bing travel

Because I did my travel plan for this summer, I summarized some tips about how to buy cheap flight tickets.

1, Choosing a Right date to book your tickets:

In general, one to one and half month go ahead of your trip is a good time to book ticket. Don’t book it too early or too late.

2, Choose a  Right day to book your tickets:

Trying to book your ticket on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Because there are too much business travelers book ticket on Monday, and pleasure travelers book tickets during weekends. The prices of ticket usually go up during Friday to Monday.

3. Pay attention to your Cookie (I’m not sure, if it is right…but it makes sense…)

The system will remember your Cookie. If you search a same flight several times, the price will not down because they know you want to buy it! Delete your cookie from your browser.

4. A great website: http://www.bing.com/travel

It has function of Price predictor, so you can know if it is a right time to book your flight ticket!

Such a cool trip plan!

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Finally finished my travel plan to southwest of the US in this summer! Although it need to be more specific, I am very glad to decide where and when we will be. You know, how hard it is to satisfy every travel partner into one itinerary. Share with you! Especially for people who don’t want to drive too much time and want to visit many places in one week.

Destination: Las Vegas, Grand Canyon Village, San Diego, Los Angles

Time: May 21 to May 26

Partners: other 4 girls

Day 1 ( May 21): Fly to Vegas and enjoy a wonderful nightlife in there.

Day 2( May 22): Take Greyhound to Flagstaff in the morning( 6:40am to 12:30pm). Rent a car from flagstaff to Grand Canyon Village (2 hours). Spend a night at there. Chasing the sunset, Walking under the stars, and waiting for the sunrise.

Day 3( May 23): Take the train from Flagstaff at night to San Diego.

Day 4( May 24): Enjoy the view along the way. Arrive at destination at noon.

Day 5 (May 25): Sightseeing the city and go to beach!

Day 6 (May 26): Take Greyhound to LA in the morning (2 hours). Begin one-day-trip in there.

Day 7 (May 27): Go back to home!

I know it may be rushed for someone. However, I am a traveler who enjoys more on the road. Trying different kinds of transportation in one trip should be much fun than only taking flight!

LA- Things to do

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Things to do:

From Tripadvisor.com

I typed “Los Angles” as a keyword in searching page of Tripadvisor. The system found a “Los Angeles Vacations”, including everything I can do in LA. There are many travel guides wrote by other people, and I think most of them are very good reference to decide where we will visit. Clicked into these guides, I was surprised that they are not just including introduction of attractions, but also containing rates, reviews, and even duration of visit. On the right side of these guide pages, the system was designed   thoughtfully including a map of attractions. And I think these guides are more convenient for me to plan this trip than just telling me top 10 attractions in LA.

Plan trip for summer!—LA + San Diego

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Planning trip always gives me unlimited happiness in my life, especially in this super busy April.

Captured by Chen on google map

Hotel

My friends and I would go to California after final exam week, so we started our planning last week. After decided the travel date, the next important thing is which hotel we will be.

Tripadvisor was my first choice to search hotel information. On Los Angles website page, I found that all hotels were categorized into different types. For example, Best value, Family hotels, business hotels, luxury hotels, romantic hotels, cheap hotels, and boutique hotels etc.. (LA hotel page on Tripadvisor). This function is convenient for customers when especially they don’t familiar with destinations. In this page, I surprised found that there were my 7 facebook friends had been to LA, so I decided to ask their recommendations and combine information such as location, price, amenities and online reviews. This should be called double insurance!

(To be continued…)

A “disgusting” restaurant

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I have hesitated to share this story for a long time…maybe some of people will think this is interesting, and the other will think it’s disgusting…

Three years ago, I saw an album, which topic is “Top 50 theme restaurants in Beijing”, by renren.com (a Chinese social networking website). There was one attracted me so much, and the theme of this restaurant was restroom.

…so, I tried it…

Taken by Chen

As it name, all decorations in this restaurant were about restroom…People seated on toilets and ate food which was put on plates of toilet shape. This environment was easier to give me some special imagination. So I couldn’t finish this meal and went away from there as soon as possible…

 

This story told me that social media websites could give us eWOM by different forms, such as statuses, videos, and pictures. However, these information often misleads audience having high expectation. On company side, attracting customers by social media is a good distribution, but it is also a double-edged sword. Because there is a sentence: the more you are expecting, the more you will be disappointed!

Travel memory–Hainan

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Hainan province is the southeast province in China, and people usually like to spend their winter vocations at there, which is similar with the Florida in the United States.

Hainan

Taken by Chen and chen’s dear Mom

 

My mother and I visited this place when I was a sophomore in college. It was a good memory for me because I had never thought the sea in China was blue like that. I like to plan my trip by myself, so did I this time.

 

I remember before this trip, I had collected much information from websites, including asking my friends suggestions by social networking websites and checking hotel and attractions reviews by Tripadvisor. Because winter is peak season in Hainan, lodging usually becomes a big part of cost in a trip. I remembered social media helped me save a lot of money on that because the eWOM made me to decide which hotel I would like to stay. It was a really good value hotel.

 

That happened in 2008, and I just realized that I have used social media to plan my trip for 5 years. Time flies…Haha!

My Disney planning tips

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Taken by Chen’s friend

Disney theme park is one of my favorite places to visit. There are five Disney theme parks in the world.They are in Florida, California, Japan, HongKong, and Paris. Do you know the sixth Disney theme park will open at Shanghai,China in the end of 2015? This is a really exciting news for me. One of my dream is visit all of Disney theme parks in the world. Actually, I don’t think this dream is hard to be come true.

Until now, I have been to one, which located in Orlando. I was lucky because one of my friends worked at there. Therefore, I visited there for free :)

If you haven’t been there, I would like to give you some tips:

1, Get your free Planning DVD online before your trip.

2, There are a great number of hotels around theme parks provide free shuttles.

3, After you entering theme parks, getting a free map first. Then, running to the Fast Pass machines to get your Fast Pass tickets, which can help you save a lot of time.

Have fun for your Magic trip!

Good strategy for social media & tourism!

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Captured by Chen from yelp & Tripadvisor

Today, I noticed a very interesting strategy between facebook and review websites! They combine with each other! For example, you can see your Facebook friends’ online reviews by Yelp.com and Tripadvisor. This is awesome because friends’ recommendations are more trustful than strangers’.

So, How it does work?… I found something for you!

1. Yelp.com: http://www.yelp.com/static?p=fb_yelp ( Follow this steps! It’s easy!)

2. Tripadvisor. http://apps.facebook.com/tripadvisor/ ( This teaches you how to Map your trips on Facebook)

Why it good?

There are some statistics: After Tripadvisor combines with Facebook, its (1) Average user engagement increased 20%! (2) Users connecting to TripAdvisor through Facebook were 2x more likely to contribute content than non-Facebook connected users(Information from: http://developers.facebook.com/showcase/tripadvisor/)