Hi WAYNers,

It’s Daga taking over the blog this week.

Here at WAYN HQ, we hope that you are having a good start into the week  :)

There’ve been quite a few things going on lately that kept us pretty busy, so let me take you on a little tour and show you our new great offerings and campaigns. I hope and trust you’ll enjoy it!

New Profile Skins, Gifts, eCards

Another set of beautiful and inspiring Profile Skins has been added to South Africa’s sponsored section. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet – have a go! They’re fun, colorful, free, and you might have a hard time deciding which one to apply to your profile… Simply go to your profile and choose one you like the most from our selection panel.

Also some beautifully designed eCards and Gifts can be found on the site for those of you who like to make your WAYN friends happy sending them virtual souvenirs.

Select your favorite eCard from Travel category, select friends you want to send it to, and type in the message. Or choose a Gift, add a lucky person (or more), and a few words to go with the Gift – simple as that!

Don’t forget to check out latest WAYN Offers

We have redesigned the WAYN Offers page to make it even more user friendly. Make sure to add it to friends and be always up to date with tons of amazing travel deals. Check out current WAYN Offers here.

WAYN Meet People App

We are also very happy to announce the release of long-awaited Meet People App. Solely created by our developers the WAYN Meet People App allows you to connect with like-minded folks based on where you are, where you want to go and what you love to do. You can start exploring innovative ways to customize your WAYN experience: meet people, get instant view on your selections and matches, check your messages and control your notifications on the go. To download the App from Android Market go here. Tap on Meet People, log in to WAYN, and get started! And not to worry if you’re an Apple enthusiast – iPhone App is about to be launched soon, so be patient

Valentine’s Day

Love is in the air and with this in mind we have prepared a special WAYN background to keep you in a romantic spirit Having the occasion we would like to wish all of you a Happy Valentine’s Day and lots of love on the 14^th of February and always!

I think that’s enough for an update for one blog entry!

Remember we’re always open to incorporating new ideas, so if there’s something you think would work great on the site, write us an email to ideas@wayn.com.

Take care and chat soon!

Daga

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WAYN signs three year, multi-million dollar advertising deal with South Africa Tourism

Under the terms of the deal, WAYN will promote South Africa to its 17 million strong membership, growing awareness and driving product via a dedicated microsite on the WAYN platform. The deal also incorporates a research element, giving South African Tourism (SAT) up to the minute statistics on its audience, as well as a competition that will run on the site.

The deal is an extension of a partnership that has existed between WAYN and South African Tourism since 2009, and is testament to WAYN’s key role within the travel and lifestyle vertical as the foremost conduit between brands and consumers. SAT has previously run other campaigns on the WAYN.com platform, most notably the ‘Face of South Africa’, a competition- similar to Tourism Queensland’s ‘Best job in the world campaign’- to find a face for SAT’s promotions in 2009, which proved to be a phenomenal success with over 20,000 applicants in just 3 weeks of the competition opening.

William Price, Head of e-marketing at South African Tourism, stated: ‘WAYN is the biggest travel and social media platform of its kind in the world, and our partnership with WAYN makes sense for many reasons. It gives us access to the broadest global demographic and direct access to the very people we want to invite to come and experience the amazing destination that South African is.’

The campaign will see the promotion of South Africa as a travel destination within user journeys on the site. By interacting on the platform according to interests such as ‘Going on Safari’ or ‘Wine tasting’, members are directed to the South Africa page on WAYN, where a wealth of information about engaging in that particular activity in South Africa can be found.

As a result, the South Africa profile has already collected 230,000 fans, contributing to SAT’s 7th position on WAYN Insights’ list of Top 10 socially engaged DMOs (see the article below). This has enabled SAT to interact with a geographically diverse audience, as highlighted by the map of the location of the profile’s fans.

To read the full press release, click here. To visit the South Africa profile on WAYN, click here.

WAYN to promote PromPeru, Western Union and Icelandair to its community of members

PromPeru, the DMO responsible for promoting Peru globally; the global leader in money transfers- Western Union, and Iceland’s national carrier Icelandair have all inked advertising deals with WAYN in the last quater.

The Peru profile continues a trend of national and regional DMOs, from Fiji to Ontario to Brazil who utilise the WAYN platform to engage with a travel dedicated audience. Indeed, WAYN.com provides a platform in addition to Facebook, Twitter et al to engage with and influence millions of travel consumers, providing a tremendous boost to a brand’s visibility in the digital media space. A profile for Visit Britain will also launch shortly to complement the Love UK community on Facebook and Visit Britain’s Twitter presence.

Meanwhile WAYN is helping Western Union in its drive to rebrand the company to appeal to a much larger demographic than its traditional audience of migrant travellers. With the tag line ‘Moving money for better’, the innovative campaign gives the Western Union brand prominent contextual exposure on various parts of the site.

Brand exposure is a key element of the Icelandair profile as well, the DMO using the WAYN campaign in a wider marketing push (which includes attractive all inclusive packages to see the Northern Lights this winter) to bring travellers back to the country since volcanic eruptions caused massive disruptions to European travel last year.

WAYN to launch ‘Destination Inspirations’ – Travel E-zine in 2012

WAYN is to launch its first interactive E-zine at the beginning of 2012, which will feature the world’s top destinations for 2012. The E-zine will showcase the results of over 30,000 votes cast by WAYN’s travel focused community, sharing their favoured destinations for nightlife & entertainment, adventure and culture amongst a host of other  key travel categories, culminating in a ‘Top 10 Destinations’ summary. The E-zine shall be shared with 17m members worldwide and hosted on WAYN.com

To discover how you can feature your destination and for more information on our sponsorship packages, email nathan.easom@wayn.com or steven.wakeling@wayn.com.

Top 10 Socially engaged DMOs online

A measurement of the online clout of national DMOs, WAYN Insights- WAYN’s research arm- has tallied up the fans and followers of the profiles of travel destinations on Facebook, Twitter, and WAYN.com. It is well established that in order to engage with an increasingly mobile and digitally active audience, destination brands must be at the heart of online conversations. The study- based on the number of ‘likes’ and followers National DMOs have accumulated on their official Facebook fan pages and Twitter and WAYN profiles- seeks to gauge the size of each DMO’s social media influence.

Source: www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com, www.wayn.com

*Figures correct as of October 2011

In the latest study, Australia leads the way by a very large margin- more than 1.3 million followers over second place UK- and has done so since WAYN Insights started collecting this data.

The study found two distinct approaches to using the two most popular social media platforms. On the one hand, the DMOs for Australia and the UK each had one main page on Facebook and one main Twitter profile to communicate with their global fan base. On the other, the likes of Ireland and Japan, had multiple Facebook fan pages and Twitter profiles, each one targeting a particular geographic region or country. The fact that Australia and the UK hold the top two spots suggests that their approach may be the more successful.

Interestingly, despite the ubiquity of Facebook and Twitter, South Africa Tourism’s profile on WAYN outnumbers its Facebook fans and Twitter followers together by just under 93,000.

Snapshot Travel Trends

WAYN Insights periodically conducts comprehensive travel and lifestyle surveys of its members. The most recent survey, conducted in May 2011, gathered over 45,000 responses and the results suggest that despite the gloomy economic outlook, many members were travelling more and spending more while on holiday than they were last year.

Taken together, these results are positive news for the industry, however they must be viewed in light of prevailing wisdom that suggests that many countries are close to recession. As governments struggle to get public spending down, the jobs market stagnates and inflation continues to rise, travel will become less a priority for many consumers.

Some of the highlights of the latest study include:

• The median average length of respondents’ last trip abroad was between one and two weeks:

This contrasts well to a WAYN poll last year when just over 50% of all respondents stated that their last trip abroad was between 2 and 7 days, and the median average length of respondents’ last trip abroad was only 5 – 7 days. There has therefore been a noticeable shift towards people taking longer holidays this year.

• Over two thirds of respondents  had taken at least one trip abroad in the last 12 months; 6.6% had taken more than 10:

This too is an improvement since last year when over 42% of respondents stated that they had not travelled abroad over the previous 12 month period. The percentage of people who had taken more than 10 trips abroad last year was also less than it was this year, with only 4.2% stating they had done so.

• Over half (55.7%) of all respondents spent more than $1500 on their last trip abroad:

The willingness to spend relatively larger sums of money on travel abroad is certainly encouraging for the wider travel industry. In a WAYN Panel poll last year, 41.6% of 7300 respondents stated they spent $1000 or less on a trip abroad, so there has indeed been a marked increase in individual spending.

• Over half (55.9%) of all respondents plan a trip abroad more than 3 months in advance of travel:

The first time this variable has been measured, this is an especially interesting piece of data which confirms that the industry needs to ensure that promotional activities grab the attention of the consumer as early in the decision making cycle as possible. Social media could play a huge role here- DMOs should aim to keep their destination at the forefront of the minds of the travel audience so that when it is time to make a purchase, that destination figures prominently in the decision making process.

In conclusion, the encouragement in these sets of data may be tempered by the impending financial crises in many part of the globe. However, as has been noted elsewhere, the BRIC nations continue to buck the (economic) trend, and it is to them perhaps that the industry should turn their attention to, if they haven’t already.

Social travel pick

Visit Britain Harry Potter game on FB

Over the summer, Visit Britain leveraged the immense popularity of Harry Potter and the hype surrounding the final instalment of the boy wizard film franchise. Sitting on the Facebook platform, the game allowed fans to work their way through 8 sets of ‘puzzles’ or quizzes , with each complete ‘chapter’ enabling Harry to move closer to defeating his arch nemesis Voldemort.

On completion of the ‘final chapter’ the user’s points (or Galleons) were converted to entries to a competition to win a trip to the UK. Simple and neat, the game allowed you to enjoy some healthy competition with members of your social graph to separate the muggles from the wizards.

According to Visit Britain, over the course of the 8 week campaign, there were 25,641 people who completed the quiz and the Love UK Facebook Fan page grew in size by 161,000. See the interview with Justin Reid, former Head of Digital at Visit Britain below, for more information on the game.

The Interview  

We caught up with the former Head of Digital at Visit Britain to give his take on a range of social media issues of importance to DMOs.

Justin speaks about the London Riots and social media strategies for dealing with adverse circumstances- specifically how Visit Britain chose to engage with its audience in those 3 days of intensely negative press; the Harry Potter game that was such a success on Visit Britain’s Facebook fan page; and the latest social media platforms including Google+ and WAYN.

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Hi everyone,

It’s Naresh taking over the blog this week.

After bit of a hiatus owing to, among other things, one of the WAYN founders getting married and going away on honeymoon (see below), I thought I’d update the blog about an exciting revamp coming your way.

Pete getting married in Montenegro

 Pete in the Maldives

But first, it’s been great to see the uptake of our newly launched feature, Tips and Q&A. It certainly proved invaluable for the WAYN team when we joined Pete in Montenegro to celebrate his wedding. Thanks especially to some great night life recommendations from our members, our time in Montenegro will never be forgotten. WAYN Tips also came in handy when Pete and his new wife Aga were checking out potential honeymoon destinations!

So continue to contribute to recommendations in your favourite locations and keep spreading the knowledge!

And as for what’s in the pipeline- I don’t want to give too much away, but we’ve got an exciting new revamp in the works. There is, as usual, a lot of testing involved and roll out will be incremental- so please be patient with us- but thought I’d give you a little teaser screenshot of what’s coming your way…

Stay tuned- more to follow very shortly

And finally, I’m happy to announce we’ve had a bunch of new recruits to the WAYN team, in London and Poland- to the commercial, product and development, and support departments. More WAYNers means more hands to ensure you, our members, are able to make the most of WAYN- to enable you to meet people based on where you are and what you want to do!

Bye for now,

Naresh

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