Travel Industry News - Features

If loyalty is defined as being faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution or product, then there seems to be a certain amount of infidelity in the workplace these days.

Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli's most recent book -- Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It -- has inspired a reaction from just about every group with a stake in today's workforce: employers, employees, recruiters, academics and media commentators. Cappelli debunks the oft-repeated argument from employers that applicants don't have the skills needed for today's jobs. Instead, he puts much of the blame on companies themselves -- including their lack of information about hiring and training costs -- and on computerized applicant tracking systems that can make it harder, not easier, to find qualified job candidates.

In 1970, the economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman published an article in The New York Times Magazine titled, 'The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.' In the article, he referred to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs as 'hypocritical window-dressing,' and said that businesspeople inclined toward such programs 'reveal a suicidal impulse.' Even four decades ago, at a time of growing public concern for the environment, his views represented the general skepticism and contempt with which many in Corporate America viewed CSR.

The global economy is uncertain at best, travel is a hyper-competitive landscape with new services and products are launching daily and the travel consumer becoming ever more savvy, fickle and demanding. In this environment how can travel companies possibly survive, let alone thrive?

When Facebook finally decided to unveil its new Timeline for company pages, they gave page owners (marketers, to be more specific) a whole new playing field with lots of new tools and only 30 days to adapt and adopt the new format.

The current multi-channel, multi-screen, 'always on' world is giving rise to a new form of storytelling, dubbed 'transmedia,' that unfolds a narrative across multiple media channels, including television, movies, comic books, video games and Twitter feeds. Look at how the worlds of Stars Wars and Indiana Jones have expanded beyond the original movies, says Andrea Phillips, who got hooked on transmedia in 2001 when she encountered a mysterious website railing against sentient robots. Phillips, now a full-time transmedia author, talked about the phenomenon, its allure and what it means for the future of marketing during a recent interview with Knowledge@Wharton.

Kees Kruythoff, president of Unilever's North America cluster, has traveled the world for the multinational consumer goods company. During a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture, he shared the unique lessons he has learned from leaders in each country and discussed the importance of infusing the workplace with passion.

Well over a month ago I wrote an article about a new definition for the word 'Destination' – a most worthy word in our world of Hospitality and Tourism.

To Jody Foster, disruptive people in any type of organization - from a big corporation to a major health center - can poison the atmosphere for everyone with whom they interact.

IN-DEPTH: Every time VisitBritain communicates through social media the national tourism agency measures engagement levels and constantly seeks opportunities to seed relevant content that resonates in its key markets. VisitBritain looks at how to model the evaluation of the social media space to ensure it delivers highly engaging content and drive traffic through contextual offers to opportunities to convert, says Philip Taylor, Head of Digital, VisitBritain.