Look Who's Blogging

Dan finally succumbed to the vicious flu bug which seems to have felled half my office this week, so the charge of blogging rests with me. Always a daunting task, but one must blog on. As I thought about what I might ‘blog’ today, what kept coming to mind was, well, blogs. It seems like everyone is blogging nowadays. The President of Iran recently blogged a Merry Christmas message, the Prince of Wales offered up a day in the life of HRH, and Posh (sorry, Mrs. Beckham) shared her various ramblings on L.A.: it’s officical – blogging’s gone mainstream.

Once the “domain of angst-ridden teens and doomed presidential candidates”, according to Fast Company, there are now well over 2 million bloggers tap-tap-tapping away- never during work hours of course. Blogging has further democratized the sharing of information. In a world where many feel increasingly isolated by technology, blogging has a grassroots, town hall feel to it. Sort of the Speakers Corner of the 21st century. No longer is the act of writing relegated to the rarified and qualified (read authors, journalists and academics). Every Tom, Dick and Mary Kate & Ashley can share their latest pearls of wisdom. What thankfully used to be confined to a tattered and private little black book is now published for the world to see.

Inevitably enough, with the utterance of ‘grassroots’, Corporate America’s ears perk up. What? A CHEAP marketing channel? And so now, it seems, amidst all the fervent blogger-auteurs, every industry is getting ‘hip’ to the blog movement.

The travel industry has embraced blogging with a fervour not seen since the airline industry invented “revenue management”, and made charging wildly different prices for the exact same seat a respectable and normal practice. Nowadays, thousands of intrepid travelers are chronicling their adventures with the help of sites such as travelblog.org, travelblogs.com and travelpod.com. Many are painfully dull –the literary equivalent of sifting through thousands of (someone else’s) travel photos. Some entrepreneurs have cleverly turned personal ramblings previously relegated to postcards into lucrative business ventures. Last weekend I read about 3 different globetrotters who have scored various corporate endorsements based on their writings. Bliss! This proves there IS a way to combine soul-fulfilling travel with pocket-filling cash. (Anyone out there looking to endorse me?). Forbes has even compiled their “best of” list of travel blogs.

Hoteliers have latched onto blogging as an informal (and inexpensive) channel with which to communicate with (and subtly market to) their guests. Hotels seeking to differentiate themselves from their competition, or to establish their ‘cool cred’, have all started blogging. We added the popular “GM’s Blog” to the Opus website in 2006. No marketing spin here: our blog gives guests and curiosity-seekers a peek behind the luxurious and implacable façade of the hotel. Where else can you read the real life antics of misbehaving drag queens or ice cold divas? (Of course I remain convinced the real lure of our blog is the intimate look inside the life and times of the sales and marketing department. Who wouldn’t want to read about that?!)

One of the most recent and alarming additions to the hotel blog community is Bill Marriott’s blog. At 75, and a self-confessed Luddite, Marriott has become a prolific blogger. (To give begrudging credit where it's due, he has quite a following of readers.) With Marriott blogging about the history of his hotel chain it’s clear to blog is now the norm . Clearly to stay ahead of the pack we need to come up with something new now. Maybe weekly podcasts from the Admin offices of Opus? Hm, no. That would entail maintaining a tidy office and eradicating all the tell tale open cookie and chocolate boxes littering our desks. Or perhaps vlogs (video logging) from guestrooms? I hear certain hotels in Vegas have live feeds beaming from poolside to website. Now THAT could prove interesting.

(Dan will be back next week!)