I have to whole heartedly disagree with GQ on this one. Man up, put on your red sash and run like you’ve never run before. You won’t regret it …
gq:
50 Things a Man Does Not Have to Do Before He Dies
42. RUN WITH THE BULLS
Sometimes it’s the fate of a good writer to bear the blame for what he inspires a bunch of idiots to do. Hunter S. Thompson is on the hook for a generation convinced it’s charming to be a drug-addicted asshole. Jack Kerouac spawned a million annoying vagabonds. And then, of course, there’s Ernest Hemingway, who has to answer not only for reams of bad, muscular prose but also for turning the San Fermín festival, celebrated in the town of Pamplona, Spain, into a three-minute institutionalized rite of passage, offering a frisson of real danger to the proceedings without being automatically fatal. It’s worth remembering, though, that courting death is not, ipso facto, cool. If there were a contest in Toledo where you drank a bottle of Drano and saw what happened, would you be proud to tell stories about it over dinner?
No doubt that this is Abraco on 7th street in the East Village. Best coffee in NYC.
(Source: theohpioneer)
Couldn’t agree more …
(Source: skillshare)
“Fear of failure constrains you and life becomes dull. Life becomes interesting when we fail because it means we’ve surpassed ourselves..” — Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone via TED.com
Take a Deep Breath And Jump
I just got back from a long weekend skiing in Breckenridge, CO where I had the chance to push my comfort zone a bit. On the second day, we hiked to the summit and ran one of the hairiest chutes I’ve ever skied. Starting with a 10ft vertical drop, the chute quickly narrows like a funnel between two rock walls before opening up to a nice wide run.
Once in the chute, the run is no different from skiing any other on the mountain. But, taking that initial jump required a 10 minute self-pep talk. In fact, standing at the top and starring down that 10ft vertical drop was, itself, 10x scarier than physically running the chute.
It was a friendly reminder that the scariest and hardest part of many new endeavors is taking that first big jump. And, looking back, it’s never as scary as it first appears.
[video]
The Forgotten Stages of Travel
I’ve been preaching for a while now to partners and colleagues in the travel space about the “forgotten stages” of the travel experience.
It’s been my personal belief that many players are short sighted in their view of what I call the travel life-cycle - the various steps and stages a person goes through before, during and after a trip.
Today, Google published an infographic laying out, better than I ever could, these missing stages and reaffirming my belief that most companies are missing the big picture by ONLY focusing on 3 areas of the travel life-cycle:
I’ll dig into the stages I believe are missing in a minute, but first, lets talk about why this industry short sightedness exists. In general, the travel industry is divided into two main groups of players: 1) Operators (hotels, tour companies, cruise ships), and 2) Distributors (travel agencies, online booking engines like Kayak/Expedia/etc, flash sales sites).
Distributors focus on converting travelers from the Planning stage to the Booking stage, while operators focus on the Experience. This dynamic leads to a 3-stage, step-by-step process that has a defined beginning and end, as shown below:
Planning -> Booking -> Experience
However, this narrow view fails to recognize the 2 critical stages that exist on either end of the life-cycle: Inspiration and the Post-Trip High.
Inspiration being the point in which you develop an urge to travel and begin to daydream about the possibilities. And, the Post-Trip High being all feelings and actions that occur after the trip. These include the sharing of photos/stories, the feelings of depression after returning to the office, the yearning for the next vacation, etc. Oftentimes, the Post-Trip High leads directly back to Inspiration.
Inspiration -> Planning -> Booking -> Experience -> Post-Trip High -> (Back to Start)
Thinking of the travel process in this light forces us to reconstruct the entire dynamic. It is no longer 3 distinct stages, but instead a life-cycle that occurs continuously over and over again.
Google recently published an interactive infographic called “The 5 Stages of Travel” where they broke down the travel experience into the same 5 distinct stages I mention above (Google calls the 1st stage “Dreaming” and the 5th stage “sharing” which I think is short sighted as it involves much more that just sharing), with corresponding data to quantify each stage. (See breakdown below)
- Dreaming: 68% of business travelers watch travel-related online videos. Among them, 68% are thinking about a trip.
- Planning: The average traveler visits ~22 travel related sites during 9.5 research sessions prior to booking.
- Booking: 37% of leisure travelers report that the internet prompted them to book, up from 28% two years ago.
- Experiencing: 70% of business travelers check into their flights/hotel with their mobile device. Almost 1 in 4 hotel queries come from a mobile phone.
- Sharing: About 1 in 3 business travelers have posted reviews online of places they’ve been.
I believe the next-generation travel product must seamlessly merge all 5 stages into one complete experience for the customer. As a travel company, our product is not just the trip itself but the entire travel life-cycle as a whole.
More on this to come in the future…
Hard to believe that the NY Times still curates and filters its materials by “most emailed” only. Tweeted? Facebook shared/liked?
“53% of consumers plan to travel more in 2012 than 2011—an 18 percentage point increase from 2011— despite a lack of confidence in the economy. Additionally, two-thirds of travel-bound consumers plan to increase their travel budgets.” — ~ via a recent Travelocity Report. Further proof that consumers are shifting dollars away from physical good purchases to investing in “life experiences”.
(Source: brycedotvc)