Traxo launches “Travel Score,” a points-based rewards system for travelers

by McLean Robbins on

You’re the ‘mayor’ of both your gym and local coffee shop, your credit and Klout scores are off the charts and you’re a platinum member of your preferred airline. Now, in addition to regularly racking up miles and points, you can also tout your new Traxo Travel Score.

Traxo, a useful web-based company that tracks all of your travel loyalty programs in one place and uses social sharing options to let you share trips across your social media friend base, today has launched their newest feature, the Traxo Travel ScoreTM, billed as “the official measure of one’s overall travel experience.”

How does it work? The company says that the score is based on a patent-pending algorithm that awards travelers a score between 1 and 100 by taking into account over a dozen travel variables that includes the number of unique states and countries visited, the total miles traveled, the total days traveled, and the total status achieved across all the various travel loyalty and mileage programs and whether the trip was confirmed by Traxo. Travelers with the highest scores will enjoy the best travel perks.”With the Traxo Travel Score, we help you display and unlock the benefits of your travel experiences beyond the perks you are already getting from individual loyalty programs.” said Andres Fabris, CEO of Traxo. “A high Traxo Travel Score rewards travelers with both bragging rights and tangible travel perks, while identifying the most valuable consumers for our corporate partners.”

In order to test the program, we set up a Traxo account and linked up our current rewards programs. While the process took a bit of time, we liked that we now only have one hub for finding our rewards activity – although it doesn’t help us when we’re entering frequent flier data on new or existing reservations. Instead, the program just tracks our existing and upcoming trips and rewards activity. Still, the program was simple and easy to use, and over 100 travel partners ensure that most all rewards programs are already in the system (we noticed Kimpton was missing, but that was it).

The travel score also promises to retroactively pull up past location from over a dozen travel and check-in services. For travel providers not yet connected with Traxo, members can manually input their trip details that are then incorporated into their scores. Going forward, Traxo does all the work, automatically weighing all travel booked into each members’ score.

But of course, no new web program is complete without some sort of reward – travelers who achieve a Traxo Travel Score of 90 and above will be eligible to win a Traxo Travel Perk like a round trip ticket on South African Airways or adventure luggage from Briggs and Riley. Travelers who achieve a score of 80 and above will earn the Traxo Travel Perk of their choice, such as free Avis or Budget car rental voucher, a free one-year subscription to Condé Nast Traveler magazine, free travel insurance from World Nomads, and free access to the Virgin America club lounge. Traxo is currently working with top travel brands to add even more travel perks.

We’re excited to see where this goes – the concept of Klout for travelers, particularly travel writers like us, would be very fun.

How to Save Money While Traveling

by Chris Owen on

Planning some business travel, a summer vacation or road trip? Using some common sense guidelines and social media tools can add up to big savings both before and during travel and make traveling a better experience.

“It’s about tradeoffs. It’s the little sacrifices we make so our money can stretch to cover the things we value most. It isn’t easy, but I’ll be happy when I’m sitting beachside without worrying that I emptied my savings account or put everything on credit to get there.” says Justine Rivero Credit Advisor for Credit Karma in Forbes.

Rivero recommends having a savings fund and a travel fund, finding a travel tradeoff (like bringing lunch to work rather than going out) and sticking to it as well as budgeting to enjoy by considering expenses when we arrive at our destination.Readily available social media tools can work very nicely into a common-sense strategy that can add to our travel fund, help with the budget and help control expenses while we travel too.

  1. Save now, travel later- money-saving offers from a variety of sources can be yours via social media platforms like DealTaker.com where by following @CouponBot on Twitter delivers instant coupons & deals by tweeting @CouponBot with a store name right after it. I got money-saving coupons by tweeting @Couponbot Delta Airlines. Airlines, Hotels, Car Rentals, Luggage, Travel Accessories and even vacation packages are also available.
  2. Follow companies on Twitter. Many offer exclusive, limited-time-only deals to their followers. I got a free case of Chobani Yogurt , delivered to my front door, by following @ChobaniNikki and signed up for even more free stuff at ILoveFreeThings.com. Tip: set up another email address just for this kind of thing to keep from getting your regular email box overloaded with offers/spam.
  3. Don’t go it alone- Knowing ahead of time what to expect in an area you are unfamiliar with is made easy with FindMeetGo where we can get in touch with other travelers from around the world, explore different trip plans, or let people know about your own future adventures. The goal: to find other open-minded travelers, such as yourself, to meet up and share costs with.
  4. Unlock deals– Using location based apps such as FourSquare and Facebook, unlock deals to save money for an upcoming trip or save while traveling. On the horizon, recent news suggests daily deal king Groupon and Foursquare are reportedly working on a partnership that would offer targeted deals based off of a users’ check-ins. That could be huge.
  5. Check In to hotels via social media to earn bonus points-Members of Best Western’s global loyalty program, Best Western Rewards, are now able to earn bonus rewards points redeemable for travel, gift cards, merchandise and more just for using the popular social media platform Topguest. Other hotel chains and loyalty programs offer this added incentive as well.

Flickr photo by katerha

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Starwood makes checking in a social affair

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Starwood Preferred Guest, the rewards program for such brands as Sheraton and Westin, just took “checking in” from the front desk to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. The hotel company is launching a new program with social media company foursquare to increase member benefits.

According to foursquare’s blog, this partnership is “the first truly global loyalty integration of its kind,” an appropriate statement for a corporate blog, of course. Here’s the upside for you: when you check in (on foursquare) while checking in (at a Starwood), you can pick up more points, get free nights and win contests.

In the past, foursquare has worked with Heineken, American Express and others, but this appears to be its first foray into travel, a natural fit for a company that has built its business around location.

Orbitz to use Facebook Send button … will you? [POLL]

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Is traveling about to get more social? Orbitz has just announced that it’s using the new “Facebook Send” button on its hotel pages, which should make it easier to brainstorm travel ideas. To me, it seems like a natural fit for family vacations and trips with friends. Using the button, you can pop a link off to a limited group of people – instead of sharing it with the world – and make plans more easily.

I’ve been watching travel and social media for a while, and to be honest, I haven’t been blown away. For all the talk of travel being a natural space for social media sharing, the marketing execution hasn’t knocked my socks off. The new move from Orbitz, however, strikes me as a step in the right direction. By taking advantage of a new Facebook feature early in the process and allowing users to self-target, the online travel agency has put itself ahead of the curve.

“Orbitz is continuing its tradition of innovation by integrating with Facebook to make the search and book experience for travel more like the actual experience of travel – social, interactive and fun,” notes Sam Fulton, Senior Vice President, Retail, Orbitz Worldwide. “With the new Facebook Send button, travelers can easily share and solicit feedback on hotels from relevant friends or groups, which ultimately leads to making a more confident and informed choice.”The Facebook Send button, of course, is applicable to more than just travel, but the Orbitz announcement indicates an early lead for the company … in a space that’s becoming increasingly competitive. With the ability to send messages and links – for specific hotels, especially – to individual friends, several friends, Facebook message inboxes and email, collaborative travel is set to become much easier.

Unsurprisingly, Orbitz already has a user dynamic in mind:

Here is an example of how the Facebook Send button works on Orbitz: Travelers planning a summer getaway to Las Vegas with a group of friends can look at individual properties, hit the Facebook Send button to message or post those options to an individual or group via Facebook or send to their friend’s email. Friends can then view a full description of the hotel property on Orbitz – including room rates, photos, maps and reviews — and discuss as a group on Facebook before selecting a hotel.

So, do you plan to use this tool to plan your next trip? Or, is it more your style to pick up the phone? Take the poll below to let us know your thoughts on this!

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The future of travel: the real impact of mobile and social media

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Even with social media and mobile technology showing incredible rates of adoption, skeptics remain. Everyone has a friend or family member who “doesn’t do” Facebook or thinks Twitter is somewhere between worthless and moronic. That said, marketing teams in the travel industry are watching these trends closely. In fact, the intersection of mobile device and app adoption with slowing social media market penetration could lead to interesting developments for the travel industry … and thus for you.

Okay, let’s start with social media take-up in the United States. Right now, 63 percent of online Americans use social media. This is only expected to hit 67.5 percent by 2013. What does this mean? The marketing folks who use social media need to do a better job of mining the online communities they already have. As you probably know, hotels, airlines and such are all over Facebook and Twitter, so they definitely fall into this trend.

Mobile device and app adoption by the travel industry’s target market is what makes this even more interesting. eMarketer reports that “nearly 25 million US mobile users will research travel information on their mobile devices before making a trip this year.” And, close to 12 million will use mobile to actually pull the trigger and book their trips.

This is just the beginning.
eMarketer forecasts that, by next year, 34 percent of smartphone users and 31 percent of mobile internet users in the United States will exploit these channels to research travel. This will extend to bookings, too, which will be made by 18 percent of smartphone users and 16 percent of mobile internet users.

“Mobile has dramatically altered the travel experience,” according to Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report, “Mobile Travel Takes Off: Emerging Trends and Best Practices for Marketers.” Elkin said, “From pre-trip planning to in-flight and on-property services to context- and location-aware destination information, mobile devices promise to transform every phase in the travel process, putting vital information-and new marketing opportunities-within hand’s reach.”

Travelers – people like you and me – are making a profound statement through our behavior. We use social media, and travel companies need to figure out how to engage us there more effectively. We use mobile devices, and they are stuck with the same challenge. We’re seeing these two trends converge, which poses an interesting problem for the travel industry. It needs to find ways to engage with us where we are most comfortable in order to get in front of emerging trends.

This is clear from Elkin’s further observations on eMarketer’s blog:

“An integrated, comprehensive approach will serve brands best,” said Elkin. “The more flexibly brands can offer to help their customers manage their travel-using a mobile-optimized website, apps and integration between mobile, online and offline channels-the more effective they will be. Mobile travelers, especially those carrying smartphones, are demanding, and expect suppliers to get it right the first time.”

On the surface, this may look like just another business trend in the travel industry, but what’s beneath it is far more important. How we travel – and plan for it – is changing. It’s nice to hear the platitudes about mobile and social media bandied about, but all that is meaningless until money changes hands. Talk is cheap, as they say, and it’s consumer behavior that provides the best indicator of what the future will look like.