Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category
Mar
4
You’re on your way up to Tahoe to do some skiing. The roads are clear and you’re rolling, fully stoked for all the new snow. You know the weather should hold, but you’ve just GOT to double check. You whip out the iPhone, dial up a ski resort website to get the current conditions. Sure you’ve got the latest and greatest mobile web browsing device, but even the best designed websites aren’t super functional when you decrease the screen size by 1000 pixels, take away the keyboard and reduce all those flash graphics to little F icons. So you hunt and peck and eventually get the info you need, or maybe you give up and just drive a little faster…
Mobile devices are connecting to the web at increasing rates. With high speed broadband making browsing, searching and downloading faster and new devices making it easier, we’re seeing more and more users browsing our client’s sites from iPhones, Palms, Blackberries and other devices and smartphones.
But often the needs of a person browsing from a mobile device and the device itself are quite different than what the site was originally designed for. From what we have observed, such is the case with destinations and ski resort websites, and so a mobile site is in order…
Heavenly Ski Resort Mobile Site
We’re happy to announce the launch of the
SkiHeavenly Mobile site! Just visit
skiheavenly.com on your iPhone or other mobile device and you’ll automatically be redirected to a page where you can choose from one of two
mobile site formats which work best on different devices. Or, if you want to stay on the full site you can select that and go back to the home page and continue browsing.
From our experience, the needs of a mobile website user can vary. The heavenly mobile site feeds up mostly information in the form of news, conditions and media updates, and resort info and data. The result is an easy access look at the mountain from anywhere your data plan works, whether that is from a South Lake Tahoe hotel WiFi Link or the 3G network in downtown San Francisco.
Mobile Site Features
Standing in line at a South Lake Tahoe starbucks and want to see which part of the mountain has the best (or worst) weather? Click over to the heavenly mobile webcam page and check them all out.
Want to know the latest Heavenly snow totals? It’s right on the front page with the temp and current weather. Click through to read the daily conditions narrative, and if you need even more click through to view the full report on the main site.
While you’re chilling in the airport waiting for your connecting flight, keep the stoke burning and check out the latest Heavenly TV videos from the terminal over the free airport WiFi. The blog page also features more content from Twitter and the Heavenly Blog so you can stay up on the latest wherever you are.
Click “Info” and you’ll find a simple text list of information links for Conditions, Directions, Roads, Tickets, Lodging, Ski School, Trail Map and Contact. It’s all really simple and loads up quickly. The “Roads” link on the info page takes advantage of nvroads.mobi and the CalTrans mobile road info search page.
The mobile site even has an iPhone icon image so you can bookmark it to your home screen like an app on your iPhone or Android phone. So check it out and let us know what you think!
Tahoe Mobile Sites
-Mike
Posted in Mobile
Feb
24
Tomorrow Jennifer Buch and I will be meeting up with our CEO, David LaPlante in Washington DC for DMAI’s Destination Showcase. David will be giving a presentation on the effective use of web technology and social media for destination marketing and event planning and management. Really looking forward to seeing all of our nation’s great destinations and the individuals who help fuel their tourism economies in attendance. If you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below.
Destinations Showcase Conference & Expos are the meeting industry’s largest forums exclusively bringing attending corporate, government, association, and independent meeting planners together with exhibiting destination marketing organizations (DMOs and CVBs) from the U.S. and beyond.
The details of David’s presentation are:
Meeting Expectations with Greater Integration & Multi-Channel Marketing Programs.
Sponsored by MPI
Never before have there been so many technology-based tools and strategies available to meeting planners. Never before has there been so much confusion and consternation on where, when, what, and how to use them. Compounding the challenge is the disparities between what “IT and Operations” leaders feel are appropriate, and what you need at your fingertips today.
In this session, David LaPlante, CEO of online brand marketing and messaging technology company, Twelve Horses will share with you stories and strategies of how to “sell technology” to your management and what strategies are having a meaningful and competitive impact today.
In this session, you’ll learn about:
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Comprehensive solutions for integrating and automating.
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What new technologies successful and leading meeting planners are relying on.
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How to sell the adoption of new technology to your management.
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Avoiding common pitfalls of implementing new technology.
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Proven strategies for building a better online collaboration.
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Leveraging latent and persistent online conversations to drive greater attendance and interaction.
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Deriving new revenue streams for your events with new technologies.
Once again, if you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below. We look forward to seeing you there!
Posted in Email, Marketing, Member Orgs, Mobile, Podcast, Social, Web & SEO
Dec
15
I had twins not too long ago, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still like to get out for the occasional concert, sports game, or event. In fact, I probably need time out now more than ever.
And even though I have to shell out a pretty penny when you take into account the babysitter, food, tickets, etc, there is one thing that inevitably irks me to no end – excessive ticket fees. Why do I have to pay another 25-30% on top of what the ticket costs? And “convenience fee”? For what? Great master of tickets didn’t find me a babysitter or convince my wife that we should go!
That’s why I was completely behind Twelve Horses’ initiative to develop their own ticketing system.
The ticketing industry is in need of a major overhaul.
75-90% of the market is run by 2 entities. You know who they are. Not only that, these entities have been known to command upwards of 25-35% of a venue’s total ticketing revenue. Their convenience fee model (and the model many copy cats have duplicated) often takes a minimum fee plus a percentage. I just can’t understand why these guys get a larger fee for selling a $250 as they do for a $20 ticket. Plus, the whole “convenience fee” is only convenient for the ticketing system provider collecting it, and definitely does not endear the purchaser to them or the venue they are servicing.
The openness of these systems is a huge pain point as well. They all need to take a lesson from the SaaS and web development revolution. Open standards and plenty of interoperability is just what the doctor ordered. Think about all the travel portals and concierges that need to sell tickets from different venues and providers. It’s just better for the consumer to allow these exchanges. I think you will see the industry go through a standardization to accommodate this in the future.
And for all you venue and event management people out there, ask yourself why these big ticketing providers should get their branding material all over your event? Why can’t you control the branding and even throw in a few sponsors’ branding as well?
For these reasons, and many others, Twelve Horses has launched its own ticketing platform. We are embracing the ideals of fairness, openness and control. Give me a shout, I’d be happy to show it to you…
Posted in Mobile, Web & SEO
Sep
5
In this episode of Horse Power, Rob Bynder, Stanley Hainsworth, and Gene Keenan discuss the role of design in branding and how that relates to global business with Twelve Horses CEO, David LaPlante. It was a really interesting discussion and was held in the library up at Sierra Nevada College on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Listen to the full audio recording of the talk or read the full transcript below.
For more great events from the Reno Tahoe Chapter of the AIGA, see renotahoe.aiga.org.
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Posted in Finance & Banking, Horse Power Podcast, Member Orgs, Mobile, Podcast, Reno-Tahoe, Service Industry, Social, Web & SEO
