BUSINESS TRAVEL
prweb | May 31, 2023
The San Francisco Travel Association has launched its largest-ever global marketing and advertising campaign, “Always San Francisco,” to promote tourism to the city. The multi-million-dollar campaign targets leisure travelers and meeting planners in major domestic markets and key international markets. It is the destination marketing organization’s first campaign to include television advertising.
Celebrating the city’s bold, inviting, and playful ethos, the “Always San Francisco” campaign features iconic locations visitors already connect to San Francisco—the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Lombard Street—and ones that showcase the city’s vibrant neighborhoods and the diversity of visitor experiences. The campaign also includes cameos by San Franciscans, such as Lady Camden of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame, artist Sirron Norris, dancers from the acclaimed AXIS Dance Company, musicians Mae Powell and Michael O’Konis, Chinatown lion dancers, and chefs from Michelin-starred Angler, to represent the talent and inclusivity the city champions.
“This is the largest campaign San Francisco Travel has ever launched due to the incredible support from the City and County of San Francisco, Visit California, and other stakeholders,” said San Francisco Travel President and CEO Joe D’Alessandro. “Tourism is vital to the city’s economic recovery, and ‘Always San Francisco’ is designed to drive increased visitation by showing the authentic San Francisco experience people love and dream about.”
San Francisco Travel Chief Marketing Officer Lynn Bruni-Perkins said, “The campaign evokes the emotional joy visitors find here. San Francisco will always be San Francisco. It is ever-changing, but the feeling of San Francisco remains constant. Its epic beauty, iconic landmarks, diverse people, and larger-than-life moments stay with you forever.”
To match the powerful and inspiring imagery, San Francisco Travel collaborated with local and San Francisco-connected musicians to reimagine Judy Garland’s beloved rendition of the classic “San Francisco” song for its campaign video.
“We chose a soundtrack that matched the campaign’s energy and uplifting message and tapped into San Francisco’s legendary local music scene to reimagine the song,” said Bruni-Perkins. “The result is a beautiful artistic collaboration true to San Francisco’s spirit.”
Campaign assets will appear in high-impact media, such as linear TV (traditional TV), connected TV (CTV), and digital out-of-home (DOOH) in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Houston.
The campaign will also have a robust digital media layer through programmatic advertising, video ads, paid social media, OTA partnerships, and earned media. A consumer sweepstakes contest in the U.S. featuring five San Francisco experiences, including an “ultimate” package with exclusive access to attractions and activities, will launch in the coming months.
The domestic campaign runs from May 30 to Oct. 22. Internationally, “Always San Francisco” digital marketing campaigns will run in Australia, India, Asia Pacific, Europe, Canada, and Mexico.
The $6 million+ campaign is funded by a sub-grant from Visit California, a grant from San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, San Francisco Travel, and industry stakeholders.
San Francisco’s tourism industry has steadily recovered since the city’s reopening in 2021. This year, San Francisco Travel has forecasted 23.9 million visitor arrivals and visitor spending of $8.9 billion, an increase of $1 billion compared to 2022.
About SAN FRANCISCO TRAVEL
The San Francisco Travel Association is the official destination marketing organization for the City and County of San Francisco. The city is one of the top tourism and meetings destinations in the U.S. and received 21.9 million visitors in 2022. Total tourism spending in 2022 exceeded $7.7 billion. The tourism industry is the largest generator of outside revenue into San Francisco’s economy and supports over 53,000 jobs.
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HOSPITALITY TRENDS
prnewswire | May 02, 2023
JetBlue Ventures and Plug and Play Tech Center announce that their partnership has once again been successful in fostering innovation and growth in the travel industry. Their partnership aims to increase collaboration in the travel tech industry as both companies discover and pair startups with commercial aviation business opportunities. Through this collaboration, they were able to create an impactful partnership between travel startup Autio, a location-based audio story app, and JetBlue.
JetBlue Ventures and Plug and Play have partnered together over the last seven years to support travel-related technologies and drive innovation. As part of their relationship, Plug and Play operates a Travel & Hospitality Program, which has allowed JetBlue to meet promising startups in the travel and hospitality sector. To support this program, JetBlue Ventures leverages its industry expertise and resources to help startups in the program succeed while also gaining access to cutting-edge technologies and ideas that can enhance the JetBlue customer experience.
Plug and Play's Travel & Hospitality program has already seen great success in connecting startups with corporate partners in the travel industry. Autio was one of the startups that participated in the Winter 2022 Program, and after evaluating their product, JetBlue determined that they would be a good fit for a pilot run in their in-flight entertainment department.
Initially launched in 2020, Autio offers an extensive library of 10,000+ stories across the entire United States and uses GPS to serve up stories based on geographic location. While many users listen to the stories on road trips, many more are using the app in other settings like walks or even traveling virtually from home. Through its partnership with JetBlue, US-domestic travelers will be able to choose Autio stories based on their flight location for the next twelve months. With over 250 stories available in 29 American destinations, customers can listen to the history of their next destination while looking out their window.
"One of the many benefits of JetBlue Ventures' partnership with Plug and Play is our ability to facilitate connections between startups and a larger corporate company. Autio's partnership with JetBlue is an outstanding example of this. Such successes are what make our partnership with Plug and Play so effective," said Stephen Snyder, Managing Director at JetBlue Ventures.
Amir Amidi, Managing Director of Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality, said, "These sorts of partnerships are exactly what our accelerator program is about. We love working with innovative companies like JetBlue Ventures who are eager to offer new and engaging benefits to their travelers and innovative startups like Autio who can adapt their B2C business to reach new audiences."
"Being part of Plug and Play's Travel & Hospitality program gave Autio an incredible opportunity to partner with JetBlue on our first in-flight integration. As a startup, having the support from Plug and Play has been invaluable as it opened the door for growth beyond our consumer subscription business and into enterprise deals and clients," said Woody Sears, CEO of Autio. "We're looking forward to continuing the momentum built upon this partnership."
You can download the Autio app on the Apple App Store today for only $36 a year and have unlimited access to all of their stories wherever you go. Also, you can hear from Kevin Costner directly on this partnership in his interview with Travel+Leisure magazine.
How Autio's App Works:
Users download the app (available in the App Store) and sign up for an account.
Users can access the curated audio story collection once signed in (guest accounts come with 5 free stories, while paid accounts at $36/year feature unlimited access).
Once users enable location access, they are ready to explore nearby stories. Once in-app, they can reveal hidden surroundings with entertaining stories based on GPS location.
While not traveling, users can still access the map of U.S. stories and toggle to choose content based on their interests.
About JetBlue Ventures
JetBlue Ventures, the corporate venture capital subsidiary of JetBlue, invests in and partners with early-stage startups innovating in the travel, transportation, and hospitality industries. The company prioritizes investments that advance the seamless customer-centric journey; reimagine the accommodation experience; next-generation aviation operations and enterprise tech; distribution, loyalty, and revenue management; and sustainable travel. Founded in 2016, JetBlue Ventures is a subsidiary of JetBlue located in Silicon Valley, California.
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FEATURES AND ADVICE
BrainHQ | March 10, 2023
BrainHQ, a brain training system, has recently announced the conclusion of its pilot study, showing that brain training can help space travel. The research was conducted with computerized brain training and Posit Science marketed it.
The researchers found that space travel has a hazardous impact on the brain because of the gravitational forces involved in liftoff and landing, radiation, microgravity, and isolation. These impacts resulted in effects like intracranial pressure, impaired vision, vestibular dysfunction, altered fluid levels in veins and arteries, white matter changes, and premature aging. They grouped the astronauts having qualities like age, education and discipline who are employees from the Johnson Space Center for the Increasing Cognitive Ability/Reserve Using Software (ICARUS) pilot study. It tested their cognitive performance through its assessments and Cognition Test Battery, a software-based test dedicated to NASA.
It trained five of these participants for about 15 hours of training, 18 sessions and over the 90 days. They improved on internal measures of its exercises with a 71% increase on average in primary performance metrics. On the NASA Cognition Test Battery, they showed 19% gains on average. With preliminary findings, the pilot study provided data and feasibility for further research.
CEO of Posit Science, Dr. Henry Mahncke said, “These are exciting results in a new area, which is literally about the New Frontier.” He added, “Whether it’s returning to the moon or colonizing Mars, we know that addressing the cognitive challenges of long-term space flight is essential. These results fit nicely with what we’ve seen in building cognitive reserve in older adults and people recovering from brain injury and brain fog, as well as improving peak performers — such as special forces, law enforcement, or athletes — expected to perform at superhuman levels under extreme time and performance pressures.”
(Source – Globe Newswire)
About BrainHQ
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, BrainHQ, a wellness and fitness services provider, has improved mental ability and performance since 2002. The international team of neuroscientists and brain experts tested its brain training system. Its exercise is scientific-based, and researchers validated its real benefits in their published papers. The experts design, test and redefine its online exercises for cognitive issues, healthy aging and mental conditions. It uses a special algorithm to adapt difficulty in each exercise at the optimum level. Its exercises are divided into different levels for a flexible period, depending on the personal training goals, on any computer or mobile device.
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