What’s the best cockpit view in the world?
This week, British Airways have asked pilots to submit their best views from the cockpit. The top view in the world, unsurprisingly, was the Northern Lights, often seen on North Atlantic crossings. London’s skyline was named above many exotic locations such as Mont Blanc, Sydney Harbour and the Golden Gate Bridge – all of which made the top five. The most extraordinary entry came from British Airways chief Boeing pilot, Captain Al Bridger, who was lucky enough to see the Soyuz 35S space craft returning to earth when on a flight to Singapore.
KLM Airlines are well renowned for being at the top of their game when it comes to social media strategy and engagement. The airline is behind some of the most creative travel social media marketing campaigns to date. But this week saw KLM lose a few points with an ill-conceived tweet sent as Mexico crashed out of the World Cup. The tweet, which joined the words ‘adios amigos’ with an illustration of a Mexican man with cartoonish sombrero, moustache and poncho in a Departures sign, offended a significant volume of social media users. KLM have since apologised with an official statement – but it just goes to show that even companies with a great social media track record can sometimes slip up.
Highly anticipated dance festival Tomorrowland, which takes place in Belgium every July, has upped its social media game by introducing a Facebook element to all festival bracelets. Once activated and connected to Facebook, festival-goers can keep in touch with new friends in this mini-global city by touching the heart on the bracelet simultaneously with a nearby bracelet. With a simple push of a button, contact information is traded and a daily "friendship email" is sent to guests to keep the Tomorrowland memories alive after the party is over. Tomorrowland’s annual ‘after-movies’ have catapulted this festival into the spotlight with the 2013 video reaching over 71 million views in under a year.
This week saw the launch of the first Instagram website. IKEA created the web-style Instagram account to promote their new PS 2014 collection. The Instagram gridded profile (ikea_ps_2014) acts as the home page of the website, with each image representing a range of items (benches, storage, tables). The images are tagged with many other accounts which take you to pages dedicated solely to one product which feature images, videos and information on the particular item.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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