Posts by: Mark Frary

Mark Frary

Mark Frary is co-founder of Travel Perspective, a social and digital consultancy working with travel companies and tourism organisations to create successful marketing campaigns He is an author and writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes regularly for The Times and has written for many other publications including the Evening Standard, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Express, Food & Travel, ABTA magazine, the easyJet magazine and Teletext.  Mark also gives expert advice to leisure and business travel companies on their social media and communications strategies and is the co-founder of Social Travel Market, an annual conference on the use of social media in travel at World Travel Market. He is the author of seven books including The Origins of the Universe for Dummies and is currently working on a biography of the ski pioneer Erna Low. Mark lives in Ampthill in Bedfordshire, UK with his wife and three children. www.travelperspective.co.uk

April 9, 2021April 9, 2021

The future of events is going to be hybrid

Blog, Events, Travel Industry

Many events that were cancelled in 2020 due to COVID, or happened only virtually, are now taking steps back to normality by offering a combination of in-person ... Read more

March 12, 2021March 11, 2021

Tickets, money, passport, vaccine passport

Blog, Travel Industry

After the past year, many in Britain are fed up with three part phrases like “hands, face, space” so it is perhaps inevitable that old holiday mantra ... Read more

October 21, 2020October 21, 2020

The destinations spending money on marketing campaigns now

Blog, marketing

It is easy to assume that marketing spend now is wasted money. Many countries still have not opened their borders and, at the end of September, airline ... Read more

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020

Gen Z can save the travel industry…if we learn what drives them

Blog, marketing

One survey found that 79% of travel decisions are influenced by Gen Z – the travel and tourism industry should ignore that statistic at its peril. ... Read more

August 26, 2020August 25, 2020

What can we learn from Sicily as they invest in tourism?

Blog, Destinations, Travel Industry

COVID has been a ‘total disaster’ for tourism to Sicily, as it has been for many destinations.  But now the Italian region is investing millions of euro ... Read more

July 27, 2020August 19, 2020

Will video be vital in getting people to trust in the cleanliness and hygiene provisions for booking a holiday?

Blog, Hospitality, Resilience and Recovery

A growing number of travel and tourism companies are turning to video to get their safety and hygiene messages across. ... Read more

June 17, 2020August 17, 2020

What’s in the future for tour operators?

Blog, Travel Industry

Travel has gone from a position where it represented more than 10% of global GDP, employing or supporting more than 300 million people, to a virtual standstill ... Read more

August 19, 2019

Instagram embraces the age of #spon and #ad with branded creator content

Social Media

At World Travel Market in 2016, we ran a session called Content In Crisis which looked at the gnarly problem of whether influencers should be required to ... Read more

May 30, 2019June 7, 2019

The North Face hacked its way to the top of travel search and people aren’t happy

Social Media

Search on Wikipedia for the concept of ‘digital commons’ and you are told that it refers to “information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned ... Read more

May 3, 2019May 10, 2019

Iconic and Instagrammable or invented and inhumane? Morocco’s tree goats

Social Media

Search for the hashtag #goatsintrees on Instagram and you bring up more than 7,500 images of just that, often with a glamorous millennial in the foreground wearing ... Read more

March 21, 2019May 13, 2019

Will Instagram let us shop for travel?

Social Media

Instagram has taken another step forward in becoming a key marketplace for people to buy things. This week the company announcemenced the rollout of something called Instagram ... Read more

March 7, 2019May 13, 2019

The rise of the influencer in residence

Social Media

“What is work, Mummy?” “Oh it was just something we used to do before AI and robots started doing everything for us, darling.” “And what did you ... Read more

February 8, 2019February 8, 2019

Facebook messaging integration: is dark social going to get brighter?

Social Media

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are a shady place. Lots of stuff gets shared around in these private places. That’s kind of annoying if ... Read more

January 10, 2019May 13, 2019

What’s hot in travel for 2019, according to everybody

Social Media

As a travel writer, I can tell the time of year just by looking at my email inbox. At Easter, the subject lines are usually filled with ... Read more

December 14, 2018December 14, 2018

Is YouTube’s hugely disliked Rewind 2018 round-up the most expensive tourism ad ever?

Social Media

In six days, a video has raced up YouTube’s trending charts thanks to, at the time of writing, some 113 million views. It is not the latest ... Read more

November 21, 2018May 13, 2019

Instagram finally cracks down on fake followers

Social Media, Trends

Are you an influencer or a microinfluencer (or even a nanoinfluencer)? After this week, more may be in the latter category. Instagram has finally announced that it ... Read more

October 19, 2018

Why travel needs to get into long-form video

Social Media

We have talked for a long time now about how video is the future in the world of social media. That was underlined again last week when ... Read more

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018

TripAdvisor reinvents itself

Social Media

If I talked about a social network with hundreds of millions of users based around a feed of content curated from the best of what your friends, ... Read more

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

What Facebook is going to do next in travel…possibly

Social Media

Very large, successful multinational companies, whether they drill for oil, make cool technology products or are huge e-commerce platforms, tend to have one thing in common these ... Read more

July 30, 2018August 10, 2018

How to lose $100 billion in a day

Social Media

What a difference a day makes. On Wednesday 25 July, Facebook’s share price reached $218.62, its highest ever, valuing the company at a whopping $615 billion, around ... Read more

June 29, 2018August 18, 2020

Are we getting tired of social media?

Blog, marketing, Social Media

The scandal around the use of data harvested on Facebook has caused many people to reassess their use of the social networking site and saw the rise ... Read more

June 6, 2018

What the millions of people using Pinterest for travel inspo are looking for

Blogging, Social Media

Finding travel inspo has been a huge success story for Pinterest. Of the 100 billion or so ‘pins’ – the visual bookmarks that are at the heart ... Read more

May 9, 2018May 14, 2018

How $5.4 billion in profits lets you go launch crazy: the latest from Facebook

Social Media, Technology

You might have noticed that Facebook has been a lot in the news recently what with those pesky privacy issues that have been brought to light by ... Read more

March 8, 2018March 7, 2018

Is this the most expensive tourism ad ever?

Social Media

If you were in the US and tuned into Super Bowl 50, you would have seen what purported to be a trailer for a reboot of a ... Read more

February 8, 2018February 20, 2018

Facebook in 2018: how travel companies can beat the news feed apocalypse

Social Media

The end of January is always an interesting time in social media. It is at this point of the year when we hear just how much more ... Read more

December 7, 2017June 2, 2020

Watch this space: will travel embrace Facebook’s new video platform?

Social Media

The launch of a new watch by one of the tech giants is a bit of a yawn these days but back in August, social media behemoth ... Read more

November 2, 2017

Should Instagrammers be banned?

Social Media

There are more than 1,000 places on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and it should probably come as no surprise that there is a strong correlation between this ... Read more

September 7, 2017August 18, 2020

The rise of influencer marketing and why bloggers need to rebrand

Blog, marketing, Social Media

Brands are increasingly looking to use influencers, such as Instagram stars and bloggers, in their marketing but the chasm between what brands and their PR companies expect ... Read more

August 4, 2017October 4, 2017

Why travel influencers are living in The Matrix

Blog, Social Media

“What is real? How do you define real?” So says Morpheus to Neo in the classic sci-fi movie, The Matrix. His quote took on more significance this ... Read more

July 6, 2017October 4, 2017

How social media has helped make music tourism explode

Blog, Social Media, Video

Tourism associated with gigs and music festivals like Glastonbury is now big business.  UK Music’s Wish You Were Here study in 2016, revealed that music tourism generated ... Read more

June 1, 2017June 1, 2017

How two DMOs are using content to sell and why this hybrid model is the future

Social Media

Two destinations have announced two very different but both very eye-catching approaches to marketing themselves in the past week. But at the heart of both Visit Sweden’s ... Read more

May 4, 2017May 4, 2017

Are augmented and virtual reality the future for travel inspiration?

Social Media, Video

Will 2017 be the year for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)? Some would argue that 2016 was the year. Pokémon Go became the most downloaded ... Read more

April 6, 2017April 26, 2017

Who’s winning the social media arms race?

Social Media, Video

It’s been a busy month for the major social networks, with a flurry of new features announced. But who is making the best new features? Facebook effects, ... Read more

March 2, 2017March 3, 2017

Google Maps’ gets smarter with new social and real-time features

Blog, Social Media

When you are a travel writer, there is a question you get asked more than any other: what are the best places you have visited? It is ... Read more

February 20, 2017February 21, 2017

How mocking Trump is benefitting destinations

Blog, Social Media, Video

It has become the latest trend by countries around the world – trolling Donald Trump. In his first speech, President Trump made it clear that he was ... Read more

November 2, 2016January 23, 2017

Vine is dead. Long live social video

Social Media

So farewell then Vine, your life has been almost as short as the clips you host. The platform, which enabled users to create short, looped videos of ... Read more

October 6, 2016January 23, 2017

How destinations are using Snapchat geofilters

Social Media

If you are looking for the next big thing for destination marketing, you need look no further than Snapchat’s geofilters. A growing number of DMOs are investing ... Read more

July 25, 2016January 23, 2017

How England’s Newest Tourist Attraction is using Social and Digital

Social Media

One of Britain’s newest tourism attractions has opened in County Durham this summer and its organisers are hoping to match some of the success of Puy du ... Read more

June 27, 2016January 23, 2017

How Social Media Is Being Deployed At Euro 2016

Social Media

Social media has been a key part of this year’s Euro 2016 football championships. Twitter added new features just for the championship, including auto-generated emojis when you ... Read more

March 21, 2016January 23, 2017

Is the tourist board irrelevant in the digital world?

Social Media

I often wonder whether we are seeing the end-game for the traditional tourist board or destination marketing organisation (DMO). Tourism boards and destination marketing organisations have been ... Read more

February 22, 2016January 23, 2017

Five ways to save time on social media

Social Media

One of the most annoying quirks of Instagram is finally being addressed, bringing an end to a nightmare suffered by social media managers who have to look ... Read more

December 9, 2015June 2, 2020

Jump into the stream: Facebook trials live video

Social Media

I can’t emphasise this enough – if you are not using video yet, you had better start soon. Video’s rise has been stratospheric this year. In its ... Read more

September 25, 2015January 23, 2017

What’s not to dislike about Facebook’s new plan?

Social Media

This week there has been a lot of talk about Facebook introducing a dislike button. Even James Corden on the Late Late Show has an opinion on ... Read more

August 28, 2015January 23, 2017

Google: rich social search and the anticipation game

Social Media

Google’s first results page has come a long way since the company launched 17 years ago. When we first started using that rather clever search engine, the ... Read more

July 27, 2015January 23, 2017

Google’s direct hotel booking strategy: keeping it all in the family

Technology

The internet has almost come full circle. It seems like a strange concept now but back when America Online ruled the internet superhighway (as it was inevitably ... Read more

June 22, 2015January 23, 2017

Are you on top of the newest Twitter features?

Social Media

Destinations, attractions and other tourism businesses will soon be able to promote themselves even better on Twitter thanks to a new feature being tested by the microblogging ... Read more

May 22, 2015January 23, 2017

Facebook’s Instant Articles: threat and opportunity for travel?

Social Media

How often have you clicked on a link to an article on your Facebook feed only to sit for what seems like an eternity before something shows ... Read more

April 20, 2015June 2, 2020

Is it time to flip the funnel?

Blog, Social Media

In one of the many presentations made at our inaugural Social Travel Britain conference in Salisbury over the past few days, Dr Philip Alford of Bournemouth University ... Read more

March 23, 2015January 23, 2017

Does #OreoEclipse mean we are hashtagged out?

Social Media

They were first spotted in 2007. They were given the official thumbs-up in 2009. Now they are everywhere. You cannot escape. By they, I mean hashtags. I ... Read more

March 4, 2015January 23, 2017

10 things at 10: YouTube celebrates its first decade

Technology

YouTube has just celebrated the big one-oh and look how far it has come in those intervening years. Here are our ten thoughts for brands on the ... Read more

February 17, 2015May 18, 2020

How Japan is using bloggers to attract tourists

Blogging

The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has just launched a high-profile campaign working with three bloggers – Kash Bhattacharya of Budget Traveller (budgettraveller.org/), Abigail King of Inside ... Read more

February 4, 2015January 23, 2017

Facebook adds travel tips to Newsfeed

Social Media

In the past week, Facebook has made it’s latest attempt to grab a bigger share of the geolocation market with the launch of Place Tips. These nuggets ... Read more

January 19, 2015January 23, 2017

Google Translate, a Babel Fish in your pocket

Technology

The future is here at last and science fiction aficionados will rejoice in the latest news to come out of Mountain View. The news from Google headquarters ... Read more

December 3, 2014January 23, 2017

Get earned or get burned: the Oreo vlogger ruling

Social Media

A ruling by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority last week threatens to remove a key plank from the content marketing strategies of travel companies. The ruling rapped Mondelez, the ... Read more

October 9, 2014January 24, 2017

Have we reached peak InstaMeet? Queensland breaks the record

Social Media, Technology

We spoke in our last blog post about why Instagram was the star social performer for 2014. Just this week, we have heard how the Australian state ... Read more

September 9, 2014January 24, 2017

From Ice Buckets to Bucket Lists: social goes commercial

Social Media

You cannot fail to have noticed the Ice Bucket Challenge videos that have been filling our Facebook news feeds over the summer. According to Facebook, between 1 ... Read more

August 13, 2014January 24, 2017

What is the ROI of social media?

Social Media

This post’s title is a much repeated question and one that is often answered by digital agencies with “What is the ROI of a chair or a ... Read more

June 18, 2014February 13, 2015

Newsjacking the #worldcup

Social Media

If you are on Twitter, you won’t need any introduction to the concept of newsjacking. It is the, some say shameless, practice of jumping on board something ... Read more

May 8, 2014January 24, 2017

Facebook’s autoplay videos: Love? Hate? Discuss

Social Media

Facebook autoplay videos are the new Marmite – people either love them or hate them. Either way, they are hard to ignore. Starting last September, Facebook started ... Read more

April 9, 2014January 24, 2017

No such thing as a free (Facebook) lunch

Social Media

You have just received a new Like on your brand’s Facebook page. Job done. In fact, the job is far from done and it is beginning to ... Read more

March 12, 2014January 24, 2017

Thomas Cook’s Twitter “first”

Social Media

Thomas Cook Group has this week launched what it calls a “travel industry first”. Holidays to go! is a Twitter-driven offer engine that lets holidaymakers tweet at ... Read more

February 13, 2014January 24, 2017

Ten things we learned as Facebook turned ten

Social Media

Facebook, which has just celebrated its tenth birthday, issued its latest results at the end of January and the results and comments from senior executives contained plenty ... Read more