Category: WWW (What Woman Want)

Chicks Away: What Woman Want?

Chicks Away
Meme the original Travel Chick

I copied and pasted the text below as a draft post for further review and editing, but accidentally pushed the publish button. It appeared I had to replace my keyboard as it hung. A couple of hours later I realized the post was published in raw and un edited format and gobbled at by many feed readers already.

It seems like a press release, but I copied it from somewhere else…I simply don’t know where I picked it up, but I am sure I will find out when doing some refining and editing of the post…. Ah it also appears on the Chicks Away Blog itself…..

Chicks Away, the Social Media site for Women and Travel, launches at the Student Youth and Travel Association Conference (SYTA) in Whistler, BC

Chicks Away, the innovative website community for women to Dream, Connect, Share and Remember their travel experiences, officially launched at the SYTA Conference held in Whistler, BC last week.

Developed by A Couple of Chicks e-Marketing and its parent Company, Kuikene Inc, Chicks Away is the first Social Media website dedicated solely to women and travel, and was officially launched last week at the annual Student Youth and Travel Association Conference.

Recognizing women travel differently than men and assume different roles when they travel: mother, wife, sister or friend, Chicks Away allows women to customize their own travel website and share experiences with other women.

According to women’s travel expert, The GutsyTraveler, “it is estimated that women will spend $125 billion on travel within the next year. Last year alone, US women took 32 million trips with 80% of the travel decisions made by women.”

Until the launch of Chicks Away, there were no on line travel agencies, portal websites or social media sites that addressed what is important to women as a unique traveling consumer, and allowed women a voice to share travel experiences.

“Our vision is to provide a community for women to connect with other like minded women to discuss travel dreams, plan a vacation or business trip and share experiences,” said Patricia Brusha Co-founder and Principal of Chicks Away. “Our intent is to ensure that women’s voices and ideas are heard by the travel industry and to allow them to create a central resource for both dialogue and research – a women’s version of Wikipedia for Travel and so much more.”

Chicks Away uses a simple platform combining Blogs and Groups. Women can join for free and immediately create a travel blog, upload photos, videos and invite friends to view and comment. These blogs can be fully imported into other social media applications such as Facebook, so women can use Chicks Away as a main source to discuss and share their travel experiences.

Groups are created by women based on their own individual travel interests. Such diverse groups as single mom getaway weekends, honeymoons, Tuscany travel and dream trips are a few of the initial groups started. All travel oriented business’s including hotels and destinations are encouraged to start their own groups. Both Blogs and groups are being indexed by the search engines and have the ability to be found through natural search.

The website provides a multidimensional on line community and recognizes that women are unique when researching; planning and booking travel. Led by “Meme the Travel Chick,” Chicks Away will become a trusted source for women planning travel as the content will be created by its users.

About Chicks Away

Chicks Away is a new social media site for women to plan, share and connect about their travel experiences. The concept was developed by the online marketing firm A Couple of Chicks e-Marketing, who together with its parent company www.kuikene.com combined social media technology, and online travel industry expertise to create a social media portal for women who travel. Co-Founders Patricia Brusha and Alicia Whalen have developed three distinct business units around online marketing, tourism marketing and online marketing education with the successful e-marketing conferences held annually in Canada, www.onlinerevealed.com; online media firm A Couple of Chicks e-Marketing and the new www.chicksaway.com . The “Chicks” have published over 25 articles and offer interactive e-marketing workshops which take them on many travel adventures of their own. Visit www.kuikene.com for more information.

I took out the reference to Idea Hatching of Alicia as it is my view that reference should not be made in such press release as it is overkill and a bit strange that Alicia didn’t break the news on her Blog…….

I changed my tag WWW into WWW (What Woman Want) and still have to do some editing, but must address other matters for now.

Is your Betty Ready?

My Betty is Ready

Nancy Jarecki of NYC hadn’t planned on starting a cosmetics company, until a few years ago she noticed in a Roman hair salon a ritual whereby the ladies leaving the shop got a small envelope from their haircolorist. Asked what that was about, the receptionist answered “Per sotto per farli cobocaiari” meaning “For the hair down there”.

Back in the USA her own hair salon owner friend told her that there were no special coloring sets for the nether parts available in the USA, and if they would be available she believed her clients would love them as she would love to use them herself (admitting having a couple of gray hairs down there).

So Nancy started up Betty Beauty Com.

The amount of media attention she got in the mean time is astounding: According to Advertising Age of November 2006 an Alexa projected number of 2 mio unique visitors will hit her site on an annual basis. Allure of November 2006 applauded her under the funny title “Bush meet Betty ” for breaking a taboo.

Am I off topic? I don’t believe so. I think it is an excellent idea and it would be an excellent extra amenity for a Hotel or a Spa, a place where usually you have a little more time to soak in a nice bad and pay some extra attention to your body, than you allow yourself at home. Finally: if you look at my picture at the right, I believe you will understand that I know how the gray among us think:-)

Thanks to Constance’s Dutch Shopping Blogo

However, if you believe it to be too much of a hassle to color it down there, you can always think about using this line of Picture Perfect Panties:

Panty

The line will become available in black, brunette, blond and maybe red and perm also

Thanks to The Cool Hunter’s Pic of the day.

If you click through to the Flickr page you will find a male undie idea as well.

WWW: What Woman Want

WWW also stands for World Wide Web. Nevertheless, just for the fun of it and to confuse the search engines, I will tag this post with my WWW tag that I originally intended for items related to the Internet. The other posts filed under WWW have now the tag “Internet”. My spell checker keeps saying Internet is spelled with a capital “I”. I am not sure this is correct, but English is not my mother tongue.

First

My attention was drawn by a post of

Hotsheet

Kitty Bean Yansea’s noe defunct Blog Hotel Hotsheet had as motto: “Check it out before you check in” and was written for USA Today.
The post is this: Hotels: What are you most thankful for?
Kitty being female, I thought it wise to incorporate her list here, be it only to keep it as a memo for myself:

  • Free Wi-Fi.
  • Bright bedside reading lights.
  • Curved shower rods that give the illusion of more space in a standard tub or rather the walk-in, glass-door shower.
  • Free wine happy hours. Not only is it delightful to come back to a complimentary cup of cheer at the end of a long day, but it’s a chance to chat with fellow guests if you care to.
  • Pillow top mattresses. We’re getting so spoiled in the USA that it’s harder to stay in non-luxury hotels elsewhere, where I’ve found mattresses to be harder or saggier.
  • Hotel housekeepers earning better pay. They deserve it, especially considering the extra lifting and pillow-casing they do with those heavenly new beds.
  • Most of all, I’m thankful for a cheery face and a compassionate welcome when I arrive at a hotel jet-lagged, work-worn or frazzled by trying to find it. A kind and caring staff is the No. 1 hotel amenity as far as I’m concerned.

Then

My attention was drawn to

Jim Butler

The Hotel Law Blog of Jim Butler, who is a partner of a Los Angeles law firm that “does a couple of billion dollar deals (mostly hotels cum condominiums) on an annual basis”, and who gives some interesting observations in his postWhat Woman Really Want post on his Hotel Law Blog after reminding us that the US counts three (only three?) very influential Ladies: Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, he stresses:

Women are making:
85% of all consumer decisions! and
70% of all travel decisions!

His list goes as follows:

  1. Security  Women value extra measures that ensure their safety and security;
  2. Cleanliness  Women care more than men about cleanliness;
  3. Transportation  Women want complimentary shuttle service to and from the airport, and to areas other than the airport;
  4. Simplification Women care more about express check-in and checkout, and are more interested than men in an interactive system through the guest room television set that provides information about local events
  5. Business Services  Women want the same business services that men want, but more women want service enabling them to send and receive faxes from their laptops;
  6. Creature facilities  Women want full-length mirrors, make up mirrors and hair dryers; they want spa services and more diversity of restaurants on the premises;
  7. Ambiance  Women value the ambiance of small boutique hotels, as well as distinctive hotel decor;
  8. Perks Frequent guest points are more important than frequent flyer miles—women want to be rewarded for their loyalty

Jim continues with a couple of very good suggestion: Woman want to be asked what they want and they want to be listened to! Well, as Jim continues, Isn’t that what man like also?

Thirdly,

Sean Dodson writes for the Guardian. His column Best of the net: Pod Hotels demonstrates a remarkable similarity between him finding Pod- or Cube alike hotels to my own findings here on Happy Hotelier. In What is Travel Networking? his tip about the site The Thelma and Louise Club

an on line community of women worldwide which enables members to meet like-minded women, find travel companions and fulfill their aspirations. Also enjoy great holidays, day trips, articles, and our favorite products and services.

made me think: “They could give us even more insight in the subject of this post”!
But, alas this is a strictly female site. Therefor this simple but happy male would like to ask the female readers of this post to give us some input about the site and their experience.

Finally

Very recently, a Dutch Ladies Glossy by the name Libelle (a title owned by Sonoma) started a story or a B&B for a year in Barcelona by the name of Casa Libelle. They screen ladies who they send in 12 foursomes for periods of four weeks to a B&B in Barcelona. As yet it is not clear to me whether they have started the B&B just for this purpose or that they simply send their readers to an existing B&B in order to help the owners out. In any case the Dutch ladies sent to Barcelona have to report via Blogs and via videos and all is shown on Libelle’s Website which is in the air for a week or two now after experiences some difficulties. As the site is entirely in the Dutch language, a link is not necessary. For those who read Dutch the story can be found on the Dutch language sisterblog weekendhotel Mama goes Barcelona. I will keep you posted in English from time to time.
This also seams a great source for What Woman Want!

Well ladies (and gentlemen of course), what do you think?

Happy 2007!

I hope 2007 makes all of you (and me) as happy as 2006 made me happy!

It was a happy year for me, 2006. I started this Blog adventure and are having fun with it, although it takes a lot of time which I do not always have. It takes more time than you would anticipate before you start. Because of the amount of time involved I believe that the number or derelict Blogs will soar in 2007 and that the number of new Blogs started will decrease.

The last days of a year often makes you wonder how many unfinished objects, or UFOs you have left unfinished.

Here are some of my UFOs postponed to 2007:

  • Suite with a Vault, about Palais Coburg in Vienna that was completely renovated into a luxury all suite hotel;
  • Report about our visit to Berlin and stay in Propeller Island City Lodge;
  • report about our visits to Vienna and stay in Style Vienna;
  • Web two Bubble (web2.0) and what it means for the Hotelier;
  • Finalizing the translating of the Dutch posts and fine tune the instant translation possibility of this site;
  • Further developing the style of this site. I would love to have a multi style switch installed, so that the reader can choose which style he likes best;
  • Bring you more news about Dutch Hotel Design;
  • The Ferragamo Portrait Suites in Rome;
  • The Nitenite Hotel in Birmingham;
  • pay attention to What Woman Want
  • And many more…

Enjoy!