Don’t Ride in a Gypsy Cab

My first trip to New York City was on the first week of January 1994, if I remember correctly. I was really excited about going to New York, especially the first time. Who wouldn’t be? I was in a New York state of mind.

It was bitterly cold, even for NYC. With the wind chill factor, it was -18C or -.04F. I was lucky to even land because of the ice and snow. In fact, most of the time I was there, all 3 airports were closed, and I was hoping to be forced to stay longer, outside of my control. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

I was there to attend NRF, the annual National Retail Conference, probably the biggest conference of its type in the world, looking for new products I could import into New Zealand.

My Hotel, The Manhattan Times Square was a 10-minute walk from Times Square and very close to the start of Broadway.

I had a lot of learning to do as a greenhorn, starting at Newark Airport, where I had landed at midnight on a domestic flight from Los Angeles. I was exhausted after travelling non-stop from Auckland, New Zealand. A trip with delays in transit of almost 24 hours non-stop. I struggled to sleep on the planes, which didn’t help,

As I went to get my baggage off the conveyor, it was one of the last bags and the place was almost deserted. There was a sign saying ‘Don’t use Gypsy Cabs’ hiding in plain sight, amongst the advertisements on the wall. Grabbing my high-viz yellow Samsonite Case, I went to look for a Yellow Cab, but there was nothing in sight.

A huge black man approached me with a pearly white smile and asked if I was looking for a cab into Manhattan. He told me there wouldn’t be any more Yellow Cabs till morning, and that he worked for a professional travel service. He had a smart business card with his photo on it, and I needed to get to my hotel. He told me the cost to go into the city was $75 and I had nothing to reference, so I agreed.

The card said something like limousine services, and we got into a Jaguar which I thought was unusual, especially in New York. When we got into the car, he called his base on a 2-way radio, which gave me a little confidence, as he told them our destination. There was a little banter and we were on our way.

Being my first trip, I had no idea what it should cost. The trip seemed to take forever. The driver told me he was from Nigeria and that he worked as much as he could so that he would be able to bring his wife and children over. The route didn’t seem to involve a lot of freeways, but this was Newark, not JFK. I had to trust him, although when I got to the 30-minute mark I was starting to feel some unease. All sorts of things were going through my mind, that could possibly go wrong.

Finally, we arrived at the hotel, and a concierge opened the door for me. Having got me there safely, the driver badgered me to give him the booking for the return trip a week later, asking for my flight departure details. He convinced me and told me to give his office a call on the number on the business card if I needed to change the date or time.

The hotel was one of the venues for the conference, it was a bit after 1 am. The first thing I asked was about taxis and what I should have paid to get to the hotel from Newark. She said about $30-$35. As I got to my room, I tipped the concierge who had insisted on carrying my suitcase, I rang and cancelled the return trip! The receptionist was friendly and asked why I was cancelling. I explained that I was a green Kiwi traveller and that the hotel told me they could put me in a yellow cab to JFK for less than half of what I paid to get there. She asked me if I had a problem with the driver, I replied not at all, he was a nice guy. “No problem”. I think she was used to this happening. I’m sure there were more than enough green travellers to keep them in profit.

By the time I was unpacked, it was about 6 am in Auckland, so I rang home to let Charmaine and the girls know I had arrived safe and sound and then slept like a baby.

The following morning, I flew down the lift from my room, which I think was on the 35th floor. I got an electric shock from the door of the lift as I brushed out the door. I would get used to that. After a quick breakfast, I thought I would go exploring.

Even back then, I was follically challenged and it was bitterly cold. The streets were mostly square blocks, with steam coming from the buildings through holes in the dirty snow, just like in the movies. My scalp hurt from the pain, especially on the cross streets where the wind was blowing. I had to go into shops I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in, to walk through the air conditioning curtain and defrost my head.

I decided I had to go somewhere to buy a beanie, and found myself at Macy’s. Well, it seems everyone had the same idea because I got the last beanie in that huge store. It was two sizes too big for me. But it was warm and that was what mattered.

Now I was able to explore. My first walk from there was to Times Square. That wasn’t very exciting on a Saturday morning, with a few Police at the station, but I knew the time to go there was in the evening when all the Christmas lights and decorations competed for attention with the huge screens. I did note an ad on one of them promoting New Zealand, which was cool.

I headed back towards my hotel and Broadway. I was still excited and with a spring in my step, I walked and sang George Benson’s Broadway to myself.

Being a Kiwi, when I walked past people I’d give them a friendly gidday nod, as I would on Ponsonby Rd back home to anyone. One guy I did that to asked me what I needed and offered me all manner of drugs. I was on a natural high until I gave the same nod to an African American man leaning in a doorway and got a very gruff, “What’s your problem?” I didn’t stick around to chat with him.

Arriving at Broadway, it was too early for any shows, the scalpers weren’t out yet, but perusing the shows, I went to a ticket booth and bought a ticket to see Crazy For You at the Schubert Theatre, which won several Tonys the previous year.

It was like a visit to the past sitting in one of the old theatres on Broadway

I had grown up with Gershwin and sat down wondering which famous people had been in that theatre over the years. It wasn’t the most modern show, but it was perfect as a welcome to NYC. I knew many of the songs and still have the program in one of my storage boxes of treasures.

This was my only winter trip to NYC and I revelled in it. Walking through the snow in Central Park and watching people ice skating there and in Rockefeller Plaza, going to the top of the Empire State Building which was even colder than the streets below.

I visited the World Trade Centre observation deck. Now that was an experience. I stood in a queue for the first of the two lifts for probably about half an hour, but the views were amazing. I consider myself very lucky to have had that experience, because one day, which will feature in a future post, the walls came tumbling down.

I would go back the following year, but in summer, which was totally different. But that again, is another musical story.

Life List #5 Go to Hawaii and see Lava from an Active Volcano

If you have been following my recent posts you will know that I have decided to set up 150 values based activities or experiences to achieve in the next 5 years, having been told that I am now in remission from cancer.

I have always been fascinated by lava. Living in New Zealand, I have been to White Island and experienced sulphur plumes, seen active crater lakes and live a few kilometers from Rangitoto Island, a dormant volcano in Auckland. I’ve seen bubbling mud and enjoyed geothermal hot pools, but I have never seen actual lava pouring down a volcano.

So Life List #5 is to go to Hawaii and experience this from a helicopter or whatever safe way we can get to see the fire coming out of the belly of the earth. of course while there, we can also get to experience another part of island life, Pearl Harbor and other aspects of the islands.

We Will Remember Them – Our ANZAC Soldiers

We are not a militaristic nation, we Kiwis. However we have a proud fighting tradition, standing up for democracy and human rights all over the world. We lost many men and women in the World Wars and on many other fronts such as Viet Nam and Korea. Once a year on ANZAC Day, we remember them and those who have fallen since, in Afghanistan, East Timor and other fronts. In RSA Clubs around the country the dwindling numbers of vets and their families have a beer, share a yarn, have a dance and a sausage roll and club sandwich and share the ANZAC Prayer.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

Then they play the last post, we stand proud and we remember.

Laying the Kings Wreath 2011

My late father in law was a few months from his final rest after a terrible fight with cancer. He served in the Air Force in Guadal Canal and other locations during World War II and my mother in law was a Wren. You should have seen her march in the parade, as erect as she would have been in her youth. Now we are left with photos and memories, not only of our people, but of their reunions with their fellow service people, remembering the fun times and remembering the fallen and the horror as the nights went on. The things that they could only discuss with those who had shared the experiences. The things we civilians can’t appreciate because we weren’t there. The trenches, the mud, the desert, the beaches, the waiting, the camaraderie, the fear, the relief, the moments of respite, the people in the countries where they served, who looked at them with gratitude and relief, coming home with their cobbers, coming home without their mates.

Today is ANZAC Day and we remember our lost and respect those who remain. I’m proud to be a Kiwi, even though I am an import. In some ways more so because, while I haven’t experienced war first hand, I was born in Holland and the Allies rescued our country from the ravages of 5 years of occupation.

When I was in the USA again last year, I was humbled by the respect shown to all veterans in all places. Everywhere I went, I met and shook hands with people who had served. Everywhere I went, people thanked them for their service. Every concert I went to, we stood and people were thanked for their service. Of course the numbers of people who have served in the USA are so many more on a ratio than in New Zealand. They are more visible as well. While there is a lot of negativity towards US involvement around the world, I have to wonder with a shudder what our world would be like if they weren’t there. I also think about the fact that we are talking about individual people, with partners, children, parents, who are stepping outside of their lives to do the right thing for their country. They all have their own stories.

That’s what motivated me, after 6 months of research, to write the song Another Stretch in Iraq, my Christmas song for 2007. I remember performing it in a ‘biker friendly’ bar in Florida, seeing a couple of 6 foot something men coming to the stage and thinking “I’m going to get beaten to a pulp” as the came towards me with tears in their eyes. But no, they came to thank me and welcome me into the arms of their Desert Storm ‘family’, saying that I had taken them straight back to their Bradleys and MRE‘s.

Yet, as I sit here in my lounge and watch the ANZAC commemorations in New Zealand, I am reminded that we, at the bottom of the planet, far removed from all the fronts and global politics, do serve. We tend to be in peacekeeping forces these days rather than at the front lines, but you will find Kiwis in most countries where there is freedom to be preserved. We fight for human rights. We take global responsibility as we can and we care fiercely about freedom and democracy. To a large degree we do that because of those who lead by example, who took arms and piled onto planes and ships and those who didn’t come back.

We will remember them. We do remember them. Even if our eyes aren’t wet every day as they are this morning. We remember them and we honor them by trying to do the right thing for the future of our children.

What we can Learn from TripAdvisor

I recently wrote a blog about TripAdvisor and how to make the most of it on your FIT (Free Independent Traveler) trip.

What can you learn as a developer or someone who wants to own their own app to win loyalty and business in the hospitality and tourist industry?

The first thing is content. Most applications are city focused. That’s understandable, but based on my experience in the Southern States was that there were loads of tourists looking for cool things to do and see, but they were so hard to find. If I hadn’t found the Blues Trail Guide at the Natchez Trace Information Centre, I would not have visited Crystal Springs because according to TripAdvisor there was nothing there but a single restaurant. In fact I had the most wonderful day there, meeting the Mayor at City Hall and spending a couple of hours with Theresa,  the Granddaughter of legendary blues giant of Crossroads fame Robert Johnson at his museum.

Theresa and I at the Robert Johnson Museum

Now you may not have heard of Robert Johnson, or watched the movie Crossroads, inspired by his legendary story, but if you are a blues fan, then this is a must do pilgrimage and to actually meet and talk with his granddaughter is something you won’t likely do at music museums or historic places of interest anywhere in the world. My point is that outside of the cities is where the real people live and the world is full of exciting and interesting places outside of Disney, Alcatraz or the Empire State Building.

While I make that criticism, I do have to say that TripAdvisor was by far the best for the apps I used on my trip. I was able to find the properties I wanted to stay in, I was able to filter things to do, types of accommodation and more, I guess the key thing was lack of information outside of cities.

As a future step, I’d like it to have the ability to learn about me, profile me based on my interests and make suggestions to me. Given the wealth of information they do have, this would not be too difficult.

When it comes to accomodation, maybe they could also help me with search functionality that would allow me to eliminate properties with keywords, for example ‘show me all properties in Xville excluding keywords ‘bed bugs’ and ‘bad internet’. I understand the problem for properties who may be unfairly targeted by competitors trying to put people off their properties, but that is a security issue and there are always opportunities for redress. The fact is, wherever I saw comments about bedbugs etc, I avoided those properties like the plague. So all it did was make it take longer for me to find those comments, but I still didn’t stay at those properties. What frustrated me the most was that I spent up to 2 hours some nights, instead of relaxing, trying to work out where we would go next and where we would stay, which took a bit of the gloss off an awesome trip.

I’d like an app, and I know people are building them, which allow you to list your interests and then it will generate a tour or recommendations to meet your interests. Issue for me is most of them are based around specific advertisers who are often self rated, or very generic interests. That doesn’t work for me, I want apps that have all places, business and non business.

Probably the biggest one for me is I want live events. This was the hardest thing of all and TripAdvisor didn’t support this. If you ask a tourist what some of the best things they did were, it was about real life events, fairs, the bath-tub river race, Civil War reenactments (there were plenty but other than driving past one by accident we wouldn’t have had a clue where to find them), concerts, shows, the rodeo in Hattiesburg MS which we only found out about because we were in a hotel restaurant having breakfast and met a family who were competing in it.

Tourism is hurting around the world. Lots of people are traveling their own countries rather than going overseas. Lots of treasures are being missed in towns that have a lot to offer and many of those businesses need our tourism dollars more than the big cities.

A footnote to state and regional tourism organisations, particularly USA, Australia and New Zealand. It is frustrating and short sighted in my humble opinion to stop your tourism efforts at the border. I loved the Tennessee tourism book, but it was too hard to use and it stopped at the border. I also understand that your tax dollars stop at the border, but tourists don’t. Same to Louisiana who obviously had their book made by the same publisher. If you are using the same company, then that company could perhaps look at making quality location based applications that make it easy and attractive for people to enjoy holidays and spend their money.

Perhaps the key is to ask the tourists what they want rather than just continue to focus on traditional print business as usual.

Apps to Aid Your Road Trip – TripAdvisor

If I had only one application to use on my road trip it would be tripadvisor. Having said that it wasn’t enough on my road trip although I spent more time using this app than any other. I put a lot of planning into the trip before hand and contacted US State Tourism organisations asking for information. Only Tennessee came back to me with a booklet including useful maps of the whole state and things to do, places to see, which was great. I filled it with post it flags.

Using Trip Advisor at one of the many hotels I stayed at last month

All tourist organisations have material like this book, but they don’t make it easy to access and they don’t appear to collaborate interstate. This is a major negative for a traveller on a road trip that regional tourist operators in New Zealand and Australia should also think about. I managed to get a similar book for Louisiana when I arrived in New Orleans, which looked like it was designed by the same company. I was lucky that the property we stayed in had one in the room. Otherwise you need to find an Information Centre, but of course these aere widely spread out and you need info to find one.

The biggest problem was that these books were segmented by town or county and not well linked to the main map. They were designed more for people who are looking at locating themselves in a town for a holiday and exploring from there. Also the maps for each state ended strictly on the state line, so if there was something worth enjoying on the other side, it wasn’t going to be on the map. This makes it really difficult to plan a multi state holiday. It would be far better for State and Regional Tourism Operators to work together to mutual benefit. I’m going to cross the line whether you make it easy for me or not.

So back to tripadvisor. If you install it on your mobile or iPad it will help you find Accommodation, Restaurants, Flights and Things To Do, sometimes. What I found was that they worked pretty well in cities, which was the same case with apps such as Foursquare and others, but when you go to rural USA, which was my plan for 3 weeks, the information tends to be more limited to accommodation and sparse when it comes to the many interesting attractions that people have put huge effort into but leave most people blissfuly unaware of them.

My main use for tripadvisor was accommodation and this was really interesting. When you travel through rural America there is a huge variety of accommodation options from very cheap to very expensive. The great thing about it is that it is full of reviews from people who have stayed at those properties. Reviews is something that scare the hell out of tourism industry publishers who charge people to list on their publications, websites, reservation engines etc and in New Zealand some property operators have complained about competitors giving them bad reviews, therefore saying the systems don’t work.

My message to them is that I trust my peers more than I trust advertising, especially those who have stayed at the properties. When you do advertise, make sure you are honest and deliver on your promise.  When you say you have high speed WiFi Access throughout the property, make sure you do because this could be the deciding factor as to why someone books and stays with you and the one negative if it doesn’t work, that they will tell the world about.

For the app user:

• Read many reviews. Look at the dates they were posted and read them carefully. Often there are unique stories where the person had unique needs or expectations that were not met. The more reviews you read, the more you will get the real big picture. Some people are unreasonable or feel that if they are doing a review they have to find fault. Do other people contradict their comments or are there common threads?
• Think about what your needs and time frames are. For example I got a cheap hotel for one night in New Orleans as we were arriving at 1AM and leaving again first thing in the morning. The review said it was clean and tidy but the air conditioning was noisy. They were right, but we knew we were going to be so tired after 30 hours of traveling that it wouldn’t keep us awake and the price and location was good.
• We ended up rating properties based on the things we were looking for and canceling out any that looked dodgy, for example several had complaints about bed bugs.
• We were able to ‘star’ the ones we thought were ok for a re-look.
• We also looked for situations where people had complained and the manager of the property came back and offered solutions and responses. In some cases there were managers who responded to every comment good and bad.
• The problem is that there are many options and when you are doing a road trip and trying to find attractions etc, you can easily waste hours of what should be relaxation time on your trip, but this is one of the costs of being a FIT.
• Tripadvisor offers many choices of reservation engines and price checks. I quickly found that once I had found a property I liked, a phone call to their front desk not only got me a cheaper price than all of the reservation sites, but also cooperation on a better room. Many properties will put you in a crappy room next to the laundry, the road or the busy swimming pool when you get a cheap online booking. If someone recommends a room number and their review sounds like what you are looking for, ask for that room.

Tips for the Tourist Operator:

• Your property is likely to end up in tripadvisor whether you submit it or not.
• People will talk about your property whether you like it or not. Most of them will be bona-fide guests who benefited from the application and are therefore sharing their experience.
• Put yourselves in their shoes. Your business is about hospitality and for your guest it is totally personal. Treat them as you would your family.
• When people make a comment about your business, good or bad, acknowledge and respond to it.
• If you sell rooms cheap on reservation engines don’t automatically give them the crappy room that you never sell if there are better rooms that are going to stay empty. I had a property in Auckland, Sebel Suites, do that to me early this year. They said they could only give me a room with a view of the carpark, because I had booked
  

  Sebel Marketing

  on a cheap promotion. The thing was that they didn’t sell many of the nice rooms overlooking the beautiful Auckland Viaduct Basin that night (I followed up the next morning), but if they had, it wouldn’t have been fair to the people who paid full price. So here’s my advice to them, which the Duty Manager didn’t want to hear. I live on the outskirts of Auckland. I have the choice to go home, but sometimes my wife and I like to go to a show, or out for a night, have a few drinks and not have to worry about driving home. We have stayed in many properties in Auckland. We have told all of our friends and tripadvisor which ones we liked and which ones we felt let us down. We will never again go to the Sebel Suites, we will go back to hotels like the Sky City Grand which has some great promotions on their site. As I said, it travel and tourism is personal.

• Make sure your business is on sites and apps like TripAdvisor.

Bottom line, I almost hated tripadvisor by the end of my holiday because we became almost fanatic about reading the reviews. We found the star ratings didn’t help much and whilst there was a function to save the ones we wanted to revisit, we couldn’t also flag the ones to avoid. We spent a huge amount of time on the site, BUT in every location we found exactly what we expected. We knew which rooms to avoid, and quickly learned to read between the lines.

For developers, this is an excellent site / application to learn from, not perfect but very good, even using your location on your mobile to help you find locations. For users, do give back. If you value crowd sourced feedback and make decisions based on it, you need to give back as well. If you are in New Zealand or Australia, talk to us at GeoSmart. We can help you with practical experience as both frequent travellers and users of apps and a mapping company that cares very strongly about the quality of our location-based data, maps, Points of Interest and the success of applications developed using it. We are local and keen to help. If you are here, but aiming for the world, we can help you get a start based on what we know about the industry and our experience as travelers. We want to help grow New Zealand international success stories.

Planning a road trip somewhere or know somene who is? The may be interested in this series of blogs, which they can find at https://luigicappel.wordpress.com Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think may benefit from it. I wish I had been given a lot of this advice before I left for my trip.

I will follow this up with some ideas as to what would have made tripadvisor a better app for the road tripper, which may be of interest to people looking at developing apps for travel and tourism and am happy to discuss my ideas and experience.

They drive on the wrong side of the road

This is a follow on from my blogs on preparing for a USA Road Trip, but it is equally relevant to anyone going to another country and especially where they drive on the opposite side of the road to what you are used to.

It is very easy when you relax into your trip and get up in the morning, to accidentally start driving on the wrong side of the road and many people even in New Zealand have had accidents and even died by losing concentration and automatically driving on the wrong side of the road because they have been doing it for years at home.

The thing that struck me on my first driving experience in the USA was that the traffic lights are often in the middle of the intersection. In New Zealand they are before the intersection, so I almost stopped in the middle of the road.

One of the things on the top of my preparation list was learn the key elements of the US Road Rules. I had my navigation but it wasn’t going to tell me who had right of way. The rules work really well for you once you understand them.

One that was really interesting is 4-way intersections and we found loads of those. The rule is whoever gets there first has right of way, so you really have to pay attention when you get to them.

Another rule that works really well is that you can turn right at a red light if the way is clear, unless there is a sign saying you can’t at that particular intersection. Make sure you come to a complete stop first, I’m told police are often hiding waiting for people to drive straight through.

A rule that I thought was really good on the Interstates was that if a car was broken down on the side of the road, you have to change lanes to give them space.

Whichever country you go to, its worth spending half an hour to make sure you know the basic road rules. Relax and enjoy but don’t relax too much. I was driving onto a major intersection a couple of weeks ago and the nav said turn sharp left, so I did and found myself facing a one way highway full of traffic coming straight at me. I managed to back out safely, but it reminded me of the importance of staying alert at all times. Having said that, I really enjoyed the road trip and the little bit of preparation beforehand made a big difference.

My 3 Essentials for the US Road Trip

My Thrifty Rental

I’m going to go into more detail continuing from my previous US road trip blogs, but I want to start with the 3 items that were critical to the trip. Actually it should be 4 because the first thing is you can’t do a road trip without a vehicle. I booked an SUV with Thrifty Car Rentals, online. I have to admit some trepidation with this because they were less than half of the price I had been quoted by a number of New Zealand travel agents. I needn’t have worried. These guys were super professional from start to finish and I highly recommend you use them. Even with a queue we were done with the paperwork in about 15 minutes. We were then told to take our pick from a variety of Fords and Jeeps. We chose the Ford Explorer in the picture because it had tinted windows to hide prying eyes from the fact that we had all our luggage on board much of the time.

So back to my list:

1. Car Navigation. I downloaded USA maps on to my TomTom GO LIVE 820 before we left. For a long trip the cost of renting car nav is probably more than buying one. I didn’t realise I could have also downloaded live services, which would have been awesome and solved some of the problems I had along the way, but nevertheless, our trip would not have been possible without TomTom. One lesson I learned in setting it up was that the file was way too big to go on the device, but when I put a SD Card in the slot it installed so easily I was worried that I had done something wrong. I hadn’t, it just worked. Grateful thanks to TomTom. It guided me to all the places I needed to go (I changed the voice to American, Kiwi and Australian didn’t really cut it with names like Lake Ponchtrain)
2. My iPhone. I will go into detail in upcoming blogs about all the apps I used on my iPhone and why, largely because there were no single apps that could tell me what I needed to know about attractions, accomodation, food etc. This is great for the development community, but if I was’t a geek, we would have missed out on so much and probably have been dissapointed with our ability to meet our bucket list expectations. Not only the apps, but also the ability to stay in contact with family at home, using a combination of voice and data apps including Facetime, Skype and Voxer.
3. A USA SIM Card. We spent about 2 hours in New Orleans getting a local SIM Card. Thanks are required to the team at Keep N Touch on Canal Street who were awesome. Our first trek into town was to Riverwalk Mall, thinking it should be easy to get a SIM card but the two mobile shops there could help us, but they only sold mobiles and accessories. Someone in the mall told us to go up Canal and there would a store there which could help us and they were right. The whole team from the store at Keep N Touch rallied around us for a $50 prepay card from H2O for my iPhone. First they had to take a micro SIM out of one of their phones to see if my phone was locked, then set up an account for me, then help me get it working. $50 got me unlimited calls throughout the USA, unlimited text messaging throughout the USA and 2GB of data! It worked pretty much flawlessly everywhere we went, while my wife’s Vodafone mobile had coverage less than half of the time.

I’m going to write a lot more about mobile and location based apps in upcoming blogs, but basically these were the essential elements without which we would not have enjoyed our trip half as much and you would do well to do the same as we did. The other item I will mention is that we have a service on our Orcon telephone and Internet account (I haven’t had a good run with them, but this one feature was great) giving us free calls to the USA for up to an hour at a time including US mobiles. Once we had the SIM set up, our children were able to call us on mobile, within the constraints of the time zones and we used it a lot.

Planning a Road Trip

Yesterday I wrote a blog called Location Based Lessons from FIT USA Road Trip and I am going to write a series of blogs about this experience.

At first it wasn’t going to be a road trip. As a songwriter I wanted to go to Memphis and Tennessee. I also wanted to go to places that neither I nor my wife had been, so all our experiences would be mutually new.

I would have loved to go to the Country Music Awards in Nashville, but we were too late to get tickets and accommodation in and around Nashville was up about 400% during the festival week. I googled tours for the Tennessee area and the awards and came up with pretty much nothing. There was a tour from Australia, but I really didn’t want to spend a couple of weeks with Aussies. It turned out there was a NZ tour going, I actually met them randomly in Chattanooga including getting a hug from the fantastic fiddler Marian Burns, who had so much fun playing that she had lost her voice. It was odd being in a country where people think NZ is either in Australia or somewhere below Wyoming, one woman said NZ is fabulous, they have some amazing homes in the Balkans, but I digress and she was from Alabama:)

So I contacted a few travel agents in Auckland. I visited a few and asked for brochures for the USA. No one had anything other than cruises. I then went on websites and phoned a few, saying I would like a rental car and to basically do a 3 week driving tour, focussing on Tennessee and Mississippi, based around music and history. What could they do for me. I quickly found out that they had no experience in the USA and the options they came up with made very little sense and were hugely expensive. They were not particularly helpful and their ideas ranged from fly to Chicago and drop the car back in Kansas to why don’t you do a tour of Canada. Their quotes for flights and rental cars were way above retail. They didn’t tell me about interstate drop off fees and I ended up doing half the work for them and still found them wanting.

So off to the net and DIY from scratch. The first thing I did was find the Tennessee Tourist Development Department who kindly posted me a tour book and map of the State. This was hugely helpful. I spent a lot of time reading, using Post It Tags and looking on Google Maps. I searched some car rental sites and found that Thrifty had the best deals by far and I managed to get a Ford Escape SUV for under half of the best prices that NZ travel agents offered me.

The next step was, while I wanted to be a FIT traveller, I needed somewhere to crash on the first night in New Orleans as we were arriving around midnight. I installed the Booking.com application which was recommended to me and booked an airport hotel, The Days Inn, for the first night, a couple of weeks in advance. I didn’t want to pick up a rental car in a city and start driving on the wrong side of the road at midnight after about 30 hours of travel and little sleep. The nice thing with Booking.com is that you can book and provide your credit card details, but in most cases if you cancel within a certain time, they don’t penalize you or take your money.

I also installed TripAdvisor on my iPhone and iPad which was both my lifeline and my nemesis. More on this in upcoming blogs. I relied heavily on the reviews on TripAdvisor and they never let me down. TripAdvisor was the best app I used on the whole trip, but it was incredibly time-consuming. It told me that The Days Inn was closest to the airport, had a free shuttle to the airport and that many rooms had noisy air conditioning. I figured we were going to be so tired it wouldn’t matter and I was right.

TripAdvisor is an excellent location based services application for not only acccomodation, but also places to eat and things to do. Of all the apps I used, this was the best, but it still left me wanting. This was a great lesson for me as a location based services and mobile data evangelist, eating the dog food so to speak. As I mentioned in the previous blog, I have learned so much on this trip and the big lesson is that if you are not a geek, then you have a massive learning curve with mobile data location based apps as available today. If you are a developer, particularly down under, you have brilliant opportunities to develop new applications that are more user friendly, and I can help.

mPass iPhone App

I then started planning for the next 2 nights in Louisiana, which I will discuss in my next blog. I will mention that we placed a bid on MyAirNZ for a Skycouch as this was my wife’s longest flight to date (Auckland to Los Angeles) and we had 2 more flights straight after that to get to New Orleans. We were told that we could bid for upgrades using airpoints and considered that as an option but looking at the Premier Economy that looked really impressive (and obviously felt so, looking at the big grin of a retired senior politician beaming at me from one of them on the return flight to NZ) they didn’t allow you to lie down, or get anywhere remotely like that. If there are two of you and you are happy to lie down in spoon position, I’d go with the cheaper Skycouch option and note that if they are not all sold, they get cheaper the closer you get to the flight, although there is a risk that if you wait too long you miss out.

I also installed Air NZ mPass on my iPhone which I also strongly recommend you add to your smartphone. It was quite helpful at times, which I will also explain later, at least when it comes to Air NZ flights, but not very helpful for code shares where it pretty much failed.

In my next blog I will discuss my next two days and how the American tourist and hospitality industry is getting really well-connected when it comes to mobile apps, social media and web sites, but there are major disconnects between having the apps and doing something with them. They appear to be ahead of New Zealand when it comes to business prescence on apps and websites, which is something NZ travel and tourism businesses need to address, because inbound tourists are going to have expectations I don’t believe we are meeting. A large percentage of those tourists will have smartphones and expect more. On the other hand, whilst everything looks wonderful, many properties pay lip service to social and location based media after they have invested in the technology and completed the app sign off. This is a similar attitude that many properties have to their web sites. Build and forget.

Want to know what happens next? Subscribe to this blog and wait for the next one which won’t be far behind.

More on In Vitro Meat

A couple of years ago I wrote about the potential to grow your own food including  in vitro meat. The first experiments produced something rubbery and inedible, but things have moved on since then.

For a country like New Zealand the idea of creating artificial meat is anathema. We made history in 1882 when the SS Dunedin successfully arrived in London carrying 4931 refrigerated carcasses  of  mutton, lamb and pork.

Whilst in the past meat represented better than 50% of NZ’s export revenue, in 2009 it was a modest 13.2%. On the other hand biotech is becoming so important in New Zealand that it has even made the Secondary School curriculum. Significant consideration is being given to Animal Biofarming in NZ as evidenced by this comprehensive document from the NZ Foundation for Research Science and Technology FRST.

Why would you consider doing something like this. Simple really. A large chunk of the population of the world is hungry and unable to feed itself. Over 1 Billion people fit the definition of living in hunger. That’s more than 3 times the population of the USA! Then there’s water. There is debate in some places that there is no water crisis, but fresh water represents only 3% of the total water on the planet. I won’t go into the countries where drinking water is an issue, its common knowledge and drought as a news search on Google draw almost 13,000 results.

According to Fred Pearce who wrote the book When the Rivers Run Dry, it requires around 24,000 liters of water to grow the feed to make a kilo of beef, or 2,400 liters for a Quarter Pounder.

Now while a cow also produces leather and pet food, and other product a massive amount of each beast is expensive waste product, even if some of it goes back in the ground as fertilizer. Wouldn’t it make sense to be able to just make the meat if you could?

I’ve focused on some of the why’s. I haven’t even touched on the widely held ethical views on growing animals purely so we can eat them. I definitely like my meat, don’t get me wrong. Anyway I will leave with a link to the In Vitro Meat Foundation and a quote from Winstone Churchill in 1932:

“Fifty years hence (…) we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”

The last word goes to Jason Metheny of New Harvest

How far away is Peak Oil and what is it?

Lately there has been renewed interest in Peak Oil and while we are talking about Emissions Trading and allowing larger trucks on New Zealand Roads, the fact is that oil is running out.

What is peak oil? Wikipedia has an extended description, but in simple terms it is when the amount of oil being extracted is at the highest rate and from then on, the amount of oil becomes terminal. In other words, the amount of oil being extracted from the earth will be less than is being consumed, while demand, along with population, increases.

The Space Collaborative paints a scary picture of what the near future could look like without oil. Of course oil doesn’t just drive our cars, our ships, our planes, but it also helps to generate electricity.

Now of course for New Zealand it’s not a big deal because we have geothermal power and arrangements with countries like Japan to access oil, when it starts running out. Major gas guzzlers like the USA will gladly give us a share of their emergency stocks because we’re nice people.  We shouldn’t forget that we have more vehicles in New Zealand than we have licensed drivers.  Of course the price will sky rocket and you will need to be very wealthy to be able to run your car. Just as well we have natural gas.

It was interesting to read that Australia voted in November, not to put together a plan for peak oil, so we probably won’t find any help there.  New Zealand has been working on plans for a number of years, because in 2003 we were dependant on oil for 48% of our energy production. This means that brown outs as predicted in the diagram above, within the next 20 years could become a reality. Yet besides emissions trading, the Kyoto Protocol, which as I have blogged about before will require that instead of spending money to protect our own infrastructure will have us sending money to other countries who have lots of trees.

I don’t think we’re talking about science fiction here, where it will be a problem for future generations, long after we have turned to dust. I think this will be a problem that anyone reading this blog will face. So what are you going to do when you can’t get petrol or diesel for your car and there isn’t enough oil to generate electricity or even make candles?

It bears thinking about doesn’t it?