For anyone struggling between protecting your brand and joining the mob offering deep discounts to attract visitors during this downturn, here's a great article from the New York Times about how The Four Seasons is addressing this dilemma.

The top dogs at The Four Seasons say protecting the brand is more important than heads in beds. The recession will end eventually, and there's too much to lose from devaluing the product. Many of their hotel real estate owners feel otherwise, some resorting to behavior unbecoming of a luxury brand.

Which side are you on?

Before you go abandoning your traditional media plan entirely, it might be a good idea to take note of how some of the most successful online brands are becoming successful.

This article in today’s Adweek reports on how Kayak.com’s co-founders are eying the the successful launch of online video sharing site hulu as a model for their own growth. Eighteen months ago, hulu didn’t even have a name. Today, it’s the second most popular video sharing site, thanks in part to a 60-second television spot on the superbowl - followed by a very aggressive television spot buy.

According to the Adweek article, other brands eyeing traditional media include Zappos.com and Amazon.com. Strangely absent from the article is Apple’s iTunes, the online music store linked to the iPod and iPhone. While Apple does market extensively on the internet, they continue to rely on traditional media, too. And it is paying off. Apple continues to dominate the music market and is gaining market share from Windows PCs.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend the Phocuswright Analyst Forum in New York City. The presentation of most relevance to Destination Marketing Organizations was Swaying the Undecided: The Impact of Destination Marketing on Consumer Travel Choices, by Lorraine Sileo, Vice President, Research, for PhoCusWright.

Lorraine’s presentation revolved around the results of a recent study to help determine where DMOs fit into the travel process based on actual consumer behavior, and what they can do to remain viable organizations in the coming decade. While there were many interesting findings, including compelling demographic data supporting the value of the DMO customer and a clear indication of what DMO website features consumers value most, one finding made was a clear mandate:

DMOs play a vital role in the dreaming phase

(when consumers choose a destination)

and they have the most work to do in this area.

The challenge is that consumers are looking to DMOs, more than any other online source, for inspiration. Consumers go to DMO websites in search of wanderlust - a compelling story behind the destination that create desires, and depth of information to help them plan their trips. Their website feature usage patterns confirm this.

The disconnect is that DMOs are increasingly finding themselves having to justify their existence by finding direct links between their marketing efforts to actual visits. This is in direct conflict with what consumers are looking for from DMOs, and could be setting the DMO up to look like the role they play in the travel planning process is of limited value.

Consider this:Even though many DMOs have invested in adding booking engines to their sites, those investments had limited ROI. When it comes to booking their trips, the vast majority of consumers choose to use OTAs, hotel sites and offline booking over DMO sites - except when packages and deep discounts were offered.

One of the biggest complaints I hear about social media platforms like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and Twitter is the amount of spam on the network. As a person with a high sensitivity to both internal and external distractions, this unwanted din makes it very difficult to listen carefully to the conversation.

On the other hand, participating in social networks takes a lot of time. I write an online newsletter on travel marketing and destination branding, write a travel marketing blog, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn account, answer LinkedIn Q&As, a Digg account, a Technorati account, a public Google Reader rss feed, and a Plaxo page. Keeping up with all of these different social media spaces is more than a full time job.

Over the past year, I have been experimenting with some of the automation tools to reduce the amount of time I spend starting conversations so I can direct more time listening and responding to the conversations of others.

Some would say that these automation tools are bad social media etiquette.

Under certain circumstances, I would whole-heartedly agree. However, I believe with proper thought and care, these automation tools can help cut down on the spam I create and focus my attention on being a meaningful participant in the conversation.

In the past, every time I had something to say, in a blog post for instance or a comment on something I read on Google Reader, I would spend a couple of hours going through the process of alerting my various social networks manually. With the help of automation tools, I can now write a blog post or comment on an article in Google Reader and let my entire network know about in seconds.

Is this spam?

I suppose if I set these automation tools to randomly spit out alerts, the answer would be yes. Or if my posts and comments were on subjects not of interest to my followers, again yes it would be spam. But now that I am using these automation tools (very judiciously and only when warranted), I can spend more time listening. As a result, my posts and comments are now more relevant to what my network is interested in hearing from me. How do I know this?

The number of comments I am receiving on my blog is increasing and the number of meaningful relationships within my social network is growing.