Category: travel

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business-general, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, travel

Two weeks in Turkey, not speaking the language, with my marketing radar wide open. Here’s some of what I noticed.

  1. A surprising number of Turkish TV commercials remind me very much of US commercials from the 1960s and 1970s: housewives demonstrating the superiority of some cleaning product, dancing chocolate bars, and so on. At the same time, some are totally state-of-the-art, with special effects and much more modern concepts about marketing. But as in America, often these forget to actually sell the product.
  2. At least during the slow season of our visit, most shopkeepers and hospitality business owners (and the general public) are very friendly, and eager to meet special requests.
  3. Personal service in the hospitality industry seems to be a Turkish hallmark. We repeatedly experienced people going the extra mile for us or plying us with gifts. As an example, one hotel proprietor arranged our public bus tickets to the next town, had the tickets delivered to the hotel, booked on us two tours at the next destination we were going to, and even paid the minibus fare from his gleaming hotel to the bus station, some 12 km away. Another one saw that we were making sandwiches and she supplemented our bread and cheese with a huge gift of fruit, olives, and better bread. An enterprising travel agent across from the bus station had his agency open hours before the others, in time to meet the early morning arrivals from the night buses. Offering a warm room on a cold morning and help communicating with hotels, he was doing a healthy business selling tours, balloon tickets, and lodging.And yet, some of the basics are neglected. One hotelkeeper never cleaned our room on a three-day stay (though all our other hotels cleaned regularly and thoroughly). A restaurant owner who served an excellent meal and whose dining room was beautifully decorated had not bothered to fix a long-broken door latch in the bathroom or his leaky toilet mount. Nonsmoking laws are violated constantly (almost every adult male Turk seems to smoke).
  4. The Turkish business community seems way behind in its use of the Internet. Vast numbers of businesses don’t have a website, and if they have an e-mail address on their business cards—many don’t—it’s Hotmail or maybe Gmail. Of those that do have a website, a surprising percentage have a useless brochureware site that gives nothing you can’t get out of a phone book—sometimes in multiple languages. And yet, the two-room hotel we chose in Goreme had a very professional English-language website, even though its owner speaks no English.
  5. My willingness to do business with someone is inversely related to how much pressure they exert—and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Despite this, in all the tourist locations, touts are everywhere, some of them quite obnoxious. Those with a different approach really stand out. In one souvenir craft shop whose owner gave us all the time we wanted to browse his offerings, answered our questions but otherwise left us alone, we bought five different items. Often, however, we were prepared to buy, but left without buying as the pressure increased. Yet the behavior continues.
  6. We saw very few beggars; much fewer than in the US. In Turkey, it seems the economically marginal eke out a living by trying to sell something: a glass of fresh-squeezed juice, a bagel, a bag of roasted chestnuts, a shoeshine, a song—or, of course, earn a commission from one of the rug or craft merchants. Particularly in Old City Istanbul, male strangers will approach you, chat you up, give some bit of genuinely helpful advice, and steer you toward their particular rug shop.
  7. There is a great deal of competition among nearby businesses, but also a great deal of cooperation. Merchants respect their neighbors and will work together to make a sale for someone. Tea shops in the Grand Bazaar do a thriving business ferrying chai to the rug merchants who offer it to their prospects.
  8. During the slow season (such as our December visit), many businesses hang on by the slimmest of threads. One restaurant owner told us he’d had one table to serve the previous day and we were, at 1 p.m., the only ones that day. He was quite excited that he already had a reservation for the following day.
  9. The sampling economy is so taken for granted in Istanbul that locals will simply reach in to a bulk food bin and try something without asking. If they like it, they buy. We didn’t have a chance to observe these kinds of markets outside of the Istanbul region, so I don’t know if that’s true elsewhere.

Crafts will vary enormously in quality and price. If you plan to go beyond Istanbul, get a sense of what the items you like cost. You may find them for half as much in other regions, or you may see them higher and want to pick them up before you fly out. If you want to make sure you’re buying Turkish goods, check labels carefully

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics-International, Green Business, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, travel Tagged with , , ,

I can think of no better way to celebrate July 4th this year than to acknowledge the huge honor my hero and friend Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans in Orange, MA recently received.

Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon making music in Rwanda

Dean Cycon is the most ethical business owner I know, and the only person to be a guest twice on the business ethics radio show I hosted and produced for four years, from 2005 to 2009. Dean has done 100% organic and fair trade coffee and cocoa since the day he opened his company, which he located in a depressed area where jobs are scarce. Dean not just funds but also actively partners with people in the villages that supply his coffee to do “people-centered development” projects, led by the folks who live and work in those villages. He also partners with local charities in western Massachusetts to create private label coffee they can sell as fundraisers. Oh yes, and he’s also the author of one of my favorite travel books: Ippy Award gold winner Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green, 2007). And he’s a fun guy who hasn’t let success interfere with his playful spirit.

And now, OMG, Dean Cycon has been awarded one of the most prestigious honors in the world: the Oslo Business for Peace Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize for business. The award judges are actual Nobel Laureates, including microlending pioneer Prof. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel prize in Economics in 2006, and Prof. A. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. Dean is one of five honorees, and the only American. All I can say is, he richly deserves it.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, travel Tagged with , , ,

By Shel Horowitz, Editor, Global Travel Review

In my many trips to San Francisco and the Bay area, I’ve tended not to go to the Mission District. I’d walked through it on my first trip to the city, way back in 1976, and remembered it as a depressing area with more than its share of derelicts. While it was not as raunchy as the Tenderloin, it was not, at that time, a place that inspired return visits.

Well, things have changed—somewhat. Valencia Street in particular has gotten somewhat chi-chi, with a wide range of restaurants (and prices), cafes, bookstores, and small shops. I met friends at Osha Thai: upscale and very tasty, with unusual—I’d even call them exotic—menu choices and yet very reasonable prices.

And the Mission is host to an incredible diversity of murals: I’m guessing well over 100, often stacked next to each other in rows of five or more. The largest concentration I saw was along the entire length of Clarion Alley, which runs east from Valencia near 17th Street to Mission (I only made it as far as Lexington halfway down). Themes range from Aztec gods to revolutionary hiphop culture, and artistic quality ranges from thoroughly brilliant to quite amateurish.

Murals in Carion Aley, San Francisco
Phtographers and gawkers in San Francisco's mural-lined Clarion Alley

Another good collection is just east of Mission in the low 20s, behind and around of all things a Zipcar parking lot.

Murals at a Zipcar parking lot, San Francisco
Murals at a Zipcar parking lot, San Francisco

And then there’s the Women’s Building, whose four-storey corner edifice at 3543 18th Street has turned into a giant canvas for muralists on both street-facing sides.

Side view of the Women's Building, San Francisco
Side view of the Women's Building, San Francisco
African woman with child mural closeup, the Women's Building, San Francisco
African woman with child mural closeup, the Women's Building, San Francisco

While San Francisco is a charming, beautiful city, many parts of it lack sufficient trees. Not so Delores Street, a beautiful boulevard with a refreshingly green tree-lined median strip. At 16th is a large Spanish-style church, and immediately next to it is the mission of Saint Francis of Assisi, for whom the city is named.

The original San Francisco mission (built 1785-91) and the neighboring basilica
The original San Francisco mission and the neighboring basilica

The original mission dates to 1776, but this building was constructed a bit later, 1785-91.

Like Valencia, Mission Street has a number of food choices. I met another friend at Gracias Madre, a vegan Mexican restaurant, and from there, continued walking up Mission to 24th Street.

This is an area that time forgot. Crumbling old movie theaters, pawn shops, and yes, lots of derelicts curled up in doorways when not going through trash to salvage deposit bottles. Many of the buildings on this upper stretch have not been updated in decades.

Has time forgotten this thrift shop and pawn shop on San Francisco's Mission Street?
Has time forgotten this thrift shop and pawn shop on San Francisco's Mission Street?

And yet the impression was clean, and the murals were everywhere, and the streets were full of people who seemed engaged with their landscape.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday’s postal mail brought an invitation by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to survey our driving habits.

I live in a rural area, along a state highway but between two college towns. Green as I’d love to be, I go most places by car. Occasionally, I’ll have enough time to bike to Northampton or Amherst, but it’s about 50 minutes each direction, and that’s a big chunk out of my day. It’s also not a very pleasant ride, along a busy, very hilly highway with lots of curves and potholes and big stretches without a shoulder.

I’m a lifelong fan and USER of public transportation. Growing up in New York City, I was eight years old when I switched from the school bus to the public bus—and that was with a transfer. I’ll often take buses instead of driving to Boston or New York (and I’ve actually booked Amtrak for my next trip to Washington). When I travel out of my area, I rarely rent a car unless the destination city is the start of an extended driving trip. If I’m just staying locally, I use buses, trams and subways (and the occasional taxi.

There’s a local bus that runs past my house. But even though I’m a public transit guy, I’ve lived here 12 years and have never taken it. Why? Because it’s set up to fail. The local transit authority, in its wisdom, runs full-size coaches three times a day in from Northampton to South Hadley and twice a day back to Northampton. I have lots of reasons to go to Northampton, but I can’t do it on the bus. The first trip to Northampton that passes my house arrives at 5:30; the last bus back departs Northampton at 5:35. So that leaves five minutes, after business hours, to do my business. Ha, ha.

If I happened to want to go the other way, I could have a whole hour in South Hadley, between 5:05 and 6:05 p.m. Whoopie! Oh yeah, I could also arrive at Mount Holyoke at 8 a.m., and if I happened to somehow discover nine hours of things to do in sleepy South Hadley, I could catch the 5:05 back home. Thanks a lot.

I can see these rare buses go by my house, and they’re usually very uncrowded. What a surprise! Set up a bus service to fail, and then complain that nobody takes the bus.

But how’s this: what if instead of a 40-passenger coach scheduled as to be unusable, there was a 10-passenger van or minibus, going, say, every two hours. Labor cost would be higher, as a driver would have to be diverted from a more popular route. But the other costs of operation, such as fuel, would be sharply less for each run. And my whole family would probably use the bus several times a week, especially if the route were extended three miles past Mount Holyoke to the high school my son attends, at the beginning and end of the school day. Probably so would a number of other people. Maybe enough to make the route viable.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life, travel

Just back from a week aboard a cruise ship, with almost no Internet access (Yeah, I could have bought access at 75 cents a minute, but I saw no reason to grab my email at highway robbery prices. I did manage to use an Internet cafe on shore, twice, just to check if my Virtual Assistant forwarded anything urgent. But it wouldn’t be a vacation if I were still dealing with 300 incoming messages a day.

Anyway, some totally random thoughts from the trip:

Transportation Safety Administration has spiffy new bright blue uniforms (my last flight was several months ago). They look gorgeous–but aren’t we supposed to be in a budget crisis? There was nothing wrong with the old white ones.

Cruise ships completely distort not only the local economy but also visitors’ perceptions. The feel we got for Guatemala in our three-week trip last summer was almost completely different from the artificial world of a cruise port that waits only for boats to dock. It’s even different from the land-based tourist towns and attractions that deal with a continuous (but much smaller) flow of tourists but also have a vibrant non-tourist life, integrated into the fabric of the nation.

The cooperative movement and indigenous self-help organizations have even penetrated the restricted corridors of cruise terminals–Good!

If you turn off email and Internet, it’s not that hard to completely ignore the outside world.

Our flight to the boat was canceled, so we arranged with the boat to meet it at the next stop, arranged with the airlines to reroute us to the closest point, arranged for a one-way car rental, and drove four very scenic hours to meet the boat. This astounded many of our fellow passengers–but we’re used to making our own travel arrangements and it didn’t faze us at all. It didn’t even seem like one of our more difficult travel adventures, compared with some of what we’ve done over the last 30 years together, but cruises for the most part don’t attract intrepid travelers. Of course, it helped that we followed the Principled Profit philosophy and were so nice as we explained our situation that people went out of their way to bend the rules for us. And it also helped that we had access to a cell phone and a laptop.

Environmental consciousness has penetrated even to the cruise industry. I went to a lecture from the ship’s environmental officer and was pleasantly amazed at the sophistication of waste treatment, etc. Still a ways to go. But they’re even considering having one nonsmoking ship as an experiment.

Rainforests are very special places, and some of the landowners know this. In Belize, we visited a 3rd or 4th generation landholder, a young man in his mid-20s, who has organized his neighbors to provide many acres of unbroken habitat for howler monkeys, and has done quite a bit of research on them.

Weather can always impact a trip. In addition to having our flight canceled, we had to skip our call in Mexico, because it was too windy to dock the boat. Bummer!

It’s always better to have a reservation for car rentals. We didn’t when we docked in Tampa, and the cruise terminals had no cars. So we had to buy tickets to an airport shuttle, hunt around the airport for a car to rent, and then go off to see Tampa.

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