by Lufthansa Flyer | Nov 4, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Lufthansa has partnered with skin care giant NIVEA for a new contest that will award 3 lucky people an opportunity to visit a loved one. The contest, called “Love & Care”, is being held on their Facebook Page (click the link to be taken there to enter).
To enter, you simply need to share your story about a long distance relationship. The relationship can be a long distance romance, a friendship separated by distance or a relationship with a relative separated by distance. To be eligible, the significant other, friend or relative as well as the contest entrant must have a Facebook account. When you go to enter, you’ll need to select that person from a list of your Facebook Friends. You’ll also be asked to provide the Cities/Countries where you both reside, as well as how long you have known each other. Additionally, you’ll need to share a photo showing both of you and a brief description of the nature of your relationship.
For your efforts (should only take 2 minutes!), you’ll be entered to win 1 of 3 Lufthansa tickets that will be given away. The ticket will be good for a round trip to take you to the city of your friend, relative or significant other. If you are a German resident, you’ll also have a chance to win 1 of 500 NIVEA Skin Care Travel Packs.
The contest started on 1 November and will continue until 28 November. Winners of the Lufthansa ticket will have until 31 December 2013 to complete their travels.
Additionally, this contest is open to most residents of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Residents of the Americas and Asia are not eligible to participate.
For more details (including a complete list of eligible countries), please read the Terms & Conditions.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Nov 4, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Thanks to the success of Lufthansa’s “SceneSpotter”, their social media team has decided to expand the project to now include cities from the United States and Asia. In the coming weeks Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Seoul will be added to represent Asia while New York, San Francisco and New Orleans will be added to represent the USA. As SceneSpotter grows, expect to see more cities added to the App.
For those of you not familiar with “SceneSpotter”, it’s a Facebook driven App that allows users to share and receive recommendations for their great places to visit when in a particular city. SceneSpotter encourages people to share favorite restaurants, shopping opportunities, cultural places of interest, family friendly activities, green-space and lodging suggestions.
What I really like about SceneSpotter is that it is not necessarily designed to cover the popular places for a given city. The strength and value of SceneSpotter is to provide you with places to experience that are off the beaten path and places not readily found in a tourist guide. After all, when visiting a new city for the first time, what fun is to go to places surrounded people from your home country, speaking your language? The beauty of travel is to discover the new and unique things, especially when they’re not spoiled by “tourist abuse”.
When SceneSpotter first rolled out, I was part of the Beta Testing team while we were building “content” for European cities. I’m really excited that the project has earned the ability to be expanded and I’m especially pleased that US cities are being introduced for the first time.
I’ve been working with Lufthansa’s Social Media team in building initial content for the rollout of the new cities and want to thank MilePoint.com’s Pat89339 for providing fantastic suggestions for San Francisco and Michael W. of “MichaelWTravels” for providing great ideas for New York City. Their contributions will really help the US cities get off to a fast start with their great recommendations.
As you read this, and have recommendations that you would like to share for Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangkok, New York, San Francisco and New Orleans, I ask that you PLEASE share them with me and I can forward the information to the programmers responsible for SceneSpotter. Ideally, we’re looking for ideas that are a bit off the “beaten path” and are favorites of your’s. If you’d like to share these places, please email them to me at lufthansaflyerblog@gmail.com and I’ll make sure they are added to the database of user recommendations. All I need is the name of the place and an address (if you have it) and a few words about why you’re recommending it.
If you have yet to experience SceneSpotter for yourself, I strongly encourage you to visit the SceneSpotter Page on Facebook and try it for yourself. It’s truly a great interactive tool that I think will help you as you plan your travels or if you want to leave your recommendations for others.
To learn more about SceneSpotter (including step by step directions in using it), you can read my post on it when it was first launched in July of this year.
If you have any questions or other comments regarding SceneSpotter, please email them to me or leave them in the comments section for this post and I’ll make sure that the Lufthansa Social Media Team receives them.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Nov 2, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Earlier this week when The Lufthansa Group announced their quarterly earnings result, their Chief Executive Christoph Franz took the opportunity to answer questions regarding Lufthansa’s plans on a potential “tie-up” or codesharing arrangement with a Mid-East Carrier.
In the Reuters story, Herr Franz insisted that Lufthansa will wait to create such a partnership until it feels that it has accomplished the goal of revamping their current operation. Lufthansa is currently in the middle of their “SCORE” initiative focused on streamlining the group and optimizing their cost structure. It appears that any serious conversations regarding a Mid-East partnership will wait until they have reached their goal under “SCORE”.
Over the last few months we have seen Qantas enter a 10 year alliance with Emirates, Qatar announced that it will join oneworld and Air France entered a code-share agreement with Air Berlin and Etihad. When asked about these partnerships, he stated that “Air France and Air Berlin have entered these partnerships from a position of weakness”, he also added that “We do not want to do this, we are not under pressure, and we can and we will assess any potential partnerships very carefully”.
European carriers have been under a great deal of stress ever since Mid-East airlines entered the European market en-masse and have started to chip away at market share that was normally reserved for the European legacy carriers.
Herr Franz went on to say that Lufthansa will only enter discussions with a potential Mid-East partner when it feels it is on equal footing with the potential partner and is not acting out of desperation. As part of his comments, he added “If the head of Air France traffic says ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ that’s not the expression of a business strategy conducive to survival”.
That comment should crystallize exactly how Lufthansa feels when it comes to these partnerships. The feeling is that they can go at it alone for the time being, and will act only when they are confident that they have their own house in order.
It will be interesting to see which strategy will work best over time: Partner now as in the case of Air France, Qantas and Air Berlin? or wait until you are in the drivers seat at the negotiating table.
Personally, I would think being in the “driver’s seat” and in control of your destiny is a far more desirable place to be versus having terms dictated to you.
