FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
A Boredpanda.com poll of Europeans asked, "Which European country has the most attractive citizens?"
As the above map on the tweet above shows, Sweden won in a landslide, with almost four times as many votes as second-place France, with Spain third and Norway fourth. Yes, seeing is believing! But trust me, Norway is a very, very competitive fourth! Even the armed female Customs officers at Oslo Airport Gardermoen are very, very attractive, which at 6:45 a.m., in the middle of January, after a LONG overnight flight from Newark, was not something I was expecting. But adapt I did! I really like the Oslo Airport, too, since it's very clean and tidy, and if you didn't know any better, you would think it opened last year.
Remember, too, as I've written about here previously, four months from now,low-fare carrier NorwegianAirlines starts non-stop flights from Fort Lauderdale to Oslo on November 30th. With flights to Stockholm and Copenhagen days later.
No more need for pointless flights first to Newark, Chicago, Detroit or Dulles just to fly to Scandinavia.
APRIL 20, 2013
Scandinavian Delight! Starting November 30th, fly nonstop cheaply between Ft Lauderdale and Oslo or Copenhagen on Norwegian.com, and starting December 1st, fly from FLL to Stockholm Arlanda; @Oslo, @norway, @stockholm, @sweden, @copenhagen, @denmark
Tourism game-changer for South Florida travelers & Fort Lauderdale-area businesses -but only if they're smart and start planning now. Ruminations on the upcoming Norwegian.com flights b/w Ft. Lauderdale and Oslo, Stockholm & Copenhagen, and the need for Broward's hospitality industry to take full-advantage of the opportunity; @Oslo, @norway, @stockholm, @sweden, @copenhagen, @denmark
Above, the State of Florida's classic 1970's national TV tourism ad that I've posted on the blog many times before. This spot ad was hugely-popular and successful, especially in the Midwest and East Coast, and was by far THE best tourism TV ad the state has ever produced. To this day, it still makes people smile when they see it or hear that catchy jingle, "When You Need It Bad We've Got It Good."
But in a much-more competitive travel marketplace than existed over thirty years ago, with so many disparate consumer markets, and different ways of reaching out to prospective travelers, it seems to me that we need to see the state come up with something new that's just as compelling as this was. http://www.youtube.com/embed/OxB0kjqO6SI
Today I wanted to follow-up with some specificity on my blog post of this past Saturday, April 20th, which had some great news that some of you readers of the blog might want to take full-advantage of in the near-future -just like me- regarding a game-changing marketing move
A move that will simultaneously make travel to a dynamic part of the world more convenient and cheaper, while also offering local Broward County-area hotels, restaurants and hospitality-related businesses an entrée to an affluent English-speaking tourism market -esp. families- that they have barely even begun to scratch:Scandinavia:
Scandinavian Delight! Starting November 30th, fly nonstop between Ft Lauderdale and Oslo on Norwegian.com for as low as $238, or fly from FLL to Stockholm Arlanda for only $269, plus taxes and luggage charges; @Oslo, @norway, @stockholm, @sweden
A comparable round-trip flight on SAS to Oslo or Stockholm, even in Economy and made weeks in advance, is well over $1,000, as I know from experience in January.
Compare that to whatNorwegian.com will offer starting in late November, with a direct flight to Oslo from FLL.
And coming back this way, with these flights, Broward is now much-cheaper airfare-wise, than flying from Stockholm or Oslo to The Maldives, a very popular vacation spot for Swedish families that's heavily-promoted, along with, of course, Thailand.
The latter is a holiday travel location that many Swedish families have been to so many times before that at least some of their kids are actually blah towards going there again. (Really.)
And since I neglected to mention it in Saturday's post, or so far today, you should know that Norwegian.com is the fastest-growing airline in Europe and has already placed orders for 200 new airplanes.
Here are two photos from my blog of some travel-related advertising I snapped while I in Stockholm in January, and trust me, these display ads are everywhereyou look.
You literally can not escape them.
And that's in part because they work so well.
Especially when it's 17 degrees Fahrenheit and sundown is at 3:45 p.m.
Not surprisingly, this ad was in heavy rotation during morning TV news shows, so much so that I started hearing this jingle in my head by my 3rd day in Stockholm.
As a friend who's a travel professional in Sweden explained to me, since I didn't know myself, flights from Oslo or Stockholm to The Maldives or to FLL are roughly the same time-wise.
But if you compare the costs of airfare using Norwegian.com, NOW flying to FLL from Scandinavia is a ridiculous bargain, by hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and is a bargain that is multiplied by each person who flies here.
After being over there and getting a small sense of how things are done, my own opinion is that the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) needs to really increase their advertising and marketing dollars in Scandinavia and start working on some compelling co-op advertising with Norwegian.comthat they can start running this Fall, before the twice-weekly flights start. http://www.sunny.org/
It seems to me that we need to do this to make sure that the airline's strategy (gamble) works to everyone's satisfaction, and then at some point, they can increase the number of flights or days they fly between FLL and Oslo, whose still-new-looking airport is, in a word, sweet.
Since HB's beach is so woefully unattractive and poorly-maintained, the local postcards that I gave to some business people I met-and the new friends that I made- in Stockholm were entirely of Hollywood Beach and The Broadwalk.
Trust me, people I spoke to there in all sort sof places around Stockholm were very intrigued by what I told them about the area, esp. after hearing them relate some of the daily hassles they deal with when they go to Thailand and other tropical places.
They're looking for new places to visit, so why not our part of the world?
Savvy and enterprising individuals, companies and firms from South Florida to Sweden can now finally reach the affluent, well-informed and influential decision-makers in South Florida and beyond who regularly read Hallandale Beach Blog and its Twitter feed for the facts, nuanced insight and original analysis they can't get elsewhere, and do so via VERY REASONABLE advertising on the blog, at prices starting at just $85 a month. Contact me today for more details at hallandalebeachblog@gmail.com
Above, in the foreground, a Norwegian.com plane alongside one from SAS and Thai Airways on the tarmac at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, around 12:39 p.m. (I told you it was overcast most of my trip!) This particular plane has famed Swedish botanistCarl Linnaeus a.k.a. Carl von Linné, featured on its tail. His face also appears on the 100 Swedish krona note, the smallest bill with a security foil strip. As I have blogged about before here, he's scheduled to be replaced on that bill by gorgeous Greta Garbo'sface. Ah, Garbo! January 10, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
Meant to post something about this valuable bit of great news a few months ago when I first got the news from someone in-the-know, but it's still worth mentioning all these weeks later now that it was officially made public on Tuesday. And it's a real game-changer, too. Starting November 30th, you can fly nonstop between Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood and Oslo on Norwegian twice a week starting at $238 each way,plus taxes and luggage charges. Norwegian's departures from Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood will be on Mondays and Fridays at 9:30 p.m, arriving in Oslo at 12:35 p.m.the following day.
Departures from Oslo are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 3:10 p.m., arriving at Ft. Lauderdale at 7:30 p.m. Eastern the same day.
CopenhagenAirport1 YouTube Channel video: SAS commercial: Så godt som hjemme (As good as home) Former Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen is discovering Tokyo, Japan via SAS. Uploaded January 25, 2009. Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto. http://youtu.be/33CQKswrPlg
Have begun preliminary pre-flight checklist for trip to snowy Stockholm, yet am already taking flight in my imagination, even while researching how many NFL playoff games I won't be able to see in Stockholm sports bars because of the six-hour time difference.
Like former Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen and his trip to Japan depicted above, I'll soon be the proverbial fish-out-of-water, a tanned Floridian in snowy Sweden in darkest January, riding sweet-looking trains, trying to figure out vending machines, and taking photos of normal, everyday things that cause passersby to wonder why I'm taking photos.
But those with a yen for the Internet will quickly spot my Sony Bloggie videocamera and surmise, "Oh, he must be a blogger! Everything is fascinating to them." My first full day there I'm slated to say hallå to a day where sundown comes around 3:15 p.m. http://www.smhi.se/ More on that in the days to come...
