#but also the level of cleanliness in this house is driving me up a WALL and i think if i mitigate some of that perhaps it will help

[quatregats]

Also in other foolish illness news I stripped my bed this morning because I was so sick of the sheets smelling like fever sweat and thought it would probably help but now I'm wondering why I did that. Now I have to like...actually wash them. Girl help

[coffeecakefanfics]

The 1,001 Clichés of A Teenage Romance (Peter Parker x Fem!Reader)

Studying with Ned was nothing new to Peter, but actually stopping by ‘Kay’s Coffee and bakery’ for coffee was.  The coffee shop sat two buildings down from his apartment and Aunt May would stop in before work every morning.  With her day off she asked Peter and Ned to run and get her a coffee and whatever they’d like.  

It was a typical coffee shop, the walls were painted a muted cream and the tables were a beautiful sturdy oak.  There were pictures of New York plastered on the wall along with a big picture of the “Kay” family.  Behind the counter was a menue board along with a black board with the desserts of the day scribbled in pink and yellow chalk.  

“Good morning, welcome to Kay’s Coffee and Bakery where every cup is brewed fresh and every baked good is homemade how can I help yo- Oh hey I know you two from school,”  The girl stood behind the counter.  She had a smile on her face.  She wore a plain black long sleeve with a small Kay’s logo on the left breast.  The half apron she wore was black and the name tag was pinned to the top ‘Y/N’

“We have Calc, bio, and english together and im pretty sure we share a lunch break too,” she beamed.

“Oh yeah you’re in drama and on the volleyball team right?” Ned kind of lit up.

“Yup, and i’m in knowledge bowl, student council, and they’re trying to get me to join prom planning,” she kind of laughed. Peter recognized her alright, she was the top hitter on the volleyball team, he remembers watching her last season with MJ. 

“You stay busy then?” Peter piped up this time.

“Well I mean between school, clubs, and work i’m surprised I have time for anything else,” She took a deep breath at that. “So, what can I get you guys?”

“I need an,” Peter looked at the text May had sent him, “Iced French Vanilla with Extra Extra Cream and white chocolate syrup and a coffee cake muffin” he finished and peeked up at the girl who was already brewing the drink. 

“So you’re the famous nephew huh?” she teased as she poured the creamer into the cup. Peters face went flush and he started to stutter

“I-well I uh”

“It’s fine, I think it’s sweet.  She tells me how good you take care of her and the trouble you get in to.  It’s honestly one of my favorite parts of my morning.  Everyone else is suuuch a drag,” She laughed and slid the drink and muffin across the counter. “Anything else?”

“We don’t really drink coffee,” Peter turned to Ned. “do you want anything?”

“Yeah can I have a hot chocolate?”  He asked.

“Of course, plain or with extras, extras are free of charge except espresso shots”

“However you like it is fine”

“alright that’ll be $8.27 thank you,” she took the cash, gave them change and went to making the drink. 

“May We’re back” Peter called into the apartment.  May came almost running from the couch to grab her coffee. 

“You are a life saver,” she kissed the top of his head.

“Come oonn” he gently pushed her back.

“Where’s Ned?”

“He had to go home, something about a new episode of a show, I don’t know” He flopped onto the chair cockeyed to the couch.

“She’s cute right?” May smirked and set her drink down.

“I mean yeah, She’s pretty, but she’s also popular,” he shrugged. 

“Peter, baby, she has a job and a full ride to MIT, not to mention she likes a lot of the same dorky stuff you do,” she shifted and looked at him. “You haven’t been on a date in years Pete, why not go now?” she poked.

“She probably already has someone, I mean she is popular, remember?”

“I think you should go for it, get out of the house,” The conversation ended there. Peter laid in bed that night thinking about how he’d spot her in class or in the halls.  She was pretty, but she was also busy, he didn’t want to mess with her schedule. 

Lunch rooms are the devil, they’re clique filled and loud, but the only time he can actually talk to his friends. 

“Come on you KNOW that padme just lost the will to live,” How the topic started none of them new all they new was Peter and Ned were going at it again and MJ wanted out. “Dude she just gave up, her husband joined the darkside, face the facts”

“Actually, Palpatine took her life force for Anakin, Padme was a strong woman who fought for what was right, she wouldn’t just leave her babies alone,” Y/n jumped in and sat next to MJ. Ned and Peter looked at each other and back at the girl.

“What i’m popular not uncultured,” she laughed. “Okay MJ I need some serious help with knowledge bowl studying”

“Y/n, I love you, I do, but I’m busy this week, I have a ton of homework because Mr. Braun decided to be a dick, I’m sorry,” MJ spoke remorsefully.

“My meet is monday, it’s going to decide who goes to state, is there no way you can help,” Y/n pleaded with her friend.

“I’m sorry, I am, but I can’t fail this class”

“You’re right I’m sorry, if you need help studying or doing homework i’ll help you” She smiled and went to stand. 

“Peter can help,” Ned blurted

“I can?” Peter turned his head sharply.

“He can, he has a stark internship until 6 but after that he’s free,” Ned motioned with his eyes from Peter to the Girl.  

“I-uh-I, yeah I can help,” he stuttered and flushed.

“Peter you really don’t have to,” she gave him a sympathetic look.

“Yeah no, it’s uh, no problem,” he smiled awkwardly.

“You just saved my life, I owe you.  I’ll meet you at the coffee shop and we can go to my place after okay?” she beamed.  Peter liked her smile, it was bright. 

“Of course” he grinned. 

“Y/N, Game plan!” One of the other girls called.

“Sorry, I have to go but tonight at 6,” she lit up as she grabbed her tray and jogged over to her friends.

“What the fuck?” peter turned to Ned.

“I saw how you looked at her at the coffee shop, and you haven’t been on a date in years. it’s my job as a wing man to help you get dates,” Ned shrugged and took a bite of the sandwich in front of him. Peter sighed and pulled his phone out.

P:Hey May, I’m helping a friend study I won’t be home till late

M:You’re not patrolling are you?

P:No, I’m seriously helping a friend study

M:Stay safe, I sent you $10 for dinner <3

The streets were dim when Peter walked up to the shop.  She stood locking the door.

“Hey” He called.

“Peter Hi,” she grinned and waved. 

“So um, y-your place?” he tugged at his straps. 

“Yeah, I live in those apartments right there,” she nodded at the building two doors down.

“Wait, what? so do I, how come I never see you?” he turns to her. 

“I usually take the fire escape home, I hate walking through the lobby, and I can sneak in without having to talk to my family,” she laughed. “Not that they’re bad people, I just get over worked and don’t want to take it out on them” they walked into the lobby and got in the elevator.

“Don’t worry about them being home, I live with my dad and he’s on a business trip,” she unlocked the door and let Peter walk in.  It was cleanly decorated with neutral greys, whites and blacks. 

“This is nice,” he lets his eyes wander the apartment.

“Yeah, it’s how my mom liked it,” she smiled sadly.  Peter remembers it happening, it was one of the attacks on New York, The avengers couldn’t get everyone out in time, 3 people had died that day.

“I’m sorry for your loss”

“I’m not, she’s why I do what I do” The girl smiles and kicks her shoes off, “my room is back here, it’s way cooler than this,” she laughs and drags him to her room.  Warm LED lights illuminate the room.  Peter spins and looks at all the posters and figurines scattered around the room.  The walls are decorated with posters of various animes and shows. He turns to the tv stand and sees shelves full of games. 

“Told you I’m cultured,” she teases and sits on the bed. Peter sits next to her.  She pulls out her laptop and plugs a flash drive into it. 

“So this will give you questions and the answer, I get a point if I get it right,” she smiles and spins the screen to him. “thanks for doing this, by the way,” she adjusts and holds a decorative pillow to her chest.

They had been at this for nearly two hours she was growing frustrated and uneasy.

“Who wrote A farewell to Arms?”

“Hemmingway” she looed pleadingly

“Yes,” he beamed and went to click next.

“I can’t anymore, I’m done,” she flopped back on the bed. “This sucks” she yells muffled by her pillow.

“Then why keep doing it?” he closes the laptop. She sits up and pushes her hair out of her face. 

“That is a topic for a different level of friendship,” she smirks and looks him over.  She had had a crush on him forever, and by forever she means since last year.  She admired how his eyes kind of drifted around the room. 

“Do you need to go home yet?” she asked. His eyes jumped back to her and locked. 

“No, I live two floors down so it’ll only take a minute to get home”

“Do you want to play a game or watch a movie?” she asked, getting up and grabbing the controller. His face kind of flushed. “A-a movie is fine”

“What? scared I’ll kicked your ass or something?” she smirked.

“No way I just don’t want to make you cry when I beat you,” he joked cockily with her.

“Oh you’re on Parker, Injustice 2?” she looked back at him and he nodded.

“Black Canary is way to OP this is bullshit,” Peter throws his hands up. Y/N laid laughing at him.  His phone cut the laughter short.

“it’s May sorry,” he picked up the phone. “Peter it’s 10 pm where are you?!” she called into the line.

“there’s no way it’s-” he looked at his watch. “Oh shit, May I’m sorry i’m coming down now,” he hung up.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize how late it is,” he scrambled to grab his stuff. 

“Fire escape is faster than the lobby, there’s a window to the hallway if you go to the right” she grabbed his phone and bag for him. 

“i had fun,” he smiled at her.

“I did too, especially since I kicked your ass at injustice,” she smirked.

“I’ll see you at school monday?” he asked.

“Um, I’m free saturday if you want to come over, we can play games or watch a movie or something? I’ll get us pizza or-” she trailed off.

“I’d love to,” he blushed.

“It’s a date,” she smiled and opened her window. Peter stepped out onto the landing. 

“Hey peter?” she called and he turned to her.  She leaned out and kissed his cheek. “A little something for the road,” she held something wrapped in white paper to him. He shut the door to his apartment. 

“There you are, I was worried sick,” May scolded.

“I was upstairs with a friend, I’m sorry we lost track of time.  He set the paper on the counter and opened it.  A fresh coffee cake was sitting in a small box with a note

‘For May and Peter’ 

[themockingcrows]

Familiar Ch. 4: Birthday

This chapter is available on my AO3! John/Dave This chapter is SFW

As years pass by, surely it becomes easier to cohabitate with a former crow familiar. Right? Right?

    It was the morning of John’s sixteenth birthday, and the house was quiet save for the subtle thumps and clicks from the kitchen as Dadbert whipped up stacks of waffles for himself and the boys to celebrate. Some were confetti, sprinkles making warped colorful patterns, some were chocolate chip, and another stack was pumpkin and cinnamon. Different syrups were warmed and prepared in their containers, forks and plates ready to go. The only thing missing was the birthday boy, but if experience said anything it wouldn’t take long for him to rise and shine. Especially considering the extra help he had in the waking up section.

    John’s room has been altered to make room for the new roommate, a set of bunk beds dominating a far wall with John down below. As they’d grown, Dave eventually stopped cuddling up nightly to John in favor of nesting on the top bunk some nights, expanding into his own space as he learned and adjusted more to appreciate space and privacy when it came to his best friend. The first to wake and half the time the last to sleep was always Dave, and today was no different.

    In fact, he’d been waiting for some time for the perfect time to strike, waking near dawn and counting down time on the clock on the desk till it was a decent time to act. Six. Seven. Eight thirty. That had to be good enough time. Slowly he crept down the rungs of the ladder, wings flaring for balance on the way down before he climbed onto John’s bunk and straddled his hips. John remained deeply asleep on his back, arms flailed in different directions, lips parted so he could breathe deeply.

    Sleeping in was a thing of the past thanks to Dave, but a guy could sleep every day as if he’d get that magical extra hour in the end all the same. Just in case, he’d be ready to snooze with the best of them.

    Leaning down, Dave pecked John’s lips once, twice, three times waiting for him to wake up. He nuzzled his cheek and softly cawed, tugged the collar of his pajamas with his teeth since he lacked a beak, looking for signs of life. When he finally showed some signs of waking, Dave leaned back and cawed loudly, wings splaying, then dove back in to start tickling John’s sides with skating fingers.

    “Happy birthday!”

    Yelping, John woke all the way almost automatically and arched his back, squirming to get away from the onslaught as he laughed. Damn him for teaching Dave what tickling was, he’d literally never unlearned it and now it was a long lasting entry in his personal catalogue of tactics for attention.

    “I’m up! I’m up I’m up! Holy shit, stop ahahaha I’m awake!” he cried, swatting at the birdbrain who was perched on top of him with open hands. When the tickling didn’t stop John grew rougher, grunting and grasping Dave beneath the armpits to try wrenching him to the side. The tussle for dominance grew in intensity till there were wings and caws and laughing cries ringing out, which finally prompted the door to open, James in his apron with his own plate of waffles piled high.

    “Ah, I was wondering when he’d wake you up. Birthday waffle buffet is all set up, boys! Funfetti, chocolate chip and pumpkin. There’s also bacon and sausage on the side. Take as much as you want, there’s plenty.”

    Caught mid-fight Dave and John blinked and stared at each other in their tangled position before deciding that, yes, there WAS something more important at play here.

    “Waffles!” Dave cawed excitedly.

    “Happy birthday, John,” James said with a smile. “Let me know what you want your dinner to be, I’ll get the ingredients later on and whip it up special.”

    “Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” Dave crowed a few times more as he sat back on his heels with a playful smirk, letting John finally catch his breath as he sat upright. They made quite the sight, matching pajamas with needed alterations in place for Dave’s wings, hair wild and cheeks flushed.

    “Sixteen years old now,” chuckled James. “Quite the young gentleman now. Or are you too cool to be anything but a hip teenager.”

    “Daaaaaaaad.”

    Still smiling, James winked at him and swept back out of the room to go enjoy his food while it was still hot. John glanced to Dave, then sighed and shuffled out of bed to get dressed, tugging his shirt off.

    “You could’ve let me sleep in you know.”

    “Where would be the fun in that?” Dave asked.

    “It’s not fun, it’s. Come on, can’t I sleep in even on my birthday??”

    “Naps,” Dave offered as a solution, definitely to be helpful and not because naps were prime cuddling times for him to indulge in.

    "Yeah, I guess naps,” he sighed again, tugging on a clean shirt and a comfortable set of pants before leaving the space open for Dave. The blonde changed shirts with a bit of rustling before pulling on a set of sweatpants instead, feeling no sense of urgency to be well dressed for the day. All it would be was photographs probably, and he didn’t care how he looked in pictures so long as he could look at them later. Maybe this would be the year James finally trusted him with the special camera so he could take pictures of his own.

    Just because the last attempt had wound up with the lens being broken due to a butterfingers move on his part shouldn’t mean a lifelong ban. James wasn’t that kind of man, not that Dave could tell. He just needed a bit more time and practice and he’d wind up taking pictures good enough to wind up in the photo album too!

    Or maybe he’d get to have his own photo album full of things. ...Maybe he should ask about that later on after he’d eaten his fill of waffles.

    John and Dave went downstairs to the kitchen together to fix their plates, each stacking higher than they could probably finish before taking a seat near James. The kitchen was immaculate as ever from his cleaning as he cooked, and though the counters were crowded with plates and syrups and the sides things were spotless and lemony fresh underneath. He was a man who appreciated cleanliness of his home as much as he appreciated a good shave. This had led to some issues in the last few years, especially with Dave having a human form now, but he was always up for a challenge.

    “I know you’re cranky about birthday cakes still-”

    “Dad, please, tell me you didn’t do a cake,” John immediately said, horror crossing his face as he poured far too much syrup onto his plate.

    “I didn’t do a cake,” James said, watching Dave’s face fall. Darn it, he liked when James made big cakes. He always got to help lick the spoon or the bowl, and there was always crumbs to peck. ...Pick up. Not peck up anymore, pick up. The trimmings were always moist and delicious. “I made a pie instead.”

    Though John looked relaxed at first, he soon looked suspicious and cut a slice of waffle to jam into his mouth as he observed his father with narrowed eyes. “...What kind of pie.”

    “Lemon cream,” James said calmly, continuing to grin at John’s suspicion.

    Dave, confused, looked between the two of them while he happily ate. Something was going down, though he wasn’t sure what. Pies were always exciting! Would they eat it? Would they throw it? Hard to say, it depended on the mood and some unseen cue that Dave still wasn’t able to decipher, but at least it always resulted in some kind of tasty dessert even if it was whatever could be salvaged off John’s face and the pie tin before he scrambled upstairs to wash off.

    James never wound up covered in pie somehow. John’s aim was great, but with magic involved it always altered the trajectory. He trusted that someday John would deflect properly. Who knew, maybe he’d wind up covered in pie someday as well and join the family on another level that he hadn’t before.

    The two stared at each other for a moment longer before Dave interrupted.

    “John, syrup?”

    “John, can I please have the syrup,” Jame corrected with a smile.

    Dave frowned a bit, annoyed that he slipped back into basic habits. Darn it.

    “John can I please have syrup?” he asked instead, holding his plate up in offer.

    Distracted finally from the attempts at discerning his father’s potential plans with the pie, John blinked a few times before picking the syrup up and drizzling it over Dave’s plate. “Say when.”

    “John, you know he never says when,” James chuckled.

    “Oh, right. Yeah. Here, that should be enough to get everything,” John said before setting the container down. “Do you think we could have lasagna tonight for dinner, Dad?”

    “I don’t see why not. It’ll take a little doing, but there’s nothing quite like a homemade lasagna on a nice day like this.”

    The other unasked question was eating John alive. Questions, really. When would he finally get to practice with the car and get his license? Was he getting a birthday gift this year, or was he just getting money now that he was older? Would it be a surprise? Was it something he’d wanted for a long time? Would it be socks??

    There was no way it was hidden in the house somewhere, because Dave would have come across it by now during his daily scouting attempts inside and out of the house, exploring corners and crevices he hadn’t been able to when he was thumbless. John never tended to bother him when he was doing these things aside from checking up on him now and then. Dave never left without one of his toys in his pocket, so there was no cue for a meltdown, but he seemed content in tiny entrapped spaces. Once he’d even been found in the dryer, though he barely fit at the time, curled up as if inside a tire ready to take off down a hill, grinning with pleasure at his own antics.

    “Son, you’re getting older now,” James said. “An adult in your own right finally, and I’m so proud of the progress you’ve made over the years.”

    John stopped eating again, attentive, squirming in his seat.

    “And I think it’s about time I take you into town for some driving lessons, so you’re ready to use the car.”

    “WOO!”

    Dave, caught up in the excitement, lifted his hands the same way John was, fistpumping the air to share the thrill.

    “How would you like to take a spin later on? I know you already remember the basics from me teaching you outside, but if we find a nice empty parking lot we can get even more practice in. Learners permit will be easy to get afterwards, then it’s just a lot of practice till you get your license and I won’t need to be in the car at all.”

    “Dave, did you hear that? Just a while longer and we can do a road trip somewhere!”

    “Er. ...No, son. Dave has to stay here.”

    John’s face fell, though he stayed in place with his arms wrapped around Dave, simultaneously being wrapped in the same way by the bird. “Wait, what? I thought you said he could leave eventually with us..”

    “Eventually, yes. Once we figure out a good way of hiding his wings that isn’t just a simple cloaking charm,” James said. “He’d still be knocking things over left and right that way, and be showing a lump in other cases. We need something stronger, strong enough to pass detection by those keeping an eye out for things like him, before he leaves the house.”

    “Road trip! Road trip!” Dave cawed raucously. John stroked his hair, looking guilty.

    “Yeah. Road trip.”

    This was on him again, the ball once more in his court. If he wanted to be able to take Dave anywhere, he needed to find even more ways to change him. As if making him a humanoid hadn’t been enough of a blast in the face. He swallowed hard at the idea, suddenly a little less hungry than the mountain of breakfast in front of him from earlier suggested. It was his responsibility as Dave’s friend and his pseudo-owner to care for him and all his needs, and those needs would include being able to venture off the property as they got older. Even if it wasn’t  on his own, John wanted to give him a bit of the freedom he himself would be tasting soon.

    It was only fair.

    “Now now, perk up. We’ve plenty of time for that. For now, enjoy your birthday and we’ll take a drive later on.”

    “What about-”

    “...Dave can come with us,” James decided quietly. “We’ll find somewhere out of the way, and we can see about keeping his wings folded under a coat. I’m grateful they’re not bigger than they are. It’s not perfect, but it would at least let him tag along for this one time before we figure things out. So he’ll know where you’ve gone in the future.”

    That was a decent enough trade for the time being, John supposed. Dave was always a lot calmer knowing where John was at, so if he was off the property then knowing roughly where he was would probably help. Who knew, maybe the conversations Dave seemed to have with the crows outside could prove useful. Maybe the murder that seemed to shadow over the nearby town was keeping tabs on John and James both, letting Dave know what was happening where he couldn’t see, letting him know things were okay. That his humans were safe.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    John knew it was coming. He knew like he knew his own name, and there was no escape from it. The pie had been in the kitchen earlier in a metal tin instead of the glass one his dad liked to cook with best, settled on the counter after spending time in the fridge, keeping his father company as he readied pasta for the layers of lasagna in the baking dish. Then, it had been gone. James claimed he didn’t know what John was talking about, that he’d just put it back into the fridge to cool a while longer on second thought, but John knew better.

    He knew so much better.

    He’d snuck a peek around while getting a glass of milk he didn’t feel like drinking, and there had been no pie to be seen. A subtle spell from outside of the room didn’t give him extra sight to see where a cloaking was happening. It wasn’t in the laundry room or the living room, or even the car. The only places really left were the lounge and his dad’s room.. But the latter was definitely off limits.

    Especially with Dave following hot on his heels, not wanting to leave the birthday boy alone too long. Or alone at all, if the last bit of the crows entire lifetime had been any indication. Where John went, Dave was set to follow him without question or invitation.

    “Dave, you’ve got to let me know if Dad’s following us at any time,” he said urgently under his breath. “Try to focus. I know you’ve got the whole bird thing, but you’ve been around magic almost your entire life, you’ve got to have some kind of sense as my familiar.”

    “No Dad magic. Got it,” he said simply, confirming what he’d heard. It’d have to do.

    Slipping around the edge of the hallway, John slowly headed towards his father’s room, keeping an ear on the kitchen for the steady clinks and soft thunks of his cooking preparations, and quietly opened the door. His dad’s room was simple, boring in some ways, but fascinating when you looked close enough. Beneath the boring exterior were vestiges of his magic and different tools he employed while doing it. Places he’d explored, people he’d met, even memorabilia of the time he got perma-banned from Cirque de Soleil for causing a scene with magic when someone startled him with a pre-planned stage fall and he’d tried to help them while failing to cast a proper coverage spell to block the view. All they’d seen was a crazed man jumping the stage with what observers claimed was his hands on fire briefly, trying to grap at one of the aerial stunt divers.

    Truly, there was so much history in this room.

    “John, it’s you,” Dave said at a normal volume till John hissed and covered his mouth with a palm.

    “Shhhh! I- ..Oh, you’re right, these are my baby pictures,” John realized as he looked at some of the framed images. One shot with his mother made his smile  grow and soften, even now not over the empty feeling he got when he thought about what she must have been like, memory not able to go clearly as far back as she’d existed in his life. Another shot was him with Dave after he’d recovered, the crow covered in flour and John himself looking pleased as punch in the mess in the kitchen, a mixing bowl of what he was pretty sure was pancake batter on the ground where he could reach it. “Hey, this one’s you.”

    “I know,” Dave said with a grin. “I was happy.”

    “You were?”

    “Yeah,” Dave promised. “I’m always happy when you’re there. Even when I’m mad I’m happy.”

    John smiled a bit. ”Aw. That’s actually pretty swee-” He heard a creak behind them and his heart stopped, watching the door open with wide eyes. His father stood behind it with a pie in hand, the same pleasant grin on his face, and determination in his eye.

    “John, you know I don’t normally like you boys poking around my room when I’m not in here,” he chuckled. “But I wanted to let you know! It’s time for dessert.”

    “We haven’t eaten dinner yet,” John interjected, knowing his fate already.

    “Oh, no son, I think you’re plenty ready for dessert before dinner,” James said as he lifted the pie. “Happy birthday, John!”

    The pie flew with magic guided force, John raised his hands to try deflecting, but before the creamy concoction could splatter him head on.. Dave jumped in the way with both wings spread, taking the dessert full force to the face, splatters of it dispersing around his sides to catch John’s edges all the same.

    Everyone froze and blinked, watching Dave closely. That.. hadn’t happened before. Usually there was cawing or excitement, but Dave had never taken the dessert for John before. They weren’t sure how he’d react, if at all.

    “Uh. ...D. ...Dave?” John finally asked. “Are you okay?”

    “I’m sorry there son, I was aiming for John since he was expecting it,” James tried to say, as if this were somehow his fault and not from Dave leaping in front of the attack.

    Dave, still quiet, finally reached up to pull the pie tin off his face and rub his eyes clear of cream and lemon curd. He licked his lips, face a mask of sweet goo and fluffy cream, and crooned. “This is really good, Dad.”

    James exhaled a breath before laughing, stepping around them all to go find the camera, wanting to capture the moment. John still looked startled, but with Dave continuing to croon as he savored the fact he was getting to essentially eat the majority of an entire pie by himself, he supposed there wasn’t much to worry about.

    “Why’d you do that?” he had to ask.

    Dave blinked at him, licking his fingers clean. “Because you said to keep an eye out for magic and I didn’t know he was there. Then it was pie time,” he shrugged.

    “You… you didn’t have to do that,” John chuckled. “I mean, you know it wouldn’t have hurt me, right?”

    “It hurt my carpeting more than it hurt either of you boys,” James said, making sure there was film and that the lens was uncovered before coming closer to frame up the picture. “Now then. Say cheese, you two!”

    “Cheese!” Dave said, grinning beneath his mask as John leaned over to steal a taste.

    “Huh. Y’know, Dad, this was kind of a waste, it’s REALLY tasty.”

    “Good thing I’ve got another one hidden in the dishwasher then,” he said with a proud smile. “We can enjoy some slices with dinner once Dave’s all cleaned up and we’ve had our driving practice.”

    Once Dave was all cleaned up, huh? Cream was all over his wings, in his hair, probably in his ears. It’d take him a while to get clean. It’d take them both a while to get clean, he mentally corrected, as Dave reached a messy hand over to glom some of the pie onto John’s face. The camera clicked a few more times as they dissolved into flailing with shared pie goo, James laughing all the while.

    “Now, now, that’s enough, you’re grinding it into the floor haha. Both of you, go get tidied up. The Lasagna is ready for the oven now, I’ll pop it in just before we leave and it’ll be plenty ready not long after we get back. Sound good?”

    “Yes Dad,” Dave said, releasing the sides of John’s purse lipped face once he’d firmly wiped the pie off on both sides and the front of his shirt. Then, wings folding as if being coated in lemon curd was the natural state of things, Dave sauntered off to the bathroom to shower with John sighing as he followed, glasses removed and squinted eyes trailing the black and blonde cloud in front of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    “Dave, hold still, it’s not going to hurt you!” John complained. “It’s like when you have a blanket on.”

    “Blankets aren’t tight!” he cawed, clicking his teeth in warning for a bite before John reached up and popped the chewy into his mouth for him to angrily gnaw at instead of taking the potential injury to his hands or arms himself.

    “It’s a jacket, you big baby!”

    “Too tight! Let me use mine!” he growled around the toy in his mouth, close to spitting it back out to let it dangle around his neck so he could bite John after all.

    “John, just get him one of mine so he can have everything covered. We can’t have your wings out, remember Dave? Your jacket won’t work,” James reminded him gently from the kitchen as he applied a final last minute layer of cheese and seasonings to the top of the lasagna and covered it with tin foil while the oven preheated.

    The struggling slowly stopped as John stopped trying to shove the jacket into place and Dave folded his wings, disgruntled but willing to try alternatives. Especially if they were James’ alternatives and didn’t involve jamming his wings into small spaces. The replacement option was satisfactory, a long white trench coat whose weight weighed down on Dave’s folded wings to smooth the lump on his back considerably. It was comfortable enough, he supposed, and the added flappability of the overly long sleeves was appealing. Dave cawed softly in approval and let John securely tie the belt around his waist.

    Soon enough they all bundled into the car, John eagerly in the passenger seat and Dave buzzing in the backseat with his face pressed into the glass of the window. They drove away from their well loved house and down the bumpy dirt and gravel road to the paved road, then to the highway. Dave’s eyes were massive as he watched the other cars come close and pass them one after another, coming and going in so many colors. There was one brief moment of James needing to remember the child locks for the back seat to prevent Dave rolling the window down any further than he already had, wanting to feel the wind on his face and through his hair as if he were flying again, but otherwise the trip was simple.

    “I remember here,” Dave said as they pulled into an empty parking lot of a defunct mall. “And there too,” he added, gesturing to a McDonalds down the road. “Good food.”

    “I’m glad we took you in, your diet no doubt added to your original longevity,” James chuckled as he parked the car and turned off the ignition. “Now stay put for me. John? Come on over, son. Let’s try some starts and stops, and some parking. I’ll get in the passenger seat instead.”

    Eager as ever, John darted around to the front of the car, clumsily sliding over half the hood before slipping down onto the bumper and nearly crashing to the ground before saving himself and making it into the driver’s seat to buckle up. Dave, once again, was bouncing and cawing raucously behind them as James took his seat and did the buckle as well.

    “Right. So. Turn it on,” John murmured, running through steps in his head. “Then… brake, shift to drive.. And gas.”

    The vehicle smoothly went into motion with only a few initial anxious wobbles, the brief realization that he was piloting a thousand pound death machine with his father and his best friend inside of it catching up with John, before smoothing out and gradually picking up speed at James’ coaxing. The turn was a bit sharp at the end, making everyone tense up and hold their breaths, but subsequent attempts were more in control. By the end, John was even managing basic parking, backing up, and some parallel parking thanks to his dad and Dave both standing out marking the ends of where he was aiming.

    All in all, a successful day.

    Dave grinned and untied his coat near the end, flinging it open to stretch his wings out before the ride home, only to be nearly tackled by James tucking it back into place.

    “Ah ah ah, I’m sorry Dave but no. Not here. Not right now. I know it’s not the best, but try to hold on till we get home..”

    “Dad, can’t you just cloak him till we get back? He’ll just be in the back of the car,” John said from the driver’s seat as he parked and shut off the car to get out. Dave went wide eyed and nodded.

    “Please? Itches.”

    James sighed.. and nodded, raising a hand as he let the coat fall to apply a quick cloaking spell. As if melting away, Dave’s wings disappeared from view, leaving only the cut open back of his shirt. It was strange seeing Dave that way, John decided. No wings on his back, Dave looked naked in some way, vulnerable with his red eyes and wild hair, skinny frame and slightly stooped posture. Nothing was tethering him to the world anymore when he just looked like an out of place human instead of an out of place angel.

    “Hurry into the car though. You never know who’s watching,” James urged, handing Dave the trenchcoat before making a shoo gesture with both hands. “We’ve got lasagna waiting on us at home.”

    Dave remained outside of the car for another minute, just enjoying the wind in his hair and through his unseen feathers, savoring being somewhere familiar before he finally got into the vehicle as well and buckled up. He felt like someone was watching him and looked around, but let the feeling fall. Nobody was out there but the three of them, and besides: there were more important things afoot.

    “Lasagna!” he cawed, appetite more than awake by this time.

    “Yep. Lasagna,” John said from up front. All in all? A great birthday. He hoped the future ones could be as peaceful.

[notgonnarememberthis]

A Dance With Death - Chapter 4

I bounced back and forth with what I should post today, the finale of Elementary. It’s been a wild ride that I honestly don’t intend on getting off of for a while. I’ll still be sticking around while friends finish the series as they’re still way back in season 4. In the mean time I thought it’d only be fitting to match an end with another end. This is the final chapter of A Dance With Death!! This fic has been so much fun to write as I got the grant to write Watson a little out of character. It’s truly been a blast and I hope y’all stick around to see what else I got coming. 

Sherlock wakes to something rough colliding with his head. His eyes snap open to a furious Kitty lingering over him with a newspaper in one hand. Two more blinks revealed a concerned, but also angry Harper standing in the background. He narrows his eyes at the two girls sitting up.

“You let her leave?” Kitty nearly shouts. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m not sure I could’ve made her stay if I tried.” He tries for sarcasm which Harper seems to agree with, but Kitty is less amused. 

“You do remember someone is trying to kill her right? That you prevented two attempts on her life?” Regret fills his body as he runs his hands over his face. He had risked her life for his comfort. Rather stupid of him. He considers calling Detective Bell but he really can’t risk another probation from work. Last time he and Kitty almost killed each other in their boredom. He grabs the closest shirt shrugging it on before muttering an apology to the two younger women. He left without an invitation for them to follow on the quest to find Watson.

He goes to her work first, unlikely that she’d go there. She’s not an unintelligent woman, surely she’d avoid there. The office building is closed down for today, police had been by earlier to collect Otis’s things, not exactly fans of lingering eyes. He can’t say he likes the nosy citizens that plague crime scenes either but it makes for a much more obvious atmosphere if she were to come here.

He takes his time scaling the stairs as the elevator is still out of service. He checks each floor carefully before finally reaching her level. He combs the area just for safekeeping. Nothing seems out of place other than the cover marking to empty window frame. He spies an open drawer that he doesn’t recall being that way before. He peeks slowly, making sure there was still nobody around as he did so.

The drawer seems to house a bunch of files from her previous interviews and articles over time. Yet they seem in disarray. Watson doesn’t strike him as an unorganized woman, not in the slightest. His guard slides up as he flicks on his flashlight. The file of McAllister appears to be missing from the marked ones. He pulls out his phone to take a photo when it starts chiming.

Watson’s number flashes across the screen much to his relief. He answers without hesitation holding the device to his ear. “Watson, good you’re still alive.” He tries not to let the emotion in his voice carry over.

“I know who’s trying to kill me.” The urgency in her voice makes him pick up his head.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine for now but you need to come quick. I’ll send you the location.”

He hangs up the phone allowing the quiet to rush over him again. He waits 3 beats and it announces the arrival of the message. He memorizes it quickly before deleting it. It would be a race to get to her first if the perpetrator was watching either of their phones. 

He arrives at the location in record time barely glancing at the cabbie as he tosses him his pay. He doesn’t even knock as he barges into the suburban home. The walls hold frames of a family vaguely resembling Watson. If he had to guess, he’d say this is her brother’s home. Judging by the pile up of mail on the doorstep, the family is on holiday. 

“Watson!” He shouts her name as not to get attacked by the woman lingering around the corner with, judging from her shadow, a child’s baseball bat in hand. She steps out with a soothed look on her face. Her hand abandons the bat and in that moment he’s not sure if she’s going to hug him or hit him. She appears to settle on neither, instead gesturing to the living room. “You said you knew who was trying to harm you?”

If she is disappointed by him jumping straight into business, she doesn’t show it. “I was still unnerved by McAllister’s interview. I knew he was lying but there was no way he could have taken the shots at my office or been able to access the elevator chute to cut the cable with his early onset Parkinson’s. So I did some digging,” She grabs her glasses off the table and settles back into the spot it looked like she was occupying prior to his arrival. “Initially it looked like stuff we already knew, his wife divorced him after he couldn’t pick up a job, he’s been shunned in the sports world for cheating, and he was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s two weeks ago.”

He settles in beside her glancing at her work, he notes privately that she hadn’t used orange highlighter which is an oddly pleasing detail that he stores in the back of his mind. However, he also notices that none of the papers laying out match the ones taken from her drawer. “We’ve already ruled out McAllister.” His tone is a mix of condescending and sympathetic. It’s clear the effort was there, however it looks more like effort wasted to him.

“We’ve ruled out a McAllister.” His head snaps to her so she continues explaining. “Meet Liam McAllister, son of Colm and Bella.” She lays a photo out of a cleanly shaven guy, appearing in his early twenties. The features are incredibly similar to the father’s, including the cold look in his eye. “He got an honorable discharge after his father was diagnosed and needed immediate financial and emotional assistance. Since his father lost his job, he had no assistance or insurance to care for his condition. He needed the discharge to come home to take care of him.”

“What about the wife?”

She lays out copies of phone records with a raised eyebrow. It’s a challenge and he can’t help the corners of his lips beginning to turn up. “The wife missed six calls from the husband, thirteen from her son. She clearly has no interest in helping.”

“So he comes after the woman who destroyed his family. That’s you.” Silence falls between the two of them, heavy and accusatory. Her eyes fall to the floor, any teasing nature had dissipated in that moment. For a brief second he watches the mask fall from the woman hardened by the nature of her job, her life. All the grief of the lives she’s destroyed weighs heavily on her shoulders, she’s just excellent at hiding it.

He’s not sure what possesses him to but he reaches forward, taking her hand in his. His fingers curl into hers like they’re meant to be there. Her eyes meet his and the vulnerability staring back at him is almost enough to knock the breath from his lungs. His other hand acts on it’s own brushing a fallen hair back from her face. 

She leans into his touch, closing her eyes with a soft sigh. His thumb swipes over her cheekbone softly before he pulls away. She offers him a small smile at the comforting gesture. He’s almost foolish enough to fall into her touch once again.

“What a touching sight.” The two of them spring apart at the new voice announcing itself. The man from the photo stands in the doorway, the gun in his hand pointed towards the two of them. “Hands up,” He does as he says, nodding to Watson to do the same. All the while, he’s sizing up the items in the room that could potentially protect them, as well as any escape routes. 

He steps around the couch grabbing a pillow off of the couch, his jaw tightens thinking about the family walking in on the scene. Perhaps two overexcited children, yearning for the feeling of their own bed stumbling upon the scene of their aunt and a strange man on the couch shot.

From the corner of his eye he can see the same thoughts racing through Watson’s mind. The look of absolute fear is enough to drive him into action. He waits until the man inevitably goes on a tirade because of course he does. The driving action in any of these situations is that the perpetrator has the absolute need to prove that he’s smarter than them. Truthfully it’s dreadfully annoying. Unless he’s doing it himself, the simple truth of it is that he is smarter than them.

Finally he makes the grand gesture with the gun, the perfect opportunity. He takes no more than two bounding steps, dropping his shoulder to drive into the man’s gut. He hears a shot go off, hopefully into the ceiling. Sherlock twists his wrist sending the gun skittering across the floor. He knows there’s not a chance he’s winning a hand to hand fight with a trained army man. He just needs enough time for Watson to get a hold of a phone to call the police.

Just as quickly as he’s tackled the man, Sherlock is flipped onto his back with a pained groan. He narrowly moves away from a punch to the nose, taking it to the cheek instead. He grunts trying to pull away from the grip, get an eye on Watson, anything. The man is too heavy to shake from him but so long as Liam’s attention is on him, Watson is safe.

The sound of glass shattering causes him to flinch away. The weight of Liam McAllister folds to the side revealing a wide eyed Watson standing over the two of them. From the look of the glass, he’d deduce that she struck him with the vase that once sat on the mantle. Her hands tremble as she stares at him. “Are you okay?” She asks, breathless. Liam is unconscious, that much he can tell so he nods jerkily. 

He spies the red staining the once pink blouse and his heart drops to his stomach. He’s on his feet in an instance ignoring the pain that blossoms in his head. He presses his fingers to the wound on her hip, his eyes scanning her face for any signs of shock. She flinches away from his touch at first, of course she does.

“Sherlock, I’m okay.” She tries to tell him but he’s not listening. He needs to stop the bleeding. “Sherlock,” He needs to stop it all before he loses someone else. He’d so nearly lost Kitty, his brother, Irene… “Sherlock!” She grips his face forcing him to meet her eyes. “I’m okay. It’s just a scratch.”

He looks again with clearer eyes. Sure enough the blood seems to be less than he initially thought, the tear pattern revealing that it’d barely hit her. He drops his head letting out a relieved breath. He feels her forehead press to his, her fingers caressing his face until his breath slows and his heart rate falls back to his normal. 

Even as the sirens pull up to the home they remain frozen in this spot, finding comfort in each other’s touch. It’s not until he hears Marcus come up to the door that he breaks away. His eyes never leave her even as they take her to the ambulance to stitch up her side. Not until she’s driven away by Marcus, per request of Sherlock himself.

He waits until all the cops have cleared the scene, until all people who lurked at the scene seemed to have lost interest. He slips back into the house long after the place had been cleaned. He scribbles a check leaving it on the table with an apologetic note for the damage to their property.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

A week later he finds himself bouncing his leg waiting for Harper to leave Watson’s office. It’s not common that he actually waits for an appointment but he has an important question. He need not have her influenced by him barging in on another project. So instead he focuses his efforts trying to pick out who in the office is going to be fired next.

“She’s going to say yes, you know.” Kitty plops down beside him handing him a cup of coffee from the shop on the corner. He takes an experimental sip and deems it worthy, nodding her his thanks.

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?” She takes the seat across from him crossing her legs as she sits. “She enjoyed working with you, even a dunce could see it. Plus she’s good at it? Like naturally good at it. You don’t find those on a whim.”

“I’m aware.” He’d spent the first two years working in New York looking for an apprentice. Finding Kitty, well just like Watson she just sort of fell into his lap with a case of her own.

“You don’t need to ask her to start out right away. She can just be an irregular like Mason or Harlan.”

“You don’t like Harlan.”

She scoffs at that, feigning insult. “I don’t not like him. I just find his methods… questionable.” She takes a drink of her much too sugary coffee, gesturing with her free hand. “Besides, he did accuse me of stealing you away. He insulted my character first.”

He tries not to smile at her childish defense but he’s taught her well enough that she can see it in his gaze. “Who’s the other coffee for?” The question is innocent enough but he knows the answer isn’t Watson. It’s a near copy of her own caramel frappuccino sugar bomb, but instead of caramel chocolate and Kitty’s own is lacking the whipped cream topping.

“Watson.” He knew the defensive answer was coming. He raises an eyebrow, challenging her.

“That does not look like a skim milk latte.” He tilts his head at her. He has a sneaking suspicion but it’s not until Harper comes out, that he gets his confirmation. He stands up unceremoniously marching to her office. In the reflection of one of the office windows he spies Kitty passing the coffee to Harper with a shy smile on her face. He can’t help a small smile of his own gracing his face before he rounds the corner.

She’s focused on her laptop when he steps through the door, long dark hair pulled away from her face in a half updo with the rest draped over her shoulders. She notices him before he says a word, “Sherlock.” The warm smile she grants him does little to ease his nerves, “Why are you here? You’re not having issues prosecuting McAllister are you?” One of her hands drifts to the spot on her side, still sore from being scraped by the bullet.

“No. None of the sort.” She relaxes back into the chair again. “Rather I have a proposition for you.” 

Her eyebrows raise in curiosity. The ghost of a flirty smile teases at her lips flustering him more than usual. “Oh really?” She leans back now, the chair spinning with the movement. She’s challenging him and part of him wants to give in. But he has more important matters to tend to.

“I want to work with you.” That catches her off guard, freezing in her spot.

“What?”

“I came to realize that working with you on the case was rewarding. I’d like your help on future cases, should you have me.”

“So I’d quit my job and become a detective with you?”

“Not quite. I have several contacts, irregulars, if you will. I contact them when I need they’re expertise. If you would permit, I’d like you to join my contacts.”

“Okay.” He shakes his head, unsure he’s heard her correctly.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll join.” Once again she’s managed to surprise him. Normally his irregulars take a tad more convincing. “Is that all you were going to ask?” For a moment he considers a proposition of a different kind, an experiment.

“No, that was all.” He turns to exit, stopping the movement before looking back at her again. “We’ll speak soon Watson.”

“I hope so.”

And truth be told, he does too.

[mabiviz-blog]

DRRM Kwentuhan

As one of the prerequisites in our NSTP class, we were to visit our barangay hall to conduct an interview regarding the status of the community’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management plans.  

Community Background

I have lived in Bacoor for as far as I remember. More than half of my childhood was spent playing in the streets of Aniban II. Not only did I spend most of my time playing outside, but learning how to commute during junior high school only made it much more easier for me to explore and memorize the ins and outs of our community. Aniban II is a generally a peaceful community. 

Community Situation

I was able to interview Mr. Christopher Rivera who is on his first term as a Sangguniang Barangay Member. With respect to his request, we did not take a picture together with him. Regardless, he was kind enough to indulge me in a “kwentuhan” session regarding the barangay’s risks and hazards.

Hazard Identification

Bacoor was a generally flood free city before the influx of people moving into the city in the late 1900s. The city used to be composed mainly of flat lands perfectly used for agriculture, with bodies of water like the Bacoor River and Zapote River proving to be crucial sources of water for irrigation.

picture taken at Prinza Dam

 Now, the same bodies of water have also become one of the biggest hazards in the city. During rainy season, more commonly used bodies of waters like the Prinza Dam and Molino Dam overflew and caused flooding in some areas. Aside from this, the Zapote area is below sea level, making it prone to flooding during heavy rains. Typhoon Yolanda was one of the biggest storms to hit the Philippines to date. The typhoon did not only kill, but also destroyed thousands of homes. With the sheer size of the destruction caused by the calamity, Aniban 2 worked hand-in-hand with its surrounding barangays to help the community members to rise from the catastrophe.

Vulnerability, Elements, and People at Risk Assessment

picture taken at Aniban I, Bacoor

One of the most easily flooded places in Bacoor is Aniban 1, where a good 1-3 inches of flooding can easily accumulate as compared to other barangays like Aniban 2 and 4 who would not be experiencing any flooding at the same day. People living in the area have become accustomed to experiencing ankle-deep floods fluctuating throughout the months of July to December. There are also a some numbers of houses along Barangay Aniban II that are built on lower grounds, where residents often victims to minor flooding when there are continuous downpours of rain. 

The Aniban Central School is one of the identifiable areas of barangay Aniban II vulnerable to flooding. Located right beside the barangay hall, it is observable how much lower the school grounds are compared to the main road right in front of it. This becomes one of the main reasons why students of said school are considered to be some of the people at risk during rainy season. Just this year, they finished constructing a four-storey building consisting of more than 10 rooms, which would also serve as a evacuation area during flooding.

During rainy seasons, water accumulates in the dark damp areas of the barangay. These places become possible breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which could lead to a dengue epidemic . Just recently, the officials visited the most common breeding areas for mosquitoes and were successful in their project of fumigating said areas. Residents also took part in the project by eliminating damp places around their homes where mosquitoes can lay their eggs.

Capacity and Disaster Management System

The barangay does not have specific operation plans but what they do have are basic equipment and manpower so they mostly rely on those two factors. They often plan the detailed execution of rescues and addressing calamities when the actual warning for said calamity comes, in order for them to be able to build a more specific action plan that would better address the certain situation they were to be faced with. 

In preparation for calamities, they monitor the frequently flooded areas they divide into 2-3 groups who are each assigned an area to patrol. During patrol, they have with them their walky-talky and personal mobile phones to ensure that they stay within contact, most especially during times of emergencies. It is imperative that the barangay hall is stocked with the equipment needed for rescue missions, like first aid kits and security gear, especially during typhoon season. 

Safest, Hazardous Places and Good Practices

One of the most hazardous places in the city was the Zapote River because bodies of water often pose the risk of overflowing, thus causing floods in the areas near it. This issue has been addressed through the construction of the Zapote River Drive. The construction project has not only addressed flooding issues in Zapote, but also in Las Piñas. Included in the project is a 300-meter wall with road, crossing Golden Acres & Moonwalk Phase 2, and Brgy. Talon 5, heading to Zapote River Drive. A 630-meter wall and road, built for retaining water, was also constructed It also includes a 630-meter retaining wall with road, including a bypassing the Zapote River, covering areas from Vatican Drive to Cicero Street at the BF Resort Village.

In the case of earthquakes, Aniban Central School and the Barangay Hall are the safest places in the barangay where residents can evacuate to. The school contains enough space to accommodate at least a few hundred people during evacuation. There are not many places in the barangay with open spaces clear of any hazardous buildings or objects for earthquakes because it mostly consists of residential houses and commercial establishments constructed relatively close to each other. 

The barangay officials are generally aware of the ongoing issues in the community, which is why they recently conducted a project to fumigate the barangay to prevent a dengue epidemic. As I’ve previously mentioned, not only did they fumigate common areas susceptible to mosquito infestation, but they also encouraged the residents to partake in the project by eliminating possible breeding grounds on their own homes.

Issues of The Community

Aniban II, Bacoor can be observed as a generally resilient community. They have enough history that proves that their resources and manpower can ensure that the members are able to bounce back from the damage that some calamities bring to them. A major move towards eradicating community issues is to improve the barangay waste management and drainage system to lessen the chances of flooding. With the heavy influx of people passing through the community in daytime, it is quite difficult to maintain cleanliness for some parts of the barangay. 

Correlation to the Disaster Situation of the Philippines

The Philippines, being a tropical country surrounded by multiple bodies of water, is vulnerable to storm surges and typhoons. Having said this, we must address the inefficient sewage and waste management systems existing in numerous cities all around the country. Such problems continue to make our cities more susceptible to flash floods with all the canals blocked up by our own garbage.

This problem cannot be solved single handedly. All barangays/communities from Bacoor must collaborate to come up with newer and more efficient ways of improving the city. Us, members of the community, must also join the initiative by observing discipline in waste management.

Realization

Despite having lived in this community for more than half of my life, I have come to know that there were still a lot of things I was not aware of regarding my surroundings. With this activity, I got to know more about the place I grew up in and the people within it-- the ins and outs of how the community functions together. It would be difficult for communities to live and thrive without collaboration because each barangay is interconnected with the other. I hope that this activity enlightens others as it has done to me. It is time that we all help improve our communities by taking on more active roles as Filipino citizens and living more sustainable lives.

Why and How should we address the issues of disasters in the Philippines?

As Filipino citizens, these disasters do not only destroy infrastructures, but also the lives and livelihoods of the people. It would not be possible for the government to address and solve this issue with unwilling and uncooperative citizens. We must all take part in becoming the solution to these disasters. We can always start becoming more conscious of our actions and how they affect the people and places surrounding us. It is evident that a lot of us lack discipline and responsibility in terms of waste management and self-awareness. 

Philippines has bounced back from so many calamities already. It is good that our country is a resilient one, but would it not be much better if it were to become a prepared one? We would not need to use up tons of our resources having to repair properties destroyed by disasters if we built disaster-ready establishments. We would save so much more resources if so and tons of lives would not have to be deeply affected by disasters in our country. 

What actions should I take to increase the capacities of my own community?

As I am no longer a minor and already capable of participating in voting, I could start with voting for community leaders who prove to be promising, responsible, and self-aware leaders and members of the community, as well. One of the things that I already do to help my community is trying to live a sustainable life by minimizing my consumption of plastic and other harmful products to our community’s environment. Aside from this, I can also take part in community projects like, barangay cleanups and tree planting events. As a student, I must also take part in school initiatives and seminars that would benefit my community, like taking NSTP courses to improve and broaden my knowledge on how to help my community. We, as citizens of our country, must be more self-aware of our actions as they affect not only us but our environment, which is why we must all do our best to improve ourselves and become more proactive in our own communities.

[a1junkremovaltucson]

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OUR RESIDENTIAL JUNK REMOVAL SERVICES COVER JUST ABOUT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: Air Conditioner Disposal — Ever tried to pick up an old air conditioner? Yes, they are heavy, dirty, and uncomfortable. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's team of professional junk removers can help you to get rid of that old air conditioner. Read more… Dishwasher and Trash Compactor Removal — When it’s time to replace your dishwasher and trash compactor do not hesitate to contact A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson. We specialize in removing and recycling large appliances. Read more…

DIY Construction Debris — Home renovation shows don’t tell you how messy cleanup can be! A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's residential junk removal services will recycle and dispose of construction waste after a DIY project. Read more… Debris Removal — We’ll pick up those tree branches, clippings, and excess yard waste after a landscaping project. Read more… Electronic Waste — Old computers, monitors, televisions, scanners, printers and other e-waste pollute the earth when sent to landfill. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's electronic waste removal takes these bulky items and donates them or recycles the materials. Read more… Estate Cleanout — Dealing with junk creates undue stress when moving out or handling an inherited property. Our professionals respect your time and space while we quickly clear entire rooms or houses. Read more… Freezer and Refrigerator Disposal and Recycling — Replacing your old freezer and refrigerator can easily save hundreds of dollars. What to do with the old appliances? No problem. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's pros will remove and recycle it for you. Read more… Foreclosure Cleanout — Real estate agents, banks, and property owners partner with A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson for affordable and efficient residential junk removal services to take care of leftover belongings and junk in foreclosed homes. Read more… Furniture Removal — A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson has the manpower and vehicles to haul away broken or unwanted furniture disposal. Don’t break your back or damage your walls moving furniture yourself! Read more… Garbage Removal — Too much trash for the curb? Don’t bother locating and driving back and forth to a dump. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's residential junk removal services are your on-demand pickup solution for bulk garbage. Read more… Hot Tub Removal — It was fun while it lasted! Now you need to clear the space. Our team will disconnect and break down the parts, haul it all away, and recycle most of the materials. Read more… House Clean Outs — Yes, you are right; every good cleaning project has clutter that needs to be removed. Whether it is a single room or the whole house, we have you covered. And, because we focus on recycling, you are helping to keep our environment clean. Read more… Junk Hauling Services — You need that space and you need it now! No problem. Give us a call and we will remove all that old stuff filling up the spaces you need. Our professional junk hauling services make it easy to take care of all your unwanted junk. Read more… Lawnmower and Landscaping Equipment Disposal — Do you an old lawnmower and other landscaping equipment that takes up the valuable space in your garage. Our team of junk removal pros will help you to reclaim that space. Read more… Property Cleanout Services — Struggling with a junk-filled property? Whether you are a Realtor, home-owner or renter, A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson is your solution. Set-up an appointment now and our team of professional junk removers will have you smiling shortly. Read more… Scrap Metal Recycling — Unwanted metal materials make a great candidate for junk removal because they should not be sent to the landfill. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson disposes of your items at scrap metal recycling facilities. Read more… Stove, Oven and Microwave Disposal — You are ready for that long awaited kitchen upgrade. But what to do with all those old appliances? A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's team of junk removers will help you to remove and recycle all your old appliances. Read more… TV Disposal — Televisions contain dangerous mercury, lead, and other toxic materials. TV disposal from A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson handles the pickup and transportation of TVs and other electronics to donation centers or recycling sites. Read more…

Useless Junk — Unwanted children’s toys, exercise equipment, or rooms full of forgotten collectibles... whatever useless junk you have, A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson residential junk removal services help you say goodbye to it! Read more… Washing Machine and Dryer Disposal — Buying the latest washing machine or dryer to cash in on those new energy and water saving technologies? A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson can help to get those old appliances out of your way. Read more… Water Heater Disposal and Recycling — Nobody loves cold showers in the winter. A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson's junk removal experts can help you to remove that old water heater system when you get ready to place it. Read more… Yard Waste Disposal — What do you do with more than few bags of grass clippings? Call A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson for yard waste disposal and we’ll handle the tree branches, trimmings, gravel landscaping, and more. Read more…

CALL US FOR: • Cheap Junk Removal Near Me • Free Junk Removal • Pick Up Junk Furniture For Free • Junk Removal Prices • Hauling Services • Garbage Hauling Companies • A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson • Junk Removal Calculator

BEST WASTE REMOVAL SERVICES COMPANY IN TUCSON ARIZONA A1 JUNK REMOVAL OF TUCSON REQUEST MORE INFORMATION.

CONTACT DETAILS A1 Junk Removal Of Tucson Tucson`s Favorite Junk Removal Company! Call Us : (520) 353-3421 Location : Tucson Arizona Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 7 am – 11 pm Websites : https://a1junkremovaloftucson.com/

SERVICE AREA Cities and Towns Near Tucson Arizona: Tucson, AZ metro: Cortaro | Marana | Sahuarita | Oracle | Vail | Green Valley |Drexel Heights | AZ Flowing Wells | AZ Casas Adobes | AZ Catalina Foothills | AZ |Oro Valley | AZ Marana | AZ Green Valley | AZ Eloy | AZ Coolidge | AZ Florence | AZ Casa Grande | AZ Nogales |AZ Nogales | Mexico Sierra Vista | AZ Ajo | Arivaca | Casas Adobes | Catalina | Flowing Wells | Green Valley |Oro Valley |Marana | Sahuarita |Tanque Verde and Vail.

ZIP CODES: 85629, 85641, 85701, 85704, 85705, 85706, 85707, 85708, 85710, 85711, 85712, 85713, 85714, 85715, 85716, 85718, 85719, 85723, 85724, 85726, 85730, 85741, 85743, 85745, 85746, 85747, 85748, 85749, 85756.

OUR SISTER COMPANIES NEAR TUCSON ARIZONA A1 JUNK REMOVAL OF TUCSON (520) 353-3421 https://a1junkremovaloftucson.com/ TUCSON HAULING JUNK & MOVING (520) 353-3428 https://tucsonhaulingjunkmoving.com/ TUCSON JUNK REMOVAL (520) 353-3434 https://cheapjunkremovaltucson.com/ TUCSON JUNK DISPOSAL (520) 353-3430 https://tucsonjunkdisposal.com/ PRICE MOVING HAULING TUCSON (520) 353-3422 https://movingservicetucson.com/

[the-abqhauler505nm]

Best Waste Removal Services In Albuquerque NM | ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving

More information is at: https://albuquerquejunkremovalhaulingmovers.org/best-waste-removal-service-near-me/

Looking for the best waste removal services in Albuquerque? ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving offers waste removal services for residential homes; including junk removal, furniture removal, appliance removal, garage cleanout, house cleanout, garbage collection, recycling and roll-off container rentals. Cost of Best Waste Removal Services? Free estimates! Call today or book Best Waste Removal Services online fast!

REQUEST A QUOTE TODAY

BEST WASTE REMOVAL SERVICES

ALBUQUERQUE WASTE REMOVAL SERVICES

Our residential junk removal services provide an easy solution for clearing out clutter and hauling away unwanted junk. We help homeowners and tenants find an easy solution for clearing out unwated junk. We're not the cable guy – we know you don't want to wait around all day, so we show up on schedule and get the job done quickly. You can feel good about hiring ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving because we get the job done quickly and neatly. We recycle more than our competitors, so you can also consider us your green option for junk removal. People love ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving because we provide the highest level of professionalism and fantastic customer service. You get a no-hassle experience with upfront pricing, easy scheduling, and fast service. Schedule a no-obligation appointment, and when you say the word we’ll haul away the junk and sweep everything clean. BEING GREEN, BEING KIND Junk does not have to end up in a landfill, and ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving believes in recycling every bit of material possible. You can feel good about doing the eco-friendly thing when you work with us. We also send usable items to local non-profits and donation centers to help the community and reduce waste. One person’s unwanted furniture or electronics may do a stranger a world of good! Residential Junk Removal Services from ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving

Cleanliness and organization make a happy home. Stuck with useless junk? Let ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving take care of the garbage and unwanted stuff: • Hauling services for large and bulky amounts of junk. • House cleanouts for moving, spring cleaning, converting rooms, or just getting a clean slate. • Property cleanouts for landlords, real estate agents, or inherited homes full of old belongings. • Trash removal for yard waste, construction projects, and cleaning projects

OUR RESIDENTIAL JUNK REMOVAL SERVICES COVER JUST ABOUT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: Air Conditioner Disposal — Ever tried to pick up an old air conditioner? Yes, they are heavy, dirty, and uncomfortable. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's team of professional junk removers can help you to get rid of that old air conditioner. Read more… Dishwasher and Trash Compactor Removal — When it’s time to replace your dishwasher and trash compactor do not hesitate to contact ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving. We specialize in removing and recycling large appliances. Read more…

DIY Construction Debris — Home renovation shows don’t tell you how messy cleanup can be! ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's residential junk removal services will recycle and dispose of construction waste after a DIY project. Read more… Debris Removal — We’ll pick up those tree branches, clippings, and excess yard waste after a landscaping project. Read more… Electronic Waste — Old computers, monitors, televisions, scanners, printers and other e-waste pollute the earth when sent to landfill. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's electronic waste removal takes these bulky items and donates them or recycles the materials. Read more… Estate Cleanout — Dealing with junk creates undue stress when moving out or handling an inherited property. Our professionals respect your time and space while we quickly clear entire rooms or houses. Read more… Freezer and Refrigerator Disposal and Recycling — Replacing your old freezer and refrigerator can easily save hundreds of dollars. What to do with the old appliances? No problem. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's pros will remove and recycle it for you. Read more… Foreclosure Cleanout — Real estate agents, banks, and property owners partner with ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving for affordable and efficient residential junk removal services to take care of leftover belongings and junk in foreclosed homes. Read more… Furniture Removal — ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving has the manpower and vehicles to haul away broken or unwanted furniture disposal. Don’t break your back or damage your walls moving furniture yourself! Read more… Garbage Removal — Too much trash for the curb? Don’t bother locating and driving back and forth to a dump. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's residential junk removal services are your on-demand pickup solution for bulk garbage. Read more… Hot Tub Removal — It was fun while it lasted! Now you need to clear the space. Our team will disconnect and break down the parts, haul it all away, and recycle most of the materials. Read more… House Clean Outs — Yes, you are right; every good cleaning project has clutter that needs to be removed. Whether it is a single room or the whole house, we have you covered. And, because we focus on recycling, you are helping to keep our environment clean. Read more… Junk Hauling Services — You need that space and you need it now! No problem. Give us a call and we will remove all that old stuff filling up the spaces you need. Our professional junk hauling services make it easy to take care of all your unwanted junk. Read more… Lawnmower and Landscaping Equipment Disposal — Do you an old lawnmower and other landscaping equipment that takes up the valuable space in your garage. Our team of junk removal pros will help you to reclaim that space. Read more… Property Cleanout Services — Struggling with a junk-filled property? Whether you are a Realtor, home-owner or renter, ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving is your solution. Set-up an appointment now and our team of professional junk removers will have you smiling shortly. Read more… Scrap Metal Recycling — Unwanted metal materials make a great candidate for junk removal because they should not be sent to the landfill. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving disposes of your items at scrap metal recycling facilities. Read more… Stove, Oven and Microwave Disposal — You are ready for that long awaited kitchen upgrade. But what to do with all those old appliances? ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's team of junk removers will help you to remove and recycle all your old appliances. Read more… TV Disposal — Televisions contain dangerous mercury, lead, and other toxic materials. TV disposal from ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving handles the pickup and transportation of TVs and other electronics to donation centers or recycling sites. Read more…

Useless Junk — Unwanted children’s toys, exercise equipment, or rooms full of forgotten collectibles... whatever useless junk you have, ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving residential junk removal services help you say goodbye to it! Read more… Washing Machine and Dryer Disposal — Buying the latest washing machine or dryer to cash in on those new energy and water saving technologies? ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving can help to get those old appliances out of your way. Read more… Water Heater Disposal and Recycling — Nobody loves cold showers in the winter. ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving's junk removal experts can help you to remove that old water heater system when you get ready to place it. Read more… Yard Waste Disposal — What do you do with more than few bags of grass clippings? Call ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving for yard waste disposal and we’ll handle the tree branches, trimmings, gravel landscaping, and more. Read more…

CALL US FOR: • Cheap Junk Removal Near Me • Free Junk Removal • Pick Up Junk Furniture For Free • Junk Removal Prices • Hauling Services • Garbage Hauling Companies • ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving • Junk Removal Calculator

BEST WASTE REMOVAL SERVICES COMPANY IN ALBUQUERQUE NM ABQ HAULING JUNK & MOVING REQUEST MORE INFORMATION.

CONTACT: ABQ Hauling Junk & Moving CALL (505) 225 3810 CLEANING CALL (505) 570 4605 JUNK REMOVAL CALL (505) 850 3570 MOVING Best Junk Removal Hauling Company in Albuquerque NM Open Monday to Sunday 7:00 am – 11:00 pm Located in Albuquerque NM 87120 Website: http://www.albuquerquejunkremovalhaulingmovers.org/ http://www.serviceabq.com/ SERVICE AREA: Albuquerque Metropolitan Area: Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, Valencia Counties NM, Albuquerque, Belen, Moriarty, Rio Communities, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Estancia, Mountainair, Peralta, Bosque Farms, Corrales, Cuba, Encino, Jemez Springs, Los Lunas, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, San Ysidro, Tijeras, Willard, Algodones, Carnuel, Casa Colorada, Cedar Crest, Chilili, Cochiti, El Cerro-Monterey Park, Isleta Village Proper, Jarales, Jemez Pueblo, La Jara, Los Chavez, Los Trujillos-Gabaldon, Manzano, Meadow Lake, North Valley, Paradise Hills, Pena Blanca, Placitas Ponderosa, Pueblo of Sandia Village, Regina, Rio Communities North, Rio Communities, San Felipe Pueblo, Santa Ana Pueblo, Santo Domingo Pueblo, South Valley, Tajique, Tome-Adelino, Torreon (Sandoval County), Torreon (Torrance County), Valencia, Zia Pueblo New Mexico #junkremoval #hauling #moving #trashremoval #cleaning #newmexico #Albuquerque

[epackingvietnam]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking

[bfxenon]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[xaydungtruonggia]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/3oHoTAQ

[kjt-lawyers]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn’t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[noithatotoaz]

Travel SEO Trends and Pivots from 2020 (and What to Carry into 2021)

Posted by Rachel.Vandernick

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future of tourism. Unlike nearly any other industry, tourism is simultaneously dictated by a number of factors including consumer proclivity, weather and climate, global economics, and government.

Travel was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors in the 2020 shutdowns, which affected every business domain from the largest destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to local small businesses that thrive on the foot traffic tourism normally brings. US Travel’s year-end assessment determined there was a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. Success in tourism in 2020 meant simply surviving for many businesses, accompanied by total content strategy revamps, product pivots, local SEO investments, and local marketing activations.

What worked in 2020

Locals-only tourism

With out-of-state quarantines in effect for most of the US, and especially prevalent in the northeast, once global destinations and metros became intensely local. Succeeding locally meant celebrating local culture and playing to the hometown advantage, and creating and activating hyper-local content and SEO to sell reimagined experiences and drive renewed interest at home.

Visit Philadelphia, the DMO for the greater Philadelphia region, revamped its 2020 marketing efforts to rollout “Our Turn To Tourist” through winter 2021, a “regional marketing initiative [that] encourages people to take staycations and close-to-home drive trips.”

Visit Philadelphia’s main objective is to attract tourists from all over the country to the city of Philadelphia. With millions of out-of-state visitors each year, and huge growth each year proceeding 2020, Visit Philadelphia had the early foresight to create content geared towards both locals and visitors, and adopted a local-first SEO strategy for things to do, see, and eat nearby.

The organization went so far as to create local-centric mini itineraries based off of current restrictions, optimizing for local tourism and attraction-related keywords, and widely distributing new COVID-19 content. This campaign supported not only the hotels and attractions in the city, but also the local restaurants and small businesses.

While not totally divergent in its approach, the long-term investment that Visit Philadelphia has made into winning at local search, snagging SERP features, and embracing new features like Discover, helps ensure it will continue to be a successful advocate for Philadelphia as “the greatest city in the USA to spend the weekend”.

Reinvented experiences

Tourism and experience-based companies hadn’t extensively ventured into the virtual space prior to 2020 — after all, why plan to watch the action from home when you could board a plane and take part live and in-person?

Philadelphia-based Beyond the Bell Tours, the only LGBTQ+-owned-and-run tour operator in the city, faced a critical decision in May 2020: Their hallmark Pride-themed “Drag Me Along” drag queen trolly bar crawl was unable to launch with bars closed indefinitely and social gatherings restricted. As searches continued to increase for virtual events, virtual gatherings, and virtual things to do, businesses that rose to meet the demand found success. For Beyond the Bell, that meant turning the “Drag Me Along” concept into “Pride In A Box”: a series of five different themed Pride boxes that included products and experiential components for use at home.

Though their website was originally built on a tour-booking engine, to execute a pivoted product strategy, they restructured it to allow an e-commerce integrated function, and optimized to sell products and experiences for Pride.

Founder Rebecca Fisher said, “We thought about how a box could embody a community. We highlighted queer people, businesses, and queer products, and held weekly events for Pride, all proceeds of which were donated to racial justice. A single ‘box’ purchased during Pride supported many queer businesses, and we wanted people to feel that impact.”

Ultimately, businesses that adapted quickly to changes in consumer search behavior, and that conducted and implemented keyword research for new content targeting previously unranked/low-volume terms, were better positioned to maintain consumer support and visibility even though actual travelers continued to drop.

Up-to-date info on expanding and changing regulations

Domestic travel is rarely regulated in the US, so when cities across the country responded to shut down orders, hot spots beloved by locals and tourists alike emptied out and revenue began to drastically fall.

As an SEO community (especially local!) we’re always advocates of the value of keeping local listings in Google My Business up-to-date, and it never mattered more than in 2020. Coming out on top were those who updated hours, COVID-19 policies and procedures, and published delivery or third-party partnerships. Unsurprisingly, AirBnB’s and VRBO’s new Covid content “enhanced cleaning protocol” and “guidelines for owners” come out top in searches for short term rental cleaning best practices, and cleanliness related to travel accomodations. Updated local listings allowed exasperated consumers to easily see what businesses were open, and allowed search-savvy businesses to leverage their GMB to position themselves as safety-conscious, accessible, and prioritize addressing consumer concerns (not to mention the features released to help businesses access these tools).

What to expect from tourism in 2021

It’s hard to remember a time of greater collective cabin fever. Though with border closings, pre-travel testing, and business closures remaining a moving target, we can still expect that a majority of travel will happen closer to home in early 2021. Here’s where we can expect to see growth first.

Short term stays: road trips, workspace respites, and snow birds

What's ahead for short-term travels? Continued RV sales, for one, which were up 4.5% annually in 2020. These growth indicators, as well as public perceptions of travel safety, continue to slate hometown and close-by exploration as the early 2021 winners.

Outdoor and spaced-out activities show continued interest in search volume and sales. Yellowstone National Park alone saw a 21% increase in year-over-year visitation in September 2020. Don’t expect this to slow down any time soon.

Another trend we expect to see continue in early 2021? Snow birding. Once reserved for the retired, heading south for the winter is especially popular this year for northerners leaving lockdowns at home. Expect extended stays, fuller flights, and busier beaches than normal.

One final place you can expect to see travelers? In a nearby hotel. Formerly reserved for the luxurious staycations, local hotels have become workplace respites for those fully remote workers who lack adequate home office space. Though not “technically” travel, many hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, for starters) are offering single-day, day-time only, “work from hotel” deals to help relieve lost revenue and fried nerves of managing co-occurring zoom calls at the kitchen table.

Extended visits: remote relocations

With many children and families, not to mention formerly remote employees, feeling the squeeze of their walls at home, many hotels and villa properties are offering cost-effective extended stays (three weeks or more). Mid-term relocations are becoming incredibly common, with particular flight happening from metro centers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. Individual countries are actively trying to scoop up consumer demand for change of scenery and pace, with countries like Dubai, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands offering temporary extended work visas to US citizens as a way to revive local tourism.

Short term rental properties such as beach house bookings, waterfront properties, mountain cabins, and southern getaways — or you know, just a yard if you’re a city-dweller — are booking in greater numbers in 2020 than nearly any time in 2019. AirDNA notes, “Among those leading the rebound are beaches, mountain towns, lakeside getaways, and really anything within driving distance of a major urban hub.”

Longer-term remote stays, whether for yourself or your family, are increasingly popular, as are remote work options which, according to Google trend data, have increased by two-times the previous levels pre-pandemic. Searches for extended stay vacations peaked at the end of December 2020, with previous highs in October and April 2020. Moving into 2021, we’ll likely see expanded tourism offerings to match this consumer demand, and also to accommodate pre-quarantine requirements, which vary city to city.

In conclusion

Travel isn��t what it used to be, and for the time being, we’re seeing increasingly important local search activations and feature adoption. And as remote work and location agnostic work becomes more the norm, the lessons we learned from pandemic travel search will help businesses thrive in this new tourism climate moving forward.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!