Journey of a Lifetime: Young Adult Travel Adventures

Book Proposal Query Letter - Title

Journey of a Lifetime: Young Adult Travel Adventures

Summary

The companion travel guidebook to the web-based Reality TV Travel Show "Journey of a Lifetime" is all about building a framework for a social network of like-minded young adults who crave travel adventures and want to experience their own Journey’s. Just like the contestants who have submitted their video online and won their dream travel adventure, young adults can learn through this companion travel guide how they too can experience the very same adventure they’ve seen on the show, or create their own travel adventure. This companion travel guidebook will compliment the Reality TV Travel Series where submissions by contestants highlight personalized stories, often emotional tear-jerker reunions, about connecting young adults and their families with their heritage across continents. Each chapter will coincide with the actual itinerary of each week’s contestant winner. This guide will include easy reference to all the resources compiled for every aspect of the week’s show.

The JOAL guidebook is different because each chapter tells a unique and compelling story, all immersively tied to the visual anchors of that week’s episode on video, as well as logically and easily navigated on the web. The guidebook is designed to be the back-pocket easy reference for the traveler’s favorite episode. For those traveler’s who were mesmerized by the events portrayed on the show, the guidebook will insure that they know exactly where to go and what to do if they want to replicate that experience.

Author

I am a global media Entrepreneur who captures the cultural change of young adults seeking purpose in their life by producing compelling travel adventures leading to self-discovery delivered precisely the way this generation receives its content: thru their iPhone, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. You can see the show’s website at http://www.journeyofalifetime.com/ which includes videos about the show and submission videos by contestants.

One of the key elements to consider when evaluating whether to represent me and this book is the considerable momentum the author can contribute to the overall marketing of the book through a comprehensive distribution strategy which supports and enhances all the traditional book distribution opportunities. In addition to developing traditional and interesting publicity hooks and novel selling approaches, the author is uniquely qualified to bring about a new distribution method for this guidebook, including;

HyperDistribution (social networking)

DVD Distribution

Broadband and Viral Distribution

Search Engine Distribution

What Qualifies Me? I am a technical entrepreneur and have been published in numerous industry and trade association publications and technical white papers. I am currently writing two other books, one non-fiction titled “Hyperdistribution: How to Market to Young Adults” and one fiction titled “Gardner’s of Eden”. I am a subject matter expert in online marketing and have obtained industry recognition for Search Engine Optimization, including having written extensively about search engine ranking. I am credited with coining the phrase “hyperdistribution” which is a new online method of marketing which is described in detail in my proposal and the subject of one of my other non-fiction books. I have authored numerous internal company publications, dozens of business plans, executive summaries for successful investor offerings and numerous policy manuals. I have written for numerous websites, including writing the website www.pattilang.com, a six year journey chronicling my late wife’s battle against brain cancer. I am a published author for a cookbook titled, “Cicciotti’s Kitchen” Italian Family Favorites, featuring Gaetano Cicciotti.

Audience

The emerging market of Youth and Student Travelers, ages 18 to 35, is becoming a highly prized demographic.

We provide travel content for the Traveling Young Adult and Student Community and have created effective online revenue generation strategies through this vehicle. We create unique location-specific, travel oriented websites to educate and inform youth travelers.

We believe that traveling youth between the ages of 18 and 35 are one of the principal driving forces behind the growth of the Internet and that as of January 2009, individuals in the age group of 18 to 35 made up 45% of the online population. We believe that traveling youth between the ages of 18 and 36 also represent an attractive demographic group for advertisers and businesses, controlling or influencing over $1.6 trillion of the $3.0 trillion in annual travel spending in the United States.

We have one of the most demographically targeted online communities on the World Wide Web. Our business will be the largest online travel content provider for young adults, with more interactive travel connections and more unique visitors to our Web sites in a given month than any competitor. Our network, built around our core community website "JourneyofaLifetime.com", provides an easy-to-use, comprehensive and immersive travel community experience tailored to the interests and needs of traveling youth aged 18 through 35. We provide advertisers and merchants with targeted access to traveling youth using the Web.

We are an online travel content company that enables our target Young Adult and Student customers to not only immerse themselves in the video content of our uniquely formatted travel shows, but to also search for and purchase a broad array of proprietary travel products, including direct sales of in-house Travel DVD productions, travel guidebooks, as well as referral coordination of airline tickets, lodging, car rentals, cruises and vacation packages through our website and strategic partner websites like Travelocity.com and Orbitz.com. We sell these travel products both individually and as part of packaged trips to our target customers located primarily in the United States. We also offer access to travel news, travel weather, travel delays, security alerts and other information of interest to travelers on our website.

Although there is currently more revenue to be earned from Baby Boomer travelers today than Gen Xers or Digital Youth, that won’t be for long, according to research conducted by TIA’s new strategic partner, DK Shifflet & Associates. Gen X travelers have been on a faster trajectory than their older boomer colleagues as far as growth in hotel room-nights goes.

The Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Commerce, ITA, Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, "In-Flight Survey," May 2005. http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/) produced a report showing that there were 27,351,000 total U.S. Residents visiting overseas destinations in 2005, with 22,373,000 or 81.8% of those total overseas visitors doing so for Leisure as well as visiting Friends and Relatives. Applying 24% youth/student travelers to the total overseas visitors shows that there are approximately 5,369,520 youth and student travelers who went abroad in 2005.

Competing and Related Titles

There are literally thousands of travel guidebooks published around the world. A quick visit to your local bookstore is likely to confuse and overwhelm a would-be reader with the plethora of “me-too” travel books. Most of the existing works focus on basically the same thematic formats which bludgeon the reader with statistics, facts and maps.

The JOAL guidebook is different because each chapter tells a unique and compelling story, all immersively tied to the visual anchors of that week’s episode on video, as well as logically and easily navigated on the web. The guidebook is designed to be the back-pocket easy reference for the young adult traveler’s favorite episode. For those traveler’s who were mesmerized by the events portrayed on the show, the guidebook will insure that they know exactly where to go and what to do if they want to replicate that experience.

The JOAL guidebook is part of a comprehensive social networking strategy designed to foster loyalty only associated with high affinity groups. The traditional TV Travel Show Industry (discussed later in more detail) and the Travel Guidebook Industry have missed a fundamental connection which we address because we are creating a Primary Affinity Group. There are signs of this emerging market trend to focus on the Young Adult Travel market, for example:

• YoungMoney.com (http://www.youngmoney.com/) has targeted the Young Adult market demographic, but treats travel as a narrative adjunct for the traditional task list of articles like; dealing with theft while traveling, top safety travel tips, save money while traveling and other equally non-compelling topics.

• Student Travel Association (http://www.statravel.com/) targets the right audience, but regurgitates the same old tired travel information; the world's largest student and youth travel agency, beats any price…wow, what a difference! They get you (student, teachers & anyone under 26) the cheapest, most flexible flights and top-rated accommodations.

• Student Universe (http://www.studentuniverse.com/) is basically a repackaged reseller of online booking and reservation systems linked in from other providers.

• Student Traveler (http://www.studenttraveler.com/) comes a little closer, but still doesn’t hit the mark.

Special Marketing and Promotional Opportunities

Embedded Advertising (branded alliances) is becoming more and more sophisticated. Theatrical release of the most recent James Bond movie embedded everything from Omega watch advertising to Ford. The restaurant chain Cheesecake Factory now embeds advertising from sponsors in their menus! We are proposing a novel approach to partner with our publisher and to obtain upfront embedded advertising from select Product Sponsors.

Seven main Product Sponsorship areas of focus (not including ancillary product placements) are priorities for SIP operations: Airlines, Hotels, Rental Cars, Search Engines, Computers, Beverages and Clothing. Please see the Product Partners section for more details about each of these opportunities.

In addition to the Product Sponsorship, we are working with a highly specialized Media Services organization which is helping us prepare a sophisticated and comprehensive viral and hyper distribution marketing strategy.

Most 18-year-old students, our Digital Youth, entering the graduating class of 2010 this fall were born in 1990. They grew up with a cell phone in one hand, a mouse in the other and a computer screen as part of their worldview. They learned to surf the internet as they learned to read. While they were still in their cribs, the 20th century started to close as the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet bloc disintegrated, and frequent traditional wars in Latin America gave way to the uncontrolled terrors of the Middle East. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead. This year’s entering students form a generation that has always been ‘connected’ and is used to things happening in ‘real time,’ like live satellite coverage of revolutions and wars, instant messaging and movies on demand. They expect solutions for every problem, from baldness to diseased organs. To the chagrin of traditional media outlets, they’ve developed their own generational means of communication.

HyperDistribution: a distribution channel which is even more efficient than broadcasting. If you don’t know what HyperDistribution is, then you don’t know about YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. If you’ve never checked out online content forums and social media sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Newsvine, then you’ll need to explore those to understand what’s going on.