I am freshly back from Travelcom 2008 in Chicago, where I was invited to join Yahoo's panel discussion of quantifying the social media behavior of online travelers. I was invited by Yahoo's Brad King, who heard about me through Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps, whom previously interviewed me about Philadelphia's unique uwishunu social media campaign. Sarah analyzed our social media work for uwishunu and wrote about it as a case study for a new social media analysis model she/Forrester created (collaboratively with Compete Inc., I believe). Sarah used the uwishunu case study in this session and I was particularly pleased that she included the point that it was a team of people at GPTMC who made uwishunu and our social media tactics a success. A social media director is a great start for an agency or organization but it takes the dedication of a whole team to make it all work.

Also on the panel were Greg Saks from Compete and Aaron Cooper from Orbitz.

Pretty diverse group of us and it was an interesting discussion all around.
~*~
Of course, it wouldn't be a trip without a travel fiasco for me. I was caught up in the American Airlines debacle en route to Chicago. Fortunately, I had the sense to immediately call their 1-800 number as we all queued up to be rebooked and I secured one of the last seats out of Philly that night. Unfortunately, there was a lightening storm in Chicago, and my flight was forced to move on to Indianapolis, where we touched down for about an hour and eventually headed back to O'Hare for a very late arrival.

I arrived at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, a massive hotel complex, only to find that the day shift had allegedly made some mistakes with bookings that left me without my reserved room with a king-sized bed. Instead, this massive hotel complex told my tired and harried self that they had a sofabed room for me. Huh? Wha..?

Frankly, I was too tired to fight. I was too tired to hit the streets with luggage and a laptop and find another hotel after midnight. I was *speaking* at a conference in *this* hotel in the morning!

Unhappy but resigned, I sighed and asked if the sofabed was at least pulled out and made up for me. The front desk clerk assured me it was. So I schlepped with my luggage - not a bellhop in sight, even when I stepped out of the taxi at the front entrance - over a skywalk and to the West Tower.

Of course my key card didn't work for the elevator, luckily another guest arrived and his worked. I went up to my floor, 36 (the top floor, maybe there's a view!). I arrived at my floor, confused, because I stepped out and saw conference rooms. One said "Chicago Board of Trade" on it. Clearly this is not right. These aren't hotel rooms. Additionally, there was a group of security huddled around the body of a semi-conscious drunk man laying on the floor next to my room door.

Honesty, I didn't care about the drunk guy. I was TIRED. Get me a bed. I keyed into the room, and I found...a meeting room. Yes, you heard me, a meeting room. Two couches, neither are a pullout. Now I was pissed.

I called the front desk, explained my problem and they transferred me to a general voicemail for the hotel. I kid you not. I called back, asked them to please not transfer me again and explained there was no pullout in my room. The woman on the phone gaves me attitude, like I am making this UP! I asked her to just send a cot up.

The cot took about 20-25 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, I stepped into the hall and briefly chatted with security, who were still huddled around the unconscious drunk; then I fell asleep on the couch. The cot arrived with no pillows or blankets. The housekeeping man told me to take them from the closet. I found some musty pillows and blanket, wrapped a towel around the dusty pillow and used it. Basically, I reverting to tactics one might use in their 20's while staying in a European hostel.

At this pointed, I'd twittered the whole saga.

I used my phone as an alarm clock and hit the hay.

I will say, the Hyatt Regency Chicago charged me half price for the room and gave me a voucher for breakfast, but why didn't they find me a room in another Hyatt in Chicago? Or another hotel?

You can bet I won't stay at the Hyatt Regency Chicago again, even though the clerk at check out made me smile. After he apologized twice for the room ordeal, he looked at me and said, "Miss Heckenberger, I can only hope that the Eagles or the Phillies win a championship for you this year." I don't know how he knew I was from Philly, I checked in with my passport which identifies NYC as my hometown, but he won me over for a moment and I twittered that too;)