Disney Travel Channel Launches
From mediapost.com:
TweetIN AN EFFORT TO PERK up two business categories–travel and theme parks–Walt Disney is launching a video-on-demand channel, Disney Travel.
Two cable systems will be part of the initial launch, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable, which will reach more than 9 million viewers. The channel will include reality, special-event content and concerts, all focusing on Disney parks worldwide.
“Consumers are multi-channeling all the time,” says Michael Mendenhall, executive vice president of global marketing for Disney Parks & Resorts. “And 86% of our guests use the Internet.”
Unique to this channel is its interactivity, which will include letting viewers talk to a Disney travel agent. “Before, you would have to enter all this information on the Disney site,” says Mendenhall. “Now, within five and 15 minutes, we will call your home.” For a long time Disney has had it own travel agency business–an effort to push its theme-park business.
Disney got the hint that a travel channel might work, given the strong response to its vacation-planning DVDs. Mendenhall says there is a lot of entertainment on the DVD, and people were screening it as regular TV content.
hey should do this on a worldwide scale. The current generation down here has no idea there are places like WDW out there. When I was young, we had a show called “Disneyland” on TV that showed classic cartoons and talked about the parks. Nowadays, Disney Channel barely covers it, in between That’s So Raven and “New Actress/Singer Show”.