Rich Thomaselli

"Never again." That's how a commercial for Carnival Cruises ends, with a woman and her husband staring blissfully onto sea, recalling an earlier vacation horror in which they were attacked by a bear. Now, it's Carnival that's perceived as the vacation horror -- the hashtag #cruisefromhell actually trended on Twitter last week -- following a ...

Thanks to social media and wall-to-wall coverage by CNN, no one has failed to hear about the "cruise from hell," complete with tails of raw sewage running down cabin walls, no air conditioning and rotting food. "You have 3,100 people on that ship telling their family and friends they're never going on a cruise again, you have tweets and photos com...

Advertising Age Player brightcove.createExperiences(); AMR Corp.'s American Airlines today unveiled a marketing campaign to tout its new look and logo, the first change to its iconic branding in almost 45 years. The Fort Worth, Texas-based flier, the third-largest airline in the country in terms of ...

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has launched a $20 million ad campaign aimed at "persuaders" -- 40 million casual travelers who might be considering a trip to Sin City but feel overwhelmed by everything Vegas has to offer. The campaign, via longtime Las Vegas-based agency R&R Partners, rebrands its former visitlasvegas.com websit...

After years of marketing itself to just about the youngest driving demographic possible, Toyota's Scion brand today will announce a new campaign -- a mea culpa of sorts that its advertising might have actually aimed too young in the past, just as the brand is now starting to show signs of life after years of declining sales. "We wanted to ...