Spending vast amounts of time browsing the web and much of it travel & tourism related, perhaps it will be a good idea to share some links in regular postings. I am thinking a weekly round up may be most appropriate but we’ll see how it goes!

Short reviews of ‘Top 5 Killer New Travel Sites’ profiled by the Ministry of Tech blog. These include:

• Travelistic – video sharing for travel videos – Read review
• Farecast – airfare prediction and recommendations for over 75 US cities – Read review
• Flightstats – comprehensive information on flights, airports and airlines – Read review
• Kayak – Travel search engine site covering flights, hotels, cars and deals – Read review
• Real Travel – Online community where travellers share insights and information – Read review at Techcrunch

Following on from Ryanair being voted the ‘world’s least liked Airline‘ by online Travel community TripAdvisor, Mark Ritson in Marketing magazine this week discussed the need not to worry too much about your mass-market brand being despised.

His main point was that it is better to be strongly admired by a profitable minority and disliked by the rest, than be feebly liked by the masses. He used marketing examples of previous brands that have roundly antagonised, including the ‘Whassup‘ Budweiser campaign appealling to the youth market but infuriating others, and more recently, the highly irritating, yet chart topping Crazy frog anthem.

‘New Players in Travel Search‘ is an article on Search Engine Watch published in July 2006. Brian Smith looks at two travel sites that are creating a more transparent fare booking process. The two sites in question are Farecast (as mentioned above) and Fare Compare.

Travel Weekly has relaunched today. Along with a new magazine and site to match, a blog has been launched.