The South African Tourist board has launched a microsite in conjunction with the Daily Telegraph. Site visitors are encouraged to share their experiences based around seven key themes. Each theme is accompanied by a video of a past visitor talking about their experiences. There is also a chance to win a five day holiday.

Each theme page is going to become quite long as more experiences are added. As these grow, perhaps the site could integrate a tag cloud (see below for a wiki definition or view Flickr’s popular photos tag cloud) onto each page to highlight the diversity of experiences along with their popularity.

For example, I’m a keen cricket fan and have read two related comments. I think it would be useful if i could click a ‘cricket’ link that would filter the relevant comments.

*A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

Keep an eye out for the launch of DiscoverAmerica.com in March. Branded as the official travel and tourism website for the US the site is funded with a £2m grant from the US Department of Commerce.

I’m not sure why the US hasn’t marketed itself before as a destination as opposed to just individual states or other entities. The tourism push will no doubt aim to improve the country’s image overseas and help stimulate the economy.

The site is little more than a holding page at the moment but I’m sure one that gains plenty of traffic. One of the key aims should be to collect emails, not necessarily for special offers as indicated in the sign up form, more for visitors to be notified of the launch. I think this should have been placed much higher up the page.

Here is a link to the TV ad by M&C Saatchi.

TourismROI is a global B2B networking and information service for tourism destinations around the world.

I met up for a coffee with Richard Miller and Don Montague during the World Travel Market to find out more about the site.

Richard worked at the World Travel & Tourism Council for over 16 years culminating in a role as the Executive Vice President. In 2007 he joined MMG Worldwide, a NYC based firm specialising in marketing for the travel and hospitality sector and where Don is Chairman and CEO.

There is a holding page at www.TourismROI.com and downloadable brochure. They are beta testing the site at the moment with a number of destinations and plan to soft launch early this year. TourismROI has ambitious plans to be the world’s largest collection of tourism information and research for more than 6,200 destinations whilst providing a b2b networking platform that offers real value to destinations. The idea for the project was conceived early last year and was met with plenty of interest from investors and destinations. I’ve listed below a few of the problems that the site aims to solve and how they plan to do it.

[Read more →]

A new campaign by Baltimore Tourism gives residents the opportunity to describe their personal highlights of the city.

Site visitors are encouraged to upload videos of themselves in their favourite places at Visit My Baltimore.

My own perception, rightly or wrongly, is a large city in Maryland with high crime levels and an odd sounding baseball team. (A few years living in Chicago gave me an early love for the game) So quite a limited and imbalanced view then!

Personal experiences like this can help alter perceptions and the amateur video production adds to the authenticity. I think it’s a great idea. Stories create emotion and are easy to remember. People buy on emotion and stories are easier to relate to than copy on a DMO or related site.
For anyone who has used video sharing sites like YouTube the layout and functionality should be familiar.

Users create an account, upload a video and give it a description, category and assign it any number of tags. Below each video are links to some of the places mentioned for further reading.

Below that are thumbs of related videos. Site users can sort the 70 or so videos by rating or category. The one above from Steve is his own irreverent tour of the city with an emphasis on food spots. He also shows us where to park for over an hour for a quarter (or 15p!).

The Tourism Management Institute are holding a series of digital marketing and technology workshops on 20th June at Leeds Metropolitan University. There will also be a number of companies exhibiting their products, including suppliers of DMS, e-marketing tools, CRM systems and web design.

Online book and event brochure over at http://emmm.co.uk/tmi/.