I recently came across this June editorial from HOTELS magazine (Thanks to Jens).

“Travel 2.0 - As the Internet evolves, latest tactics and new rules change the way hotel marketers reach customers.”

It looks at a number of examples that demonstrate the importance of online experiences that add value to hotel web sites and build communities.

In this post I’ve pulled together some of these examples and a few others. Unfortunately the article does not link to the external sites mentioned.

[Read more →]

The Tourism Marketing Conference is a three day event on 20-22 November. More details of the schedule and the lineup.

“The chance to mix with 165 other marketing and sales managers, tourism business owners, advertising agency creative directors and PR consultants and hear the latest ideas and creative thinking in marketing and filling the quiet periods in your tourism business.”

Deborah Meaden, widely known for her appearances as a dragon on Dragon’s Den will be speaking. More importantly she successfully built up her parent’s business, Weststar Holidays.

She sold it for £33 million and still has a 22% stake.

Techcrunch review of VibeAgent, the community powered hotel review site (currently in private beta). Guillaume at Hotel-Blogs.com posted an in-depth review earlier this month.

Blognation have looked at hereorthere.com, the shared travel experience site launched by Hugo Burge from Cheap Flights/HOWZAT media and friends. I liked it, easy to use and an enjoyable browse. It was launched last month and currently has over 400 travel experiences. Go Karting through the streets of Berlin looks fun!

Wise words from Susan Merrit: 10 things we can learn from Facebook - and for those Facebook followers, a discussion brewing over at Techcrunch, Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft?

On the same theme, Jens Thraenhart has started a Facebook group to build a community among travel-related bloggers. Paul Johnson of A Luxury Travel Blog has started a group for those working in the luxury travel industry. Good luck to them! I’m feeling a little facebooked out after some heavy usage and the blanket coverage in many of the blogs I frequent but I’ll be joining in soon to get connected and see how it’s working out.

A new tourism technology blog written by Stephen Joyce who runs Rezgo, a reservation system designed for small tourism businesses.

Mashable.com and more travel sites

Thanks to the Travolution blog for highlighting the Dot Tourism blog when revisiting the T-List - a collection of travel-related blogs started earlier in the year from Mathieu at Radar. Also via Travolution I came across a list from Mashable (a big blog devoted to social networks) of 17 travel community sites and services with a short review of each. Lifehacker have picked up on the list and published their thoughts on one of the holiday planners, TripWiser. I thought I’d list a few more that have been added since in the Mashable comments.

Parentography: Reviews of family-friendly places and trip ideas from other parents as well as the usual mix of social networking features like member profiles, photos, etc. More on their about page.

Ball of Dirt: The strangely named BoD lets anyone share travel photos, notes and maps on the web. More in their FAQs section.

Virtual Tourist: A long established resource with over 1.5 million reviews and nearly 3 million photos VT lets travellers share advice and experiences. ‘10 Great Things To Do On VirtualTourist‘ for a good intro to the site.

TripConnect: Launched in 2004 TripConnect and in beta the site connects you to advice from people you know and share interests with. More in their FAQs section.

LonelyPlanet.tv: Lonely Planet’s twist on sharing travel experiences by video. View a selection of the best picked by LP.

Travel and tourism in Second Life

Researching the opportunities for a client investigating the world of Second Life I came across this blog by Kzero that has a category keeping track of activity in the travel and tourism sector. This includes:

Galveston Isle: Tourism marketing in SL (Jan 17th 2007) - visit the press release from Galveston.com

Maldives opens first virtual embassy (May 24th 2007)

The Second House of Sweden (May 24th 2007)

Costa Cruises (June 4th 2007)

Visit Mexico and Chichen Itza(June 13th 2007)