It’s a little project we’ve wanted to do for a while and found the time in recent weeks.

We’ll build the database up over the coming month and each logo entry will include a downloadable file – we’ll try and find the best quality in each case.

We’re keen for feedback so please let us know what you think.

[UPDATE] Alex Bainbridge has posted a short review about CountryBrands.org on his blog

The Tourism Society

Nomao allows you to share your favourite places on a customised map (e.g. best restaurants, holiday spots) and for each you can add pictures/videos along with a widget to your blog.

A freelance journalist at the Guardian is spending the next three months putting a number of travel networking sites put to the test. She also includes a list of these sites towards the end of her article. I’ve included these below:

For meeting a local

couchsurfing.com
hospitalityclub.org
yoursafeplanet.co.uk
globalfreeloaders.com
stay4free.com
bewelcome.org
joomla.servas.org
lghei.org (gay and lesbian)

For meeting other travellers

wayn.com
addictedtotravel.com
doyoutravel.com
thelmaandlouise.com (female only)

For upmarket networking

asmallworld.net
yacht6.com
quintessentially.com

For tip sharing and advice

Ivebeenthere.co.uk
tripadvisor.com
43places.com
virtualtourist.com
lonelyplanet.com/thorntree

For older travellers

sagazone.co.uk

For meeting someone on a flight

Flight-club.org
triplife.com

For getting a date

Travelhotties.com

For practising languages

friendsabroad.com
voxswap.com

For letting people know where you are

twitter.com
facebook.com
dopplr.com

For community blogging

bootsnall.com
travelpod.com
globenotes.com
travelblog.com
realtravel.com
mytripjournal.com

For special interest

warmshowers.org (cyclists)
tejo.org (Esperanto speakers)

For creating your own social network

ning.com
crowdvine.com

A traveler sends an outline of what they plan to do and where. Zicasso distributes this basic info to 100 service providers and within two days, four proposed itineraries and costings land in your inbox. Zicasso offers this service for free and takes a cut from the agents and operators. The service will appeal to those planning more complex trips or simply at those who do not have the time searching multiple travel agencies and search engines.

How would you feel about receiving bids from agents you don’t know?

There is a more in depth review at Profy who believe Zicasso has a model that could define the future of online travel booking – Zicasso: The Potential Future of Online Travel Planning

Follow Techcrunch coverage
Dopplr post announcing integration

Limited functionality but aimed at developers to start building applications before a full launch.

Best Geek Hotels in the World 2.0 from Hotel Chatter

Simple translation tool - Jesse Gardner posted this tip on how to offer your site in many languages. The translation is automatically done by Google Translation and is by no means a replacement for human translation. But it may be useful to those with little budget as a way to give international visitors a basic understanding of the site content.

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.

Why TourismROI?

TourismROI aims to solve two main problems:

a) Network – Expensive and exhausting processes for destinations to find the right partners for investment and development and vice versa.

b) Information – Diverse and hard-to-find research sources covering latest trends, policies, statistics, incentives and forecasts.

TourismROI aims to provide this information and platform to connect suitable parties to speed up the business decision making process.

TourismROI features

1. Investment opportunities – worldwide visibility in a comprehensive and standardised framework. These range from opportunities from destinations, local and multinational corporations, business/hotel brokers.

2. Destination-specific tourism information – including strategy and master plans, research, facts and figures, reports and analysis.

3. Publications and research to buy or in the public domain – focusing on marketing/promotion, policy, economics, development and investment trends.

4. Visibility and access to investors – along with funding sources, buyers, partners and professional service providers.

5. Visibility for Travel & Tourism professional services, research and consulting firms.

6. A up-to-date network for events, investment conferences, requests for proposals and Travel & Tourism trade associations.

Site screenshots

1. Home

2. Destinations

3. Investment opportunities

4. Business opportunities

5. MyTourismROI

The main difference from existing sites like Farecast and Kayak is that it helps users get a refund for flights where the price has dropped after you have bought the ticket. Yapta will inform you of a price drop and advise you to get in touch with the airline for a coupon or refund, something that few consumers do.

As Erick Schonfeld points out, the idea of a service that keeps a tab on prices for you could be applied to other areas of travel such as hotels, holidays and rental cars.

Not to be deterred, the team behind Yapta have pressed on with the launch even with the unexpected news that their headquarters went up in flames on Monday morning.

boo.com

Fast forward to 2007 and Web Reservations International have bought boo.com for its main consumer brand that includes 50,000 properties. Focused on accommodation the aim is to expand this and meet traveller’s needs (flights, care hire…) under the one site.

As the strapline (’Collection wisdom’) suggests, the site also looks to make the most of user generated reviews and online communities interested in sharing their destination recommendations.

Luggage Online have compiled a fifty strong list of the best travel sites ‘you probably have never heard of’. An impressive resource and each link contains a summary along with any strong or interesting features found on the sites. Unsurprisingly, given the continuing buzz and popularity around social communities, the first category and ten links are attributed to social travel networks. Some of the more off the wall sites include Airline Meals (with a collection of almost 20,000 images!) and Unusual Hotels of the World (over 100 hotels profiled ranging from the different to the bizarre).

The site launched a little over a week ago with an early review posted to the Travolution blog. I agree with the comments posted, the site is not easy to use and will provide many users with a poor browsing experience.

For a business that depends on its website, accessible web content and user-centred design is good and essential business practice. According to government figures UK residents in 2003 made over 61 million trips abroad and spent over £28 billion.

A quick accessibility analysis of the home page indicates that the page does not comply with all of the automatic checkpoints for W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines, the most basic accessibility test. The site does not produce valid HTML code and does not adhere to web standards.

The upshot of the site’s poor usability is that it is not accessible to a large market of potential customers, including the disabled. There are over 10 million disabled people in the UK. Many find it difficult to shop, find information and book holidays online because most websites are not accessible. The spending power of this is estimated to be in the region of £50 billion in the UK.

Good usability practice is not just for the disabled though – the usability problems evident will impact all users equally, regardless of ability.

Some of the issues include: insufficient contrast between foreground and background colours, text that is not scalable, lack of suitable alternative text for images and likely inconsistent display across a range of devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.

Colours
The first thought that struck me was the flat monochrome and poor use of colour. The colours are too dull and not consistent with the content theme of booking a holiday. The choice of colours for the background and foreground do not provide a high level of contrast for readability.

Fixed text size
For me the text is too small and too similar in size. Unfortunately, to increase the size for Internet Explorer users is not possible. The text in the corresponding style sheet has been attributed a fixed value and selecting a size from View > Text Size has no effect.

Printing
There is a lack of support for print friendly pages. Visitors to hotel sites will regularly print details of resorts and hotels and the use of a separate print style sheet would provide this.

Interface
The page looks cluttered and the content elements do not have enough space to breathe. This is most clearly evident in the left side column where the offers hotel images and text is placed tightly against the containing boxes. I think the rounded corners have been over used and the overall effect results in a page that is hard to read and scan.

Other interface thoughts:

• As Nick Gassman on the Travolution blog pointed out, the use of the label ‘Agent id’ is confusing and could put off and deter non trade users.
• The Youtravel.com logo does not link back to the home page and the unused space to the right of the logo looks odd. Perhaps a strapline or banner related to offers would be appropriate.
• The hotel search form is poorly designed. Youtravel.com purports to have the best online booking system and with a growing database of hotels it goes without saying that an easy to use search form is a key aspect of the site’s success. It looks too cluttered and contains too many options. Perhaps it could be simplified and certain criteria (such as the Board option) could be moved to the advanced search. Youtravel.com has commented that it aims to have trade clients make up 80% of its custom but the site should tailor more appropriately to each audience).
• A pop up calendar would enable the user to quickly choose a date.
• The ‘Destinations’ element is not easily readable; the list is provided in a linear format, the scroll feature hides over half of the options and the word ‘hotels’ has been unnecessarily repeated. Perhaps this feature could be displayed on the left or right columns with more space provided for the main hotel search. The ‘Destinations’ could also be arranged in a drop down enabling the user to quickly scroll through the options – the number of hotels/resorts could also be provided in brackets to indicate the strength of Youtravel.com’s coverage in each.
• The short guide called ‘Bookings’ is badly written and although it is a new site with many first time visitors, it may be better placed in a separate (guide) area and linked to from the Hotel search form.