Tourism INTERNET Marketing Blog 1.0

Travel and Tourism Blogs

Saturday, March 3. 2007

It seems a small community of travel and tourism bloggers is establishing itself. Many of us have either met, or at least emailed each other. With the great work that Guillaume has done in pulling travel, tourism, and hotel blogers together...just yesterday he released his Technorati ranking (and the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog is ranked at Nr. 21...I am quite pleased with this since I am live for just two months now). Today, Mathieu at Radar just started what he calls the T-List (Travel/Tourism Bloggers List).

Travel/Tourism Bloggers that I have met or I have worked with include:

Chris Clarke (in Vancouver - also writes for the Online Revealed Blog and other entertaining blogs such as Bed Jumping)
Dan Craig, GM of the Opus Hotel (in Vancouver)
Rogier Gruys (works in my team at the CTC in Vancouver)
Mike Wylie (co-chaired the HSMAI Hotel Internet Marketing Committee with me)
Joe Buhler (free-lancing for Phocuswright)
William Bakker (Director of E-Marketing at Tourism British Columbia in Vancouver)
Alicia Whalen (in Toronto, co-produced the first Online Revealed Conference with me last year)

I may have forgotten a couple, but in the next few weeks, I will put together a list of my favorite blogs in the area of Internet Marketing in the Travel, Tourism, and Hotel Industry.

Continue reading "Travel and Tourism Blogs"

Posted by Jens Thraenhart in Interesting at 13:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Tourism Internet Marketing - Winning through Collaboration

Friday, March 2. 2007

Last week, I was invited to present at the BC (British Columbia) Tourism Conference in beautiful Victoria. It was a great event, and it validated that E-Marketing is playing an increasingly important role in marketing to consumers world-wide. Rod Harris, CEO of Tourism BC touched on it in his presentation with Bruce Okabe, Deputy Minister of Tourism for British Columbia. I co-presented with William Bakker, E-Commerce Director at Tourism BC, as well as Alicia Whalen from "A Couple of Chicks E-Marketing Consulting". Our goal was to demonstrate how important collaboration is between a National Tourism Organization (in this case the Canadian Tourism Commission), the specific Destination Marketing Organization (in this case Tourism British Columbia), and the supplier like hotel, lodge, whale watching operator, etc. (in this case represented by A Couple of Chicks E-Marketing Consulting) in order to make it easy for the consumer to get excited about the destination, get more information, and finally book the experience. >>>

Continue reading "Tourism Internet Marketing - Winning through Collaboration"

Posted by Jens Thraenhart in Industry Events at 17:45 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Turning Travel Experiences into Long-lasting Memories...

Tuesday, February 27. 2007

...via Email Self Publishing:

With Life Trackers, turning life experiences into a published book is as simple as sending an email. While self-publishing is nothing new, Life Trackers makes it easy to pull together travel experiences from just about anywhere a user has internet access. Best of all, there's no cost to join, and customers can get a printable PDF of their book for free.

Here's how it works: after a customer signs up, they’re given a personal Life Trackers email address. To add content to their book, they simply send an email to that address with the text in the body of the message. And you can share the email address with people you are traveling with to collaborate on the book. In addition to sending text, users can attach up to three pictures with each message.

When they’re ready, users can view, edit and publish through the Life Trackers website. Publishing options include a printable PDF document for free, and softcover book or professionally bound hardcover for a fee. I think this is great example of how destination marketing organizations or even hotel companies, and tour operators could leverage technology to help travelers turn moments into memories.

For more on Self-publishing, please see the article by Springwise, who also spotted this new website.

Posted by Jens Thraenhart in Websites at 18:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Visual Search Engine - Like.com

Sunday, February 25. 2007

Like.com is the first visual search engine that allows users to search by image or appearance to retrieve similar items.

A smart feature includes the ability to finds items that have a specific feature you like (such as a buckle, strap, etc); all you have to do is click and drag the area of the image that you want to focus the search on. You can also filter items by color, price range or even by celebrity (items worn by your favorite starlet). This is very exciting technology, and Riya, the visual computing research team behind like.com, promises that users will soon be able to upload their own photos and search for similar products.

My queston: could a model like this be used for the travel industry - possibly by matching similar experiences to give travelers suggestions...?

Posted by Jens Thraenhart in Websites at 20:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Future of the Internet?

Saturday, February 24. 2007

Is there a concern that the Internet as we know it today could change dramatically? Have a look at this BBC article and the US Senate Committee hearing on Network Neutrality. A funny dialog by Virtual Karma posted in Feruary 2006 between a father and son in 2019 shows what the outcome could be if the phone companies and big ISPs are successful in deploying "guaranteed delivery" tiered network services where you have to pay extra to be sure that your site, email, or service will reach all the people who want to get it.

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Son: Dad, today in the history class they taught us about Internet and all the amazing stuff you could do on it.

Dad: Those were good old days before the Verizon-net, Comcast, BellSouth.net...
Son: If internet was such a good thing, why don’t we have it today?

Dad: Because they decided to end it sometime around 2006.

Posted by Jens Thraenhart in Trends at 09:05 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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