Tourism INTERNET Marketing Blog 1.0 - Websites

Tourism INTERNET Marketing Blog 2.0 is live!

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:58:00 -0800

After over 200 blog posts in 365 days, I am very excited to announce the launch of Tourism INTERNET Marketing 2.0. Thanks to my readers, to my fellow bloggers, to the travel-, tourism-, and hospitality- industries, and everybody's support, especially to Chris Clarke for helping launch the new blog. All the best for 2008 and beyond.

Kind regards,
Jens Thraenhart

Most recent Tourism Internet Marketing Blog 2.0 posts:

Websites with a cause

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:22:00 -0800

Back in June of 2007, I wrote about the extraordinary concept of Kiva.org. Now I came across an interview with Bill Clinton that explains the mission very accurately...as well as this film by PBS.

Another great site is GiveMeaning.com by Vancouver-based Tom Williams. Tom started his career in Product Marketing at Apple Computer when he was just 14 years old. In his own words:

My dream for GiveMeaning is that we inspire people to take action. I believe that most every person cares deeply about something, but I'm equally sure that many of us find ourselves doing little for the causes that matter most to us — not because of a lack of desire, but a lack of confidence. My plan is for GiveMeaning to change all this by being able to take any cause or issue and identify a small, but tangible, piece of the problem to fix. I once heard a story where the moral was: "if you want to move mountains, buy a shovel." Giving Groups are like online shovels that make small steps towards addressing big issues. This is my hope for GiveMeaning; people connecting with friends, and strangers, united by a desire to achieve a common goal.

What if Google re-designed their homepage?

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:46:00 -0800

Have a look...quite amusing what a Google developer came up with...

New Travel Search Engine Kango.com goes into Private Beta

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:29:00 -0800

A little while ago, my friend Yen Lee, Kango’s President and former General Manager of Yahoo Travel, gave me the opportunity to be one of the first bloggers to get a sneak preview and play around with Kango.com a few months ago. I was very impressed, and decided to interview Yen to get an insight view and share it on the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog. Now, Yen informed me that he is pleased to finally open up Kango for the private beta release. Feel free to have a look at the interview, and apply to be one of the few to be a previate-beta tester. Yen noted that it helps to mention that you are a reader of the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog...

So what is Kango.com, and why should you care - with all the new online travel sites out there...well, in short: Kango aims to save travelers time, so they have more time to travel. And isn't it all about creating value to travellers? But let's go a little bit more indepth...

Kango has received some serious funding from a well-established investor and is creating a new travel solution that is doing a couple things that are very new and interesting.

The first thing is something that will save you a lot of time. The problem I have run across in booking hotels is that one travel site will say a hotel is 3 stars, another 4 stars and if I check a third source the hotel is rated 1 star. I now, discouraged more on to looking at another hotel, not wanting to pay a 3 star price for a hotel that could end up having a 1 star experience.

Kango is doing all that work of hunting down the truth on a hotel and presenting the information on a single page

For example if I were going for a vacation in San Francisco I might decide to stay at the Omni Hotel San Francisco because there seems to be a broad consensus from 6 different travel sites with 250+ reviews and ratings of four-out-of-five-or-better; I may be less inclined to choose the Hotel Bijou which appears to be in a similar price range because the ratings were less consistent.

The other thing that Kango is doing is aggregating what to do when you are there, beyond just booking the hotel, which most of the major travel sites don’t really talk about, presumably because it’s to hard to make money from listings of beaches just looking at the first page of Kango ideas about things to do in San Francisco and I see a few I probably would never thought to do that look fun; sure the popular Alcatraz is listed, but what if I wanted to take the kids somewhere? The Exploratorium looks like a good bet, or perhaps the Junipero Serra Playground.

Finally, Kango should help you find better choices that lead to better trips. With Kango, if you are looking for a romantic getaway in San Francisco, you will get different hotel and activity recommendations than if you are looking for a family vacation in San Francisco.

After playing around with the site, which Kango is adamant, is a pre-beta at this point, I already see a lot of usefulness, which gets me a bit excited, for what else they might be working on that could save me time, make it easier to travel, and lead to better trips.

In my opinion...a site worth watching. Good luck Yen, and keep it us posted. You can also get some more inside inforamtion right from the Kango team on their own blog.

Don't be a Tourist, Connect with the Locals...

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:33:00 -0700

Jeff Goldsmith, a friend of mine from San Francisco yesterday launched his new company VIAMIGO. Jeff talked to me about his new ideas many months back, and what really excited me about it is the concept of travellers connecting with locals. Leveraging technology to create an amzing travel experience where residents invite travellers and show their hospitality. We all know that the best travel experiences are the ones when we are emerged in the destination, and when we get away from the the traditional tourist spots to getting to explore the hidden secrets beyond the beaten path. Well, in the age of convergence, VIAmigo is attempting to exactly do that. The site helps global travelers find authentic, local experiences and insider adventures - by connecting them with personal tour guides from everywhere by going beyond the guidebook. Pre-launch, VIAmigo signed up 1500 tour guides from every corner of the planet - with a great many more expected soon. Professional tourist guides to diving instructors to archeologist to connoisseurs of every sort, you name the adventure. Private Guides is another site that offers private tour guides all over the world, but not necessarily on a budget.

According to Jeff, "Usually, unless you know someone who lives in the city or find a helpful native in a tiny village, you would be unlikely to find some of the fantastic local haunts and beautiful natural spots which are off the tourist trail. The thinking behind VIAmigo is that we allow you to easily connect with professional guides and local cognoscenti. Everyone wants to go beyond the guidebook and package tour on their next trip, and now you can, whether you're a business traveler with an extra day or an adventurer with a month to explore,"

Why got me excited about VIAmigo when Jeff first told me about his idea? Well, I think Destination Marketing Organizations need to go beyond brochureware and find a way to leverage technology to allow travellers to connect with locals. That is relationship management. I would love to have such a "one-to-one destination marketing platform" - we are working on it with our community platform, which will go well beyond our current Blogging platform on Canada.travel (which is still one one of the few national and regional tourism organizations that allows for user-generated content).

Continue reading "Don't be a Tourist, Connect with the Locals..."

TripIt launches

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:36:33 -0700

New online travel start-up TripIt has received quite some buzz over the past few weeks, and officially launched at the TechCrunch40 event in San Francisco (40 invited start-ups present their ventures).

How does it work? Well, TripIt is an intelligent travel organizer that helps do-it-yourself travelers manage their travel plans so that their trips go more smoothly. Travelers simply forward their purchase confirmation emails to TripIt and TripIt automatically creates master itineraries with travel plans and other critical information like weather, maps and driving directions, and destination information.
TripIt makes it easy for travelers to print or access their trip plans from anywhere including online, in print and on their web-enabled mobile devices. They can also share itineraries and travel calendars and collaborate on planning trips with friends in their TripIt network. Have a look at a sample itinerary or view the demo.

Tim O'Reilly wrote on his blog:
“There's a kind of magic to forwarding on a travel confirmation from an airline or a hotel reservation and having them aggregated into an itinerary, along with automagically-added maps of the destination, local weather, and other useful information. I'll often put together a packet like this for a trip I'm taking, but that's a manual process.”

Some great backing, and a distinguished management team with the co-founder of Hotwire. I received beta testing access some time back, and of course played around with it. I think it is a great platform and neat technology execution...but then I ask myself: Is this it? Is this enough to create a sustainable B2C business model? Maybe I am missing something, but I see this as a great plug-in for other travel sites, or even travel suppliers (hotels, airlines, car rental), or even corporate travel planners. Maybe that is their plan, but I couldn't find any evidence. So when I was contacted by TripIt to write about the launch (like so many other bloggers probably as well), I thought, why not ask the question: "Is this it?"

Here is what came back:

"Sure, there’s lots more to it than itineraries… it automatically gives weather, directions, destination information, maps… and we also say it has a “social twist” in that it allows you to share your trips with friends and let them see your calendar, or have them collaborate on trips with you."

You judge for yourself if this model can exist as a stand-alone business. Maybe it can, but I think the true opportunity is partnering with other organizations. Maybe call the guys at Kayak or Tripadvisor...

But definately a cool technology. Some of the key capabilities include its Calendar Integration. If you use Google Calendar, Outlook 2007 or any calendar that supports the iCalendar standard, you can now automatically sync your personal calendar with your TripIt travel plans.

Feel free to read the entire press release below.

Continue reading "TripIt launches"

Microsoft's new Search Engine - Tafiti

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:24:00 -0700

Very quietly without any media buzz (unlike Microsoft), the company has stepped up to launch an innovative new search tool called Tafiti (which means "do research" in Swahili).

Built on the company's Silverlight (it's basically another version of Flash) platform, Tafiti allows users to search in an interactive, visual environment. The motion is fluid and rich and should appeal to anybody who is tired of the stark white look of Google or the overly crushed look of Yahoo. This universal search tool incorporates images, RSS, news and books into one search with a visual toggle between them. The option that allows you to drag results to a pile for later reference is a very cool idea. But since Silverlight requires a separate plugin download, it would be interesting if Microsoft built another version of this in Flash to bump adption. I played around with it, and it is actually quite neat. It has a great ability to stream high-quality video.

To explain the functionality in detail, I Found a video on Brightcove by Matt Dickman of the insightful Techno-Marketer Blog. If you want to see a site built in Silverlight, have a look at the Fox Movies.

Toronto's Virtual City Guide

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:22:00 -0700

I just came across a new City Guide for Toronto, called STREETS.TO.

The innovative website, billed as the world's "first and only patent-pending virtual cityscape," is best described as a tourist-friendly version of Google Earth. You begin your visit to the site by hailing a virtual taxi (Beck, a popular Toronto company), which then "drives" you around to various restaurants, nightclubs and attractions. The cab stops in front of an accurate depiction of each hot spot. Click on the picture and you'll get interior shots, menus and contact info. So before you waste your money on a real cab, you'll know if it's for you. The site just launched a few months ago, so destination choices are limited. But it's a cool concept and worth a look.

Example of a great Facebook Travel Application

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:50:00 -0700

All right, I am a Facebook junkie, but just because I love the power the community platform really has in my opinion. Having played around with various applications, I now came across Hostels, which I believe is one of the best examples of incorporation of a web service into the Facebook platform. Users never need to register with an external site, and every function except booking is self-contained within Facebook. This has become an increasingly important quality to me as I research more and more applications and constantly find myself asking "Why wouldn't I just go to their website for this?" Many new apps seem to be the result of development teams feeling compelled to make a Facebook app and doing the bare minimum to get their service to work within Facebook, but not building a true Facebook app. Hostels does not fit this description. In short, developers who want to port their pre-existing community sites to Facebook should be taking notes on Hostels.

New Social Networking Site that Pays

nospam@example.com (Jens Thraenhart) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:44:00 -0700

A new social network is about to launch. Normally, that would be a run-of-the-mill occurance, but this one is different. You can make money by signing up and recruiting your friends. Friendswin offers an affiliate compensation program that pays commissions for referrals. By signing up you can become an Independent Marketing Representative (IMR). Then, by signing up others you get a comission on a tiered basis - 5 members (who pay a $9.97 per month fee) pays out 3%, or $0.30 per member ($1.50). Sign up 25 members and get 4%, or $0.40 per member ($9.97). Sign up 125 members and get 5%, or $0.50 per member ($62.31) and so on.

It's an interesting model to build membership and share in profits of this ever-expanding medium. Soial networks are growing at a rate of 89% per year.

The feature set of Friendswin includes video enabled profiles, video conferencing between friends, video dating, sharing of videos, blogs, music, classifieds, events, forum entries, and favorite/popular categories among users and groups.