Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

It’s amazing to me how much the T-List has grown since it was launched by Mathieu Ouellet back in March of 2007.  It has been about a year and half now and the most recent list was posted by Happy Hotelier in his “Happy Halloween: Happy Hotelier’s 300 T-List Travel Related Blogs Ranked according to Technorati“.  Here is a recap of how much the Travel Blogger community has grown over the last year:

• March 2007 – Mathieu Ouellet creates the T-List
• July 2007 – Jens Thraenhart and I decide to team to create the Tips from the T-List book.
• Sept 2007 – 30+ bloggers contribute to the Tips from the T-List book project.
• Nov 2007 – The Tips from the T-List book is launched at Canada-e-connect in Vancouver.
• Nov 2007 – The FIRST travel blogger’s summit is held at PhoCusWright Orlando (11Bloggers participate)
• Nov – Dec 2007 – E-book versions of the T-List book are distributed at the Travolution Conference, London and Web-in-travel, Singapore.
• January 2008 – Happy Hotelier updates the T-List with Technorati rankings.
• February 2008 – Tips from the T-list site launches, starts aggregating posts from authors.
• March 2008 – The FIRST International travel blogger summit is held at ITB Berlin (20 Bloggers participate and receive full press credentials).
• March 2008 – Second print version of T-List book (ITB edition is sponsored and published at ITB Berlin.
• April 2008 – Canadian travel blogger summit held at Online Revealed in Calgary.
• April 2008 – Elliott Ng from Uptake.com sets up the T-List Twitter Feed
• August 2008 – Tips from the T-List site is recognized as an official news source by Google News.
• November 2008 – 2nd Annual Blogger Summit at PhoCusWright, Hollywood (30+ Bloggers participate). Bloggers are provided full press credentials and exclusive media access.  PhoCusWright provides exclusive video and photo content for bloggers.
• November 2008 – The #phocus08 tag becomes the 6th most popular tag on Twitter.

So, here we are about a year after the T-List and the bloggers on it have become “mainstream”, thanks in part to the dedication and commitment of the travel blogging community.  The Tips from the T-List site has aggregated over 2,570 posts from over 40 contributing authors.  The fact that the site has been recognized as a news source by Google News has only added to the credibility of the T-List community and the work that we all do collectively.

Let’s keep the momentum going in 2009! If you would like to add your content to the Tips from the T-List site and have it syndicated through Google News, I invite you (especially if you are on the following list) to email me at stephen.a.joyce [at] gmail.com with the feed you would like to syndicate.

If I have forgotten anything in my chronology, please let me know and comment on this post.  Thanks again to Happy Hotelier for putting together the following list.

** UPDATE: I am not convinced that the Technorati ranking is the best way to rank the blogs and since this is more about inclusion then elitism, I have removed the rankings and re-sorted the list alphabetically based on Blog name.