Blogger Summit @ ITB Press Coverage

 I was really happy to see that we received some great press coverage during ITB including this half page spread in the FVW Daily, a leading German travel trade magazine. The following is the rough translation of the German text: America is the pioneer - Once Again - when it comes to the Internet. Dozens of bloggers watch the tourism industry in the USA and Canada. Whether it is exciting websites, the latest Rumours about Google or the latest trends in the hotel or cruise market: industry bloggers miss nothing. “In the B2B sector is will still a while until the American wave hits Europe”... Read more »

Online Revealed Educational Exchange a Big Success

The Online Revealed Conference (ORC) Educational Exchange in Vancouver was a big success. I was quite honoured to be invited to present as the keynote speaker for the session and I’m happy to report that the session went extremely well. My presentation was “Once Upon a Blog: Marketing Travel by Telling Stories”. It was a new presentation for me and I was a little bit concerned that the subject matter might not resonate with the audience. Fortunately for me, the combination of strong visuals and a compelling story resulted in a great presentation. The feedback from the audience... Read more »

Overview of Global Reservation Systems Tomorrow - Today

This is a subject that really interests me, primarily because it takes some of the new paradigms of web 2.0, social media, and user generated content and combines it with the underlying reservations model. Tina Fitch, CEO of EzRez even mentioned that bloggers were the pioneers in the space of aggregating information and providing user specific knowledge for their readers by digesting and re-interpreting information in a way that is attractive for their readers. The same holds true for the next generation of reservations systems. Ms. Fitch describes a system that aggregates data from a variety... Read more »

Feedback on the Blogger’s Summit

Both sessions for the workshop went very well. We had over 150 participants in the audience who were, from what I could tell, very engaged with the subject matter. One issue that came up during the feedback session was whether or not the topics was relevant. One blogger argued that the subject matter of the workshop was not really relevant to the consumer blogger or to the consumer in general. My counter to that argument however is that the subject was originally developed for the travel industry and so it does not necessarily apply to the consumer audience. That said, I think there is a huge... Read more »

Second Day @ PhoCusWright ITB - OTAs Speak Out

An interesting session with the leaders of some of Europe’s leading OTAs including: Alan Josephs, MD ebookers.com, Ignacio Martos, CEO Opodo, Ian McCaig, CEO Lastminute.com, Jens-Uwe Parkitny, VP & MD Expedia.com Gmbh, Javier Perez-Tenessa, Founder eDreams Inc. During the session Philip Wolf conducted an informal survey to determine whether the audience felt that the OTAs were doing a good job of differentiating themselves from each other. The resounding response from the audience was that they were, infact, NOT doing a very good job of differentiating themselves. So what can the... Read more »

Isango - Ranjan Singh

Ranjan Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of Isango! Mr. Singh joined online travel with Expedia and then become Managing Director for EBookers. What he found is that companies like Expedia and other OTAs are focused on the logistics of travel versus the destination products or the reasons why people go on trips. A recent survey stated that 66% of search is for things to do and attractions. For end consumers, there are many choices for booking the logistical pieces of travel but there are very few choices for the attraction and thing to do products. Therefore, a consolidation model works very well... Read more »

Mobile Travel Technologies - Gerry Samuels

Gerry Samuels, Founder & Executive Director, Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd. Who are MTT’s customers? Hotels, airlines, and intermediaries. Their core technology enables certain aspects of the customer’s mobile services. The technology can do things like deliver travel information, select seats, and even have boarding passes sent to the phone. The technology connects on the back-end with the customer systems and cherry pick the information that needs to be delivered and modifies or smart edits the information in order to be viewed on both high-end users and basic mobile devices. Do... Read more »

Best Travel Marketing Secrets - A Tips from the T-List Initiative

This was originally posted by Jens Thraenhart at the Tourism Internet Marketing blog. Please be sure to leave your comments and secrets using the Contact Form on Jens’ blog. Tourism Marketing Blog contributor Claude Benard had the brilliant idea to reach out and ask experts to share their Travel Marketing Secrets and Tips - similar to the initative from Small Business Trends…but focused on travel, tourism, and hospitality marketing.The results will be shared on the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog, and will also be presented at the Phocuswright Bloggers Summit at ITB, in collaboration... Read more »

Connecting with Tom Botts, Partner with Hudson Crossing LLC @ PhoCusWright Orlando 2007

This post actually serves two purposes: Firstly this is a great little interview with Tom Botts from Hudson Crossing LLC. Tom moderated the Blogger Workshop at PhoCusWright Orlando 2007 and seemed to really enjoy himself. Thanks Tom! Secondly, my wife forwarded me a video that was hosted using a video sharing platform called Viddler. I hadn’t heard of Viddler before but, based on its Alexa ranking of 18,487 it must be a fairly popular platform. For the most part, it is not dissimilar to YouTube, BUT what really got me excited was the ability to embed comments directly into the video... Read more »

New Look for TourismInternetMarketing.com

Congratulations to my friend and fellow T-List blogger, Jens Thraenhart on the re-launch of his TourismInternetMarketing.com blog. He worked with fellow hospitality blogger Chris Clarke to put together a Wordpress blog that is extremely well designed. I know that Jens was having a lot of issues with the performance of the previous version of the Tourism Internet Marketing blog so this new version is a welcome upgrade. Great job and I look forward to reading more great posts in 2008! http://www.tourisminternetmarketing.com Sphere: Related Content Read More →

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