User Travel Guides vs. Professional Travel Guides

Frankly I’ve always enjoyed travel guides especially the well written version by Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, or Columbus Guides.  Since the growth in popularity of user generated sites like Wikitravel and World66 I’ve cast off the shackles of paper and gone digital for my guides preferring the advice and recommendations of average travelers.  The BBC recently reported that a Lonely Planet author admitted that he hadn’t even visited some of the countries he wrote about, bringing into doubt the reliability and credibility of not just the Lonely Planet brand but all travel guide... Read more »

New Travel Bookmarking Site a Cross Between Del.icio.us and LonelyPlanet

I recently came across a new website called TravelBookmarking.com. I found it quite by accident while using Stumbleupon to look for travel related sites. TravelBookmarking.com is a sister site to SoMuchWorld.com which is a free web based travel guide similar in nature to Wikitravel.org or World66.com but written by a set of professional travel writers. The reason why I like TravelBookmarking.com is because it gives travelers the ability to bookmark sites (in del.icio.us style) in order to create their own personal travel guides. Travelers can even copy and paste in creative commons or open... Read more »

Bringing Long Tail Content to the Fore

There has been a lot of discussion over the last year about the long tail of travel and the move to market and sell specialized travel products. PhocusWright’s Senior Strategist John Bray, in a presentation at the 2007 IFITT Enter Conference, elaborated on the primary differences between Travel 1.0 and Travel 2.0. Mr. Bray pointed out that travel 1.0 was about “Searching for the Lowest Fare” whereas Travel 2.0 is about “Finding the Perfect Trip”. What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that consumers are researching, asking questions, and looking for alternatives... Read more »

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing Strategies for Travel Marketers

By Scott MacGregor Director of Marketing and Client Services Search Intelligence Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now a serious marketing consideration for travel marketers with three-fifths of all online travel shoppers reporting that they rely on search engines as their research and planning resource (source: PhoCusWright). Clearly, search engine visibility can be a major determinant for online success. There is a great deal of good information written on the subject of search marketing, however little focuses on some of the more unique characteristics of travel and even less specifically for... Read more »

Keeping Travel Agents Relevant

You probably remember the song, “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Well, travel 2.0 is trying to kill the travel agent. Review all the new travel websites whether they are social networking sites, hotel review sites, fare comparison sites, dynamic packaging sites, or large OTA sites, all of them have one primary thing in common; they promote self-service travel which effectively renders the travel agent useless. So what can travel agents and smaller travel agencies do to increase their value to the consuming public? One answer is to for agents to find their niche and share their knowledge.... Read more »

Travel Agents can increase trust by sharing

In a recent article on Travelmole.com, a survey of online travel buyers stated: “Ninety per cent of consumers questioned for online travel site boo.com said their pre-holiday research online was accurate and only 13% of people surveyed trusted travel agents and brochures above online reviews.” Source: http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1119102.php?mpnlog=1 With this waning level of trust in travel agents, how can agents (both online and offline) increase the level of trust that buyers have in them and subsequently increase the likelihood that a customer will purchase from them? One... Read more »