June 2007 Archives

One of our predictions from January this year is extremely likely to come true: Moneysupermarket.com, umbrella brand for Travelsupermarket.com, is to float on the London Stock Exchange within the next four weeks.

Reports on the Times Online claim owner Simon Nixon (brother of Travelsupermarket managing director Chris and called a "university dropout" by the Guardian) will be worth around £500 million as a result of the listing.

The company will be worth £1 billion, reports suggest.

Interesting background to the listing: Nixon (Simon) famously fell out with his co-founder Duncan Cameron and has not spoken to him for five years. He recently bought the remaining shares from Cameron for £162 million last month.

So what will the consequences be for a publicly listed Travelsupermarket?

Nixon has pledged to continue the group's extremely high profile TV advertising campaign. There may even be a few acquisitions on the cards, too.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: finance insurance moneysupermarket travelsupermarket stock exchange

As many of you will have read on today's Travolution website, the Institute of Customer Service has released the first ever UK Customer Satisfaction Index and the results are not too promising.

Overall, it seems UK consumers are not particularly happy with many of the everyday services they receive, be it helathcare, a haircut and, yes you guessed it, travel.

The UK's transport industry was among the worst performing sectors, with customers citing flight delays, lost luggage and just generally poor customer service as among their chief gripes.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic emerged as the best of the worst, while Ryanair had among the lowest scores.

“The outcomes, on the whole, leave a lot to be desired," observed ICS Executive Director Robert Crawford.

And he's right.

Consumer spending represents the biggest proportion of GDP in the UK, so the value of the customer to the overall economy, not to mention to individual companies, is not to be taken lightly.

So why can't we get this right?

Having lived in America for most of my life I must admit that, by comparison, even the lowest frills European airlines are miles ahead of the militia-style customer service of US carriers.

But being the best in the worst class is not really an honour now, is it?

Regardless of where or how we book our holidays, the fact remains that most journeys begin with the flight.

More accurately, the holiday begins when you're at the airport, so it is incumbent upon the airlines to do a better job in everything they do.

Of course this is easier said than done. But if companies like John Lewis--one of the UK's biggest retailers which received the highest customer satisfaction rating--can get it right, then so can airlines like Ryanair.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Okay, so we get around 20 emails a week asking us to exchange links/add to our blog roll, and the rest.

These are predominantly from corporate bloggers or small affiliate sites masquerading as blogs.

As a rule, we are NOT in the habit of exchanging links with sites simply because they want to boost their Google Juice and Technorati ranking. Indeed, if we respond to every request we would be giving some of the biggest blogs in the UK a run for their Link Love money.

I digress...

An email we received this morning would normally have fallen into the above category, because of the approach, but perhaps because it is Friday the site is actually worth a mention simply because it is a great example of the Long Tail of Travel in action.

[During presentations on blogging over the last year or so we have been arguing that travel professionals should be creating blogs which focus on a particular area of their business or a speciality they may have - to give them a point of difference to the 86.8 million other blogs out there.]

Private Islands Blog is about as niche as you can get. It has a very simple design (take note bloggers everywhere, us included) and its owner, Mark Amherst, writes passionately about the business of owning an island, how to go about staying on an island, where are the best private islands in the world, etc.

If any travel agents or tour operators want to see how to create a specialist, decent-looking blog this is a good place to start.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Proof here, if it was ever needed, that user-generated content is becoming as powerful as any official marketing message - but often for the wrong reasons.

In other words: if you are going to mess up (and in the most appalling way by Delta Airlines in this case, when they kept passengers waiting on the tarmac at JFK for seven hours), make sure the man in row 35 is not filming the whole thing.

...and will happily upload the clip to YouTube.

The whole ordeal is compressed into seven unbelievable minutes. Shocking...



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Tim Hughes

Technorati tags: JFK delta aircraft

We have been posting to the Travolution Blog on an almost daily basis since January 2006.

In that time we have produced almost 700 posts - with an average length of around 250 words. That's 175,000 words in total! [The average PhD is only 100,000 - not that we would suggest for a second that our finely crafted words are worthy of a doctorate]

Our Technorati ranking has climbed steadily so that we are now in the top 35,000 blogs on the web. A high of 25,000 a few weeks ago has fallen away after all the Memes we took part in over Christmas ran out [Technorati throws out links after six months].

Anyway, as we are so proud of the Travolution Blog, we thought we'd bring you some of the highlights to celebrate the last 18 months:

Live blogging: [and still no other travel media brand in the UK does it]

Travolution@WTM 2006
Travolution@ITT Oman 2006
Travolution@PhoCusWright Brussels 2006
Travolution@NBTA Chicago 2006
Travolution@PhoCusWright ITB 2007
Travolution Summit 2007
Travolution@Triton Algarve 2007
Travolution@ITT Gran Canaria 2007 [on a dedicated blog]
Travolution@E4T 2007

Funnies:

That first joint Thomas Cook-MyTravel press conference in full
PowerPoint will kill you in the end
Learning to dance in Second Life
Carry on SilverJet
Who are the Yahoo Two?
Travolution to create GDS
Poorly Targeted Blog Comment of the Year Award
How to make a Google ad like BA
Travolution sold on Ebay

Lists:

The T-List
The Twit List

Videos:

Old Advertising vs The New Consumer
Opodo: The Golden Years
Travel should be excited by this
Web 2.0 in 4 minutes and 31 seconds [probably the best video ever]
Aloft Hotel virtual tour
Where the Hell is Biggles?
This is the way to promote search engines

Whoops, they'll hate us for that:

The TravelMail shots they didn't want you to see
How to spot a splog - E-Travel News is one
Confusing article about Online vs High Street
Time to get the decorators in at Lastminute.com
GNER puffs away
Who was dot-conned in the end?
Ebookers comes clean on Google issue

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The UK's weekly Advertising Standards Authority report of adjudictions often throws up a few gems.

An internet ad for the Heathrow Express almost got itself into hot water when somebody questioned the claim: "From the train that gets you from Central London to Heathrow Airport in 15 minutes, every 15 minutes."

The complainant argued that London Paddington, where the service starts its journey westwards, is not actually in Central London.

The ASA, in its report, threw out the complaint after Heathrow Express representatives RPM3 defended the ad with material from Wikipedia and "several travel and tourism websites" which indicated that Paddington is, after all, in Central London.

"We noted all these stations, including Paddington, were in Zone One of the London transport system and were served by London Underground and buses.

"We considered that readers of the ad, whose final destination was a location in central London, would expect the last leg of their journey to involve some additional travel by one of these means of transport.

"We concluded that readers were unlikely to be material misled by the claim."

Very interesting that online sources are becoming reputable reference points for long-in-the-tooth regulators such as the ASA.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: heathrow express advertising train marketing

Nobody would really say they were surprised when they heard today that the new Thomas Cook Group is planning to close 150 shops and a number of offices, potentially putting up to 2,800 jobs in the firing line.

Perhaps the figure is somewhat higher than expected but the strategy is hardly a leftfield move from Manny and co.

Unfortunately mergers always lead to business functions from existing companies being combined.

Couple this with the obvious pressure on existing High Street agencies belonging to Thomas Cook and MyTravel from the internet and the old model was clearly unsustainable.

Let's hope TCG make good on their promise to "redeploy" agents into other areas of the newly formed business.

What staff representatives - in this case the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association - must ensure is that pressure is put on TCG to re-train as many of the affected staff as possible so their undoubted knowledge can be used elsewhere in the business.

To lose that many highly skilled people would be disastrous for TCG - and for the employees themselves and towns such as Rochdale.

A TSSA spokesman on the Telegraph website this evening said:

"This is terrible news for Rochdale and the North West and will also be bad news for consumers across the UK, for it will mean less choice in the high street when it comes to holiday bookings."

The spokesman is absolutely correct about the impact on regions where many jobs could be lost, but some might suggest that is where the argument ends.

It is because consumers are finding there is enormous choice on the internet for holiday products that Thomas Cook, MyTravel, Thomson and First Choice have been steadily closing shops anyway.

NB: There is also a healthy independent travel agency sector in the UK.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: merger job

As Joe Buhler says, when a "mass market paper reports on anything 'new' on the web it’s usually on the way to be pretty well established market behavior or a fact".

So here is an article from USA Today about a Forrester report which estimates a third of US travellers read reviews from fellow travellers on the web.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: user rev iews hotels tripadvisor usa today

Interesting that while Opodo has recently regionalised its business, after spending years running everything from a single point, Kuoni has today gone the other way, scrapping country-based operations for three separate divisions based on market products.

The new divisions are: SBD Style ("brand and service-driven products"), SBD Smart ("vacations that primarily offer outstanding value for money") and SBD Destinations ("local land arrangements").

UK managing director Sue Biggs has left Kuoni as part of the shake-up. Quite a turn of events as just four days ago Biggs could be heard welcoming CV Travel to the portfolio following its acquisition by Kuoni UK.

It seems that the industry is in such an uncertain state that major brands, such as Kuoni and Opodo, are still willing to radically overhaul their business models just at the point when most companies and their staff would be looking for stability.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kuoni opodo

Shocking behaviour...



Only kidding...

It's actually a promotion for MyTravel's create-your-ad competition running on YouTube.

More videos here on MyTravel's YouTube page, PimpMyTravel.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Travel Weekly Blog

Technorati tags: thomas cook merger mytravel pimp travel

I am working on a presentation for a seminar being held at UK banking giant Barclays on Wednesday.

The working title I have been given is: "The next generation of the Internet and the implications for travel" - in other words, a look at Web 2.0 and, in turn, Travel 2.0.

Thought it might be interesting, in order to demonstrate how the "community" is often now the source rather than the recipient of information, to ask Travolution blog readers for their definition of Web 2.0 - in one sentence...

Please leave your entry in the comments section. All will be included in the presentation...

Cheers!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: web 2.0 social media

US tech site Mashable has published Travel Hacking: Essential Sites for Summer Travelers - a list of decent social networking websites and applications.

No particularly new names on the list, but some old favourites still there and good to see the wider developer community being exposed to some excellent sites:

• TripWiser
• Iloho
• Dopplr
• TripHub
• WAYN
  
• Travelistic
• TripUp
• Matador
• Travelblog
• TripBase
• MyTripBook
• Kayak
• TripAdvisor
• WorldHum
• HoboTraveler
• Google Earth
• Facebook

Go to the Mashable site for their analysis of each site.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: mashable
web 2.0

UPDATE: Woodward is now secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

Slightly off-topic for Travolution, but managed with a colleague from Travel Weekly to grab a few minutes last night with Shaun Woodward, UK minister for "creative industries" and tourism.

In between talking about his best holiday (Cornwall, surprise-surprise, and the Three Valleys in France), I managed to squeeze in a question about carbon footprints.

[A rather timely one, I thought, considering environment secretary David Miliband launched the government's carbon calculator for the great unwashed earlier this week.]

However, Woodward was rather reluctant to discuss his own footprint.

"I actually think that is a personal question."

Oh, really.

I didn't realise at the time, but Miliband has revealed the level of his own footprint: a very worthy 2.76 tonnes per year [the national average is 4.47 tonnes].

So why did Woodward refuse to tell? Hmmm... Needless to say, he was at pains to point out:

"I have more than offset my carbon footprint."

Not sure what you all think, but is it a private matter for a government minister?

[Remarkably, he still did have the front to ask about my own - a shameless 4.91 tonnes, boosted by the number of conferences the UK travel industry hosts overseas each year]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: shaun woodward carbon footprint environment

Those of you who attended this year's Travolution Summit will undoubtedly remember Comtec's product director Ed Whiting thrashing around Second Life on his bike, wreaking havoc with the locals.

Of course, Whiting is a keen cyclist in real life too and deserves a round of applause for completing the five-day, Race Against Time charity bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats.

Whiting completed the 874 mile stretch yesterday, raising thousands of pounds for HIV/AIDS work in South Africa, particularly work with orphans and vulnerable children.

Well done, Ed!

You can find out more about the Race Against Time charity and trace Whiting's experiences by logging onto his personal blog, which he updated regularly along the way via his mobile phone --no surprise there.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Technorati tags: tour de france john o'groats land's end cycling

[Second new entry this week]

Check out this personal effort from Hugo Burge, vice chairman of Cheapflights.

Hereorthere.com is a travel experiences website, allowing users to upload photos and content and rate the entries from others.

News story here.


Let us know what you think. We can send any feedback to Burge...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

A problem eBay may face when it embarks on its full-scale assault on the travel market is one of trust.

Nothing to do with the online auction giant itself, of course, but on the BBC website today is an interesting story of a 45 year old woman's conviction for theft, by selling a string of fake package holidays to the tune of £42,000.

One unfortunate chap lost £9,000!

Julie Flood admitted the 27 offences, which took place between November 2004 and March 2005, and will be sentenced in August.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: ebay travel scam

Trafalgar Square has seen its fair share of battles over the years - poll tax riots, mayor Ken Livingstone's crusade against the resident pigeons - but London's most famous open space saw an invasion of a different kind this morning: 200 easels, a model and an MD from the world's biggest online travel agency.

The bizarre publicity stunt saw UK model Jodie Kidd (right) and UK MD Caroline Cartellieri (left in the picture below) kickstart a "inspiration" session to mark the year's longest day, renamed Blue Sky Day in Expedia-speak.

Astonishingly, some of the completed works will be hung in the National Gallery, situated on the north side of the square.

An event was also held amongst the pipers in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens.

Expedia has form with its, er, wacky publicity stunts. Here is a clip of a promotion by its cousins in the US.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: jodie kidd london trafalgar square expedia

Over the next few months, Schmedley.com will either become one of the most talked about sites on the web, mutate into something else entirely or simply disappear, such is the speed in which sites come and go.

In its own words, Schmedley "deploys a suite of web services applications that handle the most common, daily tasks of a broad range of internet users".

But it's much more than that.

The "homepage" - if you can call it that - acts as a desktop for various functions, including calendar, search, stocks, email, notes, RSS feeds and images.

But while sites such as Netvibes allow users to place boxes where they liked within a three-column grid, Schmedley is literally a blank screen which can host each application anywhere.

Functions behind the main desktop include a triple web search engine - using Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search.

...and the highlight for us: A multi-brand flight search tool across Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz, all on a single page.

It'll be fascinating to see whether this site takes off.

It's founders, Dustin Caurso and Rob Wolf, typically for new meedja entrepreneurs, come across as young, wacky and a bit too laid back to be creating something as "awesome and full of potential" (as one senior travel boss put it) as Schmedley.

It is an excellent site. Take note: Facebookers may become Schmedlers pretty soon...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: schmedley

This is very good [if you ignore the irritating narration]:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8ZadKgdC0]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Travel and Web 2.0

Thomas Cook Group arch rival Thomson - soon to be TUI Travel, once its proposed merger with First Choice kicks in - held a press conference in London this morning to unveil its annual Online Booking Report.

Some scene-stealing stats were rolled out by its new media director, Graham Donoghue:

• 60% of passengers are now booked online
• Hitwise data shows it is the second most visited site in the UK during 2007 - behind Expedia, ahead of Lastminute.com
• Running 1 million keywords on Google [someone said a few months it wanted 3 million, but Google advised against it]
• 500,000 videos viewed every week

A PDF from the press conference and 22MB Powerpoint presentation are available. [Travel Weekly story]

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor has spent far less time negotiating with Thomson than it has with sister company Expedia, over a deal to share user generated reviews. It took around ten weeks for the pair to come to an agreement and TripAdvisor reviews on Thomson.co.uk will be seen from September this year.

By the time TripAdvisor reviews are made available on the Expedia UK website, at least 18 months will have passed since the online travel agency publicly said it wanted to run user generated content from TripAdvisor on its site.

We're reminded of the phrase: You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: thomson tripadvisor hotel review online sales

Busy day for travel types in the UK.

The long-running merger between Thomas Cook and MyTravel reaches a climax today with the shares for the Thomas Cook Group listed on the London Stock Exchange this morning.

Go to the Yahoo! Finance share screen for the Thomas Cook Group.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: thomas cook stock prices

The infamous TheFlyOnTheWall.com sparked a frenzy in the US on Friday by publishing a story about Expedia and its plans to go private AND spin off TripAdvisor.

The story was picked up immediately across the financial media - Business Week and Forbes - and quickly denied by Expedia spokespeople.

The Fly's source was a certain Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive, who was said to be "looking to take the Bellevue, Washington, company private for $30 per share" and "spin off TripAdvisor, a travel advice and review site, and cut 400 jobs".

Needless to say, despite the protestations of Expedia, its share price soared on Friday trading (as you can see on Yahoo Finance).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia wall street stock exchange share price

Writing on his Facebook page last night, a member of the TUI board of directors (you can probably guess who) said he was "miffed IT have blocked Facebook".

We can imagine hundreds of old desktop PCs being dusted down so eager Thomson employees can maintain their Facecrack habits when they get home.

Wonder what will happen to TUI's very own, unofficial Facebook Group, Britannia AKA Thomsonfly AKA TUIfly AKA TUI Travel?

In fact, the group description "For all those that work (or for the pilots, do sudoko) for the glorious 'World of TUI' in any of it's guises !!!" will have probably to be changed following recent events.

[One of our eagle-eyed sub-editors has already pointed to the apostrophe in the possessive - tut tut TUI]

There are now 166 members of the group left without something to do during lunch breaks.

Surely time for a staff walkout...

Anyone know of other travel companies that have banned Facebook?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook ban facebook thomson

Interesting conversation the other day with a senior executive from a leading meta search engine.

Apparently when his company launched a few years back it sent too many leads to the American Airlines website and it "fell over" within a few hours.

Whoops.

So who was it? [Multiple choice question for you all]

1) Sidestep
2) Kayak
3) Mobissimo

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: american airlines

Don't look away just yet. Consumer travel blog Travel Rants has produced a list - yep, another one - of "Web 2.0" travel sites.

Some interesting sites, if a little confusing (Bezurk, for example, is not included in the same category as Kayak). We have included Sidestep to go alongside Kayak; WAYN is now in the social network category.

[List below]

It is good to see consumer bloggers are picking out some of the innovative sites which apparently adhere to the principles of Web 2.0.

However, here is a sobering thought from Antony Mayfield, in a post The Downside of Web 2.0 is the Name.

"Web 2.0 will one day seem as dated as a micro-scooter and Foosball," Mayfield writes.

Maybe it's just us, but Web 2.0 suddenly seems a bit uncool. Perhaps we need O'Reilly to come up with something else.

Anyway, we digress. Here are the list of sites...

Audio /Podcast Tours

Oggtours

Holiday / Flight Search

Kayak
Momondo

Hotels / Hotel Reviews

Bezurk
Hotels Combined
Paguna
Travelpost
TV Trip
Sidestep
Trivop

Miscellaneous

Native Text
Netweather
Plazes
Tripper Map
zLango

Travel Inspiration / Experiences

Everyscape
Everytrail
Grapheety
Gusto
My Trip book
Trayle
Tripbase
Tripcart
Tripology

Travel Social Networks

Pairup
TripUp
Trip Mates
WAYN

Travel videos

Geobeats
Travelistic
Venividiwiki

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: web 2.0 travel 2.0 o'reilly

Ignacio Martos, in an exclusive interview with Travolution this week, set out Opodo's strategy for the next few years.

Alongside plans to launch in other markets - outside of Europe - in 2008, the refreshingly free-speaking Martos said this to a question concerning rumours about Opodo being offloaded by majority shareholder Amadeus:

"We are always up for sale."

Martos laughed when we offered him £100 million for the company.

So how much, then, realistically?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: opodo

Video voxpops from the ITT Conference in Gran Canaria last week, featuring representatives from Cosmos, BT, AirportWatch and Google.



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: BT video

Chief executive Ian McCaig and co have been quiet of late, apart from an appearance at the Travolution Summit in April.

But a number of significant developments across the Lastminute.com group have been officially announced this week.

First of all the flagship consumer product, Lastminute.com, has a new "intutive booking engine", called Judith, named after the omnipresent holiday girl of the 1970s and 1980s, Judith Chalmers.

[Read the Travolution article, Web Adds Human Touch, about OTAs and their quest to personalise the online experience, from our June edition]

But more interestingly was McCaig's announcement yesterday regarding a fundamental restructuring of the group.

Out goes the existing - rather haphazard - collection of various divisions, replaced with a US-style split into two businesses covering B2B (which will have two branches) and B2C.

Each division will be run by a vice president:

• Vic Darvey: VP for distribution and business development (Private Labels and OTC).
• Alfonso Castellano: SVP group and Travelocity Europe for consumers brands
• Brian Murphy: VP for HolidayAndMore (HolidayAutos, MedHotels)

McCaig said in a brief conversation with us yesterday that the new structure will mean the company is more "transparent" to customers (clients).

Fair enough. But the structure is also looking far more like that of its parent company and other US-run businesses.

Travelport has very seperate divisions for its B2B (Galileo GDS) and B2C businesses (Orbitz, Ebookers).

And what is Travelport doing with them? Ridiculous speculation, of course, but worth thinking about...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute sabre

Earlier this year HappyHotelier started the T-List - a collection of travel-related blogs from across the web (and very search engine friendly it is, too). Travolution was one of the first sites on the list.

Most are not particularly focussed on the workings of the industry, but there are some excellent blogs in there.

Of course, only those with heaps of free time would be daft enough to put all of the blogs in their RSS reader, but we have highlighted some of the best ones.

If you are missing from the list, copy the list below, add your URL and post on your own site.

• Luxury Travel Blog
  
• aaron dalrymple
• Adirondack Base Camp
• ADV Italia
• Air France Mexico - Weblog
• Albert Barra
• Apple Core Hotels
• Aviación Digital
• Bitácora de viajes
• Blog de gestión turística
• Blog de Viajes
• Blog on Travel
• BlogsdeTurismo.com
• BootBlog
• Brief Blog
• BuhlerWorks by Joe Buhler
• CampingCoop.org
• de viaje a Brasil
• Desde el Río Paraná a Tierra del Fuego
• Despegar
• Diario del Viajero
• DondeViajar.es
• Dot tourism
• Dutto Relaciones Públicas
• E-Mercadeo.com Marketing 2.0 en Internet
• en transición
• Entradas 31-40 » Diario del Viajero
• Entreprendre dans le e-Tourisme
• Erin Julian
• Escapadas Europa.
• eTourismus.info
• Europe A La Carte Blog
• Explorando Perú
• Exposed Planet
• FastenYourSeatbelts.at
• General Manager’s Blog - Opus Hotel Vancouver
• Happy Hotelier
• Hawthorne Hotel
• Hotel Blog
• Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot
• HotelChatter
• Hotels , Friends and more…..personal blog
• Ibiza a pie de foto
• inFlightHQ — Business Travel Blog
• Intermundial
• Kirkland Weblog
• Kiwi Viajero
• La Coctelera: ZuHause - Inicio
• Les Explorers
• Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog
• Marriot on the Move
• Me-go: Around-the-World
• Megustaelturismo
• Mike Wylie
• Mochileros.org
• My Travel Backpack
• National Geographic Inside Traveler
• New York Hospitality
• New York Traveler
• Newyorkology
• Notes from the Road - Travels in City and Country
• Planeta Viajes
• Primera Clase
• Radaron
• Rolling Rains Report
• Social Media On the Fly
• The Cottage Chat
• The Cranky Flier
• The Front Desk
• The Lost Girls
• The McCluskey Blog
• The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs: Travel
• The Travel & Hospitality Diaries
• The Travel Cooler - travel articles and photographs
• The Travel PR Blog
• The World Is Not Flat
• They Let Her Travel
• Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations
• Toni Mascaró Blog Barcelona
• Top viajeros
• Tourism Internet Marketing Blog
• Tourismus - Zukunft
• Touristikblog.de
• Travel and Web 2.0
• Travel Horizons
• Travel Rants
• Travel Weekly Blog
• TravelerWIRE
• Travolution Blog
• TripAdvisor: We Are Not Making This Up.
• TripCart :: The Travel Blog
• TURISMO + ACTUALIDAD
• Two Dog Zoo Travel
• Viajar Asia.
• Viator Travel Blog
• Web 2.0 Travel Tools
• Weekendhotel Weblog
• Xavier Cobos
• Yahoo! 360° - Profile - Lodgeman’s Profile
• Zeitgeist
• A Long Ride
• Absolut BCN - Blog de Barcelona
• Airport Blog
• Andrew Pascoe’s Under The Rotunda blog
• Aquela Passagem ! Dicas Para Encontrar Aquela Passagem Aérea
• Argentina’s Travel Guide
• Back of House in DXB
• BedJump.com - Bed Jump - Hotel Bed Jumping
• Blog Rydges.com
• blog.entornao
• Blog.rydges.com
• Brand Canada Blog
• Brave New Traveler - Online Travel Magazine
• Brazil Travel Blog
• Buenos Aires Argentina Guide |
• Buenos Aires Daily
• Buenos Aires through my eyes
• Buenos Aires, City of Faded Elegance
• Bull City Mutterings
• Chileno - Life in Santiago, Chile Travel
• Chronicles of On The Road Travel
• Comercialización hotelera? a donde vamos?
• De Viajero.com
• Diane Clarkson
• E-hotel
• eHotelTools.com - Index
• eurotrip
• Family Travel
• Farecastblog.com
• Foreign Perspectives
• France This Way
• Frank Arr - an aussie microsoft blogger
• Gadling
• Geeky Traveller - A Travel Blog for Nerds
• Guía de Viajes - La Aventura de Viajar
• HISTORY INTERNATIONAL - Drive Thru History
• Holiday Pad 2.0 - The Holiday and Vacation Weblog
• Hotel Internet Marketing News and Know-How
• Hoteles
• http://www.tr-avel.com/
• Jaunted -The Pop Culture Travel Guide
• Jen’s Site
• Jens Thraenhart
• Kulinarisch Reisen - Blog der Österreich Werbung
• La Descripción del Mundo
• Leatherwood Trail - Home Page
• Line of sight
• LocalHotelDirectory.com
• locuraviajes
• Lonely Planet | Travel Blog
• Los viajes de Jota
• m-Travel.com and Travel Distribution News
• Marketing Turístico
• My Marrakesh
• New York Traveler
• Normandy Gite - Le Gaillon
• Nos vamos de turismo!
• Notas do Turismo
• Online Travel Review — Daily Airline News
• Our Journals - Netherlands
• Pasa en Buenos Aires
• Randy’s Journal
• Real Travel
• Relactions blog
• Rumboperdido
• The Lobby from SPG
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Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: t-list travel blogs meme

Interesting interview on E-Consultancy with Xavier Vallee, UK head of marketing for car hire giant Avis, about the WeTryHarder blog.

Vallee goes into a fair amount of detail about why the company launched a blog, its policy on comment moderation ("We don't filter negative comments - just spam" - which is encouraging, if its true 100% of the time), and costs.

The WeTryHarder blog was shortlisted at the Travolution Awards 2007 in the Best Use of Social Media category. It was eventually beaten by the STA Travel Travel Blogs.

Full interview with Vallee here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: avis blog car

Caught in the middle of our rather tasty exclusive regarding WAYN.com and plans for a radical overhaul of its business model, comes a little nugget of gossip about TUI.

The WAYN story emerged from a look at the new breed of entrepreneurs in the travel indsutry and who are funding them.

During the course of Tricia Holly Davis's interviews, this came up:

“A while ago, I drew up a list of organisations that I was interested in investing and WAYN was definitely one of them, but I backed away when Brent [Hoberman], and Hugo [Burge] and David [Soskin] came on the scene."

This is none other than Graham Donoghue, new media director at TUI.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: wayn TUI social networking facebook

...tomorrow. Our apologies, we have been blogging like demons on the ITT Conference Blog for the past four days.

The June edition of our magazine will hit the desks of many UK subscribers on Tuesday. Let us know what you think.

For those who do not receive the magazine, get a copy of the next edition (September) by signing up here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Interesting session at the ITT Conference with Manny Fontenla-Novoa.

Full post on our ITT Conference blog here.

He mentions a mysterious "another company" that apparently came in with an offer for Thomas Cook in the summer of 2006. Shareholders turned it down. Who could it be?

[Our apologies for the incorrect link yesterday. All correct now]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution is heading off to the ITT Conference in Gran Canaria today.

ITT has asked the TW Group, the umbrella brand for Travolution, Travel Weekly and Gazetteers.com, to create a "media pod" for the event, including a blog, so our usual live blogging will take place on a dedicated site, ITTConference07.Blogspot.com.

Add it to your RSS readers for regular updates.

Incidentally, our first ever live blogging took place almost a year to the day, at the ITT Conference in Oman.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: itt live blogging travel conference gran canaria

Those planning a trip to the US should take note that, despite a very favourable exchange rate and volumes of cheap online travel deals, travelling in the US can still prove quite expensive.


According to a new survey by the Automobile Association of America (AAA), which monitors travel trends in the US, the combined costs of hotels and restaurants is up by nearly 4% year-on-year.


The most expensive destination for holidaymakers is Hawaii, where the daily cost of food and hotels for a family of four will average £326 per day.


Washington, DC is a close rival at £306 per day.


New York City, not surprisingly, will set you back about an equal amount, as will Brits' all-time favorite US city, Miami Beach (gag!).


If you're set on going to America this year, but are working within a budget, then the best option is to go west young man (or woman).

For about £100 per day you can travel to Iowa and look at cornfields or biofuels or whatever it is they have there.


OR.....you can hang out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where you can get a decent hotel and food for the bargain basement price of £82 per day.


And just in case you get bored with Indian reservations (which abound in New Mexico), you can always use some of the money you saved on a hotel to drive to Las Vegas...a mere 500 miles away.

(Sorry, the AAA survey didn't list the average cost for Vegas. )

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution



Technorati tags: holiday america

It's no secret to those faithful travel industry bloggers that Digg is planning to bolster its web presence by allowing consumers to post reviews about everything from restaurants to hotels.

Can anyone say Digg Travel?

For die-hard techheads who have used the site to keep tabs on their favourite blogs, etc, Digg's plans are a big deal.

For travel industry observers, it's more like, "Oh, well, here's another one".

So Digg wants to enter the enormously crowded, highly competitive, testosterone-driven travel space.

Well, jolly good luck to them.

Doesn't TripAdvisor and a whole host of other sites already do this?

Admittedly, a negative review on Digg could be potentially more damaging than one on TripAdvisor by virtue of the way the former works.

BUT....those companies which are unfortunate enough to have a negative review "digged", will face the same dilemma as when a negative news story about their company continues to appear in the top listing of Google.

It's not great, but, for most, it's not the end of the world either.

There is no doubt that web reviews are a force to be reckon with--if they weren't then user generated content sites wouldn't have to look over their shoulder every 20 seconds to make sure they weren't libelling someone and PR minions wouldn't be dispensed in droves to write up glowing reviews about their clients (cheeky monkeys).

Social media sites, which are command centres for consumer reviews, are sweeping in millions of marketing dollars everyday from travel companies which see the huge importance of this medium to their business.

So, will Digg be the next Consumer Reports or TripAdvisor, as some enthusiastic bloggers have fathomed?

Maybe....then again, maybe not.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

technorati tags: digg travel user reviews

Three high profile travel apps now on Facebook. The TripAdvisor-owned Travelpod.com launched a blog sharing widget last week following the SideStep plug-in a few days before.

Now TripAdvisor itself is getting in on the act.

The application is a Google Map mash-up, trip-sharing effort - and it's pretty good and very simple. Members can just tag every single destination they've been. Simple.

Facebook users can install the application easily.

Ideally - and it would not be a shock to see it happen pretty soon - each tag should also show the review of the hotel in which the member stayed at each location.


Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook trip web 2.0

EasyJet is tapping into MySpace's 8.7 million user base to create an online resource for travellers.

The budget airline has launched a EasyJet branded page within MySpace to allow consumers to upload photos and videos of holiday destinations, including (of course) footage of attractions at easyJet destinations.

EasyJet plans to create a gallery of "interesting and little known sites" to provide consumers with holiday and weekend break suggestions which are accessbile (of course) by easyJet.

Each week a panel of judges will select the best photo and video submission to compete for the chance to win a pair of return tickets to a destination of their choice (so long, of course, as easyJet flies there).

The easyJet branded community will also allow MySpace members to blog on their easyJet travel experiences and access the latest cheap flight deals.

The easyJet channel follows the launch of several branded MySapce communities, including Adidas , Reebok and Lynx.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Technorati tags: myspace easyjet community