Tuesday 22 August 2006 by Edward.

You want to take that return trip for two, by plane, from Seattle WA to Boston MA, between 18-25 September. Airlines aside for a moment, is there a BEST TIME to buy your ticket? According to Farecast.com there is. Now. This site will tell you when to buy or when to wait, with a %-confidence assigned to its recommendation. Farecast keeps track of a 64-day history of each flight and displays a graph of prices. The low fare and average fare for the period is noted, along with price volatility. The site currently holds 55 US destinations.

A really neat feature is an RSS feed for each flight. Farecast.com brings the latest airfare predictions to your desktop.

Farecast.com is working to include more detinations, to add one-way airfares, integrate results with airline bookings, increase server capacity, and extend browser platform compatibility.

Posted in Website/Event, BEFORE the visit | 2 Comments »

Tuesday 22 August 2006 by Edward.

Many tourists want to create their own travel plans. That includes looking for a place to stay. Finding a special, unique place to stay just got easier with DirectoryOfHotels.com, where they say “Escape the Ordinary”. The website directly connects discerning travellers, that’s you and me, with all sorts of accommodations — boutique and small hotels, resort hotels, spa resorts, all-inclusive hotels, eco-resorts, chateaus, bed & breakfasts, and more.

DirectoryOfHotels is an independent guide of hotels and travel information created by a team of people who love to travel. The website earns income from membership fees from listings — basic listing US$10.00 per month, featured listing US$29.00 per month. Accomodations in the directory have been screened for approval. They represent something special, something unique for the traveller.

I explored the site. In Hotel Finder I selected Canada as my destination. Six of Canada’s ten provinces were displayed. Of these, four had active links: Newfoundland, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.

Posted in Website/Event, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Tuesday 22 August 2006 by Edward.

Whether you walk, hike, run, ski, scavenger hunt, or golf on your vacation, you may find that your hotel will hook you up with a GPS. Hampton Roads’ Daily Press reports that Hyatt, Four Seasons and Marriott hotels, among other hotels, give their guests tools to navigate and have fun.

Posted in GPS, DURING the visit | 1 Comment »

Monday 21 August 2006 by Edward.

As far as tourism profits go, Spain is fat and Canada is thin. In 2003, Spain earned US$33 billion in net earnings from tourists — more that twice that of the USA, the world’s second highest tourist earner. That’s the character of equal-area cartograms created by Worldmapper. Countries are “re-sized” depending on what is being mapped. This makes for some very strange-looking, but eye-opening, maps.

To date, Worldmapper has 172 maps in 27 categories. More are planned. Eight maps relate to tourism: tourist destinations, tourist origins, net-in tourism, net-out tourism, tourism receipts, tourism expenditures, tourism profit and tourism loss. Each map can be reproduced via high-resolution PDF files, and data opened with Excel spreadsheets. The Worldmapper team is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, University of Michigan, the Leverhulm Trust and the Geographical Association.

How aboute trying to create your own cartogram within regions of your own country?

Rule 5 “The Rule of Perceived Value”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, shows that ‘First impressions really are lasting impressions’. “Each entryway to your community”, writes Brooks, “… provides the first hint about (its) character and quality”. Maps can do the same thing.

Posted in Website/Event, Maps | No Comments »

Sunday 20 August 2006 by Edward.

How would you like to put the coolest guest map on your website? BuddyMapping lets you place a Google Map on your website then have your online visitors leave their placemark with comments and photos for others to see — perfect for blogs, online forums, groups, and tourist destination sites. “The tourist destination”, notes site owner/developer Ben Gotow, “is the perfect candidate for a ‘buddy map’. A company could use a map to show popular destinations in an area, with pictures and links to more information. Visitors to the page could add their own favourite spots and make comments … or could use the map as a guestbook and let tourists write about the places to which they’ve been.”

Features of BuddyMaps include live-updating, links and banners for your website, views via Google Earth, a browser dashboard widget, and a map view counter. Placemarks can be coded to match your site’s colour scheme. What started as a way to connect friends has grown within about 3 months to over 1,500 maps and 11,000 place markers.

I examined the map posted at BuddyMapping.com. There were 270 people listed on the map. I contacted one of the entries — RV-dreams.com. An email from the site owners told me that they had 340 entries on their Buddy map in just the first week. They call their map the RV-Dreams Family Map. Their map was covered with markers from all over continental USA. Not all location names are accepted yet when creating a placemark, especially outside the USA. With time, I’m sure this shortcoming will be resolved.

I created a BuddyMap link for this website, TheTouristExperience.com. Check it out. Try adding your placemark and some comments on my map.

The BuddyMapping goal is to be “simple , clean and easy to use”, notes Gotow. This required an incredible amount of work, to ensure an efficient site in the popular browsers, he adds. Gotow has lots of plans (and lots of ideas from his growing fan base). Expect to see multiple-tag entries and migration of GoogleMaps to user sites in future.

Rule 17 “The Four-Times Rule”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, tells us that ‘The shortest distance between two pints is a good time’. People will visit your destination if it will maintain their interest four times longer than it took them to get there. In other words, if your destination will keep visitors busy for two hours, expect most of your traffic to come from within 30 minutes away — the ‘four times rule’. For tourist websites I will equate that to “site stickiness” and “site revisit potential”. Will a Buddy Map improve your tourist destination site stickiness and revisit potential? As Ben Gotow suggests, “try it and find out”.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, Maps, AFTER the visit | No Comments »

Saturday 19 August 2006 by Edward.

The UK Guardian Unlimited reports that “Saudi Arabia has lifted a ban on photography in public areas as part of an effort to attract more visitors.” Certain restrictions remain.

Meanwhile, Australia is starting to selectively ban public photography. The Herald Sun recently reports that tourists were asked by security to delete images taken with their cameras in Melbourne’s Yarra River retail and dining centre, a popular tourist destination. ABC southwest Victoria reports on a ban on Geelong camera club members from taking photos near the oil refinery. The Victorian Law Reform Commission is reviewing public-place photo bans and is inviting comments as part of their review.

Rule 21 “The Rule of ‘wow’ Photography”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, states that ‘Photos are worth a thousand nights’. Nothing sells tourism as well as photography. Enough said.

Posted in Multimedia, DURING the visit | 1 Comment »

Friday 18 August 2006 by Edward.

Need to get through the airport fast, without worrying about how your luggage will arrive at your tourist destination? If you can afford it, FirstLuggage.com will arrange door-to-door pick-up and delivery of your luggage.

With over 20,000 bags gone missing over recent days at Heathrow International airport, is it any wonder why FirstLuggage business is up, way up? FirstLuggage works in partnership with FedEx Express, the international courier company.

FirstLuggage provides a on-line booking page and email confirmation of your order with delivery details. They liaise with your destination hotel and can track/trace your luggage real-time. Their promise is “… to do whatever it takes to make your travel experience with us unforgettable”.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Thursday 17 August 2006 by Edward.

Here is an example of a map inserted to this WordPress blog and hosted on 1and1.com. It’s done using Windows Live Writer. Here, you see a map pin inserted to show the location of the source of www.thetouristexperience.com . The site originates from Greenwood, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Source of TheTouristExperience.com

Click the pin or map to view more information. Expect to see other travel-related blogs with maps inserted in their postings. This service required MS IDs.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, Maps | No Comments »

Wednesday 16 August 2006 by Edward.

City walking tours are about to change. City Surf provides self-guided audio walking tours of Toronto via the MP3 player. While you explore Toronto you listen to the audio tour and maybe find hidden treasures and get first-hand knowledge of the city’s local culture.

Several audio tours are currently offered: Flatiron Building, Philosopher’s Walk, Reservoir Lounge, The Annex, St. Lawrence Market, and Yorkville. Tours are being developed for Montreal and Vancouver. They are put together by writing and research staff, tips from friends who live in the area, people interviewed in the area, and recorded and produced by locals.

At about 30-40 minutes and C$9.00 per tour, with map, the city traveller just might learn a little more about Toronto with this companion.

Rule 16 “The Rule of Telling Stories”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, states that ‘Great stories make the campfire memorable’. Whether by word-of-mouth or via iPOD, the story sells the destination and unearths the nooks and crannies of the world. Great stories develop great bonds with the local community.

Posted in Multimedia, DURING the visit | No Comments »

Tuesday 15 August 2006 by Edward.

At US$142.00 and sleek as a credit card the Asono M1 MP4 packs a punch and is an ideal travel tool.

Memory: 1-4 Gb
Audio: AVI, DIVX, WMV, ASF
Video: MP3, WMA (DRM)
Photo: Yes
Screen: 1 1/2″ OLED 65000 colours
Battery: Audio playback 15 hrs, Video playback 3 1/2 hrs, charge 3 hrs.
Connect: USB 2.0
Weight: 30g

Asono is a Norwegian consumer electronics company that makes audio-visual electronic products such as DAB radios, MP3 players, multimedia players and DVD players. They pride themselves on high quality products with unique design.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, DURING the visit | No Comments »