Saturday 23 September 2006 by Edward.

Link to family, friends, colleagues and others to get travel advice, information and ideas, via TripConnect, reports Yahoo.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 3 Comments »

Thursday 21 September 2006 by Edward.

UK airlines websites now have a Flybe desktop tool that allows passengers to make changes to their flight plans, reports UK Times Online. It may cost, but the convenience truly improves the tourist booking experience

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

Friday 15 September 2006 by Edward.

You’re in a small English pub quaffing down a pint or two, but do you REALLY need to hurry to make the next train in time or can you relax and enjoy the brew? With the UK Live Trains Map you’ll know what to do.

The map shows all trains (red pins) approaching railway stations (yellow pins) in near real-time. Data is extracted from the UK train timetables website. The Live Trains Map is not an official UK rail site, but a really clever “scraping” exercise by Matthew Somerville.

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

Wednesday 13 September 2006 by Edward.

You arrive at your hotel but have forgotten to bring the cables to power your cell phone, digital camera and MP3 player. No problem. Your hotel has a Spash Power pad in your room. Simply place all your electronic mobile devices on the pad and they begin to recharge — with no cables involved.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool | 1 Comment »

Wednesday 13 September 2006 by Edward.

Travel agents can work with Worldspan to save time, increase productivity, decrease phone call inquiries to hotel suppliers, and improve service to travellers. Worldspan has designed two desktop tools for travel agents that interface with their global reservation system: Go! Car Booking tool and Go! Hotel Booking tool.
These tools speed the booking process by presenting a one-stop booking portal. They are among many software tools available to the travel agent.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 2 Comments »

Tuesday 12 September 2006 by Edward.

You’re in charge of a hike in the woods, a coastal whale watch tour, or a biking expedition and you want to retrace your path taken. Perhaps you’d like to send the route travelled to members of your party, via the internet. New thumb-drive sized GPS tracking devices are entering the market that you can take on your travels to record your every movement.

SkyTRX is one such GPS tracker. This unit records every second once it receives its two AAA batteries — recording for 28-42 hours depending on the battery type used, and able to store 100 hours of data. It is compatible with Google Earth and Google Maps. Cost is about US$300.00

I had earlier posted notes about the GPS thumb-drive loggers GPS-CS1, by Sony, and the Trackstick.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, GPS, AFTER the visit, DURING the visit | 1 Comment »

Sunday 10 September 2006 by Edward.

How about travelling to a winter destination in the summer or fall instead? The rates are cheaper, the crowds are smaller and the adventure can be just as enjoyable. Escape2play of Utah, USA, specializes in such off-season bookings. In ski town Park City, Utah, reports PrWeb, instead of skiing, sleigh riding, or snowmobiling, you can hike, attend open-air concerts and festivals, go fly-fishing or go hot air ballooning.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 2 Comments »

Saturday 9 September 2006 by Edward.

Jaws drop as tourists wheel their way through Vail Colorado’s historical district on high tech Segways — courtesy of Sacred Ground’s Coffee House and Delicatessen owner Joel Karr — reports Vail Daily. Segways are computer-gyroscopically-controlled people movers.

Karr, who brought in high tech internet access to his coffeehouse guests, now offers high tech travel tours to the Hot Springs pool, to the Yampah Spa and Vapor Caves and to buildings in the downtown area. The Segway tours are, apparently, as much an attraction as the historical district, with other tourists snapping photos as the party parades by.

While Segway tours exist elsewhere they still are unique enough to atrract a crowd; and what better way to offer mobility to those tourists who cannot walk easily.

Rule 13 “The Rule of Being Unique”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, suggests that ‘Inasanity has its own rewards.’ Brooks writes ‘What may seem rather insane to you means (many) thousands of dollars to the community with the idea.” A unique idea can be worth a special trip. That special trip translates into tourist dollars.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool | 2 Comments »

Friday 8 September 2006 by Edward.

By far the largest, collaborative web tool has to be the wiki, and the most successful wiki is wikipedia — a free, online encyclopedia created jointly by thousands of contributors. A wiki is a website that allows visitors to freely add/edit content.

WikiTravel has taken the wiki model and created the world’s largest online travel guide. Wikitravel has about 8,700+ registered users that have entered almost 11,000 destination guides and travel articles. The main page of this website currently shows several sections: ‘destination of the month’ (Cincinnati, Ohio, USA), ‘off the beaten path’ (Penticton, Canada), ‘discover’, ‘travel news’, ‘a google search bar’, and ‘featured articles’.

Examples of wiki-based travel websites include:

WikiAustralia an Australian online travel and resort wiki guide

TravelAbroad a wiki travelogue for students planning to travel abroad

Belfast City Tourism Committee a wiki minutes-of-meetings

A wiki can be a great opportunity to promote your travel destination or service. To set up your own wiki try WetPaint, Jotspot, Stikipad, SeedWiki, PBwiki, Wikispaces, Wikicom, or Wikia.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool | No Comments »

Monday 4 September 2006 by Edward.

LastMinute.com finds last minute travel and accommodation packages at great prices. With thousands of hotels, and hundreds of vacation destinations, airlines, and dining establishments to monitor, LastMinute needs to make sure their customers have good experiences, and needs to learn what delights and dissapoints their customers. Hello ResponseTek. ResponseTek is a Customer Experience Management (CEM) company. They specialize in understanding customers and help turn them into advocates and transform your business.

TCMnet reports that LastMinute has recently expanded its websites into France, Germany, Italy and Spain, brought along with them the services of ResponseTek. In upcoming 60-minute seminars ResponseTek demonstrates how CEM can build advocacy, and find out what is important to your customer.

Rule 2 “The Rule of Partnerships” in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman states that ‘Relationships require more than one person.’ The most important rule in creating a successful tourism strategy is to establish partnerships. The best partnerships are ones that complement each other.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, AFTER the visit | 3 Comments »