Friday 6 October 2006 by Edward.

Here are some of the basic internet needs for today’s travel customer, according to Travelocity.com founder Terry Jones as reported in the East Valley Tribune.
1 Students are web savvy and are tomorrow’s travel customer. Fish where there are fish.

2 Smaller destinations can compete effectively on the web with the right keywords.

3 Cross-sell to increase your sales and profitablity

4 Target niche markets with podcasts, virtual tours, social networking, and feeds

5 Plan joint web pitches

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Thursday 5 October 2006 by Edward.

A website for women solo travellers has been recently launched. It includes travel tips and tools, product reviews, a forum and blog. The workshop link took me to a meeting on 24 October 2006 at Bellevue Community College, Washington, USA, on ‘For Women Traveling Solo’.

Tourist websites such as this will become more specialised with time, meeting nich-market needs.

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Wednesday 27 September 2006 by Edward.

Global competition for tourists demands increasingly engaging websites. High quality video clips, such as those I reported from TurnHere, lead the way. Here are some destinations leading the way with multimedia presentations:

Tourism Massachusetts video and slide mix

Aspen, Colrado panoramic photo and map tour

New York City 24-hour video journey

Florida Keys destination videos

The China Experience

Destination Winnipeg

Send me links to some sites that explore the boundaries of multimedia tourism online.

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Tuesday 26 September 2006 by Edward.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp has launched their “Sound About Philly” iPOD walking tour. Audio tours take you to unusual and unknown places. Current podcasts include: My Philly, History Unplugged, and Philadelphia Flavorhoods. User-created tours are also available, such as Hands-on Fun, and Literary Philly.

What impressed my about Sound About Philly was its integration with GoogleMap. I clicked on the Philadelphia Flavorhoods podcast and was presented with ten tour segments, each displayed on GoogleMap. I love markets so I clicked on the South Philadelphia Italian Market icon, on 9th and Christian Street. “Joe Bubbles”, a long-time resident, introduces us to a cheese shopkeeper, a cookware merchant and an Italian baker (I yearn for good Italian bread!). The audio clips are more of an area presentation rather than a walking tour, such as the Toronto City Surf tour I noted in an earlier blog post. A neat feature is the “add to custom tour” button. You can create your own audio tour the visit Philadelphia.

Posted in Website/Event, Blogs/Podcast/eInfo, DURING the visit, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Wednesday 20 September 2006 by Edward.

Apparently realizing the major changes taking place in tourism and in the tourist experience, national newpaper USA Today has relaunched its travel website. Readers will get travel news, planning and booking tools, expert advice — the total tourist experience, before, during and after the trip.

The USA Today website is content rich. It offers, for example:

Information on destinations
A Flight Centre (flight tracker, flight delay map, WiFi airports, and more)
Travel News
Travel and destination deals
Travel Columns

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Thursday 14 September 2006 by Edward.

The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage launched NZlive.com, according to New Zealand’s Scoop News. This rich site promotes many New Zealand cultural and current events.

Travellers to New Zealand can browse 1,036 events: live events (428), exhibitions and screenings (338), festivals (176), sport (76), recreation (78), heritage (110), conference (18), maori culture (66), pacific cultures (16), and asian cultures (14). 114 links connect the visitor to sites such as the Otago Festival of the Arts, the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and the Wheel Blacks (wheelchair rugby championships).

The site also presents NZ culture facts (eg “Maori became an official language of New Zealand on 01 August 1987), live news and the visitors’ most popular event tags.

Rule 15 “The Rule of Supporting Businesses”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, shows how ‘Movie credits tell the real story.’ Brooks writes “In successful tourism, there is never only one business holding up the entire industry.” The New Zealand government has produced and directed one “great movie”. The true success of the site is realized by the large supporting cast of New Zealand’s cultural groups.

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Monday 11 September 2006 by Edward.

When almost 1/2 of website visitors to a travel site immediately switch to a competitor’s site, to comparison shop, according to Hitwise, webdesigners need to find ways to retain the surfer.

Competition is stiff between the heavyweights such as Expedia and Priceline, while newcomer “metasearch” travel sites like Kayak, Sidestep, Farechase, Farecast, Farecompare and Flyspy are gaining customers since they scour the web for the lowest-price travel packages.

When price no longer supports/builds brand loyalty, the pendulum, I predict, will begin to swing to those value-added, personal travel agencies like 1trip3.com. With growth of the “killer” metasearch travel sites, airlines and hotels should start to partner with these quality travel agent sites and not continue to alienate the travel agent.

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Wednesday 6 September 2006 by Edward.

British Airways offers their passengers destination information and accommodation information via access to Google Earth. Further, I like their interactive flash map. It displays flight routes between UK airports and North America airports.

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Tuesday 5 September 2006 by Edward.

Tourism website Galveston.com wins the 2006 Interactive Media Awards, according to their newswire to add to their earlier award for Best Overall Website Design in the 2006 American Business Awards. This is one impressive portal to Galveston.

The homepage alone displays current weather and temperature, a rotating news bar, links to video and audio blogs, maps, and a personal itinerary creator, an embedded news aggregator and RSS feed, links to webcams, a google-based keyword search bar, details on four featured items, extensive dropdown menus (43 choices ordered under 4 groups) and sliding menus (29 choices ordered under 4 groups), a link to a newsletter membership form and a lodging reservation search, and a link to the site’s sponsors.
Despite the density of information the layout is clean and efficient. A team of designers from Texas and the UK took over two years to produce this site.

Rule 15 “The Rule of Supporting Busniesses”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, tells us that ‘Movie credits tell the real story.’ Have you ever sat in a movie theatre after the ‘The End’ to see the rolling credits? You will realize what it takes to put the project together. Start digging into Galveston.com and you unearth a mountain of partnerships that make a successful website.

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Wednesday 30 August 2006 by Edward.

Ever wonder where all those available apartments are, close to the tourist attractions? If you go to Barcelona, Spain, you won’t have a problem. BarcelonaPoint displays a map combining “special interest points” with apartment locations.

You pick the apartment icons closest to your point of interest. If, for example, you wish to visit the Grand Theatre of Liceu, at the corner of Rambla dels Caputxins and Carrer de la Unio, you can see immediately that the two closest apartment accomodations are at Ramblas-Plaza Real (3 bedrooms, sleeps 5) and at Cardenal Casanyas-Ramblas (1bedroom, sleeps 3). Each apartment icon is linked to more information (price, customer reviews, yearly availability calendar, amenities, extras, area description, places to see, etc.) and to contact details.

I can see this type of website quickly grow in number. For the rural tourist it would be a great tool for Bed & Breakfast accommodations. Further, the next mashup level would likely be for the location-based, GPS equipped, traveller.

Roger A. Brooks Rule 7 “The Rule of Perpendicular Signs” states that ‘20/20 signage equals $$$.’ Good, clear signage attracts tourists. That’s the first thing visitors see when they enter your community, writes Brooks. For website maps, step 1 is to make sure you’re on the map. Step 2. Make sure you’re on a website map that “counts” — that is, one that shows, for example, how close you are to tourist attractions.

Posted in Website/Event, Maps, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »