Monday 28 August 2006 by Edward.

Look ahead 30 days. You want to buy an airline ticket at the best price. Flyspy is designed to show you when to buy. The website is an alpha release. That means it’s in test mode. But it’s worth checking out anyway, to keep in touch at least. Flyspy describes how to use their chart and select your preferred airline to make a booking.
A similar service from Farecast was described in an earlier posting.

I will be watching how these ticket predictor sites progress.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, Website/Event, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Friday 25 August 2006 by Edward.

Interactive tourist maps are popping up all over the place. SeeBournemouth, in southern England, is an example. The website is Google “map-centric”. You navigate the city by clicking on map categories such as: pubs and bars, clubs, entertainment, sport, arts and crafts, and beaches — there are 17 icon categories. You then click on the icons to get more details.

I’m interested in aquariums. If I click on the sightseeing category I find many icons appear. Eventually I found the Bournemouth aquarium icon, called The Oceanarium. Each icon click shows a popup window and a split screen with contact addresses, telephone numbers, website links, and images.
Expect to see more of these maps with time. I’ll keep my eye out for creative and effective maps for the tourist. If you have one in your area let me know.

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

Wednesday 23 August 2006 by Edward.

OK, I’m interested in nature and nature attractions in the UK. I explored England’s West Country Tourist Information Google Map from Timaps and found beautiful, coloured icons grouped by category; arts/crafts; churches, nature attractions, heritage railways, historic buildings, leisure/theme parks, museums, wildlife attractions, shopping, food & drink, and ‘other’.

The site is well-designed. Navigation is clear and straightforward, starting with the opening map of the UK, showing its tourist regions. Broad searches can start with cities, rural areas and seaside destinations. Attractions can be grouped by the user by region, by category, by popularity and by name. When I clicked on the Exbury Gardens and Steam Railway icon, I was able to navigate to their website. You can create your own ‘custom map’ and place destination markers of interest.

My only problem was that I could not contact the owners/developers of this site, either via their on-line form, or via regular email (even after I registered on their site). Maybe if they see this posting someone will contact me.

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

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 »

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 13 August 2006 by Edward.

Travel Daily News reports that in November 2006, in London England, the WTM (World Travel Market) in cooperation with TravelMole host their Travel Technology Awards. Nominations begin early September. Winners are announced on Wednesday 08 November 2006.

Categories include:

GENERAL
Dynamic Packaging Tools Online
Online Brochure Technology
Innovation in Mobile Technology
Search/Air/Hotel Shopping/Booking System

TRAVEL AGENCIES
Dynamic Packaging Tools for Agents
Agency Desktop Tools

TRAVEL MANAGEMENT COMPANIES (Business Travel)
Corporate Online Booking System

TOUR OPERATOR
Tour Management System

HOTEL/RESORT
Property Management System
Hotel Online Reservation System

DESTINATION
Destination Management System

TRAVEL TECH EXHIBITORS
Most Innovative Stand

Roger A. Brooks Rule 23 “The Rule of Public relations” states that ‘Bragging is more effective when someone else does it for you.’

Posted in Website/Event | No Comments »

Monday 31 July 2006 by Edward.

Take your brochures, flyers, reports and newsletters, add the right amount of music or voice narration, video and animation, tap your brain cells, mix carefully, and you can create a media-rich masterpiece — a brochure, or eBrochure, that can be viewed by 500 million people on the internet.

BC Pictures creates interactive eBrochures for tourism destinations using Adobe PDF technology. Here is an eBrochure example of the Toronto CN Tower attraction in standard print format (1 Mb) and in full-media format (7.7 Mb).

Roger A. Brooks Rule 5 “The Rule of Perceived Value” tells us that ‘First impressions are lasting impressions.’ We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, says Brooks, but we do. A brochure, or website home page, is the first clue about the character and quality of your destination. What have you done lately to enhance your image?

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

Sunday 30 July 2006 by Edward.

Malta, “The heart of the Mediterranean”, recorded 1,960,368 website visits in the first half of this year, stated The Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) as reported by Di-ve.com. That’s a 70% increase over the same period last year. Last month they averaged 12,422 visits per day. Di-ve.com reports that an MTA spokeman said ” In today’s globalised tourism market … we can no longer rely exclusively on traditional methods to put Malta on the tourism map.

Roger A. Brooks Rule 3 ‘The Rule of Billboards and Exits’ requires that you “Put your bait out on the highway”. Whether you’re a little island in the middle of the Mediterranean, or a continent in the south Pacific, the same rule applies.

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

Friday 28 July 2006 by Edward.

It is a pleasure to browse the island of Cyprus through images and icons. This is a new one-point access to Cyprus — to its tourist attractions, accomodations, properties for sale, holiday rentals, business, restaurants, bars/clubs, and the all important banks.

Navigation of ShowMe-Cyprus.com is clear. It is based on images and icons, minimizing language barriers for site visitors. High resolution satellite and aerial images are used (NOT Google Earth) in major tourist areas. My contact with ShowMe-Cyprus told me that the site mission was to provide an image-based directory to the landscape, to tourist destinations, to properties and accomodations. The site was reportedly constructed over two years and tested on 8 to 84 year-olds (see Leo Leonidu’s press article on the launch of the site last week). It was found to have an average web visit time of 20 minutes compared to the internet average of 30 seconds. Relatively fast-loading video clips no doubt add to the visitor’s length of stay.

Showme-Cyprus image acquisition was costly, and the site took a couple of years to build, but this expense should be recouped many times over. My navigation of this site was easy, though it took me awhile to understand the icons. The icons did not match the legend. I tried to locate some banks and had a hard time. I love the idea that a satellite image overview of Cyprus is what visitors see first.

The folks at ShowMe-Cyprus are now busy updating and adding content, adding private ’screening rooms’, and increasing functionality. The website developers are interested in extending this model to other parts of the world via franchising. Interested? Speak to their investor relations.

Question: Where’s the best place to eat in Cyprus? It looks like a great place to travel.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 7 “The Rule of Perpendicular Signs” states that ‘20/20 signage equals $$$.’ Be visual. Visitors are not locals, therefore make your signs meaningful.

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