Seeking the perfect travel website is a bit like seeking the Holy Grail. A long, usually fruitless endeavor.
But if the perfect travel website is ever built, we're pretty sure "they will come."
And maybe the website that Fi designed is it.
For now, at best, most if not all travel web sites are pretty "ho hum," especially airline and hotel websites. At worse, they are an insult to easy access and intuitive interaction.
Or as as Hotelmarketing acerbically points out, travel websites pretty much
travel web sites (16)
How Will Google + and Panda Affect Travel?
Hotelmarketing.com was pretty blunt in saying that Google +, in conjunction with Panda updates, “could be the biggest shift in search since it took off 13 years ago.”
Up to now the mysterious ways of Google’s algorithms were the greatest source of digital traffic to travel companies and their web sites or content pages.
They were their business lifeblood.
It now seems the search paradigm has changed.
The presence of the +1 button (on Technorati’s content
 |
| From NMT Images |
Location-based marketing or geo-location allows a business to “capture a customer” when he or she is near a place of business creating, what the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) calls a “here and now experience for consumers”...meaning, delivering real-time calls to action to buy, explore or just engage customers.
It’s what they’re now calling “brand on demand.”
A lot of the talk about location based services h
We hope so.
When New Media Travel spoke to the owners of 40 Putney Road, a Brattelboro, Vermont, B&B, we were curious about how this new brand of innkeepers was using social media to build a loyal client base.
Inn owner Tim Brady said something very interesting.
In a discussion about TripAdvisor and its huge influence on hotels, inns and B& B’s, Brady said that he’d rather have his guests tell him, directly, what they liked or didn’t like about staying at his place.
He made a lot of sense. A
KwikChex, the reputation management and consumer-reassurance site, has published its first ratings of the top travel reviews sites. Each site has been awarded a star rating according to a KwikChex analysis of reliability factors.
Remarkably, no site has been awarded the top 5 stars at present, but several, such as Booking.com and Expedia have been awarded 4 stars, thanks to their carrying reviews from fully identifiable customers of the businesses they have reviewed.
In a previously post, New
One of the dreads of air travel is sitting next to someone who is either crazy or can drive you crazy with annoying habits, non-stop chatter or just plain old boorishness, resulting in impulses to jump out of the plane or slowly throttle your seatmate.
So, Hotel Marketing.com states the obvious when it says air travel has gone from “glam to glum.” But as in so many cases, social media is being touted as the panacea for air travel doldrums. It seems some travel-media web sites are engaging in wh
Or who will turn the tables and keep review sites and their reviews honest?
By now we’ve heard enough to know fraudulent, unverified reviews on heretofore sacrosanct review sites are rampant. In many ways, they’re a violation of the trust travelers place in those sites.
TripAdvisor has been cited by UK authorities and told it can no longer state that its reviews are “honest” or from “real people,” because there is no way of verifying the accuracy or trustworthiness of posted reviews.
And ther
No, this doesn’t come from us, but from someone who Tweeted about a new travel-dating site called, Misstravel.com
It’s pretty much a travel dating site...with plenty of innuendo.
The explanatory video asks are you attractive, love to travel, but don’t have the money?
It then explains that there are plenty of wealthy types (all men) like doctors, athletes, bankers, executives and other well-heeled guys who don’t want to travel alone.
To be launched April 24th, the site brings the two groups toge
Battle of the Review Giants: HolidayCheck vs. TripAdvisor
In the unfolding drama of TripAdvisor vs Fake Reviews that has played out in various travel publications, HolidayCheck has upped the stakes by trumpeting its differences with TripAdvisor relative to the integrity of hotel reviews.
In fact, the Swiss-based online travel portal, Europe’s largest, wasted no time in setting out its marketing strategy. Its press release opens with: “ ‘No more reviews you can trust’ at TripAdvisor. Customers ar
Published: Ocotber 3, 2011
Founder of GirlPorts.com Tanya Churchmuch dines at her favorite Paris restaurant, Le Chartier.
Photo Credit: Carrie MacPherson
An avid worldwide traveler, Canadian Tanya Churchmuch wanted more from lesbian travel guides, but couldn't find what she wanted.
"I was somebody who always traveled a lot and always became frustrated by the lack of useful information for lesbian travelers that was available," says Churchmuch, a former broadcast anchor and inter
Published: Ocotber 3, 2011
Damron owner Gina Gatta with business and life partner, Erika O'Conner, enjoying Iceland.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Damron
For the more than 20 years, Gatta, 46, an openly gay woman, has traveled the world and n
Curated Hotel Information vs Crowd-sourced Content
Sarah Lacy, in her typically classy and insightful travel content, points out in TechCrunch that basically we all know what to expect from an airline, no matter what airline or in what country.
We all get the bad legroom, the free soda, the predictable (if you're lucky) arrival and departure times) all of which make air travel a ho-hum, uninteresting and non-memorable part of travel
But, Lacy says, a hotel is a different story.
It's your home aw
1. Look Good (=Nice & Simple)
Creative web design is all about making a website visually appealing. A visually appealing website is a site that is easy to read and easy to navigate. To create a site that visitors will not click away from immediately, follow some basic design standards, and think about the usability and accessibility of the design.
2. Content is Key
The content on your site is your vehicle to present your message and portray your brand. And if you offer the ability to book online o
TravelPlanr is an online tool that enables users to plan, map and manage all details of their trips including maps, itineraries and reservations.
Trips can be shared between users or published for anyone to see.
Create a map for each location on your trip, use TravelPlanr to search for Hotels, Restaurants or other Points of Interest and add them to your map.
Acess your TravelPlanr information from anywhere in the world and on your trip and add photos from each of your visits.
At TravelPlanr, we are
 |
| From NMT Images |
The British Broadcasting Corporation, known the work over as the BBC, just launched its new travel site, part of a series of site revamps, that will include other lifestyle features, and its timing may be impeccable.
With it’s own legendary reputation as a highly credible news and information source , the BBC’s new travel venture now boasts Emirates Airlines, unarguably one of the top tier, elegant airlines in the business, as its key sponsor.
BBC will partner for content with the
