» Next Entries
Category
Travel & Tourism
-
Travel & Tourism
The future trip planning
Dave Winer is a developer and one of the founding fathers of the blogging community and creator of the RSS format. The reason why he is successful is because he understands the way the internet works. So when makes comments about planning his trip as part of explaining what OPML is all about, tourism information providers should pay attention because he’s right. It’s not just common sense, it’s a matter of survival.
Consider this map,
showing the route from Billings to Bozeman. That’s quite a leap of
progress. Last year at this time I could have gotten my computer to
show me that kind of route, but I had a choice, either do it offline,
and get something with great visual fidelity (meaning it’s easy for a
human being to grasp instantly, because it’s presented so visually); or
do it online, and get up-to-the-minute-accurate results but not so
visual. So things are getting better. I want them to get better faster.Now consider this page
page on Yahoo Travel with stuff about Billings, where I am right now,
as I write this. It’s got places to stay (not relevant for me, I
already have a place to stay, and I like it), attractions for kids
(again, not relevant to me, I’m an adult, traveling without children),
everything but the information I want — where is the great scenery,
are there neat places to hike by the Yellowstone River (which runs
adjacent to the town), what do neighboring communities have to offer,
where can I get a healthy meal with local food that’s fresh. Do I know
anyone who’s here right now, if so, who?Go back to the map. Why isn’t it highlighting the same things I’d like the Yahoo Travel page to highlight?
The answer — it’s only 2005. Give it some time. “;->”
But I’m in a hurry. So how can we get there sooner?
First,
how could my computer know that I’m interested in neat scenic places to
hike, especially hikes that last 1 to 2 hours, aren’t too strenuous,
and have great scenery and aren’t overrun with tourists? Easy — what
do you think I’ve been searching for and how do you think I’ve been
doing the searching. It knows because that’s what I’ve been asking it
for, in my fumbling way.So it knows what I[‘m looking for
— does it have it? I think it does. People like me who were in
Billings last month and last year and the year before, or who might be
here right now, maybe even in the same hotel. Maybe I’ve been here
before and did these searches and found a perfect place and now would
like to find another. By now you must be thinking there’s nothing
profound about this, we all want that, and know it. That’s right
there’s nothing profound, everyone wants this, just watch Star Trek or
an Apple video from the late 80s or early 90s. “Computer, tell me where
I should go today and what to do, right now, and make it so.” This is
our dream. This is why we’re inventing computer networks, to give us
nothing less than heaven on earth.So, how? I think the
answer is to put the tools for constructing data formats into the hands
of users. We’ve been going about it all wrong, coming up with
straight-jackets for users, and expecting them to conform to some set
of rules that make no sense about how the characters should be encoded,
when it’s ideas and relationships to other ideas that we want to make
it easy for them to express. In other words, we don’t know how
to capture this data that we want so much, so create a tool for
expressing data that at least some people can use, and let them use it,
and let them make it public, and then see what kind of crawlers people
write, and then learn, and iterate, and try again and again until we’re
closer to having the information we want at our fingertips, to quote
another visionary from another time. -
Travel & Tourism
Vancouver Tourist Map using Google Maps API
Google released an API for their Google maps. So I played around with it and created this map locating all the travel information about Vancouver on our HelloBC website. All the familiar Google maps functionality works and click any icon for a link to the information on the website.
-
Travel & Tourism
Survey: Travelers shop online to save time
A result of better usability of travel websites or a sign of the times? Travelers don’t only use the Internet because of (perceived) better dprices but also to save time. Makes sense. Some other highlights of The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Seventh Edition:
- There was a higher incidence of online hotel purchasing in 2004 versus 2003 (71% versus 60%), approaching that of air purchases (92% in both years).
- Half of all online combination purchases consist of air and hotel, 24% are air, hotel and car, 23% are air and car, and just 4% are hotel and car.
- More hotel chains are pushing their way onto the list of the top three Web sites used for hotel reservations, as Hilton and Marriott outpaced Hotels.com and Priceline, and contributed to declines for Expedia and Travelocity.
- Business travel rebounded, with 44% of respondents saying they had taken a flight on business, up from 33% in 2003 (and favorably comparing to the flat 90-91% who flew for leisure trips).
Via HotelMarketing.com
Full report available at PhoCusWright. -
Travel & Tourism
Pinpoint keeps things relevant
The innovation in travel websites is phenomenal, especially in the Online Travel Agent category. What
-
Travel & Tourism
Cell Phone Tourism
Seems like everybody is I talk is on the wireless tourism band wagon these days. And I’m perfectly fine with that as it will be the next big thing in the delivery of tourism information to visitors.
Everybody automatically assumes the delivery will be text based on some type of wireless device. But in Copenhagen, the Golden Days Festival has created In the Footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen, a walking tour with 62 stops where visitors can use their cell phones to get a spoken descriptions of the location. A great way of wireless content delivery since the application of geo-targeted content delivery is still in its infancy.
-
Travel & Tourism
Navigation Limit
I’ve seen my share of technology restrictions on online booking systems, in particularly ours. But this one I found on the aircanada website was new to me:
Sorry but we cannot process your request as you have hit the navigation buttons (forward and Back) too many times. Please start again.So now I’m wondering what the limit is. At least the error message is clear.
-
Travel & Tourism
Mappoint Rocks…not so much
This is hilarious. When you try to get driving directions between Trondheim and Haugesund in Norway, two cities about an 11 hour drive apart, Mappoint suggests a driving route that leads you through seven different countries (the U.K., France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden). It
-
Travel & Tourism
New Tourism Websites
The Government of India launched IncredibleIndia.org last week.
A nice looking website, but lacks maps and pictures. Information looks like a copy and paste from brochures. -
Travel & Tourism
RSS feeds of Travel Deals
It was going to happen sooner or later that somebody would launch a travel deal RSS feed. So here it is, Pheedz.com has RSS feeds for Europe, Asia, Cruises and more.
This is the future of online marketing, especially if we don’t deal with the Spam problem soon. This is the ultimate opt-in. Only receive feeds that I want to see, without any $%&* I’m not interested in. I have to get going on this for our website.
-
Travel & Tourism
Vietnames Tourism Information
« Previous EntriesInteresting article about the lack of Vietnamese travel information.
The problem facing tourists in Viet Nam isn
» Next Entries
William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
