Guest Editorial

And here's an editorial from a former Moon travel guidebook writer:

OUTSOURCING MOON
by X-Moon, Delhi bureau

Bill Newlin has announced that he is outsourcing all guidebook writing to a company based in Bangalore, India. Further questioning reveals that this company is in fact a plantation where monkeys have been trained to climb trees and twist off coconuts. With the recent rapid decline in world coconut production, unemployed monkeys have been ingeniously retrained by the Bangalore plantation owners to modify content for Moon guidebooks.

There are estimated to be 2,000 monkeys typing away on 2,000 typewriters.

They are divided into huts by continent: North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

"The maps have proved problematic," said Bill, "but otherwise, the gibberish is adequate for most travel needs. It's an ideal match for Moon because we pay them peanuts." Bill also mentioned that he is pleased that the monkeys will not dispute the format of the material. They apparently do not go berserk if print-size is drastically reduced, or the work is printed on paper so thin you can see through it. They tend to go berserk, however, if the peanut supply dwindles.

Bill spoke further: "The disconnect we were having with the human writers was causing a lot of aggravation in our editorial offices. What the chimps do is take older editions and change one word on each page, which then passes for the new edition. That's all we need really. Most of our readers don't give a fig about content anyway. What they need is the security blanket of some sort of guidebook to hold. And that's what we give them."

Next on the horizon, Newlin is thinking seriously about outsourcing cover designs to elephants in northern Thailand. "I have heard that they are quite capable artists and very adept with their trunks. Of course, the cost of feeding them is far higher than the monkeys, but still well below human designer rates, even those of starving artists in garrets." Newlin is currently looking into cheaper sources of feed for the mammoth designers, in order to cut costs.

Freelance Writing Income Plunges to New Lows

It pains my heart, but freelance travel writing has been devastated by the internet. LA Times has the article.

Freelance writing's unfortunate new model

Freelance writing fees -- beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and magazines -- have been spiraling downward for a couple of years and reached what appears to be bottom in 2009. (Marc Russell)

James Rainey

With many outlets slashing pay scales, the well-written story is in danger of becoming scarce. The hustle is just beginning for new and seasoned freelancers.
By James Rainey

January 6, 2010
The list of freelance writing gigs on Craigslist goes on and on.

Trails.com will pay $15 for articles about the outdoors. Livestrong.com wants 500-word pieces on health for $30, or less. In this mix, the 16 cents a word offered by Green Business Quarterly ends up sounding almost bounteous, amounting to more than $100 per submission.

Other publishers pitch the grand opportunities they provide to "extend your personal brand" or to "showcase your work, influence others." That means working for nothing, just like the sailing magazine that offers its next editor-writer not a single doubloon but, instead, the opportunity to "participate in regattas all over the country."

What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession -- or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.

Freelance writing fees -- beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and magazines -- have been spiraling downward for a couple of years and reached what appears to be bottom in 2009.

The trend has gotten scant attention outside the trade. Maybe that's because we live in a culture that holds journalists in low esteem. Or it could be because so much focus has been put on the massive cutbacks in full-time journalism jobs. An estimated 31,000 writers, editors and others have been jettisoned by newspapers in just the last two years.

Today's reality is that much of freelancing has become all too free. Seasoned professionals have seen their income drop by 50% or more as publishers fill the Web's seemingly limitless news hole, drawing on the ever-expanding rank of under-employed writers.

Low compensation

The crumbling pay scales have not only hollowed out household budgets but accompanied a pervasive shift in journalism toward shorter stories, frothier subjects and an increasing emphasis on fast, rather than thorough.

"There are a lot of stories that are being missed, not just at legacy newspapers and TV stations but in the freelance world," said Nick Martin, 27, laid off a year ago by the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz., and now a freelancer. "A lot of publications used to be able to pay freelancers to do really solid investigations. There's just not much of that going on anymore."

Another writer, based in Los Angeles, said she has been troubled by the lighter fare that many websites prefer to drive up traffic. A new take on any youth obsessions ("Put 'Twilight' in the headline, get paid") has much more chance of winning editorial approval than more complex or substantive material.

The rank of stories unwritten -- like most errors of omission -- is hard to conceive. Even those inside journalism can only guess at what stories they might have paid for, if they had more money.

Media analyst and former newspaper editor Alan Mutter worried last month about the ongoing "journicide" -- the loss of much of a generation of professional journalists who turn to other professions.

Writers say they see stories getting shorter and the reporting that goes into some of them getting thinner.

A former staff writer for a national magazine told me that she has been disturbed not only by low fees (one site offered her $100 for an 800-word essay) but by the way some website editors accept "reporting" that really amounts to reworking previously published material. That's known in the trade as a "clip job" and on the Web as a "write around."

"The definition of reportage has become really loose," said the writer, also a book author, who didn't want to be named for fear of alienating employers. "In this economy, everyone is afraid to turn down any work and it has created this march to the bottom."

One Los Angeles woman who also requested anonymity writes frequently for women's magazines and fondly recalls the days when freelance pieces fetched $2, or even $3, a word. Though some publications still pay those rates, many have cut them at least in half. And story lengths have been reduced even more drastically.

The writer, who once could make $70,000 a year or more, said she is now working harder to bring in half that much. "It's just not a living wage anymore," she said.

Los Angeles freelancer Tina Dupuy gained acclaim last year when she posted a YouTube video to shame editors at the Tampa Tribune into paying her $75 for a humor column on the "birthers" -- the political activists who contest President Obama's U.S. citizenship.

Up for a challenge

She said many other papers have stopped paying for opinion columns altogether --narrowing op-ed contributions at some papers to those already in syndication or those with day jobs at chambers of commerce, corporations, think tanks and the like.

"These corporate-sponsored pieces threaten to push people like me out," Dupuy said.

That's not to say that she is getting out of the business. After an earlier career in stand-up comedy, Dupuy has learned to hustle and to be "psychologically very adept at rejection."

It can be challenging, but Dupuy makes a living. "For someone who had to drive for hours to get to a gig -- to get $100 and a beer bottle thrown at them -- this is heaven," she said.

Indeed, relative newcomers like Dupuy or those who have spent their careers as freelancers -- like Matt Villano of Healdsburg, Calif. -- sound much more resilient about the revolutionary changes in publishing than the former staff writers and longtime freelancers.

The 34-year-old Villano -- whose outlets include the San Francisco Chronicle, Fodor's travel guides, Casino Player and Oceanus magazines -- said some writers struggle because they have fuzzy, arty notions about their work. They need to act more like small business people, Villano said, diversifying their skills and the outlets they write for.

Despite the endless hustle, Villano said he would not give up a career that has taken him from whale watching in Maui to the baccarat tables of Las Vegas. "I like the diversity," he said. "I like doing it on my own terms."

Villano strikes me as considerably more resilient, and sunny, than most people who write for a living. To make a go of it, the majority will require not only his flexibility, but a return of a more stable financial base for journalism.

With the advertising-driven income in a state of disarray, the source of future freelance dollars remains in doubt.

Philanthropic, nonprofit sites (ProPublica) will take up some of the slack, while other new models (Spot.Us) ask consumers to make micro-payments to put writers on specific local stories. Other websites (True/Slant) pay bonuses for stories and commentary, with writers getting paid more as they deliver bigger audiences.

It's hard to say if any, or all, will succeed. But the sooner they can take the free out of freelance, the better. Until they do, we can only imagine what we'll be missing.

james.rainey@latimes.com

Death of the Printed Travel Guidebook?

Financial Times recently looked at new technology and how new gizmos may eventually replace printed travel guidebooks. While it seems inevitable, I'd say printed guidebooks will remain dominant for the near future until the technology is sorted out and ebook readers and IPad clones bring down the cost significantly.

A few notable comments here, but do read the entire article and be prepared for some technology headaches.

"The publishing world has been talking for years about how we are going to follow the music industry down the pan," says Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides series, which has sold more than 30m books worldwide."I don't think that is going to happen tremendously quickly for publishing in general, but travel guidebooks are absolutely the front line. In travel it makes much more sense to have digital rather than traditional paper books."

And the latest news from the front line is not good. In fact, over the past two and a half years, guidebook sales in Britain have fallen off a cliff. Sales for 2009 were down 18 per cent on 2007, and if the second half of this year follows the first, 2010 will be down 27 per cent on 2007, according to data from Nielsen BookScan. If the current rate of decline continues, the final guidebook will be sold in less than seven years' time.

Lonely Planet's Australia guide sold 20,015 copies in 2008, and just 13,530 in 2009 – a drop of a third (again, the figures are from Nielsen BookScan, covering sales from British retailers). The Rough Guide to France, which sold 11,943 in 2008, fell 45 per cent to 6,561 the following year. Worse is that these are considered bestsellers.

Of course, the fortunes of individual titles fluctuate with the launch of new editions and the fashionability of destinations, but average sales across the whole range paint an equally bleak picture. Last year, the average UK sale of each title from the leading five publishers was around 1,500 copies.

The reasons behind this sales collapse are all too apparent – a combination of new technology and recession. Fewer people are travelling so buy fewer guidebooks, while those that do still go away are more likely to download free information online rather than spending money on a book.

Sales figures may be dire, the challenges mounting, but this summer there's a buzz in the world of travel publishing, a sense of being on the verge of a totally new era. The internet allowed people to research their trips themselves before setting out, but smartphone apps and iPads travel with them. Suddenly the guidebook publishers, who for years seemed to be looking on from the sidelines, unsure of how to make websites work for them, have found themselves with a medium that makes sense.

"I could see that if you got in early and created the most compelling products then it could be fantastically lucrative as well," says Douglas Schatz, who last year gave up his job as boss of Stanfords, the venerable London travel book shop, to become Lonely Planet's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Remember those guidebook sales figures? The average title selling just 1,500 copies a year? Compare that with the fact that during the volcanic ash crisis, 4.2m Lonely Planet apps covering 13 destinations were downloaded within four days. Admittedly they were being given away as a free promotion to help stranded passengers, but it hints at the potential.

Selling apps online also lets publishers cut out conventional retailers, who have been squeezing margins aggressively and often dictated at what price a book will be sold.

Of course, over the past couple of years have seen many travel-related apps, some from airlines, hotels and others in the travel industry; others as extensions of travel websites, and lots of them free. But this summer publishers are piling into the app market, hoping to persuade customers that it's worth paying for an app that comes with the guidebook brand's trusted tone and voice.

Last month Ellingham, who sold Rough Guides in 2008, launched Cool Places, a series of 30 slick apps to UK destinations, including St Ives, Brighton and Whitby. In June, Footprint Travel Guides released its first apps, with 50 being rolled out by the end of this month. Rough Guides' new apps debut later this year, and last week Lonely Planet launched its new Compass app – the first augmented reality app from a mainstream guidebook publisher. Their jostling for position is given extra impetus by the assumption that the market will explode as mobile roaming charges fall.

So will the printed guidebook disappear altogether? One scenario sees print becoming the preserve of photo-led "inspiration" books, for armchair reading before you go away. But even that market could be squeezed by the iPad. Lonely Planet, for example, recently released 1,000 Ultimate Experiences, an innovative iPad book for pre-travel inspiration that mixes photos, text and video.

Another theory is that books will become niche products covering special interests or remote, developing destinations without mobile coverage or the visitor numbers to merit an app. Bradt – known for its guides to almost comically uncommercial destinations, including North Korea and Iraq – actually saw sales rise by 2.25 per cent in 2009. And one of the few real success stories of recent years has been Punk Publishing, which produces the Cool Camping and Wild Swimming series, and saw sales double in the last four years.

Responses to FT Article: Death of Travel Guidebooks

The Financial Times article about new technology and the future of printed travel guidebooks was picked up on a Google Group called Travel Guide Writers, and brought up an excellent discussion on travel apps. All you budding travel writers should join this group to keep track on what's happening and new in the fast changing world of travel writing.

Here's the original post from the app vendor at Sutro:

Some thoughts and questions from the "other side" of this conversation

- I'm an App vendor that focuses on publishers with trusted content.

Promotion - There are 225,000+ applications in the Apple store, with the travel section growing by the day. We believe that creating the application is only a small part of the problem. Unless people purchase your application then you make no money regardless of how cheap it was to create it in the first place.
For people to find your application you either rely on luck, or you have to promote through other means such as web site or blog traffic. This is where the big name brands have the leg up - they built their brands when travel guides were physically printed books because they were big enough to bear the printing and distribution costs, and now they can leverage their brands to enable people to find their applications. Think about a LP book - how many people really recognize the author's name compared to LP's name? Yes, it is the author's (and editor's) work that created the book, but the brand is, in this example, LP.

Volume - Our applications are often in the top 12 "what's hot" list of the travel section on iTunes but the volume isn't where we want it to be. When we're the #1 travel application for a few days and still want to see increased volume, what does that say about the volumes of all of the other applications? This is a direct impact of the promotion piece above (we still need to help our publishing partners with their promotional pieces), but also raises the question of whether the market is yet ready for this new approach to delivering travel content. See below on this question.

Price - There is definitely a race to the bottom for application prices. Even LP has reduced their prices (across the board?) to less that $10; many travel applications are even lower than $5. We have heard that a $0.99 application is the sweet spot for Apple's developer iAd advertising as the conversion rate for a higher cost application will be too low to warrant the cost of the "pay per click" model that iAd offers - although we're not sure if that is general across all application types or specific to value add products such as mobile travel guides. A low volume at a low price is not a lot of money,whatever the revenue share split.

Shelf life- Newer applications covering the same destination are preferred by buying customers to older applications. This is human nature (magazines are always published a month ahead of time) but is also encouraged by Apple's store that by default lists applications
newest to oldest. A typical print guide book has a 24 month edition
life before being revamped for the subsequent print run. We find a one
or two monthly refresh of our applications helps to keep them higher
in the various lists. But refreshes have to be meaningful; you can't
just republish the same application with a new version number as
existing users will start to moan in the reviews, and a bad review is
hard to overcome. In our model we roll out new platform features every
few months to have a meaningful refresh. But in a "roll your own"
model" this could be hard to sustain, especially if a large number of
titles are published to have enough volume to put food on the table
and the only real means of improving the product is to add more
content.

Questions that we have at the moment are:

Is the market ready? Yes, there is a great deal of buzz around mobile
applications (it's why we're playing in his arena) but is the buzz
substantiated by people actually buying content? Big brands are able
to dump their books into a mobile application but is that just their
brand momentum carrying over into the mobile space for now? Given the
race to the price bottom how is the value of the content promoted so
that it bucks the pricing trend?

Travel books are likely to disappear, or have significantly less
volume - see the figures that started this thread. What replaces them?
Clearly the smartphone is the new "in" device with projected 10 times
growth in the next three years. So travel guide users are likely to
have a smartphone, but how is travel content delivered to this
platform in a way to make it appealing enough to make people pay money
for the content? Will we have to wait out a period where users have
tried the free Wikipedia content before realizing that there is a
reason to pay for content from an author that knows his/her stuff?

Is there a minimum size of publisher that can survive? Is the "anyone
can build a cheap application" belief even true? Yes anyone *can*
build a cheap application, but can they earn a living from it? Is the
traditional "big organization with lots of dependent authors" model
still true today and will be tomorrow? I wonder if some of the bigger
publishers are working towards maintaining this status quo - I would
if I was them. But does the technology enable newer author led
consortiums to build their "big enough organizations" to publish
electronically, and do authors want to even do this?

Are mobile applications just the "loss leader" to bring eyeballs and
wallets to other products? Is this true now, and if so will this be
true forever?

Even if money cannot currently be made from mobile applications, do
authors still need to produce applications to stake a claim?

If we could wave a magic wand and have the perfect mobile application
distribution solution tomorrow, what would it look it?

We have our own hypotheses and answers to these questions that we're
actively testing out and discussing with our publishers. But I'm very
interested in hearing the "author's viewpoint" to these questions,
whether publicly here on this forum or via a private message.

Regards,
Colin

TripConnect.com

"TripConnect allows you to get travel advice from a network of friends and others who share your tastes and interests." (from their website)

TripConnect started up in September 2006 and seems to being going strong. It is another social travel website, like 43places.com and Wayn.com. Like those, and others, TripConnect alows members to list, review and blog about places where you have been, and asking others members about places you want to go. TripConnect also allows you to suggest and join special interest groups (see the image above), which is less common elsewhere -- though others may also have added since the last time I looked! It does seem to be lacking a map interface, which is something that is really well done on the VCarious.com website.

Personally, I found TripConnect to be simple and straightforward - and that alone can give it a considerable advantage in the growing world on social travel websites.

MyGreatRides.com - The Online Motorcycle Community

MyGreatRides.com - The Online Motorcycle Community

"The open road meets the Info Superhighway at MyGreatRides.com, a virtual community for people who have a passion for riding."

I am personally not a biker in any way, and this website is still in beta (you need to sign up for an invitation). However, I thought it was an interesting niche travel idea, and one that may catch on with that very devoted segment of the recreation travel and tourism market. I did a quick search and did not find anything quite like what this site may be -- though I can't really tell until it become public. The closest thing was Total Motorcycle.com, but that seemed a lot more Web 1.0.

ALSO CHECKOUT: BikersWorld.com

2007 Travvies Nominees for Best Travel Blogs

Upgrade: Travel Better - 2007 Travvies: Meet the finalists, meet the judges, and vote!

The Upgrade: Travel Better blog is running a "Best Travel Blogs" contest. I just stumbled on this and thought it was a good idea -- at least a way of spreading the word about travel blogs.

I have only heard of a few of the blogs that made the final nominations, and the nomination process seemes a bit free-wheeling. But at least its a start. And I do hope to find some time to check out at least some of the nominees.

Voting ends on February 28th. So it you are the voting type, you need to head over their quickly.

Step Up Travel - Sustainable Travel Does Web 2.0

"We promote responsible travel which emphasizes the importance of personal exchanges, deeper cultural understanding, genuine benefit to local people and their communities, preservation of the environment, and ultimately a more peaceful and equitable world."

Step Up Travel claims to be the first application of Web 2.0 to Responsible Travel, and I think they may be right. There are older websites devoted to responsible travel, including both resources on responsible travel issues and listings of responsible tour products. Two that I am familiar with are Planeta.com and the Big Volcano Ecotourism Centre. But both of these are in need of a major Web 2.0 face lift. And there is the National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations, which is sometimes related to the more commercial National Geographic Traveler. As colorful and engaging as National Geographic is, however, it lacks a social interface and comes across as more institutional and less in touch with the "real" people in a destination.

So I think, yes, Step Up Travel is the first responsible travel site on the Web 2.0 era:

• It has an attractive and clean interface,
• it provides resources to help make travel more responsible,
• it appears to be making a concerted effort to market truly local products that support the destination, and
• it has a Travel Network for "Socially-minded Travelers to Connect with local people, Get off the beaten path, and Change the face of travel."

The Travel Network will be the real test of the success of Step Up Travel in achieving its goals of linking local people with concerned and responsible tourists. I have joined and it is successful.

Ning - No More Excuses to Creating a Web 2.0 Travel Site

Ning.com is hottest new Web 2.0 tool to be announced this past week. Ning.com (now in version 2) allows anyone to easily create, through a drag and drop process, a Social Network on which members can post discussion items, blogs, photos and videos, and more. It is entirely free, with advertising, and $19/month without ads. Although it is in no way only for travel and tourism, there were close to 200 social networks that are tagged "travel" on the day that I wrote this.



I have created two social networks of my own at Ning.com. One is centered on my Travelography Travel News podcast (at http://travelnews.ning.com), and the other is on Responsible Travel and Sustainable Tourism (at http://responsibletravel.ning.com).


It was very easy to create these, though doing more customizing will probably take some time. In particular, I would like to add a Google Map mashup, which is found a quite a few of the social networks (such as the Travel Tips one, below). The networks with these maps appear to be from version 1 of Ning.com, and is not a standard tool built into version 2.0. In fact, if anyone has some tips on how to create a map mashup and add it to Ning.com, I would appreciate the help.



For a video introduction and tutorial to Ning.com, go to the Scoble Show blog. Also see Ning reviews on Tech Crunch and GigaOM.

--------------------
NEW (7 Sept 07): There are other web services similar to Ning that may meet your needs better. TechCrunch.com reviews nine of them here.

Rrove - Save, Share & Discover Places

Rrove "Share Your Special Spots"

Rove is a point or pin map creation tool that mashes up with Google or Yahoo Map. The example above is one person's list and map of the top attractions in Rome. Many of the maps are tourism and travel related (as maps tend to be, in general), including the Best of New York, and World's Best Beaches. Other maps show the location of members of a group (such as VlogInternacional ). Two nice features are (1) Detailed information that can be included on each item posted on the map, including descriptive tags, and (2) A short bit of HTML code that can be easily copied into any web page that you may have.

In fact, I created my own Rrove map for my Responsible Travel Network at Ning.com (see image below). It was easy to insert the code and tweak the width and height to fit the Ning.com size restrictions. Now members (and anyone else who visits ResponsibleTravel.ning.com) will be able to post their locations and their favorite responsible travel destinations. (You can also keep your map closed so that only you can post to it.)



Rove also promotes itself as a website for discovering places in the world, based on the maps that users have created. There is a search function, but I found it woefully lacking in its ability to find place that I searched for -- even though I had seen them on existing maps. In addition, there does not seem to be a way to search for a map (which they call "sets"). There were only 97 maps/sets on the day that I created my own map (above). But even then, it was a hassle trying to re-find the maps that I mentioned above.

In sum, Rrove.com is a great tool for creating and embedding user maps on your own web pages. I recommend it.

"Web 2.0 - Over and Out" - or - Moves In Next Door

EarlyStageVC: Web 2.0 - Over and Out

Amid Peter Rip's (link above) dire predictions of the demise of Web 2.0, I think the emphasis should be on the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 (as evidenced by Time's Person of the Year award). And this should be good news for a travel industry that, to my mind, has a long ways to go to fully utilize the potential of the new social media.

See also the article on TechCrunch, where I first found the link above.

Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps

Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps - WashingtonPost.com

"NEW ORLEANS -- Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees."

Virtual STA - Second Life Travel Agency

STA Travel in Second Life

STA Travel is among the largest travel agencies in the world with a focus on student, mostly university, travel. This week, STA became one of the first travel agencies to set up business, or sorts, in Second Life. STA's island in second life will offer:

1. Dedicated Portal and Orientation Island where students can join Second Life and easily and quickly learn how to navigate the virtual world.
2. Virtual Dorms that students can customize and use for private meetings and get-togethers.
3. Virtual Travel Destinations where students can experience Mayan Ruins, an Asian Temple and a French Cafe.
4. STA Travel Main Office where students can get travel and destination information.
5. Live Weekly Events and Tours produced by STA Travel as well as numerous travel partners.
6. Sandbox where students can practice building their own virtual environment.

Not all of these are ready now, but will be soon., and I would imagine that more will be developed in the future as STA, along with other travel providers, continue to experiment with virtual travel.

VeniVidiWiki -- Wiki Map Travel Guide

VeniVidiWiki: travel guide

VeniVidiWiki.eu is a Google map wiki mashup for attractions around the world. Anyone can add a POI (point of interest) to the map and provide as much as possible of the following information:

• Name of place/poi
• Category - those shown above are listed as POI with Video -- so they all have a video link; the full list of categories is listed on the left
  
• Description
• Website, and
• Photo and/or Video links

The wiki has a large number of sites, and crashed a few times when I was trying to view a lot of them. But in general it is quick and easy to navigate, and worth exploring to learn more about attractions in a place you may want to visit.

TalkShoe - Categories Listing - Travel

TalkShoe - Categories Listing - Travel

TalkShoe has become the destination for podcasters and podcast listeners who want to record live, synchronous, call-in episodes. I usually listen to these after they have been recorded, but if I were more on the ball, I could partcipate in them by either voice or text message. For both podcasters and podcast listeners this service is free, and although the content is entirely user generated, looking at their website they really do resemble a more formal podcast network.

The reason I bring it up TalkShoe here is because they have a Travel category that contains some interesting programs. You can listen to their most recent episodes and see when their next episodes are scheduled.

Not everyone is organized enough to schedule episodes in advance (I could never do that with my podcasts!), but some are. At the time of this mini-review, the following podcasts had scheduled programs:

• Florida Travel Deals -LorenGray 15 minutes (each week) of information regarding destinations in Florid... Next Episode Time: 06/07/07 02:30 PM EDT Talkcast ID: 27267
• PlanIt Podcast Live Call Ins - David Martin - Are you looking for the next great party or event location? Do you wa... Next Episode Time: 06/06/07 08:00 PM EDT Talkcast ID: 20394
• The TRAVELERS JOURNAL - David Bear - The TRAVELERS JOURNAL is a series of 2 minute audio postcards delivere... Next Episode Time: 06/04/07 09:00 AM EDT Talkcast ID: 14057

Blogging in the Tourism Academy

I recently sent out a question to some 1000 or so tourism academics (professors, lecturers, graduate students, and other researchers) on email discussion lists, asking them "Do You Blog?" The purpose was to see how blogging is used by tourism academics. A summary of my findings can be found here:

http://tourismplace.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-dont-we-blog-university-faculty.html

The major categories or types of blogs that people told me about include:

• Blogging about Tourism
• Blogging for Classes and Students
• Research (and) Blogs
• Personal Travel Blogs
• Podcast Blogs
• Email Lists as Blogs

Click the link above for details. I have been updating these as new blogs are brought to my attention.

Travel Planning Your Way: TripBase.com & TripWiser.com

Links to two new travel planning website arrived my inbox in the last couple of months that I thought were creative and useful. They both help you decide where to go and what to do when you get their.


TripBase.com has a nice ajaxy interface where you indicate your preferences and trip characteristics, and it gives you a list of suggested destinations, which you can then click on to get more information. You can also click to remove the most popular destinations, for those looking for alternatives to the beaten paths. Variables that you can adjust include Nightlife, Dining, Shopping, Nature, Attractions, Dates, Departure city, Budget, Type of trip (backpacker, middle, luxury), Desired temperature, and Continent.


The interface is clean and quick, with limited scrolling and new page openings. Resources include a list of starred must see attractions and links to online magazine articles and prominent webistes, such as Wikitravel.com. There are also links to air, hotel and car rental reservations, though these did not work for me in the alpha-released website. Which kind of make me wonder how they are making money.


TripWiser.com is somewhat similar to TripBase, but makes its recommendations from a database of trips that have been saved by users. It has a very nice and easy to use interface for building a day-by-day itinerary for a trip, which you can make public or private. You can access and add suggestions for each day, and you give your trip tags which other people can then use to search the public database.

If you are searching for experiences, you can enter a trip name (destination and type) and receive a list of suggestions from the database. You can adjust your preferences by sliding Families-Couples, Luxury-Budget, Adventure-Relaxations, and Nature-Culture. The results change instantly as you change your preferences.


Some of the suggestions did not seem very real -- like an itinerary that included the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld, Balboa Park and Mission Beach all in one day! (That itinerary was listed as a "Top Family Trip" -- I think my kids would kill me if I tried to make them do all that in one day.) Others, however, are very realistic and provide some great suggestions.

Interestingly, both websites make use of sliders as a way of showing preference. One big difference is that TripWiser is (currently) only for the US, while TripBase is international (yay!).

Best Travel Podcasts of 2007 - Nominees

The following podcasts have been nominated for the People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Best Travel Podcasts of 2007. Congratulations!

- 808 Talk [url] [rss]

- Alaska Podshow [url] [rss]

- Beachwalks with Rox [url] [rss]

- Living in Las Vegas [url] [rss]

- The Amateur Traveler [url] [rss]

- The Dis Unplugged [url] [rss]

- The Meandering Mouse [url] [rss]

- Travel with Rick Steves [url] [rss]

- Trucker Tom Podcast [url] [rss]

- WDW Radio [url] [rss]

Anyone can vote for their favorites, starting July 28th and closing August 11th. The Podcast Awards website is a great place to find new podcasts that you have not heard before.

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OK, so I wasn't nominated, but since this is my blog, I can still mention my own travel podcasts: Travelography: World Travel and Tourism News, and Geography for Travelers, both of which got a great plug on the July 1, 2007 episode of the Home Based Travel Agent podcast -- one that I personally listen to more than any of the nominees above.

Avvenu - Remote Computer Access for Road Warriors

Few things drive me more crazy than buying (or buying into) something and then finding a better deal or product at the same or lower price. I use Gmail, for example, even though I know that Yahoo Mail is better. I just keep hoping that Gmail will be updated some day to be more like Yahoo Mail. At least Gmail is free.

In April paid for an account with Logmein.com so I can access my desktop files remotely using my office computer and my new Fujitisu P1610 mini tablet pc. I like Logmein, except for two things: (1) it does not have a search function in its file transfer and sync utility, and (2) you cannot view photo icons in the file transfer and sync.

So now I stumble across Avvenu.com which is a lot like Logmein, but offers remote file search and tranfer in its free version (not sure about photo icon viewing). Its paid version allows access to files even when your home/main pc is off by uploading the files you want to access to the Avvenu website. Very cool, and a lot cheaper than Logmein.com, or the even more expensive GoToMyPC.com.

Avvenu.com also allows you to listen and share music on your home computer from a remote computer or PDA. Although I have not tried it yet, it looks to me like Avvenu.com is a great utility for the traveling road warrior!

(Click Here to read about my Office Anywhere efforts.)

Blog link: http://web20travel.blogspot.com/2006/05/avvenu-access-files-and-share-photos.html

What is Travel 3.0 ?

From the many podcasts that I listen to, I have basically heard of two definitions for Web 3.0:

1. Web-Everywhere Technology - Always connected portable technology
2. Total Immersion Web - Virtual worlds and MMOGs

Web 1.0 was the static, expert knowledge web. Web 2.0 is the interactive, user knowledge web. So these definitions of Web 3.0 as an always connected technology and total environment knowledge web make sense to me.

And either way, the significance for travel and tourism is enormous. An everywhere web is a traveling web. It means being connected when you travel locally to work, to the grocery store, to the gym, as well as on business trips and family holidays. The Web 2.0 tools that I review on this website are among the leaders into this everywhere web space, which I predict will move toward greater convergence in the coming decades.

I have personally not bought into the the Second Life virtual world phenomenon, which I think is far from ready for prime time. In the long run, however, I think that online virtual worlds will become an important way of communicating with other people, initially, and with distant environments, ultimately. The newly emerging Web 2.0 sites that have video tours of hotels and destination are important baby steps in this directions -- even more so than the experimental hotel building in Second Life because they are more accessible for the masses.

Travel 3.0 is clearly not here, yet. However, because we can conceptualize it -- imagine what it will be like -- it is an important force shaping the visions of todays Travel 2.0 engineers and entrepreneurs.

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UPDATE: Check out the Sunverse.net blog, which is "All about Virtual Worlds and the Tourism Industry". The site mostly focuses on the development of real world tourism destinations in Second Life.

UPDATE: March 26, 2008: Bill Ryan, heard on Kenradio.com : "Web 2.0" was setting interoperability standards (including AJAX and web services, etc.) and creating communities and user-generated content. Web 2.0 was very exploitative of user generated content. "Web 3.0" is engaging more professionals to create user-generated data/content communities by compensating them. Also the semanitic web as the new tech-side supporting the new communities.

What would this mean for the travel and tourism industry? I am not sure. As an academic working on a couple of textbooks during my sabbatical, I think it is involving other academics who may adopt my books to create teaching and learning communities that provide value both for the teachers, students and the world at large. I had not thought about the potential role of compensation -- but am considering it now. I will be working on this over the summer.
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(Originally posted on my Web 2.0 Travel Tools Blog - Alan A. Lew)

User-Generated Airports and Airport Wifi

I saw this on new service from Updates.Orbitz.com on TechCrunch.com:




It is basically a user generated airport news services where users can instantly post the good and bad things they are experiencing at US airports -- like parking problems, unusual TSA delays, flight delays, etc. -- as seen in the Youtube.com video, above. This is in addition to more static information about airport and flight conditions.

Do people really use things like this? I suppose I might if I spent a lot of my life in really large airports that have enough geeks using them to generate some useful up-to-date information, and if wanted to shave off some potentially wasted minutes. However, I do not fly through SFO or LAX that often. For my main hub aiport, PHX, the latest postings tell me that 4 hours ago there were long lines at the US Air and Southwest checking counters -- so what else is new? The lines are almost always long at those two airlines. In my opinion, air travel these days is so unpredictable, the best insurance is to arrive early and be prepared to wait. I may be wrong, but I think that user-generated information can have its limits.

There was a user generated gem in the comments on the TechCrunch posting. It was for AtLarge.com -- a site where users submit reviews and tips on wireless connectivity at airpoirts around the world. I found it one of the better looking and most useful sites of this kind that I have seen. Travelpost.com has a good listing of paid airports wifi services, but no user reviews like AtLarge.com, which is a real plus!


And remember to watch out who/what you are connecting to at an airport, as there have been reports of fake wifi services out to capture your personal information. JiWire.com also has a good guide to using airport wifi, along with a summary of availability at US airports.

PS: I found two other site that have reviews of airports around the world: AirlineEquality.com and ReviewCentre.com. Both have more of a discussion forum approach and have a limited number of airports and/or reviews. And, of course, neither is "live" like Update.Orbitz.com.

Cool New Ideas: Simpatigo and TravNotes

Keeping up with the all the new Travel 2.0 websites emerging every week would be close to a full-time job. I already have a full-time job that consumes a most of my time, so all I can do is squeeze out a review once or twice a month. The websites that I pick to review are those that I think are especially creative (giving me inspiration to write) -- and happen to arrive in my inbox or elsewhere when my real job gives me time to check them out.

Two sites that I learned of just today are Simpatigo.com and TravNotes.com. Both are in early beta, and their content and subscriber bases are under development. But I thought they provided creative new twists on current trends in Travel 2.0.


Simpatigo.com is another attraction mapping site designed to help you plan your trips. This is kind of like Venividiwiki.eu and maybe Rrove.com, both of which I reviewed earlier. The difference is that Simpatigo generates a Trip Itinerary that includes driving directions (common on most mapping sites) AND short descriptions of attractions that you will pass en route. The itinerary can then be printed out to take with you.

This is a cool idea, though its realization is still a bit rough (remember it is still beta). I entered an itinerary for a road trip I am planning for next year from Cincinnati to Toronto. My itinerary only included two attractions, in addition to the driving directions, even though there were many more within fairly short distance from the actual road I was driving on. I did not see a way to capture those additional attractions into the driving itinerary.

I would guess that this will be worked out at some point. Simpatigo currently has some 1600 attractions, mostly in the more populated regions of the US. Some attractions are being captured from major travel publications, while users can also add their own points of interest to share with others. It has a ways to go before its database is truly useful, but is a good idea that has potential.


TravNotes.com is a microblog for travel planning and traveling. I have not seen anything that quite compares, though perhaps the popular WAYNE.com ("Where Are You Now") offers something like this. For the uninitiated, microblogging was made popular recently by Twitter.com, which only allows 140 characters to each blog post. (Click here for my Twitter microblog.) Pownce.com is another microblog with some added features like photo sharing.

TravNotes is a microblog with features specifically for using before and during your travels, and perhaps to talk about travel in general. Each microblog can be categorized as for an "upcoming" trip, for current "traveling", as a public "question" about a place or trip, or a "general" other. Groups can be created from friends and posts can be limited or made viewable by everyone.

Again, TravNotes is new and its membership base seems to be modest right now. But if you like microblogging and traveling, then you may like TravNotes a lot.

The Coming Boom in Online Travel in China

The China Web2.0 Review blog recently covered several new Chinese travel sites, comparing them to some of the more popular US travel sites.

Comparing Some New Chinese Travel Websites

The author of that blog post concludes that "Overall, None of these websites seems really impressive. They are still far behind Ctrip on user base. I think adding more innovative ideas like personalized travel plan similar to what Yahoo Travel and TripHub did may help them gaining ground in the online traveling market."


I have an article in this month's (Oct 2007) issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Unfortunately, my article (titled "China's Growing Wanderlust"), cannot be seen without a paid subscription. One of the topics that I cover in that article is the state of online travel in China. A few points that I make are:

• Although online travel bookings in China grew 72 percent in 2006 to over 2.75 million bookings, valued at 1.54 billion yuan (US$204 million), it pales in comparison to the US, where the online travel market generated revenues of US$83 billion in 2006.
• Chinese consumers have been wary of both online transactions and the use of credit cards (both on- and off-line).
  
• Chinese travel agents discourage online bookings because they pay higher credit card fees online (1.0%) compared to in person (0.1%). So the approach to online travel in China is to direct the public to call centers for information and bookings, and to travel agency offices for cash transaction.
  
• Successful online travel agencies in China negotiate special travel packages at favorable prices that are attractive to the middle and upper classes, who are also more willing to use credit cards and pay a little more for the convenience of online travel bookings.
  
• The biggest online travel agency, by far, in China is Ctrip.com, which accounted for 54.2% of online sales in 2006, followed by eLong.com with 17.8 percent of the market. Expedia.com owns 52 percent of eLong.com, but also has its own China website this year.
  

Although struggling now, many expect China's online travel market to explode in the coming years as more people enter the middle class and the use of plastic (credit cards) becomes more widespread. -- With trends like that, no wonder that the Shanghai stock market is booming these days!