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.

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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.