Travel 2.0 is simply the translation of Web 2.0 in the travel industry. I don’t like buzzword very much but I think it could be a very good idea to regroup all travel 2.0 websites.
I invite all of my readers (yeah you!) to help me complete a list of travel 2.0 websites. Please add comments and I will add the link in this little directory.
Travel 2.0 articles
Discover Travel 2.0
… please comment to add links here.
Travel 2.0 examples
BootsnAll Travel
Farecast
Kayak
Mobissimo
Travellerspoint
Travelowl
Tripadvisor
TripConnect
Tripmates
Wikitravel
World66
Zoomandgo
… please comment to add links here.
Marriott has launched Marriott Virtual Tour which is a new micro-marketing-website. (Sorry for this too short introduction.)
All made with Flash, it has a pretty nice look. Flash is an interesting technology for those who want to put animation on their website. On the other hand, it is not perfect. When we think in terms of search engines, it’s worth nothing else than a big zero. Search engines can’t interprete/index the texts in a Flash animation. In this case, the text is integrated in the Flash animation… and, you’re right, not indexable by search engines, you got it. Graphic design is an important part of websites but it’s not a reason to forget the good practices of web design. It would not be very hard to adapt the concept to make the text “readable” in basic HTML. The designer could have split the page, some of the parts in Flash and the text parts in HTML. As simple as that (for web designers!).
By the way, text-images are not better. On the Check In page the text in this page is an image instead of simple html. There is NO reason why it is like that.
The biggest problem caused by all this is that the website won’t be well ranked in search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN), less visitors will get to the website and the return on investment (ROI) will be less than it should/could be.
As most of the travel & tourism industry, you probably deal with many languages each day.
Depending on many factors (targets, budget, geographical situation, etc.), you will probably want to translate your website in 2, 3 or more languages.
The translation of each page should be accessible directly.
Take this page about the Cabot Trail (which you should see once in your life!) of the Nova Scotia tourism official web site. If you click on “Français”, you will be redirected to the French homepage. Ok now, try to find the French translation of the Cabot Trail… Not that easy. On the Internet, you should always try to provide the good info to the visitor at the right time. In this case, we should be redirected to the translated page of the Cabot Trail. If a French visitor wants to get to the homepage, it’s easy for him. The opposite (from the homepage to the Cabot Trail page) isn’t that easy.
You really should remember that if the visitor gets to a specific page, it’s probably because he searched for it so the translated version should be accessible easily.
Better less than nothing
I often say that less is better than nothing. Well, it’s also good when it’s time to translate your website. If you do not have the budget to translate all your website and to keep it up-to-date, you should consider creating a micro-site which would be a summary-like website that should contain the most requested information of your primary website as long as the language related information (Good example - the right column)