… so he could write about your destination on his blog. That’s the kind of idea I like.
I’m not the only one I guess because Hjörtur Smárason offered a A Great Opportunity for Travel Bloggers : A four day sea voyage exploring the untouched nature of the Breidafjordur bay, Iceland. Love it.
Most of you will remember the T-List that I’ve started back in March of 2007. It never stopped growing since then. Jens Thraenhart wrote a summary of the *history* of the T-List to introduce the next project inspired by the T-List which is the book Tips from the T-List. Here is the story : Ground-breaking new book in online travel and tourism….
The book will be distributed at the first ever Canadian e-Tourism Strategy Conference, Canada-e-Connect. This is a collective work so you are more than welcome if you want to submit an article. Here is how to it :
Deadline for submission is September 30, 2007
1. Complete and fax back the following consent form to +1 604 648 9651 or email it to tlist@rezgo.com.
2. Send us three of your best posts. The editors will select one of these posts to appear in the book. The posts should be your own work and should be things like tips, observations, or helpful hints. Please do not send news items or trend oriented posts because these will become outdated very quickly. Concentrate on original thoughts, tips, best practices, etc. Please limit the piece to 300-500 words max.
3. Send us a good quality headshot (if you want it included).
4. Send us a good quality screenshot of your blog or website.
5. Send us a very brief bio of yourself, and the description of your blog
6. Send us your full name, address, phone and email so we can send you a copy of the book.
Publisher
Stephen Joyce (who had the idea of the book)
Editors
Jens Thraenhart, Canadian Tourism Commission
Mathieu Ouellet, Radar Internet Strategy - Tourism & Travel
Update : You can find more info at http://www.tipsfromthetlist.com/
Today, I felt in love with a travel agency. THE travel agency! Butterfield & Robinson.
Their website is okay. Some interesting ideas but I think there are some navigation, info architecture et objectives issues. Anyway, that’s not the purpose of this post (even if I’m sure I could help them with that!)
I won’t describe in details why this company is my new love but simply take a look at these amazing videos, you’ll understand.
Meet the staff videos
Explore the World videos
Mr. George Butterfield
Marco - Trip Planner
In two words : Passion and… passion!
You are running your own bed & breakfast? A little hotel? A tour company? You are the communication director of an important hotel chain?
You probably care about customer satisfaction. If so, I’m sure that you read travel magazines and newspapers searching for reviews and comments about your company. Who’s saying what will help you fix what goes wrong and focus on what makes your company what you want it to be.
You already know that Internet is the largest source of information on earth. People already write about your company. Do you know what they are saying? On what sites could they be talking about you? How can you track this information? What should you do with it?
Where do people talk about the company?
- Blogs
- Forums
- Hotel/Tour/etc. reviews sites
- Travel websites (Wikitravel, Road66)
- Travel agencies website
How can I find people talking about the company?
- When people make links to your website, Google knows it (most of the time). You just have to ask Google by searching for
link:http://www.yourwebsite.com
- Technorati. Technorati helps you tracking the content you want in the blogosphere. Search for your company name, you’ll have an idea of who’s talking about you via blogs. Make sure to add the RSS feed of this search to your aggregator.
- Google News. Google news gathers news from 4500 different “official” sources. Just like technorati, you can search for your company and add the RSS feed to your aggregator.
- Website stats. With your own stats you could track who’s refering to your website. You’ll get almost the same results as with “link:” on Google.
With these 4 easy tricks, you will have a good overview of who said what. By subscribing to strategical RSS feeds, it will keep you up to date.
What should you do with this information?
- Understand what people dislike and improve your services/products consequently.
- Add comments on blog posts and answers on forums when people are expressing their disappointment about your services/products or when the info they said is wrong.
- Take the time to thank those who “support” you and give you free publicity.
Simple and effective.
Bill Marriott (and his team) launched his own blog this week. I look forward to read what he (they) will post on it. Too much corporate blogging is not always well received on the Internet.
You really should read the article in Informal learning blog written by Jay Cross.
Thanks to JSB for the info.
Here is an update regarding the post What is going on with WestJet?.
As I wrote yesterday, I’ve contacted WestJet on January 9th at 11h30PM. Believe it or not, I received an answer at 5h10am the day after. 5am! Working hard I guess! ; )
Dave Jones, Web Business director, sent me a pretty long and complete email answering all my questions.
Actually, the website westjets.ca is not a WestJet site neither an affiliate site. They will try to find out. He didn’t know either why this site exists. WestJet is very concerned about brand and trademark respect, and have clear guidelines for their affiliates. “We value our guests’ privacy and security, as well as the value of our brand. I have taken a quick look at this site and don’t see any negative connotation to our guests at this point. However, I’m no security expert so the WestJet security team will investigate that fully”, Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Jones also took the time to give me answers regarding the Google ads errors I found.
I have to say that I really appreciate that kind of feedback from a company like WestJet. It shows a lot of respect and appreciation for their customers, and from my point of view this professional attitude is an important quality in business.
I was doing some tests with Google when I saw this “lag problem” by Westjet (Canadian low-fare airline) which are still paying ads on Google for “Air Ticket, Until Dec 31 Book Flights for $170! Save Hundreds With WestJet www.westjet.com” 
Ummm, too late! It was funny (well, not that much actually) so I’ve decided to run a couple more tests. I wrote down “Westjet” and I got this ad : “WestJets (Official Site) www.westjet.com Save up to 50% off Canada and U.S. Canada’s Leading Low Cost Airline.”
WestJets!? They’ve made a typo!? Umm… then I tried westjets.ca and I got to the site http://www.westjets.ca/. It looks like it could be a WestJet project to generate traffic on westjet.com because there are a lot of links to westjet.com on different phrases. And if it is, I wonder why they are now using Westjets with an “s”!
Ok. I think I got it! Linking to Westjet - Affiliate program.
Since, it is possible for anyone who has a website to be an affiliate to earn a 2% commission on each online sale, I bet that someone uses this identity to link to Westjet and get his commission.
I will write to them right away because I’m pretty curious to know what is going on.
Tourism is not your core business but it is a part of your incomes? Then why would not you take it into consideration? You don’t have to give tourism related content a big place on the website, but here is what I propose :
That is it. Not a lot of work, right? Be smart, keep it simple and make things that really worth it… Radar!
Since my post about Toarino, I got a lot of visitors from search engines who were searching for Toarino (island, beach, ontario, sand, etc.). Honestly, I don’t care about them. Not that I do not have respect for them, just because it’s pretty sure that they have nothing to care about Radar and Internet Strategy/Marketing.
I’m telling you that to make you realize that you surely have the same problem with your own site. Visitors statistics is an indicator, but you should dig a little bit more and calculate the ratio of “good visitors” you have. It’s particularly important if you invest money to buy publicity/ads. What counts is the number of times visitors will reach your objective (get in touch with you, reserve a room, print a form, etc.) not how many visitors you have.
“Élargissez vos horizons. Et découvrez un monde insoupçonné.”
“Widen your horizons. And discover an unsuspected world.â€
A girl on a white sand beach, blue sky, blue water, littles waves… looks like Caribbean Islands.
In Montreal, you can see posters of Toarino(.com) everywhere in town, but nowhere you can find what it is… until you go to the featured website!
Take a look at Toarino.com
Surprise! It’s a website to promote Ontario summer tourism.
A great campaign by Tribal DDB