Need a break? eTourism: whenever, wherever
Par Marie-Eve Gosemick, le 14 février 2010
Six weeks later, Christmas Holidays already seem so long ago. Next vacation time may not be planned until late summer, this doesn’t mean you won’t need a break in between. Whether you have time and money to travel or not, the following links will help you escaping reality a bit, virtually or actually.
Join inspiring travel communities
If you are happily stuck in the nine-to-five-we-got-plans-for-you schedule, these websites will at least brighten up your day with exotic photos, videos and travel stories. So hit them up while dreaming of your next vacation plans and get inspired!
Matador Network - The world’s largest independent fully-interactive travel magazine
Forget fanny packs and share travel experiences off the beaten track. More than a single online travel magazine, Matador is a thriving social network that was created ‘to connect passionate travellers, people for whom travelling begins with respect and appreciation for the land and local people’. Submitted by freelance travel writers, podcasters, filmmakers, and destination experts, every article becomes a conversation. Join their blog and change your travel philosophy forever.
Spotted by Locals - Experience cities like a local
Forget tourist traps and chill and thrill the local way. Mainly reviewing European cities, Spotted by Locals is a community of Spotlers carefully selected after a face to face meeting in their city. Read their resourceful and authentically local articles and start reading between the lines of a tourist map.
For the French frogs out there, check out Caroline Rodgers’ article posted on cyberpresse to access more inspiring travel websites. There’s also Wikipedia’s little brother, Wikitravel, created ‘to provide a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide’. So far there are more than 23,000 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe. Amazing Worlds used to imitate travel reality online, literally offering tourism in 3D, but it seems that their account has been suspended (?) lately… should you be aware of what happened, whatever that is, please let me know ; )
Plan a trip using digital tools
You are certainly already aware of Google tools (Maps, Earth …) and other iPhone fun (UrbanSpoon, HearPlanet…), but if you do plan to go on a trip soon, the following websites will help you make the best out of the planning process.
TripAdvisor - Plan the perfect trip
A travel community as well, TripAdvisor has the additional advantage of allowing travellers to make online reservations through other websites.
TripOrama - Plan together, travel together
If you’re not planning to go solo, TripOrama is a good way to share your travel research with friends and family and to send invites to convince other people to join.
EveryTrail - A global web 2.0 platform for geo-tagged user-generated travel content
Downloadable for iPhone, this is probably the best tool of them all. Even if you think you are not that much into travelling, EveryTrail may create addiction…
Reinvent the art of travel
Over the past decade, customers needs and expectations in terms of travelling have changed significantly, leading the tourism industry to a sea of contradictions. Generally speaking, even used-to-mass-tourism people now tend to be high-sensation seekers for cheaper, mainly looking to sustainable travel in so far undiscovered places yet reviewed by other travellers on the net… how do tourism offices and travel airlines adapt to this new context? Well, while the latter is still struggling with reinventing its business model, there are few good innovative examples of the first category, as mentioned on etourism.info.
Discover Ireland
The official website of Tourism Ireland recommends well-illustrated highlights, offering etravellers 18 virtual tours to help them design their own trip.
Discover Hong Kong
The official travel guide from the Hong Kong Tourism Board offers a convenient interactive tool to help etravellers build their own trip, allowing them to go back to any steps of the planning process along the way.
Tourism Australia
Australia’s official tourism website has everything (I mean, everything) etravellers need in order to make their dream trip happen, all of it offered with breathtaking pictures.
So slowly but surely, the tourism industry is taking an effective place on the web, as the web is now part of travellers’ reality, whether hippies or yuppies. In fact, a new term has been created to describe the hightech traveller: flashpacker. For accommodation places, this means that, on top of being visible on the net and offering a convenient interactive website (check out my colleague Jean-François Bélisle’s article for more info), they should now be offering free wi-fi and many more plugs (and adaptors ; )) than they used to.
eTourism aside, will airlines ever adapt to travellers enough to increase their customer service, whether online or on the phone (through fax maybe?!)…?
Sujet : Consommateur, Contenu, Marketing Internet, Réseaux sociaux, Stratégie, Tendances, Web 2.0, «Parce que ça me tente» |
3 réponses à “Need a break? eTourism: whenever, wherever”
Commentaire
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Le 15 février 2010 à 23 h 24 min
Thank you for featuring Matador!
Le 24 février 2010 à 21 h 08 min
Anytime!
Le 27 février 2010 à 6 h 09 min
Here is our audio tour website : http://www.zevisit.com. Thanks to this site, free audio guides are available. These audio tour (almost 2000 POI in France) are produced thanks collaboration between zevisit and tourist offices.