Message from the Founders
Why a book comprised of the best travel blogs?
Well, quite frankly, there is a lot of information about internet marketing and e-strategies in travel and tourism online, however it is very hard to find, especially when it comes to evaluating the source. Lots of great information is published by practitioners that write about their experiences on their own blogs - instead of academics writing about internet marketing concepts in textbooks that are very quickly outdated. Not to discount the value of textbooks and whitepapers, we felt a compilation of the best travel blogs and their best marketing-related posts would bring another dimension to this fast moving subject. In the end, we want this book to add some value to the global hotel and travel industry, but it should also be just a little bit of fun. Bottom line: it�s an experiment. Anthony Williams, the author of the bestselling book ‘Wikinomics’ (http://www.wikinomics.com/), preaches the concept of mass collaboration, and is the opening keynote speaker at Canada-e-Connect. We thought we�d put this concept into action and leverage the T-List community to collaborate on this exciting project.
What is the T-List?
The T-List (T standing for Travel) is basically a collection of travel blogs on the Internet that was first compiled by Mathieu Ouellet in March 2006 (http://www. radaron.com/) with just a handful of blogs. It was born out of the desire to see what other travel blogs are out there. The list grew very rapidly, as it was a way for bloggers to get exposure and increase traffic, and also a first step to get connected with each other. In July 2006, Jens Thraenhart decided to leverage Facebook as a potential platform to build a community of travel-related bloggers (http://tourisminternetmarketing.com). The list grew and became almost too big. Then Kevin May finally decided to publish the Recommended T-List (http://travolution. blogspot.com/), which included travel blogs that seemed to consistently output valuable content.
How was this idea born?
The mandate of the first Canadian e-Tourism Strategy Conference, Canada-e- Connect, is to create a platform for the Canadian travel and tourism industry to embrace and leverage emerging technologies and new media channels. It is not enough for the Canadian Tourism Commission, progressive Provincial and Destination Marketing Organizations, strong travel, hotel, and airline brands to build engaging websites and execute innovative campaigns; the entire industry should leverage this new medium and understand changing consumer research and purchasing behaviors. So basically taking the concept of the power of the weakest link into consideration when it comes to the success of marketing an entire country such as Canada as a tourism destination. When Stephen Joyce contacted Jens Thraenhart to express his excitement at having Canada-e-Connect in Vancouver (http://tourismtechnology.rezgo.com/), and wanted to show his appreciation in supporting the conference, he proposed the idea of giving something back to the attendees that leveraged all of the communities voices and provided value. These discussions led to the birth of the ‘Tips from the T-List Book’.
Just in Canada?
Being a global tourism industry, and having T-List bloggers from all over the world, we quickly decided to make the book a ‘global blogger collaboration project’ as well. Web-in-Travel (November 29-30 in Singapore), and Travolution (November 1 in London, UK), joined forces with Canada-e-Connect (November 7-9 in Vancouver, Canada), to launch this innovative initiative. Phocuswright (November 12-15 in Orlando, Florida) also decided to join the group, recognizing the value and the timeliness of the project. Every event will launch the book slightly differently, but one thing is for sure: we are not just talking Web 2.0, Mass Collaboration, and Convergence - we are actually putting it into action and living it! Please enjoy the book, and have fun with it. When you flip through the pages, remember the medium this content was published in originally, and that blogs are conversations, anecdotes, and come alive through links and reader comments. So this is not designed to be an Internet Marketing Textbook, but a collection of self-submitted posts by travel bloggers. We did not take content from blogs without permission - only bloggers are included that saw the value and had fun with the book concept and collaborated with us on very short notice. So if you are missing a blog, or if you think there are better posts on certain blogs than what was submitted, don’t blame us, but thank all the authors for contributing and generously submitted their posts for this book. :)
Sincerely,
Stephen Joyce, Publisher Jens Thraenhart, Editor-in-chief
Rezgo.com, Sentias Software Corp. Chameleon Strategies
