Another publication, even before launching our marketing campaign this week…
Eva Taučar, one of our Ljubljana Spotters, happens to be the editor for Adrenalin magazine, a Slovenian magazine about extreme sports, lifestyle, music and traveling.
I can’t read a word from it, but it certainly looks like a nice magazine!
Links: The full Adrenalin October issue and 2 page article only.
Today our first press-release was published by PRWeb. You can check it here
You can find more information, translated versions and other press-releases on our press-page
Finally, you can visit the heavily touristed but beautiful city of Prague like a real local.
Today we launched Spotted by Locals Prague! Spotters Steve Thomas and Filip Grimm have lead the way with a lot of very interesting and funny inside tips. The other Spotters Tomas Kracmar and Viktor Prochazka will soon follow!
One of the beautiful picture by Spotter Filip Grimm:
Just came across a cool website, citypulse. It’s a project with experimental visions on cities, created by musicians and visual artists.
Most videos and pictures are very strange; I have no idea what they are about. But they do make me curious. Here’s one of street dancers in Krakow, Poland.
We believe in what we do, but sometimes it’s nice to get some peptalk about what we’re doing!
Not the least of Marketing guru’s, Tom Peters and Seth Godin, “celebrate” the phenomenon of blogging in this video.
Yesterday Bart was interviewed about Spotted by Locals on the biggest Dutch news radio station, BNR!
For people that can understand Dutch, here’s the link to the show.
We just launched our 15th cityblog: http://Vienna.SpottedbyLocals.com.
You’ll see Vienna is much much more than Sissy, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, if you visit the places our Viennese Spotters do…
User generated content, letting your users dictate the content of your website, is currently one of the main buzzwords in the online travel industry. It’s not only a phype; it’s a really successful phenomenon: the amount of travelers sharing their travel tips is booming online. Tripadvisor now has 15 million reviews, up from 5 million in 2007. Also, many other competitors to Tripadvisor, like www.Gusto.com, www.igougo.com, www.tripmates.com, and www.tripconnect.com have appeared. According to Jupiter research, 40% of American travelers use content from other consumers in their travel decisions.
But now that the hype is getting beyond the hallelujah-phase, more and more criticism on user generated travel information is starting to appear.
Of course there’s criticism from authors of guidebooks that use professional authors. They see user generated travel information as a threat. Nevertheless, Arthur Frommer, from Frommer’s guidebooks, makes a lot of good points in this column from 2007.
But also Web 2.0 enthusiasts are increasingly criticizing user generated travel information. Darren Cronian names “incorrectness of information” as one main issues on a posting in his influential travel industry blog, Travel-Rants.com.
Most of the criticism comes down to one thing: you don’t know if you can rely on the information. This is also what Spotted by Locals believes is the main drawback of user generated travel reviews. It is often difficult or plain impossible to see who is behind the “local” travel tips. You usually don’t see somebody’s profile or picture. Is it really a bona fide local or actually a traveler who has only visited the spot once? How do you know the owner of the restaurant didn’t write that positive comment?
Robin Noelle’s comment in the above mentioned discussion on Darren Cronian’s posting hits the nail on the head: “I don’t think you can get good user-based reviews if the users aren’t familiar with what the regional standards are. I don’t know that I’ve ever stayed in a hotel in Mexico where the mattress wasn’t as hard as a rock. Now that I live here, I know that it’s not just the mattresses but the sofas and chairs too.“
Now that’s of course exactly the message we’re trying to preach: real local content, by real locals, is so much more trustworthy!
Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) has announced that they will put half a million dollars into a campaign called “Go Travel like a local”.
They also launched a website, http://gotravellikealocal.com/
With this campaign they want to promote the idea that “locals” provide tourists a unique visitor experience. “The compelling message — the message that reaches out and grabs the consumer — is encouraging consumers to see the real destination”
Hallelujah! And thank you DMAI for putting a lot of money into promoting our concept!
Last monday we launched the Budapest cityblog, our 14th cityblog! Our second cityblog in the European region most people would call “Central Europe” (but it depends on who you ask..). The first one was Zagreb, Croatia.
Zagreb and Budapest are two cities we thoroughly enjoyed visiting, and warmly recommend to visit!
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