In the early years of blogging, political sites like Huffington Post, tech blogs such as Gizmodo and Mashable!, and celebrity gossip sites such as Perez Hilton were first to grab the spotlight. But of late, travel has had the hot hand on the Internet. Travel search engines, booking sites, travelogues, and independent travel blogs are multiplying like oversexed bunnies. There are now sites where travel bloggers can converse and others where travel writers can connect with PR firms and editors. Social networking sites are getting into the action in a big way; StumbleUpon only recently added a specific category for travel thumbs ups, and Twitter is inundated with travel tweets every day, all day. There’s even a special day on twitter for travel bloggers (TwitterTuesday) and an aggregator site where all travel tweets are collected and displayed in one place (Wanderlisting).

For those of us trying to make our living as travel writers, it’s frankly hard to stay on top of things, and that is where Travel Insights 100 comes in. Designed to be a forum where a diverse set of travel leaders* can share their points of view, Travel Insights 100 is a platform for discussion, based on research, with thought leaders in travel and tourism around the world. For their first project, the forum surveyed 100 travel leaders around the world to gauge their interest in and use of Twitter. The short presentation below is a summary of results from that survey, All About Twitter, released on September 21, 2009.

This is a first in a series of surveys the group will create during the next year, as it examines the impact that economic, political and social issues have on travel. Travel Insights 100 is a partnership between UpTake, a travel search engine; Tips from the T-List, a community of travel bloggers; and BootsnAll, a leading travel blog network.

*Barbara Weibel is a member of Travel Insights 100

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