Travel Industry News | Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

Hole In The Donut Named Finalist in Eleventh Annual Weblog Awards (“The Bloggies”)

Published February 15, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

The Eleventh Annual Weblog Awards (“The Bloggies”) are upon us! For those of you who don’t know about The Bloggies, once each year they set out to discover the best blogs on the web in a variety of categories (sort of like the Academy Awards for bloggers). The Bloggies began in 2001 and have grown to be the longest-running and one of the largest awards for blogs.

The Eleventh Annual Weblog Awards (The Bloggies)

Last week I learned that Hole In The Donut has been chosen as a finalist this year in the Best Travel Blog category. I am thrilled, not only to be chosen, but also because I am in the company of four other finalists who are masters of their craft: Gary Arndt’s Everything Everywhere; The Vacation Gals, written by Jennifer Miner, Beth Blair and Kara Williams; Kristin Luna’s Camels & Chocolate, and my good friend, Donna Hull, who writes the quintessential baby boomer travel blog, My Itchy Travel Feet.

Being selected as a finalist is certainly a validation of my hard work over the past four and a half years, but it’s especially nice that a lot of new readers will be exposed to my writing and photography through the awards. The Internet is a vast and complicated network – there’s a reason it’s called the web – and it’s not always easy to find gems amidst the mountains of trash in cyberspace. The Bloggies make it easy to find great new reads. For example, Ruth Pennebaker of The Fabulous Geezersisters has been a long-time favorite of mine, yet she never really got the notoriety she deserved. However Ruth has also been named a finalist this year in the Best Writing category, so she’ll begin to reach a much wider audience.

If, like me, you’re always on the lookout for quality, thought provoking writing, I encourage you to browse the list of finalists in all the categories for this year’s Bloggies Awards. Whether your interests lie with travel, sports, politics, fashion, science, religion, computer technology or even gossip, you’re sure to find some great new talent. And if you’re so inclined, you can also participate in choosing the winners in each category, as the general public is invited to vote for their favorite blogs between now and February 20th. Continue reading →

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Tagged best travel blog, bloggies, Contests, Travel, weblog awards |

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Dumbest Moments In Travel for 2009

Published January 23, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Travel Insights 100, a panel of travel experts selected by UpTake.com (the travel search engine that helps travelers decide where to go, where to stay, or what to do) were recently asked to name the dumbest moments in travel during 2009.

The experts ranked the airlines as the dumbest industry, citing events such as ramping-up of all kinds of airline fees, the NWA Flight 188 pilots who overshot the Minneapolis airport during a landing approach because they weren’t paying attention, the ‘United breaks Guitars‘ fiasco, and TSA threatening travel bloggers. However airlines weren’t the only ones on the dumbness radar, as the following presentation shows:

Travel Insights 100 2009 Dumb Travel Moments

View more presentations from TravelInsights100.

Disclosure: Barbara Weibel is a member of Travel Insights 100

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Tagged airline fees, airlines, dumbest moments, Travel, travel insights 100, tsa, United Breaks Guitars, UpTake.com |

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Travel Insights 100 Make Travel Predictions for 2010, Choose Dumbest Travel Moments of 2009

Published December 28, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

A few months ago I was honored to be invited to become a member of Travel Insights 100, a panel of 100 travel experts that included activists, traditional media, independent travelers, and airline and hotel experts who have banded together to monitor travel insights and trends and share that information across the travel industry. Participants, who were hand selected by the folks at UpTake.com (the travel search engine that helps travelers decide where to go, where to stay, or what to do) were recently surveyed about their predictions for travel during the upcoming year.

Responses covered a wide range of issues, but several trends were evident. The following were the most oft repeated predictions; it will be interesting to track the insights to see if they come to pass in 2010:

Travel Insights

Travel will begin to recover in 2010, driven in part by a pent-up demand from those who have put off traveling due to economic concerns, but travelers will continue to focus on discounts and promotional pricing. Most believe that discount airlines, hostels, and budget hotel chains will be the big beneficiary of this trend.
Several panel members believe that travelers will drive rather than fly whenever possible, as the airlines increase security measures and add-on fees. Many predict that airlines will continue to introduce new add-on fees in an attempt to squeeze the last penny out of the traveler, and one respondent predicts this will result in the government stepping in to regulate the practice.
Social media (Twitter in particular) will continue to reshape how destinations are promoted and companies will increase their participation in and creative use of social media.
With the world becoming an ever smaller place, there are no longer any “undiscovered” destinations, yet travelers increasingly desire authentic travel experiences. Most panel members believe this will result in an increase in cultural based tourism, home stays, eco tourism, and volunteer travel.

An in a more humorous vein, participants gave us their dumbest moments in travel during the past year: Continue reading →

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Southwest Introduces New Green Plane to Fleet

Published November 12, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

Southwest Airlines has always been one of my favorite carriers, a position which was recently reinforced when they refused to charge the onerous $100 checked luggage fee being levied by other airlines. My confidence in Southwest escalated another notch today when I learned a “green plane” is being added to their fleet. Environmentally friendly materials used in the interior of the Boeing 737-700 will equate to a weight savings of almost five pounds per seat, saving fuel and reducing emissions while adding recyclable elements to the cabin interior and reducing waste. Elements of the plane include: Continue reading →

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Tagged baggage fees, Boeing 737-700, carbon footprint, environment, green plane, Southwest Airlines, Travel |

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Southwest to Begin Service to Panama City, Florida

Published November 8, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines recently announced that it will begin daily jet service from Northwest Florida’s new international airport near Panama City Beach, Florida in May 2010. Southwest has not released specific details, saying only that it will add at least two daily nonstop flights from Northwest Florida to four destinations across its 67 airport network for a total of eight daily nonstop flights when it begins service next year.

The new international airport, which is the first to open in the nation in more than a decade, is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in May 2010. Specific details on Southwest’s fares and schedule will be available in December 2009. Both the new facility and Southwest’s plans to provide service to the area are expected to help position Northwest Florida, which is blessed with stunning white-sand beaches, as one of America’s leading beach destinations.

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Travel Insights 100: Making Sense of the Internet’s Exploding Travel Category

Published October 1, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

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.

Travel Insights 100 All About Twitter Survey Presentation

View more presentations from TravelInsights100.

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 Continue reading →